Who is the Bogeyman Now?
The most common of all childhood fears is that someone is hiding under the bed. The bogeyman is said to lurk there, ready to attack the sleeper in the dead of night. Parents sometimes encourage this belief, telling children who misbehave that the bogeyman will get them. Today, however, this shadowy monster has been given a face and a nationality. Today, anyone of Middle Eastern appearance, anyone who converses in a foreign tongue, anyone that does not fit the pattern of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) stereotype is the bogeyman that strikes fear into our hearts and pervades our dreams. The trouble is that we are no longer children and that we are wide-awake when we spy the dreaded monster. He might even be sitting right next to us on the very plane we fear might never reach its destination.
