Say it ain't so!

It’s a common theme, but that doesn’t make it any less true: Abject stupidity has no boundaries.

Oh, the Colonel’s shame
Kentucky Fried Chicken, the folks that one time brought its customers the “side breast” in a cluck bucket (which was half a breast and part of the back), now has a new gimmick – Bunless Double Down sandwiches.

Of course, their marketing gurus had to come up with a catchy, memorable campaign. These marketing geniuses are paying college students to wear fitted sweatpants with “Double Down” in large letters across the posterior.

You guessed it! All of the students are female and comely, as my grandmother used to refer to as girls who were “pretty as all get-out.”

If this New Age marketing ploy works, look for the Colonel to be handing out halter tops to promote the company’s “Big, Bigger, Biggest Breasts” promotion.

Politicos expound
All you can see and hear these days are the words of would be politicians wanting to stay in Congress or go to Congress claiming they are for change for change’s sake. Change is needed, they decry in everything from health care to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the welfare system to immigration to Social Security.

All most people want is for a politician to run on a single plank of an important platform: Congress shall pass no law that does not apply to members of the federal government, and make retroactive any laws which subvert the intent of this law.

Period.

Now, go forth and find someone running for election who will 1) Promise to support such a law, and 2) introduce such a bill and push it vigorously.

Good luck on finding any takers.

And, finally …

The way it now stands, the GOPers will regain control of the House, and possibly the Senate.

That will not solve a single problem plaguing this nation.

The Grand Opulent Partiers will only perpetuate the divisive culture of the House and Senate as party politics become even more prevalent and more ingrained in the political arena.

The Demagogues have the most ineffective leadership of any party in recent history. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are empty suits who have the political social skills of warthogs.

The GOP leadership – Mitch McConnell and his Cast of Incompetents – is no better.

Clean sweep and start over?

Anybody?

Everybody?

Celebrities? Pshaw!

Somebody please explain to me how we changed from a country whose citizens embraced “heroes” to one who drools spittle after “celebrities?”

On second thought, never mind. The thought of Nimrod No. 1 trying to explain this cultural phenomenon to Nimrod No. 2 gives me a migraine.

Let me see if I can get this straight: Paris Hilton in a celebrity because:
A) She’s richer than a Saudi prince.
B) She’s pretty in an Anorexia Calendar pinup sort of way.
C) She can walk a red carpet for anything from the Oscars to Emmys to Charity Event for the Venetian Blind without turning her ankle in her four-inch heels.
D) All of the above.

Paris Hilton is an airhead with money. Yet, millions of Americans and members of the world community follow her every movement like she was a tennis ball at Centre Court at Wimbledon.

Just recently, she was found with cocaine in her purse, which she said wasn’t her purse, but was borrowed. She was arrested and used the photo opportunity at the police station to “vamp” it up.

Earlier photos of her show her carrying the exact same purse, so she admitted she lied. She finally ‘fessed up and pleaded guilty and received a year’s probation.

A few weeks later she flew to Japan and after six hours of questioning by immigration officials, she was denied entry into the country because of her drug conviction.

Yea! for Japan. At least one country has guts and brains when dealing with celebrity druggies.

Hilton is 29 years old and thinks the world owes her homage. She is the picture-perfect example of bimbo, and to show she is one, she doesn’t care what all the little people think of her.

She is not just a bimbo, however. She has so much money, a new term needs to be coined (pun intended) for her ilk: $imbo.

Speaking of celebrities …

Lindsay Lohan is a druggie alcoholic who used to be cute and could, quite literally, act herself out of a paper bag.

She’s had two DWI convictions and three visits to drug rehabilitation centers. Now, she’s going to jail because he cannot raise above her spoiled-brat persona and proved it by busting her probation requirements.

Lady Gaga is a female doofus who does a bad Madonna knockoff in her singing and stage presence. Her real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

Forbes magazine listed her as fourth on the list of the 100 Most Powerful and Influential celebrities in the world.

Yikes! Even Forbes has bought into the celebrity-is-everything myth.

Just think: Celebrities wouldn’t be celebrities if everyone would just ignore them.

And it is written: The nutcases will rise up and protest

You gotta love those Good Book-lovin’ church people.

You know, the fervent but wrong-headed dingdongs who believe in freedom of religious expression as long as it’s connected to their core beliefs.

The intolerance of certain philosophical tendrils connected to major religions is astonishing to those who believe it’s okay to believe what you want to believe, that the Golden Rule should be applied in every situation and that my personal freedom to follow the religion of my own choosing is a right that should be extended to everyone.

Then, there is stripped nut-screw or two that throw that belief all asunder.

A small Florida church, with a congregation of less than 50 members, led by the not-so-reverend Terry Jones caused a worldwide brouhaha when he announced a Quran (Koran) burning. (It’s a small church filled with feather-headed know-nothings, for gosh sakes!)

It was Jones’ intention to send a message to the godless Muslims that there is only one holy book and it didn’t start with the letter Q, er, or K.

Presidents of countries – including Barak Obama – appealed to the preacher not to burn Muslim holy book. Government and military officials (including Gen. David Petraeus) and the FBI requested the plan be cancelled, noting that it might put lives of U.S. soldiers in further jeopardy in Muslim countries.

Jones first said he would not hold his burn-the-book rally, but then hedged and said he might. He didn’t say God is telling him what to do, but it is plan the god-publicity might have a hand in his final decision.

As sure as chickens don’t have lips, other headline seekers came out of the woodwork. Pastor Bob Old of some smaller-than-a-teacup Tennessee church said he was going to burn the Quran. His reason: “They worship a false god. They have a false text, a false prophet and a false scripture.”

