I am dividing today’s column between a serious proposal to address one aspect of our nation’s crime problem, and a hilarious peek into the origin story of my mockery of Elizabeth “Grandma Squanto” Warren.
I’ve been saving up some crime stories (which I’ll have to get to later this week), but one particular story is on my mind today: the outrageous prosecution of Daniel Penny in NYC. This tale perfectly encapsulates the delusional dysfunction of leftist theology re: crime, and crime prevention.
Jordan Neely should have been imprisoned or confined to a mental institution long ago, which would have prevented the serious damage he’s done to society and himself for several decades. And a Good Samaritan like Daniel Penny, who was willing to risk injury or death to subdue Neely and protect the citizens on that subway car, should be praised for his efforts, rather than blamed and prosecuted.
These are familiar points, and there’s no need to rehash them here. Most sensible people already understand them, and far-left partisans refuse to do so, until (sometimes) they or someone they love is victimized by someone like Neely.
But one wrinkle in this story is doubly irritating to me: Jordan Neely’s father Andre has filed suit for a ton of money against Daniel Penny.
I don’t know the family history of either Neely, but the typical pattern in these cases is that absent, neglectful or even abusive family members come out of the woodwork after their troubled relative has been killed or injured. They wail about the loss, and try to profit from a suit against anyone involved with the killing, usually a city or business that has the deepest pockets.
And sadly, this is indeed typical. For example, after Kyle Rittenhouse legally shot three previously convicted violent felons who were trying to murder him, he (and the city of Kenosha) was sued by the two dead felons’ families, and by the one surviving felon.
Regular readers know that I am nothing if not a font of mostly brilliant ideas, and a problem-solving machine, and I think I’ve come up with a solution to this plague upon our society. It involves a team of lawyers forming a nationwide group to automatically sue anyone who launches one of these lawsuits.
Here’s how it would work. Daniel Penny goes on trial for Jordan Neely’s death, and Neely’s dad lines up to take millions of dollars from either taxpayers or Penny and his family. But invariably, recidivist criminals like Neely – or George Floyd, Michael Brown, or the three thugs whom Kyle Rittenhouse shot in self-defense – have left a long line of victims behind them.
My team of intrepid lawyers — call them the “Simpsonian Avenger League (SAL)” if you must (I’m already working on a logo and copyright) – would leap into action, and find the past victims of the dead or injured criminal. Women he’s beaten or raped, people he’s assaulted or robbed, the family members of people he’s murdered – all would be signed up to a lawsuit against the criminal or his survivors.
Then, in the event you get a low-IQ, blue-state, social-justice-warrior jury, and they award millions to the criminal or his family, the SAL would move forward with their lawsuit. The money initially awarded to the criminal would be impounded in an escrow account, and as soon as the criminals’ victims won their suits, that money would go to them.
I’d like something similar to be done on behalf of the citizenry at large. If a recidivist had racked up unpaid restitution judgments, for example, all of that money would be scarfed up and returned to taxpayers.
I’d also push for one step further: everything that society spent on that criminal – the costs of catching, trying and convicting him, plus the lifetime costs of jailing him – should also be forfeited back to the taxpayers.
If there were still anything left owing from the judgment to him, I’d deduct all of the taxpayer-provided welfare that person had received: food stamps, housing, taxpayer-paid medical care, etc.
The SAL would probably become something like DOGE: its members would receive the thanks of a grateful nation after it did its work for a year or two, and then it could go out of business, except for a handful of lawyers needed to continue its work.
Because the ambulance-chasing lawyers for criminals are motivated solely by money. And they would soon realize that even if they won ridiculous judgments against people like Daniel Penny, Derek Chauvin or Kyle Rittenhouse, those judgments would immediately be redirected to the victims of their creepy clients.
They wouldn’t get paid, and the baseless suits would stop.
Okay, shifting gears now, regular readers will also know that I’ve been including running jokes about Liz Warren in my columns for many years. After each of those jokes, I’ve included “#wemustneverstopmockingher.”
This weekend, as I was going back through some of my past columns (which you can find at Martinsimpsonwriting.com) in search of inflammatory references to “ranny-tays” that might draw the ire of FB censors, I came across the origin story of all of my Grandma Squanto jokes. And I thought that since many of you may have found this site fairly recently, you might enjoy seeing it.
