There once was a place called "Niggertown" that no one ever had heard of and much less had visited. One day a fuzz arose about the name and what it intimated. Scandalized voices claimed that the naming were racist and should be altered to something more appropriate. The mayor of the town however announced that he had no intention of doing them this favour.
The habitants of the town, who were all white by the way, were all satisfied with the name and didn’t understand what the problem was. As long as they could recall, the name had been the same without any concerns from anyone. How could a name suddenly become racist when there hadn’t been any changes in the town recently? In fact, things had always been the same and everyone had been pleased about it.
In the media the issue was intensely debated and most debaters held that a change was necessary. Representatives of the city argued that it was ridiculous to change the name as everybody who lived in the town was happy with the way it was. The opponents claimed that this was a much greater issue that concerned the whole nation. They didn’t think it mattered that no one ever had heard of the town until a poor lost hiker had sat foot there and come into trouble.
Eventually the name of the city was changed to "Neithertown" after some heavy compromising. For a while everybody was happy, but pretty soon the opponents realized that the old name still was used in documents, maps, literature, the papers and so on. That was not acceptable! The name was literally banned and wasn’t allowed to be used in any context. And so they engaged one person on a full time basis to trace all occurrences and alter them to the new name, no matter where they were found.
Pretty soon they realized that this project required far more resources than expected. Before the incident with the lost hiker, the name of the town only occurred occasionally mainly in authority documentation, but since it all became of national interest the old name had spread like a cancer. On this purpose, 15 civil servants where hired to search and replace all occurrences in any text by all required means!
A resistance movement evolved to fight back the hectorism of the authorities. For every occurrence that was replaced, they produced two new copies of the old name. Pretty soon the old name was all over the place and there was no way to fight it down anymore. The authorities had lost the battle, but had far no intentions of losing the war.
As a result of the controversy all mass media were abolished. It was no longer allowed to run a News paper or a TV-station. From now on the authorities had exclusive right to anything that enabled communication to a broad mass. The state was run by the government and they had to show everybody who was in charge.
The underground movement didn’t care. They had already introduced a sophisticated messaging system using plain old scraps of paper conveyed by homers. Although the authorities registrated an increased rate of pigeons, they left it unnoticed as they were focused on more high-tech equipment regarding hostile activity. This was a negligence that would cost them dearly.
The underground messaging system had grown so strong that when it came to the attention of the authorities it was way beyond their reach to take control of it. But the implications were bigger than that. They had no longer any means at all to control the citizens. No one ever read the papers or watched television anymore. The public had also given up on electronic communication as it was regarded as the core in the propaganda machinery of the authorities.
The pigeons brought forth the message that Neithertown again had become Niggertown while it emerged as the symbol of freedom, democracy and free speech. As it always had been until a lost hiker appeared and disturbed the peace.
Tags: authorities, communication, compromising, dove, hectorism, homer, media, pigeon, propaganda, rubber
You can’t change the past, it will always come back and haunt you…