Isitjustme has been resting for the last few months. After all, with the pestilence of GWB no longer upon us (seriously, doesn't food taste better these days?) and with the country in the hands of Saint Barak (may his children be fruitful and multiply) there isn't much to get excited about. Nevertheless, the world turns and there are still some issues that occasionally escape our notice. To wit:
Item
Our friends at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are back in the news. In case you forgot, this is the the happy band of God-squaders who clothe their women in little house on the prairie dresses and shop for wives at Hanna Montana concerts. Last year the Texas Attorney General paid a visit to the sect's compound and bused the children to a safer spot. It seems that there are some Christian practices even Texans find intolerable...and they play with rattlesnakes. The police couldn't tell the wives from the children without a score card.
Anyway, noticeably absent from the photo orgy that followed the raid were the men. It turns out that they were busy hiding the evidence of eccentric matrimonial practices. However, 10 of the groups patriarchs are about to stand trial for molesting children, polygamy, and dressing their women like the road company of Paint Your Wagon. You gotta love organized religion.
____________________________________________________________________
Item
Can I possibly be the only person in America who never wants to see another photo of the lady who got the face transplant? My heart goes out to Connie Culp who was shot in the face by her husband (who is serving a mere seven years in prison. Maybe they should have used his face for the transplant). I'm happy that she can eat real food and that her sense of smell is restored. I hope with all my heart that she gets to live something like a normal life. That doesn't mean that I want to see pictures... including the ones of her leaving the Dick Cheney Memorial Hospital for People Shot in the Face.
Some things were not meant to be photographed. Childbirth, Rush Limbaugh naked, Joan Rivers without make-up, Charles Barkley's golf swing all come to mind. Please, let's go back to showing hideous car wrecks and pictures of Britany Spears being arrested.
___________________________________________________________________
Item
Government in action. The Delaware Department of Transportation recently issued a pamphlet on racial sensitivity. Not content to encourage common sense as a behavioral guide, the DDOT felt it necessary to include specific guidelines. The document suggests that, in order to avoid giving offense, employees should be discouraged from asking Latino co-workers for help with their landscaping. Other comments to steer clear of include: inquiring of gay employees if they have ever thought of getting help and, that old stand-by, don't offer fried chicken and watermelon to blacks. Curiously absent from the suggestions were: refrain from asking Jewish co-workers for help with your taxes and soliciting laundry advise from those of Asian decent. File this under "you can't make this stuff up".
____________________________________________________________________
Item
Considering the dire pronouncements issued by the CDC, World Health Organization, US Dept. of Health and everyone else on the planet with a medical degree and a microphone, we can suppose that swine flu/N1H1 virus posed a real threat. Oddly enough, the threat appears to have been visited mostly on the swine population. Egypt killed thousands of pigs in their country. Russia and China banned the import of pork products and in a largely symbolic gesture, Afghanistan placed its only pig under house arrest. Apparently the fact that the flu has nothing whatever to do with "swine" was of little import to many of the governments of the earth. Thankfully the disease wasn't called the Bunny Rabbit virus. Easter would have been a blood bath.
There is an inclination to say that swine-flu was much-a-do about nothing. Tell that to the thousands of Mexicans that live off the tourist trade in completely unaffected cities like Puerto Villarta and Playa del Carmen. Still, as plagues go, N1H1 was something of a dud. Calling a global health emergency a pandemic is like calling our current economic circumstance a depression. Gently with the scary titles, people. The Pandemic of 1918 killed millions. The Great Depression had 30% of Americans out of work. Nomenclature matters, especially if you want to be taken seriously next time.
___________________________________________________________________
Item
That great humanitarian, Hank Steinbrenner, has graciously consented to reduce the price of Yankee Stadium's premium seats from $2,500 to $1,250. What a guy! Somebody tell me why there isn't a statue of Hank next to Mother Theresa somewhere? I mean the largess of cutting your price in half is right out of It's a Wonderful Life.
Think about it. Now, that New York City father struggling to pay the mortgage, feed the family and put a little money away for educations can take his family of four to a Yankee game for a paltry ten grand. It's practically socialism. Forget a year at Princeton. Spring for that four-game series with the Red Sox. For the real fan willing to make a few sacrifices like cancelling HBO or trading down to domestic beer, the family can attend every game while saving almost half a million. In these trying times every bit helps.
So lets hear it for Hank Steinbrenner. Just because he got dopey Rudy Giuliani to practically build the stadium for him (the city paid half the construction plus allowed the team to keep 96% of the ticket revenue, all the parking and they pay no property tax) didn't stop the Yankee's boss from extending a helping hand to those in need. As an additional gesture of good will, the section behind home plate is to be renamed in honor of another great American, Bernie Madoff.
No comments:
Post a Comment