It’s from a column dated 12/1/17, which looked back on my favorite events of the previous month. In one of those events, Trump was giving an award to surviving members of the Navajo “Code Talkers” who served in WWII, and he wedged in an insulting “Pocahantas” reference.
So please consider this finely-aged excerpt an early Christmas present from me to you:
12/1/17:
“But that’s not my favorite story of November. That honor goes to Trump vs. Pocahontas Warren, Round Two. Was it classy for Trump to put a rib kick in on Warren when he was supposed to be honoring the Code Talkers at the White House? Was it juvenile, and a little embarrassing? Did it still make me laugh? No, yes, and I’m not too big to admit it.
Warren’s response was perfect, as she stepped right into the trolling trap, calling the name a “racial slur,” and vowing that she will not allow Trump to “shut [her] up.” Guess what, Liz? That’s the last thing he would want you to do. He wants you to keep talking all things Indian – What do you think of the phrase “indian-giver,” Elizabeth? Any thoughts on the name of the Washington Redskins? Would you consider yourself a big Columbus fan? — and as you do so, he’s rhetorically putting a huge, feathered headdress on top of your dopey head, turning you into the Native American version of Dukakis in that tank commander’s helmet.
Especially since Warren is supposed to be a leading future Dem presidential contender, we cannot stress enough the sleazy details of her egregious faux-Indian scam. In case you haven’t followed that story, here are my favorite details. The blue-eyed, blonde, pasty-white future Senator began claiming to be Cherokee in her 30s, got herself listed as a minority in a directory of lawyers, and ended up with a job at Harvard, where the school touted her as a prominent minority hire. She later denied that she got any advantage from her claimed minority status – a laughable claim to anyone even the least bit familiar with the political climate of academia.
What “facts” did Warren base her claims on? “Family lore” and the fact that her grandpa had “high cheekbones.” I’m not making that up.
Hey, you know who else has some high cheekbones? Melania Trump. And we all know how feared the Slovenian Sioux were, all throughout the Badlands.
You know who else has high cheekbones? My Norwegian-descent wife. And yes, the Slovenian Sioux were only outstripped in their fighting reputation by the Oslo Apaches. When the war canoes took to the fjords, pioneers knew that they were in for heap-big trouble!
My favorite Warren anecdote is that she once had the gall to submit five supposed family recipes as entries in a book of Native American dishes called – and again, I’m not making this up – “Pow Wow Chow.”
But it gets funnier – and I know what you are asking: How? (Get it?)
It turned out that two of her five recipes were plagiarized directly from another source: a man named Pierre Franey. I know, you don’t often hear of Indians named “Pierre.” (Although Pierre Horse, after merciless teasing during middle school, changed his first name to “Crazy,” and went on to become a ferocious warrior. Also, Sitting Bull’s real first name? “Jacques.” True story.)
“Don’t be so dismissive, Simpson,” you might be saying. “Maybe this Pierre Franey was somehow connected to the French and Indian War. I remember reading about that in school.”
Nope. It turns out Pierre was connected to… Le Pavilion, a snooty French restaurant in Manhattan.
“But Manhattan was once sold by its Indian inhabitants for a bunch of beads,” you might say.
And I’ll just nod my head sadly, and point out that Pierre wrote and published these two recipes… IN 1979!!
But wait. There’s more. The two recipes that she stole – recipes that she claimed came from her Oklahoma-dwelling Cherokee ancestors – were for “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat” and “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing.”
Because when you think of lobster, you think of Maine. When you think of corn, you think of Iowa. When you think of potatoes, you think of Idaho.
And when you think of crab, you think of… Oklahoma?!
The lonesome, moonlit nights on the prairie. The wind rustling through the grasses and wheat fields, the howling of a far-off coyote. The campfire crackling under a starry sky. And the clacking of millions of crustacean claws, as the great crab herds make their way across the endless plains in their awe-inspiring migration.
We should never stop mocking Elizabeth Warren.”
A few columns later, I first used the hashtag #wemustneverstopmockingher, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Happy Monday, everybody!
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 