Would You Hide Edward Snowden?

Die Zeit ("The Times") Germany's most intellectually engaged newspaper, has a banner headline in the June 27 issue:  "Würden Sie diesen Mann verstecken?"  ("Would you Hide this Man?") complete with a romantically windswept photo melange of Snowden looking soulful.

Yes, Edward, yes, yes, yes!  We'd be one stop on your underground railway!  You could hide in our attic or in one of several rooms in our basement.  The guest room would be fine with us:  it has a comfy bed, a nice little blue rug and some lovely plants on the windowsill.  You could roll down the shade and no one would see you.

Ecuador?  Iceland? Venezuela?  En route to anywhere you want, do call us.  Code Name?  Secret message?  Gee, how do we do that one?  Hmmmm.  I have never done this before, obviously.  But hey, "Espionage Ed," I'm sure you'll find a way, and you know what?  You could even have the clubhouse the kids and my husband built in our back yard.

Now, I know we'll probably find ourselves disappointed, but we do have a well-stocked larder.  My real point: if every little blogger whom nobody reads sends you this invitation--I know, it sounds like that Peter Pan line, every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead”--but I persist:  if every little blogger with less than 30,000 hits invites you to tea, or to stay overnight, or even two nights, well, then all zillion of us are offering a roof over your head and what can "they" do?

I'm reading The Daily Beast and the New York Times and everybody hysterically speculating that you are not a hero but an egomaniac and are, as we speak, making deals with China and destroying American interests. Or they think you're a schizoid personality.  Maybe you are.  So what.  So was Johnny Appleseed.  Like him, you're a visionary.

I don't get the impression that all this paranoia and fanfare and gasping "The last time a spy defected. .  ." stuff has anything to do with you.  I think you did just want to show that folks out there are really reading my blog.

So, how about a few flash mobs, and everyone will sing (to the tune of "Bye, Bye, Birdie"):

We love you Edward

Oh yes we do-hooo

We love you Edward

And we'll be true-hoo . . . . 

I think you have a network of concerned citizens here who remember J.Edgar Hoover going nuts over the Berkeley Free Speech movement, (I'm not proud of him in general: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/hoover/12.html) Joe McCarthy questioning Lucille Ball,  Japanese-Americans herded into camps in the deserts, Arab-Americans persecuted for walking down the street and buying a pack of cigarettes, plus that Ur-event of them all, the Salem Witch Trials.  Right after 9/11 we happened to visit Salem and saw FBI manhunt posters of Osama bin Laden staring out of telephone poles and coffee houses.  And my husband said:  "Salem.  Proudly hunting witches for three hundred years."  That about sums it up.

Edward: We'll keep the light on for ya. 

P. S. Remember Daniel Ellsberg!