“Gentlemen,” a coroner once declared when a head was found in a city sewer, “this is the work of a murderer.” --Mike Royko, Chicago newspaper columnist
While thumbing through a collection of Mike Royko’s columns last weekend—Royko was a favorite of mine back in the 1980s—I laughed when I saw this quotation. The coroner’s pronouncement wears the same cheeky humor as Ring Lardner’s “’Shut up,’ he explained.”
The coroner’s words also made me do some thinking. Yes, his declaration was ridiculous, but let’s give the man some credit. At least he was connected to reality. He looked at a head dredged from a sewer and deduced murder.
While thumbing through a collection of Mike Royko’s columns last weekend—Royko was a favorite of mine back in the 1980s—I laughed when I saw this quotation. The coroner’s pronouncement wears the same cheeky humor as Ring Lardner’s “’Shut up,’ he explained.”
The coroner’s words also made me do some thinking. Yes, his declaration was ridiculous, but let’s give the man some credit. At least he was connected to reality. He looked at a head dredged from a sewer and deduced murder.
Here in America, the most technologically advanced society in human history, coroners seem in short supply. More and more people prefer fantasy to reality. Let’s look at a few cases.
This spring on YouTube a young man, Joseph Backholm, posted a clip of himself interviewing college students about identity. He asked the students when they would say if he claimed to be seven years old. Instead of telling the guy he was an idiot, the students generally responded by telling Backholm that he could be whatever he felt. When Backholm asked whether he should then be allowed to sit in a first-grade classroom, several of the students said yes, so long as he didn’t hurt someone. When he declared himself over six feet tall, the students replied that if he felt six feet tall then he was six feet tall.
Really? Then I’d like to declare myself Cary Grant.
(When asked once by an interviewer why others wanted to be Cary Grant, Cary Grant replied: “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” But then, you see, Mr. Grant understood the difference between reality and fantasy.)
Last year, an investigation revealed that Rachel Dolezal, an instructor of African studies at East Washington University and president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, was a white woman of Middle European descent masquerading as a black. Her response? She claimed she had always felt black and therefore was black.
Senator Elizabeth Warren claims to be part Cherokee. (What’s up with everyone claiming to be part Cherokee? How come no one ever claims to be part Chickasaw?) Her claim helped Warren acquire her post at Harvard and her seat in the Senate. An investigation has since revealed that Senator Warren is not Cherokee.
In the past several years, some four thousand men have falsely claimed to be “war heroes,” hoping to either impress women or to receive federal benefits. Unlike most of the folks who create new identities, some of these guys are doing prison time for their antics.
This madness is contagious. In Canada, a husband and father of seven got booted out of his house when he decided he was a six-year-old girl. He now dresses the part, blows bubble gum, and spends his free time playing with dolls and coloring. I would call him bughouse nuts, but let’s reserve that term for the couple who adopted him.
New York City recently recognized 31gender identities. My personal favorite of these is genderqueer, which describes a “person whose gender identity is neither man nor woman, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders.” (Genderqueer describes perfectly the Venusians who lifted me onto their spaceship twenty years ago. They poked and prodded me in the usual way, and demanded I tell them why Rice Krispies “snap, crackle, and pop.” When I refused to answer, they returned me to my apartment.) New York City has forbidden discrimination based on gender and has proposed levying massive fines against those who knowingly refuse to recognize these identities or who confuse them. (I would be quickly out of pocket and in the clink; I confuse the names of my grandchildren all the time.)
Black Lives Matter attacks the police for racism while ignoring the reality that cities like Chicago and Baltimore have become battle zones where blacks murder other blacks. In Chicago this Memorial Day Weekend, over sixty people were killed or wounded. If black lives really mattered, wouldn’t Black Lives Matter march into these cities and help end the violence? Again, fantasy is preferred to reality.
Even more dangerously for the country at large, our political elite at the federal level engage in fantasies.
Every day the federal government spends us deeper and deeper into debt. Practice this as a homeowner, and you’ll soon find yourself facing foreclosure. Do this as the government, and you just print more money.
