As I get older (I’m in my late 50s) I often wonder if I’m getting wiser or just more bitter. Plus I worry about wasting time on the internet.
Many internet sites, such as Facebook (or even this one), can act as time sinks -- black holes that suck time from your life, as you inexorably creep minute-by-minute to your own death. I’ve concluded that I don’t need to see any more cat videos, no matter how cute they are (I will admit that some of them are very cute). However, once in a while, you find a diamond hidden under a pile of gravel, a wonderful plastic prize in the box of otherwise ordinary cereal. You turn into a little kid and you announce to the world, “Hey, look at this great prize -- look at what I found!”
So here’s an article that a Facebook friend noticed. I read it and I was quite impressed. And now I’m linking to it here. Follow me underneath the orange curly fries.
Apparently there’s some retired Navy guy in Alaska named Jim Wright (not the ex-congressman Jim Wright from Texas) who has a blog called “Stonekettle Station” -- and he writes exceedingly well. I’ve always liked Rep. Jim Wright from Texas (Democrat, curmudgeon, and all-around good guy). That Texas guy was an excellent writer, too. I should mention Molly Ivins, too. She was a Texas Democrat who could write up a storm. She rocked.
The Alaskan Jim Wright is ex-Navy, an NCO who once worked with military intelligence, sorting out and checking incoming intelligence and passing it up the line.
He excoriates some of his pals (or former pals) in this rant that I have to call a thing of beauty: An Open Letter To The Idiot Nation.
I highly recommend that you click the link and read the whole goddamn thing (especially the part where the typeface turns blue after the intro). It’s brilliantly written, even if it’s a touch wordy. I think he could use a touch of editing, but people from Alaska tend to be wordy because of that whole endless winter thing -- they have a lot of time to just keep typing more and more words into their computers until winter ends and the sun finally comes out. It's not their fault. I've learned to just let them talk. Alaska is like Seattle times a hundred. (I lived in Seattle for 20 years, so I learned how to listen.)
I’ll try to limit my use of quotes (because of copyright laws).
The Old Days
Wright begins by saying that in the old days, retired military guys would sit around the PX drinking the free coffee and then, later in the afternoon, they'd go to the American Legion or the VFW to have a few drinks and complain about the President or the snot-nosed kids in the military these days. And weren’t the good old days so much better? And wasn’t the other President better? And so on. Typical old guys talking about the old days.
But now the retired military guys have the internet. So they’re not shouting “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!” They're not drinking at the VFW and talking to a few people there. They’re watching FOX and shouting at the whole internet.
Does Anyone Remember Jeff Foxworthy?
One of Mr. Wright’s ex-Navy friends forwarded something to him supposedly written by Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian. Except it wasn’t really written by Jeff Foxworthy (I checked and here’s the link to Snopes.com‘s entry that debunks the email). Snopes is an email debunker's best friend. Jeff Foxworthy never ever said those things. The email is false. Some idiot wrote an email trying to copy Foxworthy’s style of comedy. Which is pathetic, if you think about it.
Here’s what Jim Wright says in his blog to his ex-naval-intelligence friends:
Jeff Foxworthy? The has-been “you might be a redneck…” comedian whose popularity waxed in the mid 1990’s? That Jeff Foxworthy?
Oh, well, if Jeff has something to say, I mean, Jeff, well, I guess I should probably listen. Right? I mean what? After his comedy career faded, he became Ambassador to China maybe? He and Larry the Cable Guy won the Nobel for a new economic theory? Did he lead troops into battle and win the Navy Cross? Maybe he founded a string of hospitals for the poor? Built a Fortune 500 company from the ground up and then sold it off to build the next generation of private spacecraft? I mean, shit, Jeff Foxworthy, now there’s an authority on the state of the nation, you bet.
(snip)
It’s bad enough that the average idiot would believe this nonsense, but you two men are far from stupid and you were trained intelligence officers. In uniform, you’d have never stood for this kind of sloppy bullshit from your watch team.
What happened to your critical analysis skills, did you take them off with your uniform?
Bazinga!
If I were writing that message about guys whose comedy careers died in the 90s (Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy), I’d add Yahoo Serious and Pauly Shore. None of them were very funny. I wonder if they're still around? They probably are -- maybe performing at state fairs, Indian casinos, or civic auditoriums in North Platte, Sacramento, or Fairbanks, or Bangor.
One more great quote (from farther down in the blog):
The poor haven’t cost us a tenth of what Wall Street has. It wasn’t the poor who outsourced their jobs to Bangladesh and Mexico, it wasn’t the poor who caused the housing bubble, and the Dot Com bubble, and the Tech Bubble, and all the recessions. And your neighbor, the one whose mortgage was forgiven? You really might want to put in a little more research on that subject if you think he made out on the deal. Was he an idiot? Sure, but it was lack of regulation on business that let him indulge his gullibility, and the fact that guys like you think capitalism ought to work like the Wild West.
Go read his blog
He’s a smart guy and a good writer. Here’s the link again. It’s a righteous well-written rant. Some of his other posts are well worth reading, too. He's a good (if wordy) writer.