Getting a Few Rants Off My Chest: Snooty Academics, Illegal Immigrants, James Dobson and Al Gore
It's not true that Burt Prelutsky goes through life constantly irked by the lunacy that surrounds us all. That would be a ridiculous exaggeration. After all, sometimes he's asleep.
[Listen or download Burt's reading of this story in MP3.]
One of the things that drives me batty is the widespread belief that professors are the smartest people in America. And by widespread, I’m not just referring to the faculty lounges on our college campuses. I only wish I were. But every time you turn around, some academician is spouting off on the op-ed page of your local news rag or giving advice to a politician or bloviating on some talk show. Now it would be one thing if they stuck to the subject they’ve been lecturing on for the past 30 or 40 years. But who wants to hear somebody go on at length about Hungarian poetry in the 18th century or pre-Columbian artifacts? Certainly not you or I and, least of all, his captive undergrads. But if he has a Ph.D after his name and gets to call himself Doctor, even though he can’t even set a broken arm or prescribe an antibiotic, he is allowed, even encouraged, to pass himself off as an authority on any number of unrelated topics.
Something else that galls me are illegal aliens and the incomprehensible way that they’re treated. We not only have churches, but entire cities offering these scofflaws sanctuary. To make matters even worse, we give them all sorts of enticements, ranging from free medical attention to free college tuition. Then, when one of them is actually caught — even if it’s as a result of committing a felony — we, as often as not, deport them. What’s the deal with that? It’s not as if Mexico is on the other side of the world. It’s no wonder that some thugs get deported over and over again. Instead of a wall, all we’ve got at our southern border is a well-oiled revolving door. I guarantee you that if we sent them off to Arizona to serve their sentences under the eagle eye of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when they got out life back in Chihuahua and Jalisco wouldn’t look half bad.
A third thing that gets my dander up is James Dobson. I used to think he was a pretty sensible fellow. He had some sober thoughts to share on families and the raising of kids. But, then, he started getting in the middle of things he should have saved for dinner table conversation at the Dobsons. The last public statement I heard from him was when he advised his followers to stay home on election day in 2008 if Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson is the Republican candidate for president.
Now I happen to like Giuliani, but I can certainly understand why some conservatives might prefer Romney or McCain or Huckabee. But to suggest that Republicans stay home and allow Hillary Clinton to waltz back into the White House is not only stupid, but irresponsible. Perhaps Dr. Dobson is unaware of the fact that Giuliani has signed a document pledging to only appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court if he’s elected. With three of the nine justices already in their 70s and John Paul Stevens being 85, the next president is likely to appoint three or four justices during the four or eight years of his or her administration. And it’s the Supreme Court, not the president, who decides those issues so close to Dobson’s heart; namely, abortion, school prayer and same-sex marriage.
Finally, we come to Al Gore, who’s been a source of constant annoyance for more years than I care to think about. What, after all, can you say about a guy who is still whining about the vote count seven years ago in Florida, but never once owns up to the fact that he couldn’t carry his home state, even though Tennessee had twice gone for Bill Clinton and had even been carried by smarmy Jimmy Carter?
Recently, a puckish reader wrote to me, asking if I thought that global warming might be caused not by fossil fuels or Al Gore’s overwrought imagination, but by the hyper-sexualization of America. It got me to thinking. Between all the pornography on the Internet and all the ads and commercials insisting we could all be hotties if only we used a different toothpaste, drove a different car, ate a different breakfast cereal and consumed Viagra like peanuts, her tongue-in-cheek theory makes a lot more sense than believing that Ed Begley’s riding his bicycle to auditions is somehow going to affect the climate at the North Pole.
Plus there’s another advantage to promoting this theory. If word began to circulate that Gore’s ultimate mission is to make the Amish the role models for the rest of us, all those Hollywood squirts who want him to be the standard bearer for the Democratic party in 2008 would quickly write him off as a fuddy-duddy and a major party pooper.
Television writer Burt Prelutsky is the author of Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (101 Reasons Why I’m Happy I Left the Left).
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9 Comments
1. Bill Bradley:And we wonder why many consider the blogosphere to be a crankocracy …
Nov 11, 2007 - 9:16 am 2. DPR:Heh. Regardless of whether global warming exists (the Earth has been cooling for 9 years, after all), or whether CO2 or over-sexing is the cause – isn’t it obvious that Gore’s ultimate mission really is to make the Amish way of life universal?
Nov 11, 2007 - 9:33 am 3. Burt Prelutsky:Bill Bradley: Only the
at the end of your message keeps me from challenging you to a duel.
Regards, A very cranky Burt Prelutsky
Nov 11, 2007 - 11:33 am 4. David Thomson:“The last public statement I heard from him was when he advised his followers to stay home on election day in 2008 if Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson is the Republican candidate for president.”
Rudy Giuliani has been known to keep his word. One can pretty well take it for granted that the former New York mayor will only appoint strict constructionists to the U.S. Supreme Court. Moreover, he is the least politically correct candidate—and this is a most important virtue when engaging in the life and death struggle against the Islamic terrorists.