Every year we pay out more and more entitlements via disability and welfare programs. Our work force is diminishing. Earnings by the middle class have been stagnant for decades. Yet we keep on increasing benefits.
The present administration has slashed our military budget. Our Navy has shrunk, the Air Force can’t find enough pilots to fly their planes, and military personnel are having to double down on their overseas tours. This may explain why Russian jets now buzz our ships, why the Chinese are taking over the South China Sea, and why the Iranians snatched two US vessels and ten sailors in international waters without repercussions.
In case my observations seem an attack on one political point of view, let’s remember George Bush and his neo-conservative crew, and their fantasy of making the Middle East a bastion of democracy. How’d that work out for you, gang? Or the fantasy that keeps percolating among Republicans like Bill Kristol about running a Republican candidate against Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton? Kristol and his friends remind me of five-year-olds on the playground who want to take the ball and go home.
The elite need to sit down and memorize Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” If you’re unfamiliar with this verse, look it up online and see whether these old verses apply to our present situation.
Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So let me see. What could I be?
I thought about putting on some robes, growing a beard, and declaring myself a Jewish man named Jesus, but then remembered the sandals. (My toenails are, to put it mildly, unattractive.)
I thought about growing a beard, wearing safari clothes, and ordering everyone to call me Papa, but then I remembered how Hemingway ended. Plus, he was too cranky for my taste.
I thought about donning a wig and a big, floppy dress, and declaring myself Maudie Frickett, but then realized no one under forty would remember Jonathan Winters.
And then I thought: Go wild, baby.
So just for today I declare myself Hispanic, with a little Korean and Cherokee thrown into the mix.
I declare myself “height disadvantaged,” meaning I can’t reach my upper kitchen shelves without a stepladder.
I declare myself disabled, as I wear glasses and sometimes my knees ache when I climb stairs.
I dislike my teeth, and so declare myself a dentophobe. (I made that word up, but I think it’s a keeper.)
As a Christian, I already belong to a persecuted religious minority, so I’m good on the faith part.
As for gender, I declare myself piscinequeer, (pronounced Pie-seen-queer), a word I also made up and is fancy talk for being a mermaid. (I’m writing in a café at the beach and looked up from my table just now at the wall opposite, where there is a carved mermaid. Yes, I thought at once. That’s me.)
These identify changes have played havoc with my emotions. Those wishing to support my upcoming therapy should feel free to send a handsome check made out to “The Jeff Minick Bermuda Fund.”
Meanwhile, I’ll just go swish my tail in the swimming pool and scare the hoot out of my grandkids.
This spring on YouTube a young man, Joseph Backholm, posted a clip of himself interviewing college students about identity. He asked the students when they would say if he claimed to be seven years old. Instead of telling the guy he was an idiot, the students generally responded by telling Backholm that he could be whatever he felt. When Backholm asked whether he should then be allowed to sit in a first-grade classroom, several of the students said yes, so long as he didn’t hurt someone. When he declared himself over six feet tall, the students replied that if he felt six feet tall then he was six feet tall.
Really? Then I’d like to declare myself Cary Grant.
(When asked once by an interviewer why others wanted to be Cary Grant, Cary Grant replied: “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” But then, you see, Mr. Grant understood the difference between reality and fantasy.)
Last year, an investigation revealed that Rachel Dolezal, an instructor of African studies at East Washington University and president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, was a white woman of Middle European descent masquerading as a black. Her response? She claimed she had always felt black and therefore was black.
Senator Elizabeth Warren claims to be part Cherokee. (What’s up with everyone claiming to be part Cherokee? How come no one ever claims to be part Chickasaw?) Her claim helped Warren acquire her post at Harvard and her seat in the Senate. An investigation has since revealed that Senator Warren is not Cherokee.
In the past several years, some four thousand men have falsely claimed to be “war heroes,” hoping to either impress women or to receive federal benefits. Unlike most of the folks who create new identities, some of these guys are doing prison time for their antics.
