Or, What a Curmudgeon Does on Thanksgiving

Major minor aggravations that ‘wear on the mind and make you old before your time.’

— These people who leave comments on various websites claiming they’ve been to teabag rallies and never once saw anyone who was a racist. Really? Not even a single racist? This is just as incredible as those who say there’s not a Republican in the land who hates Obama because he’s black — nope, it’s all about his policies, and that’s why we’re waving this here Confederate flag.

— The Obama/Hitler, Obama/Stalin comparisons. Seriously, think about this for a minute, paranoid teabaggers: If Obama were really anything like Hitler or Stalin, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al, would all be off the air. For that matter, you wouldn’t be listening to crazy Michele Bachmann at a teabag rally, because government troops would have closed down the event long before she had a chance to speak. In fact, there wouldn’t be any teabag rallies and Bachmann and her GOP ilk would be in jail for treason by now, if not executed. Of all the Obama smears invented by the fringe right, this is, along with the Birther nonsense, the most ludicrous and easiest to disprove.

— Then there are the good Christopublicans praying for Obama’s death or bodily harm. Saved by Jesus were you, you hateful little twit? Did you ever bother to read what the man you worship is quoted as saying about those who judge others, engage in hypocrisy, and misuse his name for spite and revenge or their own advantage? Hint: It’s all in the first four books of the New Testament.

— ‘Previously-owned’ instead of ‘used.’ This snooty phrase started with Mercedes and then spread to Cadillac; now it’s moved down the chain to Honda “Buy your previously-owned Honda Accord at” Is there really anyone besides, say, the faculty at Glenn Beck’s University of Something-or-Other, who would read or hear this hokey euphemism and think, “Well, I wouldn’t be caught dead buying a used car, but previously-owned is another matter!” This sales-hype excrescence should be purged from the language.

— “The American people” Politicians love to preface deplorable, usually Republican, notions with this shabby phrase, i.e.: “The American people don’t want health care at the expense of a competitive marketplace!” or “The American people don’t want the government to burden business with more regulation!” That’s BS when recovering in the hospital worried over how to pay the bill, ‘the American people’ don’t give a rip about the ‘competitive marketplace’ and the same goes for regulating ‘business,’ read ‘big corporations,’ that just laid thousands of ‘the American people’ off last month. What’s especially galling is this dog-eared expression is usually eructated by some overpaid pinhead who has been working in Washington for most of his or her adult life as if they would have any idea what America wants, or much care.

— Monetize. You mean make money from something? Why not just say that instead of employing this bit of yuppie high-hat that I first encountered on the Inner-Tubes. “I’m not trying to make a profit from my website, I’m just trying to monetize it!” People who use this euphemistically ‘impactful’ term to avoid admitting they are out for money should be ‘right-sized’ at some ‘point in time.’

There are more, but I detect by your drooping eyelids that you’ve had enough for now. Yeah, go have a Happy Thanksgiving if you can afford it!

Contact the author at editor@ltsaloon.org

2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.