A tar baby tale
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last decade or two, you will no doubt have heard of this thing called “Social Media.”
In a number of cases, it is more antisocial than social, but for good or ill it is a dominant influence on our present society.
The ancient Cherokee stories have been with us for a thousand years or more, and they come from a time when no one imagined a computer, much less Facebook, but the parallels are there, nevertheless.
We have discussed before in this column the wholesale plagiarism perpetrated by Mr. Harris and his fictional Uncle Remus. This week we will explore another ancient Cherokee story and the timeless wisdom contained therein.
As we have discussed before, Rabbit plays the role of trickster and gambler in Cherokee lore. In the story of Rabbit and the Tar Baby, we find that he also has something of a temper. This was his downfall in the Tar Baby story and is often a downfall in the virtual “community” that exists in “Social Media” and is also noteworthy in that today there are people who make their living as virtual Tar Babies. They are called cable news hosts.
The Cherokee story tells of a dummy set up to entrap Rabbit so that the character or characters who owned said tar baby could capture Rabbit for their own reasons and use or abuse him for their own ends. Rabbit, clever though he is, walks right into this trap unaware that the tar baby, much like the “news” being pedaled by various outlets today, is not real. Rather, the tar baby is just a dummy meant to provoke Rabbit into doing something, into taking an action, that is against his self-interest.
There are different versions of the story, depending on the storyteller and how the story was told to that particular storyteller by his or her elders. In the version I was told as a child, Rabbit was on his way to a council meeting because he was running for Chief. Bear, who was the Chief at the time, and running for his fifth term, and Fox, who was Bear’s fixer and dirty trickster, were looking for a way to prevent Rabbit from making it to the Council House and making his last speech before the election.
Rabbit, as we have said has a reputation as a gambler and good-time man, and Bear and his cronies agree that if Rabbit is elected Chief, it will be bad for their interests. Fox it seems, in this version of the story anyway, has agreements with outside interests and is afraid that Rabbit will expose him if he makes it to the Council House to make his speech.
Fox and Bear get together with some consultant financed by Fox’s friends, and they figure out one of Rabbit’s weaknesses. Rabbit was a friendly sort of guy, he never met a stranger and always liked to stop and talk to folks he met along the way, but he tended to get angry and violent if he felt insulted.
So, Fox and his friends set up a dummy to catch Rabbit’s attention on his way to this crucial speech. They coated this dummy with pitch and tar so that anyone who touched it would become stuck and unable to proceed on their way. The dummy looked very real, but it was not. In later times, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies would come to refer to this sort of operation as a “cut out.”
In the story, Rabbit takes the bait. Walking down the road, early on a beautiful day, he bids a good morning to the tar baby. The dummy does not respond of course, and Rabbit is insulted by the poor manners and insolence of the dummy. Rabbit reacts as if the dummy were real, thereby becoming entrapped in his enemies’ tar pit.
In today’s world we face an endless string of virtual tar babies. I have seen real friendships ended over Facebook posts, I have seen real people put out of their church over an election, children have committed suicide over online bullying, this insanity seems to spread faster than COVID, and like other diseases brought to the Cherokee country by various and sundry outsiders, there seems to be no immunity.
My friends, let us learn a lesson from Rabbit, the “virtual world” is no more real than the proverbial tar baby. When you are on your way to a good and beautiful day, remember that the tar baby someone put in your path (or on your Facebook page), is not real. Walk on by lest you be trapped in an enemy’s unreality.