By GottaLaff
I got an e-mail from my pal David Williams, a freelancer and regular contributor to the Omaha City Weekly... and it goes a little something like this:
Laffy, I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me in reaching your readers. And even though I have now come to the sad realization (how dumb could I have been?) that you are a socialist bent on the enslavement of the American people, I like to think that you are a fair socialist bent on the enslavement of the American people; that you will continue to welcome my contributions even if they eminate from what I’m sure you will consider to be the dark underbelly of Nebraska.
And, please, don’t try to talk me down. My son has already done so. With breathless futility.
“You’ve allowed yourself to be seduced,” he said incredulously. “It can’t be! It’s like that…that…Helsinki Syndrome!”
Being only 29 and a product of the Hollywood Generation, he had confused the Stockholm Syndrome with its celluloid doppelganger – that memorable invention of Hans Gruber, the diabolically dapper international thief featured in a certain high-rise heist film of a bygone millennium.
Regardless of his errant phrasing, my son had accused his own father of having fallen prey to psychological bonding with one’s tormentors.
“You’ve been shadowing those tin foil hat Tea Baggers for so long that they’ve gotten into your head,” he cried.
“Nothing of the sort,” I explained. “I’m fine. You should have been there! It was just…just…”
The tipping point, my awakening, had come mere hours earlier when I had gone to cover a 9/12 Project protest at U.S. Senator Ben Nelson’s office here in Omaha, Nebraska. The crowd, if you could call it that, was rather anemic. Only 25 flag and sign-waving patriots were there an hour after the rally had begun, so I thought the best use of my time on a quiet Saturday afternoon under azure skies would be to pepper Nelson’s office with a few cogent questions.
Questions like how Nelson could stand idly by when one of his colleagues in the Cornhusker State delegation, House member Lee Terry, continues to yammer on about death panels.
And how he should consider pressuring the president to dump any hopes of bipartisanship with the birther-baiter-babbler wing of…well, you know.
Nelson’s office was less than talkative. No replies to my queries. None.
Then it hit me. For Nelson’s office to be so thoroughly unresponsive to his constituents, so utterly unwilling to engage in the public square (even if it was a parking lot) of political discourse…well…maybe…just maybe…the placard people had a point. Perhaps I should hear them out. I mean really listen to them this time.
And don’t even bother pointing out that Nelson’s office was closed today, as it is on every Saturday.
It doesn’t change the fact that his blinds were blind to the people. His desks, probably still hung over from a Friday night bender of pulling the plug on grandma and tipping over outhouses ripe with the now-dashed promise of the American Dream…were dismissive.
And his mums were mum.
Everybody knows that freedom-haters harbor a special affinity for mums. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep,” the intoxicating allure of the petulant perennial derives from its sweet stench of corruption and flesh like that of a harlot.
No, there’s no excuse for the silence of Nelson’s office today. I mean those people (rather we, for I am now a fellow traveler) put a lot of thought into this protest.
Helsinki Helschminki!
I thank David for the e-mail, for sharing his deepest darkest feelings with me, and for finally realizing that I am, indeed, a socialist commie Marxist, and even more so for appreciating my desire to enslave.
Why, as we speak, I've hired independent contractors from Xe and KBR to add on a dungeon to the Laffy residence. I've insisted it must be built to code, but you know how touchy they can be about things
like wiring and such.We're having some difficulty in choosing a color palette, though. What would you go with: Servitude Sienna or Bondage Burgundy?
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