Coming To Grips With My Gripes

Coming To Grips With My Gripes
Thursday, December 1, 2011
by Burt Prelutsky

I have my own with Mitt Romney, but I have to confess that when Rick Perry and others deride him as a flip-flopper, I take personal umbrage. For one thing, I was raised to be a Democrat and remained one until the strain just got to be too much for me, just as it did, you may recall, for Ronald Reagan.

For another thing, talk about the obvious disadvantage for people in glass houses when it comes to stone throwing, Gov. Perry campaigned for Al Gore. And that was back in the late 80s, when Reagan had shown all of us the advantage of being a Republican.

I, personally, don’t care if people flip-flop along the way, just so long as they wind up agreeing with me in the end. I mean, are people never supposed to change their minds or their hearts? What is the point of maturing and learning from experience if you go to your grave with the exact same dumb opinions you had when you were 20 or 30 or even, Governor Perry, 50 or 60?

If wisdom doesn’t come with age, what does? Merely wrinkles, fallen arches and an aching back?

The truth is that I had expected the Occupy Wall Street movement would be over by this time. I assumed that foul weather would send the dumb schnooks scurrying home, but I guess I underestimated the appeal of being in the media spotlight. I say, shame on me for being so myopic. After all, one merely has to consider all those tawdry afternoon shows, with people constantly trooping out to disclose their deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secrets, to grasp the lengths some fools will go in order to have their silly mugs on TV.

To me, the astonishing thing is that so many prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Walters, have given the mob a big thumbs-up. But, in case you didn’t notice, so have CAIR, David Duke and the despots of Iran and North Korea. It’s odd the way that politics so often makes for strange bedfellows. Although in this instance, a more appropriate term might be gutter-fellows.

Every so often I find myself being driven mad by words and terms that become the rage for a while. In the past, we had “dy-no-mite!” thanks to a dumb sit com. No sooner did that fad pass then “like” was being interspersed between every other word, thanks to Valley girls. That, in turn, gave way to “at this point in time,” thanks to stupid people trying to sound intelligent, while ignoring the fact that “now” was a perfectly fine word.

These days, we are saddled with “alleged.” Apparently, as a way to avoid legal action, media people are compelled to employ that word when referring to every schmuck until the day, even if it takes years of trials and appeals, that he’s finally led away in shackles. If Hitler were suddenly discovered hiding out in an Austrian chalet, I assume one couldn’t get away with calling him a madman.


Herman Cain
I’m not an attorney, but wouldn’t it be possible to avoid a possible lawsuit if a TV anchorman showed us that his fingers were crossed if, prior to sentencing, he referred to, say, Bernie Madoff as a thief and Charles Manson as a serial killer?

Another term I would like to see retired from active duty is the blatantly hypocritical “With all due respect…” The one thing you can count on is that whatever follows those four innocuous words will be, at best, extremely disrespectful, and at worst, slanderous and just possibly obscene.

I have heard people insist that Herman Cain is not prepared to be president because he lacks experience when it comes to foreign affairs. When you consider the state of our relations with other countries, I would think that it would be a plus for a candidate to be able to say, “I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

On the other hand, it now appears that Mr. Cain had far too much experience when it came to affairs closer to home.

For my part, when it comes to foreign affairs, all I ask of a president is that he gets us out of the U.N., gets the U.N. out of the U.S., and that he seriously considers bombing Teheran before the end of the week.

Finally, it has been fascinating to watch Obama try to bribe his way to re-election. The guy may have gotten a law degree, but his real passion is engineering. Social engineering, that is.

After first seeing to it that college students would continue to be perennial juveniles by keeping them on their parent’s health insurance until the age of 26, he decided he’d double down by cutting their student loans through presidential fiat. Then, having ensured their gratitude at least through November, 2012, he decided to keep people in homes they had no business buying in the first place by finagling their mortgage rates.

Understand, I’m not claiming to be morally superior to any of these people. The truth is, I don’t really know how susceptible I’d be to a bribe. Let’s just say I’m waiting to see if Barack Obama ever gets around to offering free hair transplants
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.