The Patriot Post® · Minimum Wage & Minority Rights

The big brouhaha that ensued after “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson shared his biblical-based opinion of sodomites ended as I assumed it would. After first bending to objections from the homosexual community and suspending Mr. Robertson, the A&E network quickly reversed itself when some grown-up at corporate headquarters must have said, “Are you guys all insane? Robertson’s TV show is the only thing that’s keeping the lights on around here.”

I’m not saying that homosexuals or any other minority group shouldn’t have every right to make its feelings known. I’m only suggesting it doesn’t entitle them to having the final say.

I know that’s not the politically correct attitude to have these days when we’re all expected to stop in our tracks and make a U-turn simply because someone who happens to be black or gay, Hispanic or Jewish, starts whining about having his feelings bruised. But when you get right down to it, political correctness is really just a silly term that was invented in order to dignify cowardice and hypocrisy.

The best news to emerge from the contretemps is that apparently Jesse Jackson had demanded a meeting with the executives at A&E – and miracle of miracles – he was snubbed. Perhaps other corporations will take the hint and quit paying extortion to the despicable old thug.

In a related matter, comedian Steve Martin wound up getting hammered because of a joke he tweeted when asked: “Is this how you spell lasonia?” He replied, “It depends. Are you in an African-American neighborhood or at an Italian restaurant?”

In his attempt to quell the ensuing outrage, he went on to tweet, “I knew of the name Lasonia spelled with a capital, but I just thought it was amusing to point out it sounded like ‘lasagna.’”

For one thing, I figured Martin had established his liberal credentials by using “African-American” where we lesser mortals would have gone with “black.” But are we supposed to ignore the fact that it wasn’t that long ago that black politicians and elite academicians were promoting Ebonics as an authentic and legitimate dialect? Or maybe we’re expected to pretend we haven’t noticed that blacks have begun sticking their newborns with names heretofore unknown anywhere in the universe.

Speaking of which, here in L.A., you often come across cheesy apartment buildings with names like RaSar or MaReb, indicating that a married couple whose names happen to be Ralph and Sarah or Marvin and Rebecca own the joint. But I think SeaTac, WA, a combination of Seattle and Tacoma, is the only city that ever came by its name in a similar manner. At least I hope so.

But SeaTac has now achieved distinction in a whole new way. It is now the first city in the nation that has established $15-an-hour as its minimum wage. It didn’t take long for the owners of local hotels, restaurants and car rental agencies, to announce they’ll be firing large numbers of employees. One hotel owner, who already has three hotels in town, announced he has canceled plans to open a fourth.

That didn’t prevent Kshama Sawant, a newly elected city councilwoman, from announcing, “There may be a few jobs lost, but it’s a good thing.”

Even if she hadn’t run as a socialist, you would have guessed as much. It is equally obvious that she and her fellow council members are people who, like the folks in the Obama administration, have never had to meet a company payroll.

Moreover, I insist that Ms. Sawant and her colleagues are a bunch of cheap bastards. Since we know it’s not their money they’re tossing around, why didn’t they raise the minimum wage to $50-an-hour? I know I personally would feel a lot better about myself if I lost a $50-an-hour job than one that paid a paltry $15.

What these progressive dimwits never seem to grasp is that when you force employers to pay unskilled workers far more than they’re actually worth, they move their businesses if they can or shut their doors if they can’t. Then, as night follows day, you lose your tax base, and, voila, you get to be the next Detroit.

The NY Times, which doesn’t mind embarrassing itself any more than Bill Maher, Chris Matthews and Miley Cyrus, seem to, ran a front page story that insisted that al-Qaeda had nothing to do with the Benghazi massacre. In what was obviously a clumsy attempt to protect Obama and Mrs. Clinton from the fallout, the paper not only ignored real-time film of the attack but eyewitness testimony to Congress. The Old Gray Lady even went so far as to parrot Susan Rice’s lies that the attack was a spontaneous response to that silly video nobody had even seen.

It is extraordinary the length to which liberals will go when it comes to turning a blind eye on innocent corpses, whether it be in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, or Benghazi, Libya.

Also, it strikes me as high time the media quit trying to determine whether one group of jihadist creeps committed specific crimes against humanity or whether it was merely an affiliate. Maybe an Arab mother could tell the difference between Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban, but I fail to see, in the immortal words of Hillary Clinton, what difference it really makes. It is a viper with a hundred million heads and they all need chopping off.

In yet another attempt to get us all talking about something besides the mess Obama has made of our health care system, the Democrats are now crying “Foul!” over the Republicans’ refusal to continue extending unemployment benefits.

Only a liberal could convince himself that two years isn’t more than enough time to either find a job or learn a new skill. But, then, Democrats have long contended that Welfare Recipient and Permanently Unemployed are legitimate careers.

Finally, the Hippocratic Oath requires all doctors to swear to “First, do no harm.” I would say that’s a vow that Obama and every other Democrat who foisted the Affordable Care Act on us should have made.

But perhaps I’m just being naive. After all, those schmucks already swore to abide by the Constitution, and we’ve all seen how that’s worked out.