Impotent rage: Flying the bird

Kolohe Andino offers his indecent digit to the judges. But did he really want them to you know what his you know what?

Yesterday in the waning moments of Round 3 Heat 7 Kolohe Andino became very angry. He sat on his board, near Mick “White Lightening” Fanning and, at first, slapped the water. Shoulders slumped. Head hung. He slapped again and then turned toward the scaffolding and raised a lonely soldier high into the sky. A one-fingered saluted pointed at, it must be assumed, the judges in their perch. And as the buzzer sounded he did it once again except fiercer. His jaw tense, eyes blazing rage.

Were the judges offended? Difficult to say but they should have been. “The middle finger…” according to anthropologist Desmond Morris “…Is one of the most ancient insult gestures known. It is the penis and the curled fingers on either side are the testicles. By doing it, you are offering someone a phallic gesture. It is saying, ‘this is a phallus’ that you’re offering to people, which is a very primeval display.”

The Romans called it the “igitus impudicus or digits infamies”  (indecent or infamous digit). The mad emperor Caligula murderous and evil was said to have regularly offered his digitus infamis to be kissed by his enemies, just to flash his imperial nasty.

A Roman historian named Tacitus wrote that German tribes raised the middle finger to advancing Roman soldiers and that even squirrel monkeys use their erect penises to make rude gestures.

Its first documented use in the United States is from 1886. A pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters flashed his bird to a team photographer for the New York Giants, according to the BBC.

Kolohe means “rascal” in Hawaiian. Andino has Eastern European origins.