News from the Plains: All this RED can make you BLUE
Barry Friedman at Large:
December: This holiday season, try a little understanding. And brining.
(First appeared in Tulsa People)
*WWJP? Organizers of the Downtown Parade of Lights thought by including “a celebration of Christmas, Hanukkah and other holidays” in the title, they would assuage those putting on the Tulsa Hills Christmas Parade who demand fealty to Christendom this time of year.
Well, think again, infidels. You and your “Season’s Greetings” sweaters will burn in the pits of hell!
“I’m glad that they put Christmas back in the title,” said Mark Croucher, one of the creators of the south Tulsa event, “but it’s still not a Christmas parade.”
And why is that, Keeper of the Faith?
“… because what people want is a Christmas parade …,” he said, explaining his decision to retain the Tulsa Hills event, “… not a holiday parade, not a parade of lights.”
Oh, for the love of Rudolph, Santa Claus, a can of fake snow and Irving Berlin tunes, would you knock it off?
And, by the way, you’re welcome. In October, Sen. Jim Inhofe had quadruple bypass surgery after doctors discovered multiple blocked arteries during a — wait for it — routine colonoscopy.
(Your joke here.)
Inhofe — whose health care is provided by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which covers more than 8 million federal employees and is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers — had a procedure that cost upward of $100,000.
So, what did the senator say mere days after the operation?
That he hates socialized medicine and “probably wouldn’t be here” if he had been insured under the Affordable Care Act — a statement so cynical and false, it sounds like he pulled it out of his polyp-free ... well, you know.
Rule 87 No matter how many garage sales the city council eventually allows, draw the line at used shoe and sock purchases.
Random Oklahoma reference Former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey on Newt Gingrich in an interview with Eric Benson in New York Magazine: “Newt was a little bit like Ado Annie from ‘Oklahoma!’”
How old do you want to feel? Zac Hanson is married and has three children.
Dumb Criminals of the Month The honor goes to the two men who pried open — read this carefully — the cash boxes on the vacuum machines inside an Oklahoma City car wash.
Let’s review: they knocked over an industrial-strength vacuum and stole coins.
Young robbers, let this be a lesson to you: set reachable goals when starting out.
“Oh, don’t be a baby. The bullet just grazed you. It’s barely a Priority Two.” The Tulsa City Council has agreed to let EMSA increase its response to 10 minutes and 59 seconds for Priority One calls and 24 minutes and 59 seconds for Priority Two calls.
If it’s late, EMSA gets penalized.
And you probably die.
Alrighty then.
Overheard (The couple, driving north on Highway 169, was arguing.)
Woman: Between you and my son, nobody hears me. It’s amazing. What is it about the penis that prevents men from listening?
Man: What?
In the Intelligent Design “Origins of Life” textbook, however, these mammoths roamed the earth approximately 2,000 years ago, and Jesus rode them. Outside of Enid, researchers and students from Oklahoma State University excavated the remains of a mammoth that roamed the southern Great Plains more than 50,000 years ago. It is believed the specimen was not a woolly mammoth, but rather an imperial or Columbian mammoth … useful information for those who had “woolly” in the office mammoth pool.
You say “Redskins”; I say “indefensible racist slur.” Let’s call the whole thing off. At some point, Union will be the only school district left in the country whose nickname conjures up images of broken treaties, orphaned and displaced children, and the red, bloody, scalped skulls of Native Americans. Therefore, “Go, (anyone playing Union — or Washington, for that matter)!”
*Where Would Jesus Parade?
Ups and downs
UP … State Sen. David Holt for advocating a Ralph Ellison (“Invisible Man”) portrait be displayed at the state Capitol. As John Callahan, the literary executor of the author’s estate, said of the writer, “For him, whatever its blemishes … Oklahoma was possibility.”
Yeah, we know the feeling.
UP … Tulsa Superintendent Keith Ballard for describing the Oklahoma State Department of Education as dysfunctional and inept in the calculation of school report cards. Ooh, snap!
DOWN DOWN… Terry Simonson, our favorite resigned mayoral chief of staff, for his work in nepotism. He wrote in the now-defunct Urban Tulsa Weekly (oh, if only there were a connection), the following about the city’s murder rate:
“It sounds like good public safety work being done for the police by the gangs. ... If the gangs want to kill each other, we certainly don’t want to stop them. This is a callous, but true assessment of the situation.”
No, Terry, not callous, not true — it’s soulless. And ignorant.
[ed. note: TulsaPeople Publisher Jim Langdon just bought UTW. Life there could get better quickly]
UP … Oklahoman Blake Shelton for telling members of Westboro Baptist Church, which has been threatening to demonstrate at his concerts, that they could perform a particular kind of sexual act on him. Sure, whacking Westboro is as easy as whacking Donald Trump, but it’s still something that should be done at regular intervals. Good on ya, Blake. But we still think the “The Voice” is kind of weird.