It’s getting close to dinnertime at chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. I will be getting dinner ready here in a few minutes. Actually, I am just heating up some oven-baked chicken and some mashed potatoes that I made a couple of nights ago and I’ll be adding green beans to complete the culinary masterpiece. Jimbo is getting to be quite the cook, and the homemaker. Jimbo would also “put out” if it were expected. I may have some more recipes to add to your repertoire soon. But before Jimbo prepares this bounty for himself and his girlfriend, he has a little to get off his mind.
First of all: an apology. When I commented on Mickey Rooney’s rear end the other day, I used a number of different synonyms for Mickey’s buttocks, because there are so many different words to describe the human gluteus maximus (excluding foreign expressions like this one in Latin). I left out dozens of expressions, intentionally, but one I left out by mistake was tush or tushy. Pardon my omission. I should not have done a weblog about the bottom without including one of those expressions. I’ll do better next time.
The thing that caught my eye today in the news is that a member of the FCC has asked for a probe into a conservative columnist, saying the columnist failed to disclose $240,000 paid to him by the Bush administration to publicize its education policies. A little investigation into the story reveals that the columnist was given the money as compensation for running radio and television ads to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. The columnist says he accepted the money for advertisements and that he did nothing wrong. He apologized, however, saying it was a conflict of interests.
The thing that upsets me most about this is that the tax-and-spend Bush administration is so free with our money. And to top it off, they gave it to a commentator who generally supported their views. The commentator is probably making enough money that he is doing all right, whereas there are some of us who could really use the money.
I’m sure this columnist knows his way around Washington, DC. He is probably not as familiar with Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, as Jimbo is and this columnist probably doesn’t pull out his six-string and sing Lead Belly’s song The Bourgeois Blues, as Jimbo used to do in his younger days. If he did, he would find apropos the following lines from the song.
“…don’t try to find no home in Washington, DC
‘cause it’s a bourgeois town…”
If Jimbo were allowed to paraphrase Lead Belly, he would say that Washington is a bourgeois town populated by bourgeois folks, and some in particular hang out down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It sounds as if some of these bourgeois folks are spending a quarter of a mil of our money for advertising to push their programs. Now, I have nothing against advertising. It’s been proven that one can disseminate important information that way. I’m wondering, however, if the Bush administration should be channeling their advertising budget through the people that support them, and I wonder if this is the proper way to get their message across. Hell, if the Bush administration is so keen on throwing their money away, why don’t they send some of it Jimbo’s way? My proletarian wallet could use some of their bourgeois bucks. There will be no conflict of interests, there. I’ll still keep giving them a hard time. I’ll just do it while snacking on the name brands instead of the discount store brands.
I think that hell will freeze over first, before I’ll see any money from the Bush administration, or even hear a kind word from them, or any of us will. Any of us, that is, except the people to whom they are giving our money. All the while, I’ll remember what Lead Belly said and I’ll take his advice. And, I’ll quote him again.
“I’ve got the bourgeois blues
Spread the news all around.”
Because some days in Jimbo’s world all one can do is make dinner for the little woman and keep spreading the news all around.
No comments:
Post a Comment