As we headed into the summer, I was shocked to find that the MSM was not happy with the way Trump referred to immigrants:
“You probably haven’t heard about this – because CNN has been obsessed with covering nothing but the historically low black and Hispanic unemployment rates, and the strong economic numbers, and the way Mueller and McCabe and Comey and John Brennan and Clapper and Peter Stroke and his unattractive mistress have all been exposed as a cabal of sleazy perjurers who need to be jailed immediately – but Trump called some immigrants “animals.”
No, really. He did. I flipped back and forth through half a dozen channels for the better part of two days, and had it confirmed over and over again. Apparently, he described as “animals” the following groups: hard-working Mexican single mothers, saintly Guatemalan priests, impeccably dressed Ecuadorian honor students, Costa Rican abuelas who are bravely fighting stage three breast cancer, adorable Chilean first-graders, and Salvadoran first responders who specialize in rescuing adorable Salvadoran kittens who get stuck in an especially sticky species of Salvadoran trees.
Of course, as it turned out, Trump was referring to members of MS-13, a merry bunch of sociopaths who divide their time between beheading innocent teenagers and competing in round robin “who can get the most hideous tattoos” tournaments.
My favorite MSM idiot in this story – in a very crowded field — is someone named Ana Navarro. Ms. Navarro clambered onto her high horse to say how contemptible it was that anyone would ever refer to any human beings – no matter what they’d done – as “animals.”
Then, because God loves us and has a real grudge against Ana Navarro, 8 million Americans immediately Googled “Ana Navarro” and “animals” and “hypocritical beeyotch” (maybe that last one was just me), and came up with this tweet of hers from 2016: “Should Donald Trump drop out of the race? Yes. He should drop out of the human race. He is an animal. Apologies to animals.”
Move over, “Boy who Cried Wolf,” and “The Scorpion and the Frog,” because I have a new favorite Aesop’s Fable: “How the CNN Horse’s Ass got Hoof-in-Mouth Disease.”
Later that month, I had the chance to rant about a pet peeve of mine that involves actual pets – “the boneheads who have convinced themselves and the airlines that they require an “emotional support” animal to accompany them to whatever destination they are traveling to.
And before I get going on the details, trust me: these folks are not flying to the International Symposium on Particle Physics convention, or Mensa-fest 2018, or the Simpson Family Reunion. No. They are going to the Women’s March, or the Democratic National Convention, or the David “Kewpie Hitler” Hogg fan club meeting at the Hilton by the airport.
Anyway, as most disastrous trends in our recent history, this one started out with good intentions. Blind or physically disabled people needed the help of a smart, well-trained seeing-eye dog, so they were given permission to travel with their dogs. (FYI, Cassie “the Wonder Dog” Simpson briefly considered a career in the helping professions – assisting the blind, or sniffing out drugs carried by criminals, or giving a vicious and well-deserved mauling to this nation’s enemies as a military dog – before settling on a lucrative position as my faithful companion.) But immediately after the tiny number of people who legitimately needed a dog to travel with them got that permission, a horde of grifters and ne’er-do-wells and narcissistic scam artists followed hard on their heels.
Seeing-eye dogs were followed by support dogs and then by other support species. Which was already a bridge too far. I mean, how much support can your reasonably get from a cat, for crying out loud? I love cats, my family loves cats, we’ve got several. But no cat is ever going to pull a handi-capable senior citizen from a burning house, or run-down a fleeing Democrat voter with an armful of stolen loot, or sprint back to town to alert the police that Jimmy has fallen down the well.
Anyway, allowing other support species then devolved into perhaps the best indicator of modern American moral degeneration: the “emotional support animal.” Ugh. With 10 minutes of internet searching you can find stories about lost souls traveling with pigs, peacocks and monkeys, all of whom are supposed to be giving vital emotional “support.” If you can stand to learn more about this, read a recent Dallas News article on efforts of several airlines to curb the explosion of support menageries tromping onto every flight and turning them into a demented Noah’s Ark with spotty wifi.
I’ll mention just one specific example. A 39-year-old Kentucky resident named Carla Fitzgerald has recently traveled on multiple flights with her emotional support Indian Runner duck, which she named Daniel Turducken Stinkerbutt.
Where do I start with that? First, the only acceptable animal middle name is obviously “the Wonder Dog.” Second, that name you stuck one of God’s innocent creatures with is not cute – it’s really, really stupid. Other ducks are mocking your duck, and if he could get out of your clammy grasp, he’d gladly launch himself into the airplane’s jet turbines just to end his shame.
When I first read that story, I came to the detail that Fitzgerald was allowed to travel with her mortified duck because she had PTSD. For the briefest of seconds, I thought, “Ah, geez, if she’s a combat veteran, I don’t know if I can savagely mock her…” But then I read on: “…PTSD from a carriage accident years ago.”
A carriage accident? What the hell? Is this woman an upper-class 18th century lady whose vehicle suffered a broken wooden axle on the rutted path between Boston and Philadelphia? Was she taking a romantic horse-drawn ride around Central Park after Kramer had fed the horse something that made it gassy?
And her “accident” took place “years ago?” What’s the statute of limitations on carriage-accident-related trauma? Forty years ago I saw a Benny Hill skit where he dressed up like a highwayman and robbed a stage coach, leaving the female riders in only their 1970s-style underwear and garters, for some reason. Do I still get to drag my three-named platypus through first-class to an aisle seat in coach?
By the way, this might have to be a topic for a future column: the mission creep that has come to surround PTSD. If you ran over an IED outside of Kandahar, or were raped by the kind of animal that Lil’ Mike Dukakis gave weekend prison passes to, you legitimately have PTSD, and God bless you. If you had a bad experience in a spelling bee in 3rd grade, or someone called you the wrong pronoun, or you still can’t leave the house after the 2016 election, you don’t have PTSD. You have TWS (terminal wussiness syndrome), and need some SKA (swift kick in the arse) therapy immediately.