Tolerance, get thee behind Old Bob and those of his ilk.

And a spokesman for the good ol’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, said if other churches don’t burn the Quran, they sure as hell will.

The Westboro clan is known for protesting at funerals of American soldiers.
Oh, and they believe that God is punishing Americans for being tolerant of homosexuals.

One thing is for certain: The fanatical side of the Muslim faith has a lot of company in the hairball section of life … the fanatical side of fundamental Christianity in America.

Small-town thinking certainly not confined to small towns

It is a fact of STA (small-town American) that a few people run most local government or public entities – school districts, communities, counties. It is a truism with few exceptions.

Lonoke County and some of the towns that are included in it are perfect examples of how the intellectual gene pools have been drained to the point of single digit IQs making major decisions.

For years Lonoke County has been wrestling with trying to mesh the need for a new jail with incoming revenues. Finally, a couple of years ago, the county Quorum Court buckled down and approved the construction of a new jail.

That jail is scheduled to open in February 2011. Maybe.

The “maybe” comes as a result of small-brain / small-town thinking.

The county is building the jail, but apparently the cost of operating it – an estimated $1.3 million a year – was never fully considered nor explored.

The citizens of Lonoke County have elected officials – County Judge Charlie Troutman, Sheriff Jim Roberson, and Justices of the peace Mike Dolan, Mark Edwards, H.L. Lang, Tim Lemons, Roger Lynch, Alexis Malham, Jeannette Minton, Larry Odom, Bill Ryker, Adam Sims, Jodie Troutman, Barry Weathers and Sony Moery – that are supposed to be looking out after the interests of the citizens.

In this case, somebody – everybody! – apparently went to sleep.

It is the county judge’s primary responsibility to be the planner, organizer, coordinator and budget overseer for the county. The judge, running for re-election, apparently didn’t do his homework and advise the JPs on what would be needed. Neither did Roberson and neither did anyone else.

Where to come up with the money?

The county budget committee will have to solve that thorny problem. But it would behoove the county judge and the county sheriff and all the JPs to start thinking … and quit assuming.

A (quote) state-of-the-at jail (end quote) with insufficient money to operate it.

What a maroon of a situation!

Stealing a newspaper honest-to-goodness crime

As a 50-year veteran of newspaper wars, I prided myself on always being upfront and honest and truthful in all respects.

In writing more than 3,000 editorials and 2,000 columns in those years, I fully acknowledge the remote possibility of slipping up occasionally and bending the truth into a pretzel, if not busting it all to pieces.

I was talking “newspapering” recently with a long-time East Texas publisher and I was rambling on about something or other and he said, “What was the real scoop on the column you wrote about newspaper theft?”

Well, there were three actually and two happened in Marshall.

Any newspaper can expect a seven-to-eight percent theft from newspaper racks. That’s a pretty good universal number for the percent of thieves that read papers. That number is a given and is figured into circulation budgets.

Back in 1989, the rack thefts at the News Messenger skyrocketed one summer, with daily theft surpassing 20 percent. I teamed up with the circulation director and rigged up a sting: We took quarters out of racks, painted the edges with fingernail polish (Passionfruit, as a recall) and replaced them in the coin bins.

It was obvious the next day when we went through the rack collection bags that many of the doctored quarters were missing.

Before we had a chance to decide on a course of action, we adjourned to Burger King for lunch. Upon arrival, the manager welcomed us and said, “If you’d been a few minutes earlier, (a staff member) could have bought your lunch. He brought in enough quarters to feed the lunch crowd.”

Part of the lunch money included quarters with the edges painted in Passionfruit.

Back at the office, we confronted the circulation employee, had him return all the quarters (three bags full in his trunk), invited him to write a check for the difference of seven-eight percent of theft and what it had been running the past month … and terminated his employment.

Never did a firing feel so good.

The second such theft report in Marshall was even more bizarre.

The Messenger, every Sunday morning, experienced a 90 percent theft rate … at one rack. It was located front and center at a local restaurant.

One Sunday I staked out the restaurant and watched as a stream of customers came up to the rack and put in the correct change, opened the door and took out a handful of papers. There were originally 50 papers in the rack and only $5 in the coin collection tray when I checked.

I went inside the restaurant and went to a meeting room in the back. A herd of men were sitting, drinking coffee, slamming down eggs and reading stolen News Messengers.

Being as it was a pre-church meeting of a men’s Sunday School class, I announced I was there to pass the collection plate to get money for the papers that were inadvertently stolen from the rack outside. I passed a blue-striped plate and dollar bills were piled high in no time.

“Don’t make me come back here,” I said, smiling, as I exited. No more theft problems from that rack … ever.

Later in my career, the paper at which I was publishing sponsored a “Little Cutie” photo contest (or some such titled money-making gimmick), and the official entry blank was included in a full-page ad. Unlimited entries were allowed, but no copies were to be counted.

That stipulation guaranteed a high degree of theft. We went to the trouble of printing rack cards telling would-be thieves the penalties for stealing newspaper.

The theft that day surpassed 50 percent.

The following day I wrote a front-page column about the theft, and advised the readers that every single rack paper was printed with a special scan code that, if the entry form was turned in for the contest, could be pinpointed as stolen … and prosecution would be vigorously pursued.

The phone rang off the wall that day with readers saying their spousal units “might” have inadvertently picked up extra copies and they’d like to come down and make restitution. The front desk took in more than $200 that day.

In my convoluted thinking, sometimes white lies are justified. And, despite what newspaper professionals like to think, some readers are dumber than a box of hair.