Category: Orphans

It seems as if once in awhile American society has to have some sort of ridiculous news event to focus upon. The “Runaway Bride” comes to mind.

The latest sensation is the “Runaway Balloon” in Colorado. I suppose we just like the thought of people, places or things running away because we are stuck in our own day-to-day routines.

You can read all about it, see the family and pictures and videos of the balloon on You Tube in order to obsess your little hearts out.

That is what has been so great about being out of town, out of state and out of the same old-same old this week. I haven’t done anything special except watch my friend’s German shepherd puppy get into tons of mischief. But it’s nice to be a slug sometimes. Tomorrow, it’s off to Memphis to catch a plane back to Houston, one of those “regional jets” which looks and feels like a shrunken DC-9. Does anyone remember them? But it flies and has seats, thus it qualifies for what Stevie “Guitar” Miller called a “big ol’ jet airliner.”

Until the next post. Here’s looking achoo. Bless you.

No, that isn’t the rain that has been falling most of today here in northeastern Arkansas where I am on vacation, visiting a friend. It is, actually, the water rushing over the dam where a spring spawns the Spring River, near the Missouri border. Some 9.78 million gallons of water per hour flow here at what is now the Mammoth Spring  State Park and creates the scenic and trout-laden river. I also was able to view some of the Spring Lake’s own “Muskrat Love,” although we were unable to determine which was Muskrat Suzie and Muskrat Sam. We also really didn’t see any love. I just had to make some remark about the 1970s song — one which some call the worst song ever — that people either like or to which they have a violent reaction.

Many thanks to my friend Paul from Tokyo, who updated the football picks I prognosticated guessed last week while I am vacationing.

 Yep, like many others this morning, I too woke up and scratched my head, having to look twice, when I saw President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

 Along with countless others, I too agree Obama has not accomplished enough to make him what one would think was a worthy recipient of the prize. I support Obama but I wish he would accomplish more.

 Obama has two major problems (three if you include the fact that he is black and his election has stirred up a lot of latent racism). One is that his election pissed off his opposition more than most expected. I thought the hard core conservatives went around the bend when Clinton was elected president. Little did I know. The conservative, one might even say ultra-conservative, wing of the Republican party has thrown a monkey wrench into their portion of the deal to govern the country. The party is being led by people acting more like bratty children who go around with their hands over their ears screaming: “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you.”

 Secondly, Obama did not pick a very good inner circle from what it seems to me. Maybe Rahm Emmanuel should just deal with Congress and somebody — also a grownup — might possibly step in as chief of staff. Something needs to be done because an extremely likable, popular and intelligent individual is being squandered in his role as leader of the free world.

 Now as for the opposition crying out about the latest thing to stir them up, namely the Obama, er, sorry, the Nobel Peace Prize. The pundits have to find something to show themselves that they are wise so they listen to the rabble who are rousing their like-minded. Steele, the idiot GOP chairman, Jeez Louise! The Democratic National Committee also didn’t do themselves a lot of favors with their response. The false assumption that the opposition is anti-American worked because the right wing had people who listen to anything, no matter how stupid it is. The DNC should remember who they work for.

 I can see, from what the Nobel folks said, what logic they followed in awarding Obama the prize. It is somewhat logical. That’s the best I can say for their decision. What people need to keep in mind though is that — with the exception of certain contests of skill or sport — most awards are subjective and don’t mean jack when it comes right down to it.

 After working for nearly 20 years in the newspaper industry I won awards and I didn’t win awards I thought and others thought I should have. Mostly newspaper awards are for prestige of the owners, publishers or higher-ups. Many of the awards that bear my name today sit in the lobby or on the wall of newspapers where I once, but no longer, work. I may have received a certificate. Oh gee. Thanks. Couldn’t you have given me a T-shirt or a hat?

 Although I found it bizarre and puzzling that Obama won the peace prize, it is one of those subjective awards that he won, along with a million-something bucks. And most likely, Obama won’t even get to keep the money. But it is a prize and a prize like most other awards need to be kept in proper context.

 If people are going to have a cow, they shouldn’t go popping one out over this.

