Insulting Hawai'i
But that's OK. Hawai'i can take a joke. Even the joke of birtherism -- Hawai'i takes it all in stride.
But that's OK. Hawai'i can take a joke. Even the joke of birtherism -- Hawai'i takes it all in stride.
To clarify that title: when you pull a prank on this particular day, you're supposed to reveal yourself as the prankster by yelling "April Fools!" (or even, as a purist might insist, "April Fools'!"). I am not doing so, hence the absence of the exclamation mark. Sadly, my task is today is not to prank anyone (I did that last year and promised I wouldn't do it again), but to catalogue the recent spate of foolishness from our national political arena. A sober list of the fools of April, rather than an excited "April Fools!" gotcha, in other words. Well, maybe not all that sober. You decide.
Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, lived in the fifth century A.D., and he came to Ireland as a proselytizer for Christianity. That is about the sum total of the known, verifiable facts about Patrick. The rest is myth. Since such mythologizing began only a few hundred years after his death (which happened on March 17, by the way), these myths of Patrick are much more widely known than the thin shreds of his real history (which are limited to two surviving letters written by Patrick in Latin). Besides, it's much more fun to sit around telling these tales over a pint of Guinness than to dig up actual facts. Even if the tales are pure blarney.
We're going to do something today we haven't done for a while here -- take a cartoon break! Our resident cartoonist, C.W. Cunningham, has surfaced once again and sent in the following for you to enjoy.
-- Chris Weigant
About the Cartoonist | Reprint Policy
Thanks once again to the intrepid folks at Lake Superior State University, this year's "Official Banished Words List" has now gone viral. Whoops! I guess we're going to have to rewrite that sentence, since "viral" was on the top of the list of words and phrases that have just become so annoying that -- for the good of the language (and, of course The American People) -- the only possible reaction is to banish them completely from our lexicon.
[Note: Since it's Tuesday, I thought I'd run a favorite Tuesday-type article from last year. I promise, tomorrow I'll get back to being serious.]
[Originally published 3/2/10]
The title of this piece quotes the well-known philosopher Jeremy Hilary Boob, PhD. The full quote is, of course:
Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quoSo little [...]
[Program Note: This column originally ran three years ago, and every so often I dust it off and run it again, to allow me to do some Christmas shopping and whatnot. What with Part 2 of our "McLaughlin Awards" running tomorrow, there just wasn't time to put together a column today. Don't forget to check back here tomorrow (or over the weekend) for the second part of our year-end roundup, and for today I hope you'll enjoy my "go to" Christmas column. Thanks again to everyone who has donated in our 2010 Holiday Pledge Drive, allowing us to exceed our fundraising goal. And hope you've all got your shopping and wrapping done, too.]
I couldn't immediately come up with any phrases which have risen to the level of hair-pulling every time I hear them, although in recent weeks, "The Comeback Kid" being used about Obama has gotten pretty annoying, I have to say. Come on people, that was Bill Clinton's moniker! Have the wits to come up with an original phrase, at least, will you?
For your viewing enjoyment this year, we introduce... (drumroll, please...):
Kittens!
It's going to be a short one today, folks. Since Congress is on yet another one of its week-long vacations, politically it has been a pretty slow week. Even the mainstream media is left fanning the flames of the airport security foofaroo in a desperate attempt to fill their allotted timeslots, in the absence of any real news out of Washington. Well, actually, even if there were such news coming out of Washington, the media would likely still be distracted by the shiniest object in their (quite limited) ability to perceive these things.