I know this is a hard issue for the emotionally mature, well-adjusted readership of CO nation to identify with. None of you reading this can likely imagine a circumstance in which you would ever find yourself calling Customer Support at Delta and saying the words, “Can I bring my therapeutic ocelot on Flight 3245 to Newark?”
Why not just walk up and down an airport concourse wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, “I have no pride, dignity or value to society. Please commit me to an institution where I can get the electroshock therapy that I so desperately need.”
Or, alternatively, you could just listen to me, as the entire world should: if you are too emotionally fragile to travel in public without your support macaque, please stay home and work on your issues.
Speaking of listening to me, in June I read about leftist bullies in Colorado forcing a Christian baker to make a cake for the wedding of two hateful gay activists, and introduced what should become a bedrock principle of our democracy: “Mind Your Own Business You Totalitarian Jerks” (or MYOBYTJ):
“And I wouldn’t just apply it to religion, either. For example, I dislike smoking; it’s expensive, and makes your clothes stink, and it caused the deaths of my mother-in-law and a favorite aunt in the last 6 months. If someone wanted to open a bar or restaurant in my town that allowed smoking, I wouldn’t go there.
But you know what else I’d do? I’d mind my own freaking business! If a smallish town has 6 bars, why couldn’t one of them allow smoking? No one who objected would have to work there, or eat there, or drink there, and most people wouldn’t. If enough people voted with their dollars and stayed away, the bar would close. But not because some crybullies forced them out of business.
I know that smoking is not good for you, but that’s not the point.
You know what else isn’t good for you? Ice cream. Riding a motorcycle. Women half your age. Many other women. Many men, too. Playing the lottery. Cocaine. Red meat. Electing delusional white ladies to the Senate from Massachusetts. (#wemustneverstopmockingher) Really loud music. Stepping in to defend a weak person against a bully who’s much larger and stronger than you are.
Half the juice in life is negotiating your way around and through those things. For example, I once had a good meal at a steakhouse with a woman who wasn’t good for me (despite a cuteness of almost Nikki Haley-esque proportions), and then took her back to her apartment on my motorcycle, where she fed me some ice cream.
But just when I was about to do some things that would have left me with terrible regret (and possibly some soft-tissue injury) she pulled out some cocaine and said, “Let’s snort this, and then buy a lottery ticket and vote for Elizabeth Warren.”
Of course, I jumped up in righteous outrage and tossed some clothes at her and said, “Put your clothes on and get out of my apartment!”
And she said, “Those are your clothes, and this is my apartment!”
To which I wittily replied, “Oh, yeah.” The next thing you know, I’m making a dignified (if pantsless) retreat, while she is screaming from the second floor landing like a crazy person, “Elizabeth Warren is a Native American role model!”
And I’m screaming back at her, “She’s as Indian as Ingemar Johanssen!”
“Who is that?”
“Google him!” I yelled.
“You better stop mocking Elizabeth Warren, and I mean it!”
“NEVER!” I screamed, as I roared away into the night, having learned a valuable lesson.
In July, one of my least favorite Obama administration officials – in a very crowded field – Jeh Johnson drew my ire afresh:
“You may remember him as Obama’s DHS secretary. I remember him primarily as the man with the most annoyingly spelled name since Brett Favre.
Call me old fashioned, and a traditionalist. And even ruggedly handsome, if you must. But I am not one to go along with a society’s insane agreement to pronounce names incorrectly. “F-A-V-R-E” features an “R” that comes after the “V” – therefore, “Fav-ruh.” But all of sports media agreed to call him “Farve.” The same thing happened with Cub shortstop Shawon Dunston (1985-2002), when everyone agreed to pretend that that “O” was not there, and call him “Shawn.”
But not me. I could accept “Shawn” or “Sean,” but not “Shawon.” So I spent the better part of two decades talking about “Sha-won” Dunston and Brett “Fav-ruh.” And people around me continually stared at me with what I choose to interpret as quiet admiration for my fidelity to the rules of English pronunciation.
Which brings me to Jeh Johnson. In a sane world, his first name would have to rhyme with “meh” – which coincidentally enough, matches the emotion that the mention of his name should inspire, in even the best-case scenario.
But no. “Jeh” wants to be called “Jay.” And our sheep-like media just go along with it. But we have a spelling for “Jay.” It’s “Jay.” I could even accept “J” for a first name, because that would be almost cool, and how else could you pronounce “J?”
But come on. Pilots in trouble do not make frantic “Meh Deh” calls on the radio. I don’t sing “Oh Happy Deh” in church on Sundeh.
Where was I? Oh yeah.
So Chris Wallace interviewed Jeh on the subject of the morality of separating children from their parents when those parents illegally cross our borders. Wallace pointed out that this was Obama’s policy, and that such hideously inhumane and cruel proceedings went on for years, with nary a peep from our debased, Jeh-humoring media. Until Trump became president, and then separating children became the new Holocaust.
If you want to watch an example of a politician dancing around his obvious culpability while acknowledging nothing, watch that interview. When Wallace asked him for a solution to illegal immigration, Jeh said, “We can’t have catch and release…” Even though that’s what Jeh and his boss did.
And he said, “We did not want to go so far as to separate families.” But that’s what Jeh and his boss did.
You almost get the sense that Jeh and his fellow leftists wants us to forget that Trump inherited the child-separation policy – the very one that the lefty mobs now claim to be so offended by – from Obama.
I have only one response to that: Not to-deh, Jeh. No weh.
Martin Simpson 