 It has been, how long, five hours? Still no reports are forthcoming that hordes of little children from the mostly white enclaves of Lumberton, Vidor or Bridge City in my area of Southeast Texas are taking to the streets dressed in Mao-style peasant garb complete with red commie stars.

 Likewise, I’ve not heard from other parts of these United States of thousands of red and yellow, black and white, they are precioius in His sight children marching with clinched fists extended toward the heavens shouting their praise for Barack.

 What? It couldn’t possibly be that President Obama’s speech to the nation’s school children has not touched off the so-feared socialist indoctrination the right-wing tried so hard to suggest would happen. Oh my. Perhaps it will be something covert.

 Little boys cutting their hair short and wearing polo shirts like their savior Barack and little girls dressed like Sasha and Malia are probably in their dens right now plotting the coup of the children.

 Teens, instead of playing ball, drinking some illicit beers and smoking cigarettes are meeting inside libraries trying with all their might to ignite the socialist will for their hero, the great Barack Hussein, o mighty socialist ruler!

 Silly? Hell yes it’s silly. Like Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs said the other day: “It’s the silly season.” It was a thought echoed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The furor, Duncan said, is “just silly.”  Silliness is the right’s forte and it has been spread like wildfire via a cable news cabal full of folks who are too f**king lazy to go out and report real news with meaning. No, they want drama. Drama is all important.

 Let the hairy-armed, Joe the Plumbers wearing wife-beaters, tell the story with their ignorance. Screaming and crying: “We want our country back!” makes for more dramatic shots than pointy-headed Democratic smart guys and gals sitting around doing the policy wonk thing.

 And then, there is, how shall I put this? There is this 800-pound g*****a in the room about which no one is saying a word.

 Many didn’t want their kids to watch Obama’s speech today because they held deep-seated beliefs that the federal government needs to be out of their schools. No matter that tons of federal bucks help keep their schools up and running. Others didn’t want their kids to get “brainwashed” by the socialism being warned about by the right-wing noise machine. And if  either reasons one or two didn’t do the trick, we still have that 800-pound g*****a in the room.

 Yes, some people don’t want their kids being spoken to by a black man, or at least a black president. Maybe it would be okay if the kids heard a speech from Michael Jordan, or Shaq, or Bill Cosby, or even Collin Powell. You know, they all be the “hired help.” But it just won’t do to let their kids hear from some black man who dares holds himself up as the president. Why, he wasn’t even born in the USA was he?

 You think I am imagining something? You think I have “black guilt?” Not one iota. I am sorry many blacks were enslaved many, many, many years before I was born, some of whom were sold into slavery by their own people. I am sorry but not wracked with guilt.

 I talked with an old college friend yesterday who was raised in an affluent and very white part of a large American city. We got to talking about this silliness surrounding the Obama speech and without hearing my views, he said that the silliness stems from people not wanting their kids to hear a speech from a black president. Bingo!

 Where is all the talk about a new day and hope and perhaps a new dialogue on race that the cable pundits and reporters (except from Fox) gushed about when Obama was elected? Now those same cable wise men and women seem to salivate when they can find any fault with BHO, not to mention an angry crowd of men in wifebeaters whose big-haired wives are ruining their painted faces, Tammy Baker style, by crying for a lost America that either was never lost to begin with or at the very least was lost by Mrs. Heavy Hair.

 If you want to know the truth, I haven’t been as scared at what might happen in this country since 1968.

 During that year of Tet, riots, assassinations, the world going topsy-turvy and not to mention being 12-turning-13 years old, there was plenty to freak about. The last eight years of George W., 9/11, the no weapons of mass destruction invasion of Iraq and a war in Afghanistan, were unsettling enough. The right wing was angry. Hell, they’re always pissed about something.

 And it was not unexpected they would get pissed when the Democrats took over, led by a black man.

 But the right wing wing nuts have become even nuttier. It seems that since they can’t get their way, right away, the old George W. “My Way or the Highway Style,” then they will just throw tantrum after tantrum and show how infantile and unsteady they are.

 I don’t know about you, but that scares the ever-loving hell out of me.