This madness is contagious. In Canada, a husband and father of seven got booted out of his house when he decided he was a six-year-old girl. He now dresses the part, blows bubble gum, and spends his free time playing with dolls and coloring. I would call him bughouse nuts, but let’s reserve that term for the couple who adopted him.
New York City recently recognized 31gender identities. My personal favorite of these is genderqueer, which describes a “person whose gender identity is neither man nor woman, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders.” (Genderqueer describes perfectly the Venusians who lifted me onto their spaceship twenty years ago. They poked and prodded me in the usual way, and demanded I tell them why Rice Krispies “snap, crackle, and pop.” When I refused to answer, they returned me to my apartment.) New York City has forbidden discrimination based on gender and has proposed levying massive fines against those who knowingly refuse to recognize these identities or who confuse them. (I would be quickly out of pocket and in the clink; I confuse the names of my grandchildren all the time.)
Black Lives Matter attacks the police for racism while ignoring the reality that cities like Chicago and Baltimore have become battle zones where blacks murder other blacks. In Chicago this Memorial Day Weekend, over sixty people were killed or wounded. If black lives really mattered, wouldn’t Black Lives Matter march into these cities and help end the violence? Again, fantasy is preferred to reality.
Even more dangerously for the country at large, our political elite at the federal level engage in fantasies.
Every day the federal government spends us deeper and deeper into debt. Practice this as a homeowner, and you’ll soon find yourself facing foreclosure. Do this as the government, and you just print more money.
Every year we pay out more and more entitlements via disability and welfare programs. Our work force is diminishing. Earnings by the middle class have been stagnant for decades. Yet we keep on increasing benefits.
The present administration has slashed our military budget. Our Navy has shrunk, the Air Force can’t find enough pilots to fly their planes, and military personnel are having to double down on their overseas tours. This may explain why Russian jets now buzz our ships, why the Chinese are taking over the South China Sea, and why the Iranians snatched two US vessels and ten sailors in international waters without repercussions.
In case my observations seem an attack on one political point of view, let’s remember George Bush and his neo-conservative crew, and their fantasy of making the Middle East a bastion of democracy. How’d that work out for you, gang? Or the fantasy that keeps percolating among Republicans like Bill Kristol about running a Republican candidate against Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton? Kristol and his friends remind me of five-year-olds on the playground who want to take the ball and go home.
The elite need to sit down and memorize Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” If you’re unfamiliar with this verse, look it up online and see whether these old verses apply to our present situation.
Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So let me see. What could I be?
I thought about putting on some robes, growing a beard, and declaring myself a Jewish man named Jesus, but then remembered the sandals. (My toenails are, to put it mildly, unattractive.)
I thought about growing a beard, wearing safari clothes, and ordering everyone to call me Papa, but then I remembered how Hemingway ended. Plus, he was too cranky for my taste.
I thought about donning a wig and a big, floppy dress, and declaring myself Maudie Frickett, but then realized no one under forty would remember Jonathan Winters.
And then I thought: Go wild, baby.
So just for today I declare myself Hispanic, with a little Korean and Cherokee thrown into the mix.
I declare myself “height disadvantaged,” meaning I can’t reach my upper kitchen shelves without a stepladder.
I declare myself disabled, as I wear glasses and sometimes my knees ache when I climb stairs.
I dislike my teeth, and so declare myself a dentophobe. (I made that word up, but I think it’s a keeper.)
As a Christian, I already belong to a persecuted religious minority, so I’m good on the faith part.
As for gender, I declare myself piscinequeer, (pronounced Pie-seen-queer), a word I also made up and is fancy talk for being a mermaid. (I’m writing in a café at the beach and looked up from my table just now at the wall opposite, where there is a carved mermaid. Yes, I thought at once. That’s me.)
These identify changes have played havoc with my emotions. Those wishing to support my upcoming therapy should feel free to send a handsome check made out to “The Jeff Minick Bermuda Fund.”
Meanwhile, I’ll just go swish my tail in the swimming pool and scare the hoot out of my grandkids.
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