My friend BJ French in Knoxville Tennessee shared this story with me and I wanted to share it with you. It is a true story from her own childhood, but a powerful allegory for today. Please send this to everyone you know.
In her own words, I give you BJ French:
Don’t Let the Old Dogs Get Away With It
By BJ French
Knoxville, Tennessee
redistribute freely, as long as you keep the title and the byline!
My Uncle Lee used to have an old hound dog named Joe. Everybody loved old Joe and spoiled him rotten. My Aunt Blanche was especially fond of Joe and would often interfere when my Uncle would try to discipline him.
Don’t Let the Old Dogs Get Away With It
By BJ French
Knoxville, Tennessee
redistribute freely, as long as you keep the title and the byline!
My Uncle Lee used to have an old hound dog named Joe. Everybody loved old Joe and spoiled him rotten. My Aunt Blanche was especially fond of Joe and would often interfere when my Uncle would try to discipline him.
Joe had gotten into the habit of killing chickens. In fact it reached a point where Joe was killing chickens with monotonous regularity. Uncle Lee would try to spank Joe, or tie him to the front porch, but my Aunt Blanche would always come to his rescue....making one excuse after the other for Joe's behavior. Aunt Blanche was always protecting him when Joe misbehaved. My Uncle warned her Joe would never stop killing chickens as long as she was willing to look the other way.
It finally reached the point that ol’ Joe was visiting other hen houses in the area and chowing down on the neighbors’ chickens as well. Before we knew it, ol’ Joe had raided every hen house in the county, thus causing much distress...angry farmers wanted their money from their lost hens, and were up in arms and ready to shoot Ol’ Joe on sight.
One day Uncle Lee had had enough of this chicken killing dog. He waited until Joe made another kill and he picked that dead chicken up and wrapped baling wire around its neck and then fastened the chicken’s corpse to Joe's collar with the wire. He told my Aunt not to interfere with the lesson he was teaching Joe.
Well, after a few days that chicken began to smell pretty bad....the feathers started to fall out and the odor was powerful. Still, my Uncle would not remove the dead chicken from Joe's collar. Pretty soon old Joe became very unpopular among both humans and fellow farm animals.
After what seemed like an eternity to all of us....especially Joe....my Uncle finally took the remains of the dead chicken off of Joe's collar. And from that day forward, a chicken could come right up to old Joe and peck him on the head and Joe wouldn't even look its way. He never did kill another chicken as long as he lived.
That is what should be done to George Bush, John McCain, and the entire Republican Party.....someone ought to tie some baling wire around all the things that they have done to this country.....the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, Katrina, the de-regulation, Abu Graihb Prison, the huge deficit and the bailout of Wall Street fat cats....and tie these misdeeds around the necks of George Worthless Bush, John Keating Five McCain, and the rest of their little Republican playmates in Congress and on Wall Street until the stench of their misdeeds becomes so strong and so repulsive to others that they will never again try to screw the American people.
Today the Republicans are trying to run from their record, and deny their responsibility for their grievous misdeeds. We can’t let that happen.
Because, just like that ol’ hound dog named Joe, its time to teach the Republicans to stay out of America's hen house.
BJ French
Knoxville, TN