The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Pity the poor men! Every day some sad schnook who was riding high on ego and money and power, gets dragged down into the mob of angry women ready to have at his sorry manhood with sharp tongues and sharper fingernails. One day it’s that creepy monster Weinstein or Winestain or whoever, the prototypical casting couch perv who not only seduces young wannabee actresses but threatens the established ones with smear campaigns that undoubtedly would ruin careers. Hugh Hefner died last month and boy howdy, that signaled the end of an era of boys having their way with girls.

Hef surrounded himself with a bevy of young talent, lounged lasciviously in his black satin pajamas and thought he’d discovered a New World of permissive sex and exploitation. Guess he missed the Roman Empire. Power brings many rewards, but as the boys at the Pilot Lounge like to say, money talks and bullshit walks. For all our lives the frat boys and the fat cats have had their way with their female counterparts. Women’s Lib opened some doors, but behind a lot of them, they still encountered the predatory male, the guy who can’t translate NO and doesn’t expect rejection, not from some pretty little underling.

Every day now another rogue molester finds his accusers shaking fists and talking to the press. Movie actors, congressmen, judges, professors, you name it, the spotlight is veering this way and that. Poor Judge Roy Moore, newly off his campaign win for GOP Senatorial nominee of the great state of Alabama, is being accused of groping a 14 year old girl. Even in Alabama this is considered beyond the usual pale, they don’t care if he WAS the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and fought valiantly for bringing the 10 Commandments into the courthouse. (Well, 9 Commandments if you throw in the prohibition against sex with someone other than your wife.)

Even Jesus’ old man Joseph was called out by the Alabama state auditor, purportedly in defense of Judge Moore, for being an adult dating Mary, an underage teen at the time. The auditor, apparently felt that what was okay for the parents of the Son of God was certainly good enough for the beleaguered Judge. My own take is that they should be glad the statute of limitations is a couple thousand years past due date. But not for the Judge.

#MeToo is a train that’s barely left the station and already the bodies are piling up under the cowcatcher. The chatter at the morning breakfasts in the South End Diner is way less vociferous, almost whispers now. It’s as if we can nearly hear the testosterone drying fast in the hot winds of this new climate. Who knows who’ll be missing next week? Who among the assembled caffeinated is without sin? Who can say where the next finger points.

Danny the Dagger, our geriatric playboy of days long past, maybe summed it up best. “If those people thought they were safe after Trump admitted groping women then got elected anyway, they better hope they own a few very tall Towers and half a dozen golf courses too. My money’s on the women now. Trump better climb to the top of his own damn Tower and bolt the doors, they’ll be coming for him too. God help us all.”

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Ya know, like a lot of Americans slowly slipping out of the so-called middle class into Hard Times, I too feel a patriotic duty to shore up the wealthier citizens’ place in our society. Not just the individual taxpayer, but the corporate entities the Supreme Court has declared as persons with the same rights as you and me. So when I see the tax plan rolling out that will drop their bracket from 35 to 20%, I feel confident these proud Americans will pour those increased profits back to the working sector and I’m more than happy to wait for the trickle down.

My Republican legislators, working hard for their constituencies in the red states, assure us the economy will ratchet up with these corporate tax breaks. Sure, there’ll be major deficits, but trust them, the zooming economy will take care of those. Better corporate rates will bring companies back to the Land of the Free, you wait and see.

The Paradise Papers are out now, a blow-up snapshot of how the beleaguered corporate taxpayer has been forced to seek shelter in off-shore accounts. Apple dumped billions into the tiny island of Jersey. Jersey doesn’t tax them at all, but I’m sure the GOP will offer further incentives to bring that money back to our disappearing shores. 15% seems good on its face, but maybe that’s still 20% more than Jersey. If we have to compete, well, I think the rest of us taxpayers who will benefit from a roaring economy will have to sacrifice short term to achieve gains long term. Corporate Patriotism is going to be the New Patriotism, I get that.

And I’m okay with cutting into Medicaid and welfare. You won’t need those anyway in a booming economy driven by Amazon and Google and Microsoft and Exxon and Apple. Sure, we could have cut out some deductions for them and not us, but, well, you see the point. Don’t handcuff the job creators, you’re only hurting yourselves.

And yeah, I know you’re going to say these fat cats have been avoiding taxes all along. 35%? Ha, they haven’t paid 35% at all, you’re thinking, and you’d be 100% right. But you’re missing the Big Profit. Big Picture, I mean. Same difference. If our corporations, our semi-U.S. corporations are allowed to compete completely unfettered by undue regulations and burdensome taxes, they’ll hire more of us, get it? And if we have to keep our wages slightly low, maybe even lower the minimum wage if necessary, that’s how you compete with Malaysia, Mexico and Slumbekistan. Is this hard to understand???

