I’m sure that there were lots of well-meaning, good-hearted people who took part in the march in DC; I know at least one of my coworkers who did so, and she’s a good person. And I know that it’s probably tough to police the group yourself, and to keep idiots from joining your group and discrediting it.
But Man o’ Manischewitz, what a menagerie. The usual black-masked anarchists destroying property. Unattractive people of indeterminate gender carrying signs forbidding evil males from impregnating them or telling them what to do once they are impregnated. (I speak for all male-kind when I say, don’t lose any sleep over the possibility of the former. Because, nope.) Crude drawings of female organs, internal and external. Obscenity-scrawled signs alongside marching children who should be taught not to say those words. Shrieking celebrity harridans hollering about blowing up the White House. Formerly attractive actresses screaming poems about incest.
And by the way, no decent poet ever had to scream his or her poetry. No one in Christendom ever said, “Hey, you want to come down to the coffeeshop? Emily Dickinson is going to give a high-decibel poetry wail.” Or “Save the 15th, because Alfred Lord Tennyson is doing a standing-room only couplet yelping at the top of his lungs.” Or, “You know what I like about Shakespeare’s sonnets? They’re f**king deafening!”
(And yes, English majors, I’ve read self-proclaimed poet Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and it’s no exception: it might as well be screamed, and it’s terrible. I’ve read the best minds of your generation too, and there’s a good reason they were starving. No one in their right minds would buy that crap.)(To get that last joke, you may have to re-read the opening of “Howl.” But don’t hold me responsible for any ill effects.)
Who exactly do the marchers think they are reaching with their subtle, persuasive message? Think about it: a bunch of women marching in vagina-simulating hats? Because if anything connotes well thought-out moral seriousness, it’s genitalia-evoking head gear! Can you picture the impact of a million male march, all of us wearing phallic-symbol chapeaux? (The ear flaps mimic testicles! Get it?) THAT would really make the matriarchy stand up and reconsider our point about the appropriate size of government!
Or would it just make us look like an army of un-telegenic lunatics? And launch a thousand late-night comics’ routines about whose hats were flaccid, and what the guys in the 10-gallon-size phallic hats were insecure about. And what that Jenner person was doing there in a phallic hat and a vaginal scarf?
I know that I’m biased. (“What? You?!” I can hear you saying.) And I know that both sides of the political aisle contain some good and bad actors. But it seems to me that the Left has a strain of bullying deep in its DNA, of which these protests were just one more example.
Consider: Many conservatives enjoy listening to right wing radio (Limbaugh, Ingraham, Hannity et. al.) and watching a right-leaning news network like Fox, just as lefties enjoy lefty radio (NPR) and tv (PBS). But it never occurs to righties to try to force non-righties to subsidize their radio and tv preferences, while lefties have for decades been forcing all taxpayers to fund their choices. (I’m not even running down NPR or PBS in their totality, since there is some good stuff on both.)
Or consider their approaches to the constitution. Conservatives are fond of the second amendment, but we’d never dream of forcing our fellow citizens to pay for our guns. Leftist are fond of the non-existent amendment that magically grants the right to abortion, but are they satisfied with the right to have their abortions?
Spoiler alert: they are not. The rest of us must be forced to pay for them, even if we have a basic biological understanding of what is being ended in abortion. And we have to pay for their condoms, which they were apparently using to make balloon animals at the birthday parties of the children they don’t have. Since we also have to pay for their abortions, I mean.
Or consider Obama’s unilateral wiping out of the country’s laws against illegal immigration. Faced with a congress and populace opposed to open borders, did Obama get down to the hard work of patiently reasoning with and persuading the American people to his point of view?
HA! He did not. Instead, he proclaimed, “I have a phone, and I have a pen.” He used the pen to scratch through the offending sections of our nation’s laws, and he used the phone to call Tijuana and holler whatever is Spanish for “Olly olly oxen free!”
Think about how the left would feel if right after Trump got sworn in, he went on tv to announce that since the GOP believes that our corporate tax rates are too high, and inheritance taxes are immoral, he’s using his big gold pen (“It’s huuuuuge. The gold is the best quality ever. You’ve heard of 24 carat? This one is 25 carat, believe me.”) to write an executive order eliminating both taxes?
The MSM talking heads would explode, and rightly so. But how did they react when Obama pulled his pen-and-phone routine?
“El chirpo. El chirpo.” (Which, as the bilingual entomologists among you know, is the sound made by a Mexican cricket, in a village that is silent and empty because everyone got Obama’s phone call and vamoosed for ”El Norte.”) (Which is also Spanish.)
(For “the north.”)
(You’re welcome.)
(Also, I defy you to think of a better name for a band than “Buddy Holly and the Bilingual Entomologists.”)
And there’s my entry for “Best Comedic Use of Parentheses in a Political Facebook Page.”
Please vote early and often.
Addendum:
After the above post appeared, I received a great deal of positive responses, along with an aggressive fact-checkers who insisted that I was wrong about Planned Parenthood getting taxpayer dollars. I wrote the paragraphs below as a follow-up:
I can’t tell you all how gratifying it is to read your kind comments – I really appreciate them all! For years I’ve dashed off little rants like this for my own amusement, and for that of a couple of friends. But when the Great and Powerful CO asked if he could share them on his site, I jumped at the chance, and it’s great to know that other people are enjoying them.
Because I’m nothing if not a humanitarian — Ask my fellow cabal member Mr. Trump: “Simpson’s a huuge humanitarian. The best. Mother Teresa looks like H.L. Mencken next to him. He really puts the ‘human’ in ‘humanitarian,’ believe me!” — I also feel compelled to share a few words with the tireless left-leaning citizen who took time out of his busy schedule to fact-check my last post.
Sir, let me confess a few errors, to save you some valuable fact-checking time:
- There is no such thing as a “vaginal scarf.” Nor is there a fallopian cravat. But I’m almost certain that there IS an ovarian sweater. I think Lady Gaga wore it on stage during her last tour.
- Emily Dickinson never yelled her poetry in a coffeehouse.
- Mexican crickets do not in fact chirp in Spanish.
However, I made one point that apparently stuck in your craw, and that I feel compelled to defend.
Planned Parenthood does receive federal funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars) from sources such as Medicaid and Title X. And contrary to its name, “Planned Parenthood” is not a think tank filled by people in lab coats, working with charts and graphs and protractors and space-age polymers, engaged in a tireless pursuit to unlock the mysteries of how one becomes a parent. (“Dammit man,” they do not say to themselves in frustration, “we’ve put a man on the moon, we’ve refined the 46 defense, we’ve developed the spork. But we just can’t crack this ‘where do babies come from’ conundrum!”)
No, contrary to your confident assumptions, that’s not what they do at P-squared. They do abortions. Lots of abortions.
And before you say it, I know: the federal dollars never, ever go to fund an abortion. Those dollars parade through the front door, chastely averting their eyes, and take a hard left down the hallway, where they swan dive into neatly stacked piles to pay for tongue depressors and utility bills and mounds of “I’m with Her” posters, while totally, pristinely separate dollars pay for the abortions. (wink, wink.) If I can interrupt your fact checking, could I humbly suggest that you google “money is fungible?”
And then, hold on to your non-genitalia-evoking hat, because you are going to be shocked to learn that… wait for it… taxpayer dollars pay for abortions.
Martin Simpson 