By David Rutter
1. Tom Ricketts, WTF?
The Cubs are 10 games out, but the owner is not upset with Jim Hendry, Mike Quade, Carlos Zambrano, or the Cubs in general.
Or Wrigley Field or that his team wore “Fuck The Goat” T-shirts on the field for a public practice recently. Classy.
He also is not upset with world hunger, nuclear arms proliferation or the Rwandan genocide.
He’s a pretty happy fella. He smiles a lot. WTF has known people who stayed perpetually stoned on pot between 1960 and 1969 who were not this happy.
2. Political wieners, WTF?
Anthony Weiner’s recent issues made us fear the worst. No, not human tragedy or loss of reputation or forced exile from Congress. No, this would have been really serious. What if Oscar Mayer benched its Midwest-touring fleet of Wienermobiles out of a misplaced sense of tastefulness?
Turns out we need not have worried. Mobile wieners are too embedded . . . in our national consciousness. The Wienermobiles, now seven of them, are motoring along all over the country as they have since 1936.
And just who was once was a Wienermobile driver briefly as a college student at Miami U. in Ohio? This guy. We always knew he was a wiener.
3. Vancouver police , WTF?
“[Const. Lindsey] Houghton stressed there has been a change in the party culture since the Olympics and said there is little reason to believe there will be a riot like the one that happened after the team’s Game 7 defeat in 1994,” the Vancouver Sun reported before this year’s Game 7.
“That’s not a road we’re going down, the people we’re seeing [downtown], they’re in their early 20s and I think back in ’94 those people were three- or four-years-old. It’s a different atmosphere around here.”
Well, not so much.
4. Aaron’s Inc., WTF?
The manager at this establishment apparently managed not only the usual rent-to-own inventory of furniture and appliances, but also his own personal package.
It was an expensive package.
5. Cook County health care, WTF?
The provably false illusion of health care is that every citizen pretty much gets the same high quality for the same reason. We’re exceptional as a nation. We’re fair. We’re dedicated to integrity. As Americans we certainly don’t tolerate health rationing based on money, especially for children. Except, of course, we do.
We let children suffer if they don’t have good insurance. Doctors let them suffer. Clinics let them suffer. Show me the money, kid. As a nation, and particularly here in Illinois, we do this all the time, even though it is illegal and, more to the point, immoral.
Illusions of grandeur can be so comforting.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on June 17, 2011