What did we learn from watching the news this week, children?
Disney/Pixar’s “Up!” doesn’t work in real life!
Well, yes, children. When a homemade UFO/whatever-the-hell-that-thing-was took flight, it was not a heartwarming romp through the air. Rather, it was about half an hour of sheer terror as CNN held audiences in a zombie-like trance, under the false impression that a 6-year-old named Falcon (you can’t make this stuff up) was inside the darn thing, gliding 6,000 feet above the ground. He was actually hiding in his attic.
But what else did we learn, children?
Republicans refuse to stop being crazy!
Now, now, children. It’s only the 30 out of 40 of them in the Senate who voted against Al Franken’s amendment to stop funding defense contractors who don’t let their employees sue the company if they’re raped by coworkers. Let me repeat: Thirty Republicans want rape victims, if they happen to work for a defense contractor, to be unable to sue their rapists. Anything to disagree with Al Franken, I guess.
Let me put this in perspective for you, as Jon Stewart pointed out on “The Daily Show,” when ACORN gave seedy advice (Get it? Seedy? ACORN? Get it?) to two conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp, only six of the Senate’s 58 Democrats voted to allow continued funding of ACORN. Helping prostitutes = defunding.
In their defense, it is the minority party’s job to say “No!” to everything. So, in that sense, it is petty politicking on the part of Sen. Franken to introduce an anti-rape amendment when Republicans are in the minority.
And look what the majority party has done this week. The Alabama Democratic Party appointed Reynolds Smith to a local party panel, which wouldn’t normally be noteworthy, but Smith died almost a year ago. Just giving support to the right-wing claim that the American left is dying.
And, lest we forget, children, nonpartisan government officials can be ass-backwards, too. Like Keith Bardwell, the Louisiana Justice of the Peace who refused to marry an interracial couple last week, because he feared for the children. Don’t worry, though, he’s not a racist. And I quote: “I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom.”
People just aren’t letting me think up my own material this week, children. They’re making inanity happen all alone. Even here at Dear Old Duke, jokes are writing themselves.
A C-1 caught fire on East Campus, causing no injuries. According to Capt. Gary Paschall of the Durham Fire Department, “It happens every so often.” Actually, this is the second time a Duke bus has spontaneously combusted in three years, and based on the frequency with which I can find a bus when I desperately need one, I’d guess that’s two combustions for every five times a bus runs.
Never afraid to chase a hot story, my compatriots at The Chronicle news office tweeted no less than nine times in about a half-hour after the fire erupted. This, in turn, forced commenters on the online version of The Chronicle to ask why staffers were wasting time on the fire instead of doing deeply investigative exposés about how evil Dick Brodhead is, and what their positions in the Brodhead administration were. Probing.
Nathan Freeman finally ended the debate about Tailgate. Just thought you should know.
And last, but certainly not least, the Duke University Medical Center, in all its glorious wisdom, increased the minimum age of visitors from 13 to 18. In keeping children away from their ailing parents, the Medical Center hopes to stem the spread of H1N1. I, for one, can’t see any flaw in the reasoning underpinning this policy. Teens are probably the only ones who can contract the swine flu, and they can’t conceivably spread it to someone who can get into the hospital. I’m sorry you can’t see your daddy in the hospital, children, but it’s just necessary.
Charlotte Simmons thanks Nathan Freeman for ending the debate about Tailgate.
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