Stephen L. Goldstein The Sun-Sentinel

Boxing Day
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: “Cheer up”, I said. “Things could be worse.” “For once we are in agreement. They were, are, and they will be”, said you. – Some comments on your Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza column, an offering that is predicated on how bad things were, are, and will be. In other words a modern American Liberal humbug to all of you!

My dear Professor,

It must be tough going through life certain that the best you can hope for is to have only one shoe that fits well and that lions and lambs will snuggle together provided we bring a new lamb to Leo every sundown.

I must tell you that I am but halfway through a long journey in my gas guzzling SUV. I find that mental games are a good way to defeat the Interstate ennui. [Incidentally, the Interstate highway system was the first example of the Military/Industrial complex showing that “shovel ready” projects can work provided you give them 3 years to get “shovel ready”. But I’m sure you knew that.] My mental game of choice was trying to figure out if my number of killed polar bears increases exponentially as my speed increased mathematically.

The law of unintended consequence demands that my math includes the following factors: The more polar bears I kill the more baby seals will grow up to be salmon killers. The dearth of salmon will result in more grizzly bears attacking intruding bi-pods, most of whom are White. They will surely kill them with weapons that are not being used “fairly”. Meanwhile the noble Inuits and the stout Fugowis will surely starve what with their totemic salmon having gone away because of the surplus of seals. Do you think if we give Alaska back to the Russians – that would solve the Sarah Palin problem, wouldn’t it? – Gaia would be pleased and we could finally reach the horizon and become the people we were waiting for?

Your first paragraph, like the credit card ad tells us, is priceless.

You make Kwanzaa the equivalent of Hanukkah and Christmas. That takes big brass cojones, huevos annealed by decades of sitting in the forge of modern American Liberalism, moral relativism, and secular humanism.

I was present at neither Hanukkah nor Christmas but I am familiar with the story of both.

I was present at the birth of Kwanzaa.

It is interesting to note that the myths of Hanukkah and Christmas were burnished by centuries, indeed millennia, of exquisite artistry. Kwanzaa was made out
of whole cloth over a long weekend on Main Street, East Orange, NJ. It was the height of the hugely successful War on Poverty. Its language is an amalgam of Jabberwocky, Esperanto, and pre hip hop rap. Its customs were designed the way a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat and the way his cousin, the card shark, fills an inside straight.

It’s a shame that Bing Crosby died before he could record “I’m Dreaming of a Black Kwanzaa”.

I await, eagerly, very eagerly, the appearance of the first Black Scrooge. Ebenezer becomes Erastus. [Can we wait for OJ to get out?] Tupac Shakur becomes the Ghost of Christmas Past. Al & Jesse, the country’s favorite street Revs, have a Texas Steel Cage Death Match to see who becomes the Ghost of Christmas Future.

The rest of your article is made up of the quotidian persiflage – I will gild the lily. It is quotidian obfuscatory persiflage - which modern American Liberals must engage in. There are many variations but the major premise, “Not only is the glass half empty but somebody is secretly draining it even though it is toxic”, has been a staple of the Democratic Party since 1932.

Maybe I’ll take the long way home. Having gotten my quota of polar bears I want to train my death ray exhaust system on mosquitoes, coyotes, and peripatetic preachers of puerile poppycock. Plus, I will hold my breath for 10 minutes every hour. That way, when I exhale, my CO2 will be like it spent the weekend in Gahenna. Keep your gas mask handy.

I will try to find those 7 or 8 states that President B.O. told us about. As soon as I finds them the three Holy Grails of Geography, viz. Utopia, the Horizon, and Atlantis, should be a layup.






Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET