Lightning Round (posted 7/19/19)

Long-time readers of this column – and if that’s you, God bless you!  You’re the kind of people that this country needs more of – will know that most of the feedback I get is positive.  “You’re a hilarious genius!”  “My IQ goes up every time I read you.” “Your writing has saved my marriage.” “I want to give away my worldly possessions and follow you!”

That kind of thing.

But I do get negative feedback from time to time.  Most of that is the usual leftist repartee.  “You’re a sexist, racist, fascist homophobe,” and other examples of the human equivalent of those great apes whose most cogent response is to throw their scat at anyone who crosses their paths.

But the remainder of the critiques usually boil down to one thing: your pieces are too long!

When I first started hearing that, I dismissed it as the whining of those with a Youtube attention span.  I wondered whether these people would heckle Tolstoy at the local coffee shop.  “Hey, Leo, thanks for War and Peace.  I needed a big heavy door stop at home.  You couldn’t write a novella, just about War?  And then, maybe if that does well, a tight little sequel about Peace?”

Then it occurred to me that I was comparing myself to Tolstoy, whose quill pen I am obviously not fit to carry!  And I remembered that CO and Christopher Silber and many in CO nation regularly write pithy little pieces and responses that succeed like a professional bank robber: they get in, they get out, and nobody gets hurt.

So I’ve resolved to write some occasional shorter pieces, in a sort of “lightning round” format.  Although you may have noticed by now that I’m about 30 sentences into an explanation of how I’m going to write more concisely….  D’oh!

So, the lightning round:

1. Let’s get this out of the way: Elizabeth Warren is as white as Iceland during a snowstorm. #wemustneverstopmockingher

2. I haven’t written anything about journalist Andy Ngo getting assaulted by a bunch of Antifa creeps a couple of weeks ago, mainly because I’m a Christian, and seething with rage and typing obscenities in ALL CAPS doesn’t feel like the most “turn the other cheek” kind of action I could take.

In fact, you know one difference between Christ and me?  (There are a few.)  I don’t think He ever fantasized about coming up behind three masked cowards as they prepared to fracture the skull of an out-numbered little Cambodian-American gay guy, taking a batter’s stance, and knocking each of them unconscious with a Louisville slugger.  And I can’t see Him then gloating, “Oh, He went YAHHHHDDDD with that one!” like the Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds.  (Also, do we not have rubber bullets anymore?  Is that not a thing in 2019?  If not, I know we have tasers, and those have hilarious results, with the bad guy locking up and then toppling like a redwood onto the concrete.)

3. Did you hear that Leana Wen is out as the head of Planned Parenthood only 10 months after she took over the job? (And if not now, Wen? HA!) Which should surprise no one, because her tenure lasted longer than three trimesters, but that’s never stopped the fine folks at P-squared from dropping the axe. Or scalpel, or scissors, or whatever.  Anyway, sorry about that Wen, but I guess you just weren’t viable.

4. I’ve got to write more later on the idiotic, hate-filled “Squad,” but for now, I’ll just mention the juvenile inanity of that nickname. It’s something that some self-conscious, cliquish and not-too-bright junior high girls would make up for themselves.

First it made me think of The Mod Squad, a tv show whose name I can forgive because it was the late 60s-early 70s, and everything was terrible.  (Plus, a young Peggy Lipton.  Giggity.)  Then it made me think of Suicide Squad, which I can forgive because it was about a bunch of comic book characters, none of whom want to be in congress.  (Plus, a young Margot Robbie.  Giggity giggity.)(I mean, if I had ever noticed her.)(Which I haven’t, since all other women became invisible to me after I met my wife.)(But still, if you put her in those shorts and pigtails, swinging that baseball bat into the mush-filled skulls of some Antifa members, I am so subscribing to that pay-per-view!)

So I refuse to call these anti-American miscreants “the Squad.”  In fact, since they’ve been rhetorically defecating on our country since they arrived in congress, I hope that everyone will start calling them “the Squat.”  You’re welcome.

5. While Trump’s “go back where they came from” comment was ham-handed and ill-advised, IMHO, I do understand (and agree with) the sentiment behind it. Xenophobes do sometimes use some variation of that phrase as a knee-jerk response to even valid criticism. But on the other hand, it speaks to an instinctive – and justified – reaction to people who come from elsewhere and then run down the place they moved to.

When I came to Florida from Illinois to go to grad school, I saw a similar sentiment on various license-plate frames and t-shirts: “We don’t care how y’all did it up north!” Now that I’ve been here for decades, I totally understand.  If everything is so great in New York, why did you move down here?!  Could it be that your leftist policies turned NYC into an open-air asylum where the greedy leftist government taxes you on both inhalations and exhalations?   Hence: Go back where you came from!

6. Finally, I saw a headline that raised my expectations sky high, because it warned of, and I quote, “meth gators.”

My first thought was: great name for a garage band.

My next thought was that some drug dealers have found an amazing new way to protect their stashes.  I’ve always hated (and Cassie the Wonder Dog wholeheartedly agrees) the way that those criminals abuse several big dog species – pitbulls especially, but sometimes Rottweilers or German shepherds – to turn them into vicious sentries.  The idea of using meth gators to keep your rival gangs at bay seemed like a perfect solution!

First, because Gators are not Man’s Best Friend, but soul-less apex predator dinosaurs, so they don’t need to have their sweet and loyal nature perverted to do their work.  Also, the idea of a bunch of violent criminals turning up in emergency rooms and morgues with gator-bite-sized chunks missing from their buttocks, abdomens or faces seems like a leap forward for society.

So imagine my disappointment when I read the story, and learned that is it about a Tennessee police department warning people not to flush drugs, to prevent them getting into the aquifer and creating the titular “meth gators.”  Even more disappointing, scientists discounted that idea, and the only example the department could provide of a “methed-up” animal was – and I am not making this up – “a caged ‘attack squirrel’ who was believed to have been given methamphetamine to keep it aggressive.”

So another dream of mine is dashed.

On the other hand, if we can put some R&D money into creating methed-up attack squirrels with a taste for the flesh of Bloods, Crips, biker gangs  (or – and I’m just running this idea up the ol’ flagpole — Squat members), that would not be the worst use of government funds I’ve ever heard of.

Avenatti/Epstein 2020!