We should be grateful is all I’m saying. Pretty soon Amazon and their brethren will be moving into 21st Century automation. Robots don’t get paid and they sure don’t pay taxes. Throw the dice and put some trust into our Ayn Randian future. Spare the rich and the life you save might just be your own.

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I lived a fairly large chunk of my formative years in the dairy state of Wisconsin so naturally I follow their politics which is everything important to the Dairylanders outside of the Green Bay Packers, fishing and hunting. In recent years the good folks of Wisconsin have gerrymandered their districts to such an algorithmically fine degree that now the GOP has gained full control of the legislature, the governor’s office and the judiciary, the whole shitaree. The pigs are definitely at the trough, to use an agrarian phrase … which may be why some lawmakers are hoping to change the license plate logo that now reads AMERICA’S DAIRYLAND. I’m not sure what they have in mind for a replacement, maybe something along the lines of LET THE RICH RULE.

Every week or so I come across some article in the newspaper concerning my old homeland. This week a buddy who is also an ex-pat escapee sent me one concerning legislation to allow children of all ages to hunt deer. You know, if they had an adult monitor of course. Maybe you never hunted with a kid in tow, some feisty fellow with a .30-.30 he can barely lift up to his bony little shoulder, safety probably OFF and excited as hell for the first opportunity to kill something bigger than himself. I have. Trust me, it’s a horrifyingly frightening experience. So frightening, in fact, that I quit hunting in the woods of Northern Wisconsin right then and there. I’d rather hunt Siberian tigers with a Bowie knife than hunt near a kid with an itchy trigger finger and no sense of firearm safety, I don’t care if he has 15 adult monitors in the brush with him all sporting NRA logos tattooed on their asses. He’s going to shoot at anything that moves more than likely.

I’ve known people, adult people, who have inadvertently shot and killed their hunting partners. One shot his father. Another shot a brother. The NRA will tell you guns don’t kill people. And they’re half right. But totally wrong. What is true is how it changed some lives forever. The father killer went crazy. The one who shot his brother couldn’t live with the guilt and eventually killed himself. I’m not sure how many stupid deaths will result from grade school hunters. But if you think Wisconsin’s GOP legislators aren’t on top of this, consider the bill this weekend that seeks to ban abortions because abortions would reduce the future workforce of the state. You have to admire the problem-solving tenacity of these lawmakers.

Given that admirable ability, allow me to offer a new license plate option to my favorite Red State legislators: KILL A FEW SAVE A FEW. Compassionate conservatism still lives in Wisconsin.

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Maybe you can remember when we used to make fun of George Bush’s mangled speech. Ho ho, hilarious stuff, but probably not the makings of a coffee table book on the wit and wisdom of the 43rd president. We don’t really expect high minded elocution from our elected leaders so much anymore. Kennedy was eminently quotable and Obama, but most of our Top Guns, they’re not so much Cicero, maybe plenty of Clint Eastwood.

But the present occupier of the White House, well, it’s hard to imagine anyone less eloquent or serious of mind. Anyone older than eleven or twelve years old anyway. What do you reply to someone who tells an interviewer with millions of viewers he has a good brain he’s said a lot of things. If the interviewer is a Fox News commentator, you fawningly nod your head and agree whole-heartedly. In a fair and balanced sort of way. It would be impolite to roll your eyes or laugh out loud, I know, but c’mon. I’ve got a good brain and I’ve said a lot of things??? The one contradicts the other. At least when logic made sense and the world seemed rational. Which, lately, you have to admit, they don’t anymore.

There are those who suggest Mr. Trump has suffered brain damage in the past decade or two. Syphilis perhaps or mini-strokes. They point to earlier syntax that seemed less confused and posit that the man in the White House is damaged mentally. A lot of us would agree, of course, but we’re virulent liberal snowflakes and nothing Trump says would make us nod our heads fawningly in agreement. And anyone who would probably would nod again when he changes his viewpoint next day 180 degrees. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Hobgoblin of little minds. Nice line. Ralph never met anyone like Donald apparently. If he had, I bet he would have changed that quote. Me, I prefer a certain degree of consistency, hobgoblin or not, and it’s disconcerting to have a Leader who brags that he has said a lot of things. I’m with the folks who think something has happened to the man that has slowly dissolved cognitive function. The question we citizens should ask is: Igor, where did you find that very good brain?

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UTU

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