Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald

November 16, 2012
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: “Focus on the absurd lest reality drive you mad” – Some comments on 2 separate headlines in this morning’s Miami Herald.

Sirs,

“Pentagon wants to improve ethics” and “Bond vote delayed as $45,000,000 is found”. No wonder Dave Barry retired. He thought there was a limit to how many things could not be made up. It may be time for him to unretire.

I suppose ethics can be “improved”. Body mass index, SAT scores, the good cholesterol/bad cholesterol scale, the elusive “fairness” quotient surely can be made right, can’t they? I am sure the Pentagon will send up a flare to alert the media that, the horizon having been finally reached, men will now be angels.

[It’s 6:30 in the morning and those Allahdamned parrots are squawking again. Can’t we just ban the atonal, cacophonous bastards?]

Ethics, as Aristotle says, always seeks a balance. We always come in after the fact that someone has broken their vows. Those vows can personal, spousal, religious, institutional, or civic

“A man upon oath holds his soul in his hands as if it were water.
He opens his fingers at his own peril.”

Alas, that can’t be taught at boot camp.

It is not just doing what is right but, first, knowing what is right. What is wrong, what is evil, becomes an affront to man’s nature [“the better angels on man’s nature” perhaps]] and an insult to his Creator.

My favorite African Bishop said “Love God and do what you will”.

Which leads us to

“Bond vote delayed as $45,000,000 is found”.

“Found”?

Where? Behind the water cooler? In the lunch room? In the Affirmative Action office? Did someone turn in a suspicious portmanteau?

If ever a headline called for, nay, demanded 100 lashes well laid on followed by defenestration, that is the one.

If $45,000,000 can be “found”: would it be safe to assume that $45,000,000 can be “lost”?

As a former Chief Financial Officer of a public company I know, financial ledgerdemain – that my way of spelling it – notwithstanding, debits must equal credits.

Miami/Dade County seems to have lost sight of that.

That they induced their citizens to indenture themselves for decades to build an arts center, a tunnel, and a baseball stadium while losing sight of $45,000,000 suggests a scenario starring the Marx Brothers directed by Mel Brooks.

How fitting that picture next to the story about losing and finding $45,000,000 – and that money will go down the next open modern American Liberal rabbit hole quicker than a lamb chop could get past the big, bad wolf – is a picture of earnest true believers holding up signs that scream “End Homelessness” followed by signs that say “Feed the Meters”. Presumably the out of touch 1% will circle Ocean Drive and Lincoln Road to dispose of all their pre-1964 quarters into vacant parking meters, said parking meters being the source of “Ending Homelessness”.

Clio, the Muse of History, tells us that it would be easier to end the vicious cycle of high tide/ low tide than it would be to “End Homelessness” by “Feeding the Meters”.

Curses!

I have just sentenced myself to a fruitless morning of trying to find a suitable synonym for absurd.




Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET