Don't Say You Haven't Been Warned

Matt Welch | February 18, 2008

This morning I taped an interview at Al-Jazeera's studios on Washington D.C.'s K Street. It was my first time there, and I didn't really know what to expect. The Q&A, about the U.S. media's treatment of John McCain, was standard enough, but on my elevator ride down things got a little unusual when I was joined by an Al-Jaz employee who looked like an 8-inches shorter version of Rasheed Wallace, wearing camouflage and an impressively tall headdress of some sort.

"Whoever's in the White House," he said in the car (quotes are inexact and from memory, etc.), "if they don't understand that there's going to be some serious redistribution of wealth in this country over the next 20 to 50 years, then there's going to be violence."

I raised my eyebrow so violently it probably made a noise.

"It's just a matter of physics," he explained as we exited. "With all the wealth in this country, and all the people with weapons, they're just going to go off. You can only hit people for so long before they finally hit back."

And with that he and his co-worker headed down the sidewalk to Whole Foods.