The Twelve Labors of Racist Hercules

Facebook has always been a kind of polestar for racist ranting. Search through any feed and you’ll eventually find someone’s small-town, xenophobic cousin spouting off about the blacks, or the Jews, or the Korean Muslims coming to take their freedom, as if it were a thing they keep stashed away in lock boxes along with Grandma’s ring and their collection of Roosevelt silver dimes.

The person in my feed? Strangely enough, it was the actor Kevin Sorbo of ‘Hercules’ fame, who put in his two cents about the police shooting and subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri:

He later took the comments down and apologized, but the damage has been done: not only has Sorbo exacerbated the plight of an already impoverished and disenfranchised population, but he has, to my mind, left the Hercules mythology in disarray. Fortunately, I had some time today to Sorbify™ the lore, so here are the Twelve Labors of Hercules – the tasks given to him by King Eurystheus as penance for slaying his own wife and children*— reimagined for a racist demigod in a modern world:

The Twelve Labors of Racist Hercules:

1. Slay the Nemean Lion (Even if it’s unarmed).
2. Deport the nine-headed illegal immigrant Hydra (Unfortunately, when you send one head back home, two take its place).
3. Arrest the Ceryneian Hind (Because with those golden antlers and all that bling on its hooves, it’s obviously some kind of thug).
4. Perform a “random” search on the Erymanthian Boar.
5. Pay a migrant worker well under minimum wage to clean the Augean stables in a single day, and if he can’t get it done, call him “lazy”.
6. Slay the Stymphalian Birds (For acting like a bunch of animals).
7. Keep the Cretan Bull in a state of economic stagnation.
8. Steal the Mares of Diomedes (Sorry, I mean “discover” the Mares).
9. Explain to Hippolyta of the Amazons that some of your closest friends are Amazonian.
10. Accuse the monster Geryon of reverse racism.
11. Steal the apples of the Hesperides. (Discover. I mean DISCOVER).
12. Blame everything on Obama.

All right, you can take it from here, Wikipedia. I look forward to your edits.

*The real Hercules weren’t no peach, neither