A Gaggle of Cyclopses

A few weeks ago I started a Cyclops Award for those people who seem to have such narrow minds that if they fall on a pinpoint the pin would pierce both eyes. It’s an old Fred Allen joke about his agent who was so narrow-minded that…And we have to remember that the Greek cyclopses were physical, not mental giants. I have a Cyclops file in which I stuff candidates when I run across one. I’m amazed how quickly the file fills. Here are some of my latest awards:

Maliki, Petraeus, the Pentagon

Lurch’s Iraqi buddy Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki decided to throw the militias out of Basra, Iraq’s only major port city, on March 25. Our close friends the Brits pulled out of Basra because they got tired of being killed for a wrong-headed policy. You might say they had decided to join the “Coalition of the Unwilling”, an ever-increasing number of countries.
We can’t seem to get any more volunteers to join the fight in the cesspool of Iraq. NATO countries are also telling us to go to hell when we have asked them to provide more troops in chasing the Taliban around the mountains of Afghanistan. Whenever I see a squad of U. S. soldiers or my fellow Marines clinging to the side of some Afghan mountain after being Bushwhacked by some Osama or Muhammad I get angry. What the hell are we doing chasing Talibanis in the mountains when we have to make the economy work for the Afghanis in the cities first? We could chase these religious nuts through every mountain pass and over every riverbed and never defeat them in a 100 years. Over 100,000 Russians found that out in the 1980’s.

Well, back to Basra. Maliki sent “well-trained” Iraqi soldiers against Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army—who promply surrendered their weapons after getting an olive sprig and a new Koran from the militias. Over 1,300 Iraqi “soldiers” with their new Korans clutched tightly went “over the hill”, as we used to say about deserters. I guess they decided they would go to Paradise some other day. After five days of “fighting”, the Mahdi Army still controlled 75 percent of Basra! Perhaps John McCain is right. We will probably be stupid enough to have troops there for 100 years.
Calvin Trillin in “The Nation” wrote a short poem that immortalizes McCain’s century of Iraq occupation “What Real Straight Talk From McCain Would Sound Like on The Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War”: “It’s going very well, my friends./ Our triumphs now are bound to grow./ The worst five years are over, friends./ That leaves just ninety-five to go.” (I am currently reviewing McCain’s status for an award.)

In view of the continuing disaster which is Iraq, I bequeath Cyclops Awards to Maliki, his keeper General David Petraeus, and the entire Middle East Pentagon staff.

Mr. and Mrs. John MacArthur

Perhaps you have seen tributes to billionaire John D. MacArthur and his wife as show sponsors on PBS, including that wonderful series “Masterpiece Theater.” Seeing the testimony one assumes that he and wife were upstanding citizens and gained every cent of their fortune honorably.

According to Nancy Kriplen, a biographer of the MacArthurs, these two were a couple of rascals. MacArthur ran insurance companies and scammed almost everyone associated with them whether they were customers or workers. He often simply discarded claims instead of paying them. Sometimes he would deliberately put wrong addresses on checks just so he could use the premium payer’s money a little longer.

One of MacArthur’s companies, Bankers Life, received plaudits in the 1940’s for employing 650 older and handicapped workers. But he had an ulterior motive. In the company’s headquarters building the ceilings in the basement were very low. So MacArthur hired the handicapped and wheelchaired and stuck them in these basement rooms because few of them could stand. He employed dwarfs as custodians to clean the basement “usable” space.

I hereby grant Mr. and Mrs. John MacArthur a Cyclops Award they can share because of their total concentration on greed.

Michael Griffin

So we have invested over $100 billion in the International Space Station, one of our real bright ideas. But the Lurch administration has screwed around so much with policy and funding that, gee whiz, we will have to depend on Russia and the guy with the soulful eyes (according to Lurch) to get our people to the station for five years, between 2010 and 2015.

Although the American taxpayer has paid almost all of the bills for the station, we will have no vehicle capable of getting to the station for that five-year period! The space shuttles are old and will go out of business in 2010. In other words, we will be up Crap Creek without a paddle and with a big hole in the canoe. We are going to depend on Vladimir Putin and his cronies to get our men and women to the space station? Good grief!

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a former astronaut and chairman of the committee that oversees NASA, sees red at this situation: “This is a very serious betrayal of American interests. This will be the first time since Sputnik when the United States will not have a significant space superority. I remain dumbfounded that we’ve allowed this serious threat to our natinal security to develop.”

I hereby award NASA administrator Michael Griffin a Cyclops trophy for concentrating so hard on the space budget that he forgot an important element of transportation—like a new space shuttle of some sort!

George Kalishevich

I still remember the movie “Easy Rider” with all those helmetless bikers spiking their tresses in the wind, listening to the weird pan flute sounds whistling through their empty heads. Up until about ten years ago, most states got tired of paying for young empty-headed hulks using geezer beds in nursing homes for decades, so they passed laws requiring helmets. Simple logic tells us that when concrete and steel meet bones and brains, regardless of total mass, the bones give and chunks of concrete end up replacing brains.

Twenty years ago, 47 states required helmets for all riders. But then we had the “individual right” philosophy and the “you-are-taking-away-my-freedom” kick.
Sure, you have the right to kill yourself. I have nothing against suicide. Just don’t send me the body to patch up or bury—with hospital and doctor bills wrapped around the brain—if you are racing around the countryside without a helmet or without having the seatbelt “clicked.”

Why should society pay for a nursing home room for 50 years for a vegetable who didn’t have enough sense to wear a helmet? Have you noticed that circus performers who are shot out of cannons even wear helmets? Why do you think they do that?

Today only 20 states require helmets. Twenty-seven states protect only younger riders from imbecility. While states have been discarding helmet laws the death rate continues to grow. The highest rate of deaths occurred just before helmet laws were passed.

In 1986, 5 million bikes were registered. Then helmet laws started to be passed by the states. In 2006 6.5 million bikes were registered but we had the same number of deaths as when 5 million were registered. Helmets accomplished that feat. Between 2002 and 2006 over 40 percent of the riders killed did not wear helmets—and half of those killed lost control and crashed without hitting another moving vehicle.

In a letter to USA Today, George Kalishevich of Coaldale, Pa. wrote: “We are becoming a nation of control freaks. People do not want to wear helmets. It is their free choice, and, as adults, it is their right…People who sky dive are basically falling out of airplanes, hoping to float to earth with a piece of cloth. People who jet ski barrel across lakes at breakneck speed. They’re all taking chances. It is their choice, their bodies, and their lives.”

Please, George, I don’t want to pay your bills if concrete or steel becomes imbedded in what’s left of your unhelmeted brain. (Why do sky divers always wear helmets?) By the way, George, here’s your Cyclops Award.

The Unknown Rolls-Royce Customer

We may be in a recession but Rolls-Royce expects to sell more $450,000 cars this year in the U.S. than they did last year. A third of Rolls-Royce owners own yachts and a third have “access” to a private jet. Rolls made only 1,010 cars last year with 322 sold in the U.S. Rolls, for a price, will add almost anything you want. Those shy billionaires always want personal monograms on seats and door sills and bars and refrigerators in the back. Reminds me of our Winnebago.

I have picked out a Cyclops Award winner from the Rolls group because of the utter inanity of what the obscene rich need to maintain interest in themselves.

The Rolls has a distinctive figurine to adorn the radiator grill. It is a figure of a rather healthy young woman which can be made to disappear into the depths of the Rolls when it is parked so vandals can’t get a souvenir. This owner did not think the breasts on his figurine were Dolly Parton enough so he had the figure go through breast augmentation.

I think such devotion to your class during such a busy life merits a Cyclops Award.