Home Editor's Essays Myrtle, Please Hand Me Another Plastic Bag

Myrtle, Please Hand Me Another Plastic Bag

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[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]What a wonderful fairy tale world the ephemeral President Nebulous J. Ambivalent has drawn for us in the last 22 months, he being the first chief executive in American history to take office the day after the election. Surely you remember. President Bush, a classy gentleman, said nothing when the classless rube elbowed him aside. The new President’s arrogance and bad breath ran a horse race for the title of Biggest Change from the Previous Administration.

If you had not noticed insufferable gall sticking out all over President Ambivalent during his campaign, perhaps you will recall the phony seal his amateur aides immediately concocted on The Day After for the lectern from which he addressed us peasants, “Office of the President-Elect.” There is, of course, no such artifice. Was that anything like his invisible “Christianity”?

Do you find it peculiar that we know pages more about the intimate lives of Glenn Beck, of Bill O’Reilly, of Sarah Palin, of LeBron James, even of Mayor I Love Me than the man in the Oval Office?

Is it any wonder that scams, hoaxes and bogeymen abound across our not-so-subtly changing land, symbolizing this strange man’s administration that — have you noticed? — only seems to play road games? God does not travel as much as President Ambivalent. My candidate for the snuff-sniffing hoax of the last 50 years is global warming or climate change or Aunt Tillie’s petunia patch, whatever the name of the day is. Gore-ian apostles of the My Gawsh, Murgatroyd, the World May End by Sunday Brunch movement deserve a prize for maintaining a straight face through the successive layers of exposure of their universal scam during the past year. Sadly, though, you cannot embarrass the unembarrassable.

If You Are Barbie, Where Is Ken?

The left historically has been adroit at manipulating the meaning of words to fool the normal people. When Sen. Barbie Boxer (D-CA) was outflanked by rookie Republican candidate Carly Fiorina in their first televised debate last night, did you notice how the runt ranter refused to utter that ugly word that causes her tongue to curl, “abortion”? Instead, she preferred the perfumed euphemism, “a woman’s right to choose.” Golly, Barbie, that sounds so drawing-room saccharine.

H.L. Mencken, my journalistic hero from another century, used to say you never can go wrong underestimating the gullability of the American people.

For proof, I give you a list of nonsensical creations prospering during President Ambivalent’s bizarre administration —

• global climate warming change,

• Roe v. Wade (it’s not in the Constitution, by thunder, but it should be. Oh, okay),

• “clean energy bills,”

• “let me tell you how many millions of jobs I have saved and/or created,”

• “banning gay marriage is unconstitutional (or it should be),”

• “green jobs,”

• “solar power,”

• “wind farms,”

• “affirmative action,”

• the testing gap between white students and “people of some colors, but not Asians,”

• tests that are fair for white firefighters but unfair for black or brown firefighters,

• “undocumented immigrants,

• “crime is down since undocumented immigrants began pouring across the Mexican border” (from the files of the Los Angeles Titanic),

• “racial profiling,”

• The wretchedly out-of-his-depth President Obama, his oversold unassailability, his lack of imagination, and his refusal to be transparent about anything in his personal life except his mysterious “autobiographies,”

• and finally, my latest heartthrob: “the use of plastic bags will end life on the planet unless halted before Christmas or Ramadan.”

A goofy cousin-by-marriage to global warming, most sheepish Americans never challenged veracity of a plastic ban, just as its nutball inventors had predicted.

The best news of this week was the defeat of — everyone should hold his breath for 40 seconds while the tintinabulating trumpets trill a terse tune — the amazingly silly Plastic Bags Ban bill in the political zoo of Sacramento.

This legislative job-justifying nonsense was proposed by a lady I know and like. She must have suffered a pre-senior moment, Democrat Assemblywoman-person Julia Brownley.

I met her a number of years ago when I was covering Santa Monica and she was on the School Board.

It may be time to returning to watering flower boxes with a fire hose before another doozy like this smellifies Assembly chambers.