Boyd, the fighter pilot who changed the art of war, got in trouble with the Zero Defects people at Eglin when he refused to sign a pledge promising not to make any errors in the coming year.

He said if he didn't make any errors he wasn't doing enough. He wasn't stretching the envelope. Learning.

Ornette Coleman said, "Once I saw I could make a mistake I knew I was on to something."

The old NCOs called Zero Defects Zelda Dork.

I called a character Zelda Dork. "Ask Doktor Dork."

In the newsletter I had my hero writing, KorporateKulture.Kom. At Suent Scientific.

The upthrusting arrow of kwality.

HONK if you love Suent. Suent HONKs.

Holistic
Omnivorous
No bugs, milady (the diversity element)
Keratodontalism forever! (fight tooth and nail for quality)

Suent had a screen on the company intranet that came up every morning when you booted up. The Diversity Circle, they called it. A white, a red, a yellow, and a brown hand, shaking hands.

I added a blue Thalidomide flipper and called it the The Circle Jerk screen.

Suent had what they called Suent Partners. These were organizations employees could belong to and go to meetings on company time. Hold luncheons in the company cafeteria. Presentations in the company auditorium.

They had one for Blacks, one for Hispanics, one for Asians, Aleuts, and Pacific Islanders, one for Women, and one for Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Undecided, one for the Handicapped, or Differently-Abled.

One for everyone but straight white male.

If you were a straight white male you were part of the oppressive legacy hegemony that was exploiting minorities, women, gays, and retards. Feebs.

The straight white male was demonized.

As Nelson Algren's friend said, "I, Mr. Baldwin? I brought you over here in chains?"

I had the temerity to ask, "I? I'm exploiting you?"

Once, when we lived in Courtney, I applied for a job as a technical writer at the Western Electric plant outside Winston-Salem, the plant many of my co-workers worked at, before Western Electric became Lucent Technologies, and they transferred down to the fiber-optic cable plant, formerly a copper cable plant, in Atlanta, the plant I called APRF, pronounced A-perf, in my books. Atlanta Product Realization Facility.

The man who interviewed me said that they had been found guilty of discrimination and were under court order to hire blacks until blacks reached a certain percentage of the workforce. The company policy was not to hire any whites until that figure was reached.

That is, the remedy for discrimination was reverse discrimination. Affirmative action.

Reverse discrimination was called affirmative action.

Had to be done.

But it was still being done.

In any line, a straight white male was last.

He was the last hired and the first let go.

Because if the company let a black person go--or failed to promote him or her promptly--they would face a discrimination complaint.

If they let a white female, or a white queer go, or a retard, they would face a discrimination complaint.

What could a straight white male say if he was let go, passed over for promotion by a less-qualified person, or not hired in the first place? I'm being discriminated against?

He had no race card to play.

The race card was used against him. His race card was nullified. Quite properly.

Go ahead, brother. I can take it. I'm more able than you are. More qualified. They need me to come in and clean up the mess you made.

It's like the potlatch. The more blankets you give away the more honor accrues to you.

Did your daddy buy you that?

Christ, you're as bad as Captain Charlie.

You can see why I was ambivalent about putting this at The Daily Bugle.

But put it at The Daily Bugle I did.

I sounded my barbaric yawp.

I tore the doors loose from the doorjambs.