Clearing the Decks
Every so often, my in-box becomes so crowded with memes I’ve printed out and little notes I’ve written to myself, I feel as if I’m being buried alive.
Every so often, my in-box becomes so crowded with memes I’ve printed out and little notes I’ve written to myself, I feel as if I’m being buried alive. This is one of those occasions when I either deal with it or risk dying in an avalanche of paper.
I’ll kick things off by reporting that Australia’s High Court recently got around to declaring that their Aborigines are citizens. I think it’s long past time for our Supreme Court to determine the status of Democrats: Human or otherwise?
Speaking of foreign lands, I’m reminded that 50 years ago, when my first wife and I spent a week in Japan, we were having dinner one night with a Dutch couple who had been living there for several years. When I mentioned what a difficult time I had had trying to find a location in Tokyo, our host and his wife both nodded knowingly.
He explained that the Japanese were an extremely polite people. If you ask them for directions, they will offer them even if they have no idea where you want to go. The assumption is that once you arrive where they’ve sent you, there will be someone who can actually provide you with the information you need.
That distant memory rang a bell. It’s the same process I experience every time I call for technical advice about my computer and am passed from one individual to another. Unfortunately, along the way I am often disconnected and have to start all over again.
It’s the updated version of “you can’t get there from here.”
When I signed up for daily announcements from the White House, which is called West Wing Reads, I foolishly assumed I would be able to reply.
So when I read about a 92-year-old woman who was raped and murdered by a 21-year-old illegal in New York and the White House’s objection to sanctuary cities, I wrote back: “My question is why President Trump refuses to have the sanctuary governors and mayors arrested by federal marshals. If he started with Bill De Blasio, Gavin Newsom and Gil Garcetti, it would send a strong message to all the others that they better start abiding by the law.”
I was quickly notified that West Wing Reads doesn’t accept email. That led me to address the following letter to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: “Dear Sir or Madam: When I receive an email, I assume I can reply. But apparently that is not the case with communiques from the White House. So I am sending you the email that was rejected. I hope someone who knows the answer to my perfectly reasonable question will respond so I can share it with my subscribers who, I can assure you, have also been wondering why the scofflaws keep getting away with ignoring federal law. Regards, Burt Prelutsky”
Howard Last let me know that a friend of his wife’s finds it hysterically ironic that the two angriest people on TV are named Whoopi and Joy.
I’m kicking myself for not noticing that first.
When Jay Lehr, the pride of Ostrander, Ohio, let me know that he’s friends with a certain left-wing movie critic, I asked him if he can ever engage in a political discussion with him. It turns out he has the same problem that I have when I get together with the two liberals with whom I can still have a cordial lunch. The ground rules for Jay and his friend is that they pretty much have to stick to movies. In my case, I have to limit myself to sports, show biz and mutual acquaintances.
Jay let me know that he, too, finds that when he tries to venture beyond the proscribed topics, he finds his friend is casually dismissive and refuses to defend his political beliefs.
I was reminded that some years ago, I wrote to a Muslim doctor who, because he opposed Islamic terrorism, kept popping up on Fox News as proof that not every Muslim was a blood-thirsty savage. I wrote to him to ask why he chose to remain in a religion for which he had to spend so much time apologizing. I was honestly curious why he didn’t simply adopt Christianity and be done with it. He didn’t bother getting back to me.
The next time I was moved to write to an individual to question his beliefs, it was Alan Dershowitz. He received a lot of attention because, in spite of being a liberal, he provided a legal defense of Donald Trump’s actions, declaring them unimpeachable.
My questions were, one, why he chose to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016; and, two, considering how pro-Israel Trump has shown himself to be, whether he, Dershowitz, had experienced a change of heart over the past three years.
I kept hoping that someone at Fox would ask him those obvious questions, but they have all been too busy slobbering over him just because he stated the obvious – that the House had no basis for impeaching the President.
Naturally, along with the Muslim doctor and Queen Elizabeth, who so far hasn’t responded to my request to replace Harry as the Duke of Sussex, Dershowitz chose to ignore my letter.
Am I the only person who bothers answering his mail?
Speaking of which, I received an email from a woman in Hawaii who recently lost her husband.
I offered her my condolences but decided that wasn’t enough. Having gone through a similar loss a year ago when my wife died, I decided to offer the following few words of advice: “I know exactly – I mean exactly – how you feel. After Yvonne died, I saw no end to all the things that needed to be done. I felt I was going insane and it had nothing to do with dealing with grief. Every time I turned around, there was something new to cope with – a funeral; a lawyer; a bank; getting death certificates; dealing with the accountant; Social Security and the IRS; selling her car; holding garage sales; etc., etc. They were all things I hated having to deal with and they all seemed to stretch out to infinity. I was drained. But then one day, like a head cold that seems to linger on indefinitely but then, almost without your noticing that the sneezing and coughing is over, it ended.
"You’ll make it, Linda. How do I know? Because I managed and nobody is less suited to dealing with practical details than I am.”
Bob Hunt sent along a meme that pointed out that President Obama sent $1.7 billion cash to our enemies in Iran with no one in Congress, the FBI or the Justice Department, calling for an investigation, but President Trump merely had a conversation with a foreign president and the Democrats tried to impeach him.
A friend wondered why so many young people are so enamored of Bernie Sanders, who is almost a caricature of a grumpy old fart. As close as I can figure, they seem to believe that Socialism represents 365 days of Christmas, an endless amount of freebies with no work involved and no strings attached.
They’re no different from the saps in Russia, Germany, China, Cuba, North Korea, Cambodia and Venezuela, who also misinterpreted the actual meaning of Socialism when they decided to provide their own shackles, trusting that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, Castro and Hugo Chavez, would all be the Santa Claus they all promised to be.
But, then, there are those who claim that even Santa uses slave labor, although I don’t subscribe to the belief that just because the elves can’t unionize makes them slaves.
