Cheers!

By Lance Hendrickson
Contributing Writer

Folks, I try. Really, I do.

And as I’ve gotten older, for better or worse I have improved at fighting off paint-drinker-grade stupidity as & when it finds me. Usually, boozing like Quint and smoking like Brody get me through the worst attacks. It ain’t easy, though. My lower lip’s topography resembles the Verdun countryside from the biting, and I’m sure my liver says “Rawlings” on one side by now. But, somehow, I get by these days without too much hair-ripping or dog-kicking.

In my salad years, though, I regularly found myself asking my cousin Ray, for instance, the least-useful question the English language has to offer: “What’re you, an idiot?”

For the most part, by the time this query echoes off one’s dental work (or Jerry Seinfeld puts it to work), everyone within earshot either knows the correct answer (and should have from the get-go), or never, ever will. It’s the Vietnam “conflict” of all interrogatories – pointless, futile, and a complete waste of irreplaceable resources (like, say, youth, and time).

And hey, I’m not saying Ray didn’t merit asking. This guy once dragged the family grocery-getter down off the ramps (where I was changing the oil) and drove it 65 miles with the parking brake mashed. (His classic after-action report: “well, it was kinda tough going ‘til I got to Brunswick, and I guess I did notice a funny smell…”) When I got him a job in a restaurant, he made three cases of garlic bread—with no garlic. (I actually had a better question for him that day: “How in the ninth circle of hell could you hear the ‘bread’ half of the name, without hearing the ‘garlic’ half?!!”) Later, in college, he reported to work at KFC one day in his Long John Silver’s uniform.

I admit it. Before my enlightenment, I must’ve popped the question towards Ray’s vacant stare about umpty-leven times. Consistent results, on each occasion.
But the point is, I’ve learned that our slower friends, who insist on shoving their way onto elevators before we can exit, and text-driving the ditches & medians full, will do that forever. So there’s no point in trying to bring them back from Narnia or Krypton or wherever they spend their waking moments. Most days, I just watch ‘em put new paper in the stalls without starting the rolls, shake my head, shoot Jameson’s, and motor defensively.

Same thing – almost—goes for Todd’s wife, Sarah Louise. I stuffed it back when she said the Vice President is “…in charge of the U.S. Senate…” Johnny Walker helped me shush when she claimed Obama was “… palling around with terrorists…” And when she relocated Illinois’ Eureka College to California, I just tithed a little more to Phil Morris. Granted, I nearly had to go score some Michoacan black tar when her anti-mosque tweet added “refudiate” to the lexicon, but I kept mum.

Rhetorically icepicking Mama Grizzly’s eyeballs for being utterly daft would be easier than clubbing baby seals (and just about as sophisticated an endeavor). And today, though I really, really have the jones, I’m not proceeding. Here’s why.

See, her special way of cracking off about brown people who pray funny or talk funny or wear funny hats (as opposed to white folks who do the same – I give you Alabama, Mississippi, dare I say Texas…) is catching on like the Macarena with God’s Own Party nowadays. Examples abound – PortaJohn Boehner’s latest leakage, for one. And as soon as the tin-foil-hat crowd left off yammering about Mexicans & pointed their spit-shooters at Muslims, even the horribly-misnamed Newton Gingrich bobbed up and analogized New York mosque proponents to Nazi taggers.

To be fair, Abramoff’s bud Grover Norquist offered a quick “It is very stupid… to focus attention on this issue.” Maybe voluntarily, maybe not (his wife’s a Muslim – check for nail marks around his fly to answer that one). But he’s wrong, too, for the same reason I’m not inquiring about Governor Quitter’s i.q. score atop my sooty lungs.

The T.P.ers’ howling about some planned house of really bad Yoga in Manhattan ain’t “stupid,” Grover. (Now, get your furry pie-hole back to Charlie’s Restaurant.) And the Rat-publican presidential hopefuls stinking up the troposphere with this flatus aren’t acting out of sheer idiocy (this time).
They’re not just race-baiting. They’re race-chumming. On purpose.

So I’m not asking. Just observing. If they shovel another mug or two over the stern unchallenged, we’re all gonna need a bigger boat.

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