CSotD: Everybody says the darndest things

Andertoons (AMS) rekindles a real hatred of mine, because, when I was a little kid, I looked forward to the part of Art Linkletter’s House Party where that simpering sack of s*** rewarded children for showing off.

Bill Cosby took over the franchise in later years, but by then (A) I’d recovered from the notion that making little kids look silly was entertainment and (B) his smug asides to the audience annoyed the hell out of me, while (C) it’s been awhile since anyone had to defend not liking Bill Cosby, though I got off that train before it reached the end of the line.

I worked for a newspaper with a weekly feature in which they’d go to a classroom and ask little kids questions they couldn’t possibly answer intelligently. The schools liked being featured, the parents liked seeing their kids in the paper and only the kids who said the darndest things ended up being featured.

A few decades later I got a job where I let upper elementary and middle school kids write intelligent things and several of those kids went to college on full rides and are now doing great work in the world.

And yet Young Sheldon still gets boffo ratings for saying the darndest things.

In the words of Lucy Van Pelt, it’s like bailing water with a pitchfork.

 

Which is certainly not to say I’ve given up on wiseassery in general, and this Mother Goose and Grimm (KFS) brought me back to the early days of my second bachelorhood, when it took me all of about an afternoon to realize that people looking for love were, by definition, doing it in all the wrong places.

They were referred to among the rest of us as “Parents Without Prospects.” I had three major post-marital relationships, each of whom I met in the normal course of my life rather than at single bars or matchmaking symposiums.

Or amateur attempts there of. Having your friends make matches for you is like having them clamber into the pilot’s seat for your next vacation, and I say that with great respect for trained, experienced pilots and also for Indian mothers.

I met an Indian couple whose marriage had been arranged. He was a college professor and his mother had found him an attractive, highly intelligent wife who was an observant Hindu with no desire to live in India. They were very happy and clearly very much in love.

Though I also met an Indian medical resident who said that her mother kept trying to arrange a marriage for her, saying “You need a man to take care of you.”

To which she would reply, “Mom, I’m gonna be a doctor. I think I’ll be all right.”

She told me that, if she married for love, she’d have the first non-arranged marriage in her family, but that somehow all the women had advanced degrees and none of the men did.

World keeps on spinning and even ancient civilizations evolve.

 

Though here’s something that doesn’t change: Billionaires still say the darndest things, and Steve Brodner points it out through Jerry Jones, who was a horrible man long before the snows hit Dallas/Fort Worth.

Though, to be fair, he’s not the CEO of the company and he’s not the one who said, “This week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these incredible prices . . . Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a material amount of production.”

However, he owns three quarters of the company and if he could fire Tom Landry and Tex Schramm, it wouldn’t be hard for him to swat this troublesome insect.

As Koko explained to the Mikado

It’s like this: When your Majesty says, “Let a thing be done,” it’s as good as done — practically, it is done — because your Majesty’s will is law. Your Majesty says, “Kill a gentleman,” and a gentleman is told off to be killed. Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead — practically, he is dead — and if he is dead, why not say so?

Come on, Jerry: Cards on the table.

Meanwhile, for the totals on some of those utility bills, you could mount a couple of solar panels on your roof, stick a Tesla battery in your garage and tell the utility company to go develop a way to generate power by pounding sand.

 

Several cartoonists have commented with varying degrees of bitterness about state GOPs that have censured their Senators for having supported the idea that there’s something wrong with plotting to overthrown the government by force and violence.

(For the record, I think there is.)

But John Cole is the first whose commentary made me snicker and it helps if you read those captions in squeaky little mini-Trump chipmunk voices.

 

Nick Anderson (Tribune) also got a laugh, and made me think that it’s too bad we’re not on a British system, because this would be one helluva time for Biden to call an election, wouldn’t it?

Pennsylvania, after all, is a toss-up in the best of times, and it’s beginning to feel as though it’s roundup time in Texas and the GOP bloom must surely be off the sage.

 

Though, as Mike Luckovich (AMS) points out, dumbasses not only say the darndest things, but they believe them, too.

As long as the GOP is willing to lay the blame on a Green New Deal that hasn’t even been formally proposed, much less enacted, and as long as 58% of their voters are convinced that the assault on the Capitol was staged by a non-existent left-wing group, it’s dangerous to let them dumb sumsabitches vote on what’s for breakfast, never mind on a for-real election.

Not, to be fair, that Texans are the only dumbasses in the country. Would it were so.

But you can laugh and despair at our national composite IQ, or you can see what one of Ted Cruz’s former senior staff members has to say about the fellow.

Or you can just dig a little country fiddle. Your choice.