Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
What shall we wish for in the New Year? Given the performance of 2008, let us start small.
We wish that clerks and waiters (and waitresses and servers and wait persons) would learn that the correct response to “thank you” is “you’re welcome.”
Servers, when you fill our water glasses and we express gratitude, it is not appropriate to say “no problem.” We know this small service is not a problem; it is part of your job. A problem would be figuring out how to make ends meet if everybody reduced your tip each time you responded “no problem.”
Here’s a more difficult wish: Let Democrats at last give up the lie that the United States Supreme Court “selected” George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. Democratic Party officials have told this lie so often over the past eight years, their constituents believe it. With the election of Barack Obama they can turn to more contemporary dishonesty – like stealing a Minnesota Senate seat.
A myth is born: Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has the Dems all twisted up, having appointed a black man of apparently impeccable credentials to fill Obama’s Senate seat. The majority party wants no part of a Blago appointment, but it doesn’t want to exclude a qualified African-American.
We heard a commentator on Fox – some political “expert” – explain that this is because the civil rights movement was “all about” getting more blacks into Congress. Thus we will have to modify Martin Luther King Jr.’s immortal speech at the march on Washington. It now should read: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged at least in part by the color of their skin as well as by the content of their character.”
Another new standard for the Senate: Caroline Kennedy, speaking of her desire to occupy Sen. Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacant seat, told a cable news channel, “I haven’t followed a traditional path, but I think I bring a lifetime of experience to this.”
If this is the standard, every American citizen 30-years-old or older is qualified. After all, haven’t all of us accrued a lifetime of experience? Perhaps she meant to say “relevant experience.”
Former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney continues to prove herself certifiable. She just tried to run the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza to bring “medical supplies” to the beleaguered Palestinians.
Her dad also told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution his daughter recently traveled to Cuba, where she was “very well received” by Pres. Raul Castro. No surprise there. She also tried to visit Syria, no doubt to congratulate President Bashar al-Assad on Hezbollah’s peace-making successes in Lebanon.
Let us hope the New York Times gets through 2009 without another sparkling demonstration of its fallen standards. Of course, it doesn’t help that it will be kicking off the year defending a libel suit filed by Vicki Iseman. She’s the lobbyist the Times implied had in improper relationship with Sen. John McCain. (You remember him. He was a candidate for something or other in ’08.)
According to a Times spokeswoman, the article in question was “an important piece that raised questions about a presidential contender and the perception that he had been engaged in conflicts of interest.”
And never mind that neither the Times nor anybody else looked into Barack Obama’s conflict of interest in suggesting – while on the board of Public Allies Chicago – that his wife be hired as the organization’s executive director.
Soon to be a tax: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “environmentally conscious travelers” departing San Francisco International Airport soon will be able to buy “carbon offsets” at concourse kiosks. The city is teaming with 3Degrees, a “firm that sells renewable-energy and carbon-reduction investments.”
A spokeswomen for 3Degrees told the Chronicle, “While the carbon offsets purchased at kiosks can’t be seen or touched, they are an actual product with a specific environmental claim whose ownership is transferred at the time of purchase.”
If you buy this, we have a boys’ band to sell you.
