Genocide is so hot this Season

In order to work for Barack Obama, he has requested to know if the applicant has ever sent a "controversial electronic communication".

I consider myself to be relatively intelligent and politically literate. At times, I have entertained lofty dreams of a career inside the beltway. I am a self-proclaimed news junkie who thrives on NY Times email updates and CNN breaking news. I watch John King's Magic Map as if porn were to spring out of the red states. Election season was the playoffs and Obama drafting his dream team is training for Olympic gold. 

In short, for the better part of 2008, my political panties were wet.

For many democrats, a spot on Obama's team is THE DREAM. Myself included. But hold the fucking phone. He wants to know if I have ever sent a "controversial electronic communication"?

I am all for transparency and due diligence. We don't need a democratic version of the Ted Stevens scandal and I would never want the credibility of the Obama Administration questioned by some Fox News wanker because of some silly Facebook wallposting. However, with the exception of a 50-60% of my professional emails, I can honestly say that no emails, IMs, Facebook messages or Twitter updates have not been controversial. I can also honestly say that the brilliant students with whom I toiled to obtain a Master's in Human Rights, as well as my NGO colleagues and friends are the dirtiest and most offensive bunch of kids I have ever encountered.

I firmly believe that the good karma which I accrue working 9 hours everyday to secure the rights of Africans, to provide economic opportunities to rural food farmers, to subsidize bednets for children in malarial areas and to train traditional birth attendants allows me to conduct myself in a manner that is outrageously controversial and politically incorrect. And quite frankly, I don't know anyone in my field who doesn't have the same sense of intellectual and humanitarian entitlement as I.

I am not talking about accidents. I am not talking about the time when I was organizing the Special Olympics in Chicago and called a volunteer who I was managing "retarded" on the basketball court surrounded by Special Olympians. I am not citing examples of when my roommate accidentally decided it was an opportune time to make cancer jokes in the presence of my niece whose mother had recently passed away from breast cancer. 

I am talking about calculated efforts to document the extent to which my sense of dogooderness entitles me to articulate wildly inappropriate things.

No one is safe from my wrath. I'll make fun of anyone. It's 24/7 reality TV broadcast from South Park hosted by yours truly. It's as if the more I learn about the protections enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the more I want to verbally strip them away..but of course, from everyone equally. Just today I wrote an email in which I said "genocide is so hot this season". This is despite the fact that I labored for months in 2006 over my dissertation outlining what steps civil society could take to stop the massacre in Darfur.

But does my offensive humor cross out the "good" that I do working for an NGO in the same way that a Republican and Democratic vote cancel each other out in the electoral college? Or does the fact that I make fun of every race and religion equally make it OK?

Sometimes I wonder if it's just catharsis. Or an exercise in self-preservation. If I can't find some humor in hearing about trafficked children being recruited to become child soldiers later forced to anally smuggle diamonds across international borders so that wealthy Dutchbags in Antwerp can turn a profit how can I ever face my job? My industry? Or even the entirety of my career? Maybe humor, albeit controversial and offensive, is a method of protectionism that makes me an effective advocate. Maybe humor is in fact the best weapon in the fight against burnout, against the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness which is so prevalent in my field.

I do worry about my future, however, because of the Interweb and all forms of electronic communication and monitoring. Sometimes I am the author of my own demise, leaving an electronic trail of virtual blood as I consciously chronicle my life on sitonmyFacebook, as I diddle my Twitter. But sometimes, I worry that my dreams will be squashed because some douchenozzle will find some secrets of my past and could reveal them to an employer, or to Barack. Is he going to find out that my sophomore year roommate took topless pictures of me dressed up as a PowerPuff girl? God, I hope not. But damn, it's possible.

I am a living juxtaposition. I am 50% human rights defender, 50% running from the dock of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.  And while I'll defend my right to freedom of expression I realize that every civil liberty in the book will bite me in the ass later when I can't get a job for Obama.

In the meantime, maybe we should just focus more on my aspirations for African women's empowerment rather than the fact that I have an order in for an Al Sharpton bobblehead cause he really gets on my tits.

But please, please, don't tell O'Biden.