{"id":28243,"date":"2020-06-06T21:19:49","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T01:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=28243"},"modified":"2020-06-07T07:45:02","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T11:45:02","slug":"taking-a-knee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/taking-a-knee\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a knee"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first heard of taking a knee, <\/em>I thought to myself: \u201cwhose knee? Take it where?\u201d<\/p>\n

And I was reminded of Spike Milligan\u2019s version of, \u201cI left my heart in San Francisco\u201d:<\/p>\n

I left my heart in San Francisco,
\nI left my knees in old Peru.
\nI left my little wooden leg
\nHanging on a metal peg,
\nAnd my eyeballs I gave to you.
\nI left my teeth on Table Mountain,
\nHigh on a hill they smile at me.
\nWhen I come home to you, San Francisco,
\nThere won\u2019t be much left of me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know why the saying irritates me so profoundly, but it does. Why can\u2019t people say, \u201cI knelt\u201d? Is it because “I knelt” evokes echoes of Christianity which today, as everyone knows, is a thinly disguised euphemism for white colonialism?<\/p>\n

Like or not, though, those who take their knees are performing an act of religious obeisance to a god: the god of conspicuous righteousness in this case.<\/p>\n

Here we have some police men and women who have taken their knees, not to old Peru, but downtown Toronto to show everyone that social distancing isn\u2019t as important as they claimed when they handed out tickets to people getting together for reasons other than demonstrating on behalf of black lives matter. <\/em><\/p>\n

It’s a lovely image: heads bowed in reverence, cameras clicking, fists raised, CBC microphone at the ready, poised to capture any whispered pieties.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first heard of taking a knee, I thought to myself: \u201cwhose knee? Take it where?\u201d And I was reminded of Spike Milligan\u2019s version of, \u201cI left my heart in San Francisco\u201d: I left my heart in San Francisco, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[256],"tags":[2639],"class_list":["post-28243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-black-lives-matter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}