Weapon-mention as political statement?

[Michael Bailey]

 Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
> So now I ask you, Michael:  Do you really think that Vineland's mentioning
> of the Uzi
>  is an anti-Muslim statement?
>
> Personally I do not think so.
>

no, certainly not.  In fact, I had forgotten the context and just
remembered the yibble.

Lots of war fiction that I had read as a kid used "budda-budda-budda"
to depict machine-gun fire, but I don't think that was anti-Buddhist..
But seriously, yibble yibble was so different that it really stuck in my mind.

I think the context in V. was that Benny was working in a Borscht Belt
hotel and encountered this other employee who was Jewish and
"supporting the troops" in his own rather comical way.  I don't think
the analysis in that passage was so deep as to delineate whether Da
Conho's (and what would the lineage of a Jewish person by that name
be?  Portuguese diaporan?) imaginary machine gun was defending
Israel's 1948 borders (which were in place at the time of V.'s events)
in accordance with international law or engaging in
expansionism...although with Pynchon, it might be there to be found...

No, unfortunately, all I was doing was chiming in with another Pynchon
reference to machine guns that I thought was funny.
"He who laughs has not yet been told the terrible truth" - Kafka by
way of Salinger