Editor\'s Essays Articles

The shiftless two-thirds black population of Ferguson finally has taken a minimal forward step, earthshaking by the modest standards of the St. Louis suburb. Next week will mark two months since out-of-town radical left-wing black racist agitators poured into the hapless burg, picked out likely young people and smoothly convinced them the Mike Brown shooting was a crime born of racism. It only takes one spark to explode a forest fire.

Halloween cannot be far off. Narcissistic environmentalists have scored another silly putty victory. Taking a breather from their “I Am a Victim” campaigns, conducted from their knees, one must inquire, What did these unsolicited, simplistic stewards of the environment do before they lost their day jobs?

One afternoon several years ago, I spent an hour and a half interviewing the sometimes-courtly Bernard Parks in his Crenshaw district office. Arrow-straight, he entered the room precisely at the appointed hour. This would be our first sitdown. He reminded me of the wished-for kindly father-in-law I never had. In the midst of a hard-fisted kerfuffle at the time with County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and L.A. City Council colleague Herb Wesson, he spoke in almost delicate tones, as if we were in the presence of the Mother Superior at a nearby convent. The Chief, as I have referred to him, whether face to face or ear to ear, sat casually at the head of a long table. I had to hunch forward to basket-catch his barely audible, but eagerly forthcoming, comments.

Here are the most intriguing numbers in the left-wing Los Angeles City Council’s latest hammer-handed attempt to make themselves feel better: Loosely, they commissioned three studies (the boys don’t count well) to determine the impact of raising the hourly minimum wage at select hotels to $15.37. This, for the least educated among us who tuck pillows into pillow cases for a living, and still will be tucking pillows into pillow cases 20 years from this afternoon.

The Los Angeles City Council, which knows less about commerce than it does the causes and cures of Ebola, is about to blindly vote a huge pay raise for the city’s least educated workers at major hotels. The minimum they could be paid would be $15.37 hourly. Some hotels are threatening layoffs, and that is fine. Wait until Mayor Garcetti imposes his bullet-to-the-brain minimum wage hike. Layoffs and going-out-of-business sales will drown the cheers of the uneducated workers. Why is the Council executing this unconscionable, unearned handout?

You seldom encounter anyone with the moral strength of the woman you are about to meet. Ostensibly, she messaged me to tout her new book, “Love Life and the Library” (Laguna Woods Publishing Club), memoirs, often witty, of her 30 years as a librarian. The lines that leaped off my screen, however, carried depressing, sadly familiar news …

Do not accuse our seldom honest leftist friends at The New York Times of being mirthfully malnourished. If they cannot laugh at themselves, they invite you to mock them as they carry out their sworn pledge to defend President Obama against all charges large and small. As the most voluble voice in English language media last year for the enforced health insurance farce known as Bombcare, the august Times produced this top-of-the-page headline two days ago …

Who out there in Newspaperland can explain why President (Don’t Soil My Tender Legacy) Obama can justify sending 3,000 ground troops to West Africa to fight Ebola while simultaneously vowing not to put a single military toe on the ground to counter the ubiquitous nests of world order-threatening terrorists across the Middle East? Do you imagine Swishy wore frilly dresses when he was a boy? Hmm. Old habits can be unbreakable.

Thank you, God, for planting leftists in the life gardens of normal people. Leftists are here for our pleasure, and for that noble cause, we regularly water them. Almost daily, they make us titter with their sputtering attempts at propagandizing. But sometimes they make us sputter.

The trouble with The Privileged is that they start to suffer a case of irreversible trembles when those nasty downstream Ordinary people get too close. Hopefully, none of the aroma from the Ordinaries will be leak into the skin of The Privileged as they sniff for furriners getting, oooh, ick, too close.