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Election Afterthoughts: Making Newt Gingrich Secretary of State
Someone started us thinking of humor by noting on Facebook that Saturday Night Live would regain its once dominant share of the TV audience if Trump and his newly found majority carry out his missions. Well yes, the majority has always been there—we're just now paying attention.
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad – worse than bad. They're crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.
Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. (shouting) You've got to say: "I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!"
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: "I'm mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!"
-Peter Finch in his unforgettable role as TV Newscaster Howard Beale, harried due to his low ratings by network heads, in a television play written by the late Paddy Chayefsky, titled "Network." I looked it up and was astonished when I read that it was first presented in 1976.
As far as the election is concerned, Republicans might as well get used to losing as well... gardeners and maids. I can see the giant HELP WANTED advertisements: Premium wages for agricultural workers in California and premium prices for all vegetables, melons and grapes due to the retraction of the North American Trade Agreement by Congress. Short-handle hoes disappear from hardware stores everywhere. Unemployment numbers in the U.S. strike an astounding new low of 0.05 percent as people in the rust-belt rush westward to become field workers.
No, that's not funny. Making Newt Gingrich Secretary of State, would be.
-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Mencken
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