Nov 11, 2007 - 11:36 am 5. Chris Sanders:I’m having a difficult time believing that people are still talking about Romney, Giuliani and the Huckster as being even close to Republicans…wild RINO’s maybe but, certainly not anything closer so, I’m going to start passing people’s homework out to them;
WILLARD ROMNEY:
Mass. Governor’s Rightward Shift Raises Questions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122002046.html
Mitt “What have I not lied to you about already” Romney:
http://www.ethicsscoreboard.com/liars/0704_romney.html
http://boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/01/14/romney _retreats_on_gun_control/
Will You Be Mitt Romney’s Cheap Date?
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/article3648.html
Romney’s Long Time Hunter Boast Blasted
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/05/romney.hunting.ap/index.html
Mitt’s Biggest Flop
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11222
Romney Won’t Raise Your Taxes But, He Will Create More Fee’s And Raise Every Existing Fee In Sight;
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/romney_fees/2007/08/28/28054.html
Activists Remember a Different Romney
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/25/78/
Top Ten RINO’s ( Republican In Name Only )
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=11129
Will The Real Romney Please Stand Up
http://gunowners.org/pres08/romney.htm
The Real Romney?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9IJUkYUbvI
Mitt Romney Flip-Flops on hunting, abortion and iraq and dog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PURfrORhWPc
You Can’t Trust Mitt Part 1: Abortion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNbGNHaNFtw&mode=related&search=
RUDOLPH GIULIANI:
Why Rudolph Giuliani Really Shouldn’t Be President
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2007/mar/08/w hy_rudy_giuliani_re ally_shouldn_t_be_president
Guns and Rudy: The Whole Story
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.ht ml?id=25471
Read just the short editorial reviews from the following;
Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-1891553-3615230?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Grand+Illusion%3A+The+Untold+Story+of+Rudy+Giuliani+and+9%2F11+by+Wayne+Barrett+and+Dan+Collins&x=16&y=19
The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania by Jack Newfield.
http://www.amazon.com/Full-Rudy-Man-Myth-Mania/dp/1568583826/ref=sr_1_1/102-4494634-0108169?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194721557&sr=8-1
Rudy!: An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Guiliani by Wayne Barrett.
http://www.amazon.com/Rudy-Investigative-Biography-Rudolph-Guiliani/dp/0465005241/ref=sr_1_1/102-4494634-0108169?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194721606&sr=1-1
“I used gun control as mayor,” he said at a news conference Saturday during a swing through California. But “I understand the Second Amendment. I understand the right to bear arms.” He said what he did as mayor would have no effect on hunting.
http://www3.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO42897
MAYOR GIULIANI AND SPEAKER VALLONE ANNOUNCE CITY LAWSUIT AGAINST GUN INDUSTRY
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/republican_michigander/20 07/feb/12/rudys_lawsuit_against_firearms_industry
MIKE ‘THE HUCKSTER’ HUCKABEE;
WSJ: Another Man From Hope
http://opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110010782
From Council of Conservative Citizens: Huckster on Illegal Aliens
http://cofcc.org/?page_id=756
American Spectator: A Tale of Two Candidates
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12205
Club For Growth Full Report
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2007/01/a_report_on_mike_huckabees_fis.php
Tax Hike Mike http://www.taxhikemike.org/
ARRA Delegate Straw Poll
http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/2007/07/fred-thompson-wins-arkansas-republican.html
Freedom Works Video
http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/?p=933
Freedom Works “Tax and Spend”
http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/?p=942
CATO
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581.pdf
Gasoline and diesel tax bill:
http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/1999/scripts/ablr/bills/bills.asp?billno=HB1548
Bond issue bill:
Nov 11, 2007 - 2:30 pm 6. Andy Rigrod:http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/1999/scripts/ablr/bills/bills.asp?billno=HB1500
Chris Sanders, if I were the people at Pajamas Media, I would ban you for life for littering in their comments section like that. Shame on you. (also, you’re boring us to death)
Nov 11, 2007 - 4:25 pm 7. Jan Shawkey:I wouldn’t take what one hears about Dr. Dobson to be what he has actually said. I heard Dobson, I think on Medved’s show, say he and the recent evangelical get together did not promote a third party alternative like was being reported in right talk shows and blogs.
Rush has had to deal with this phenomenon for as long as he had been broadcasting. 20 million people hear him say one thing, then it gets reported in the MSM as something else. All, Rush says, they had to do was listen to the show. The same with Dobson.
I think what irritates the right about people like Dobson is that the political drama means less to him than the political fruit. Roe v. Wade means something different to Romney, Guiliani, and Thompson but their understanding of Roe v. Wade does not come close to the horror Dr. Dobson sees it as.
I deal with this in in a section of my blog where I show how different an election is to the base activist; to the talk show host; to the political office holder.
My suggestion to Mr. Prelutsky is that he read or listen to the original source material Dr. Dobson puts out on these matters.
Nov 11, 2007 - 11:43 pm 8. Burt Prelutsky:First off, I agree with Andy Rigrod. Next, I did not state that Dr. Dobson said anything about a third party, I said that he told his followers to stay home on election day if either Thompson or Giuliani was the GOP nominee. So, how about quoting me correctly, Ms. Shawkey, and stop fretting about Rush?
Burt Prelutsky
Nov 12, 2007 - 6:08 pm 9. Brewfisher:Mr. Prelutzky,
Although I would like to agree with you on most of your points/rants, your lack of informed substance regarding Dr. Dobson begs me to question any of what you say. May I suggest that you look beyond the NYT, WP and LAT editorials, and actually investigate what Dr. Dobson has actually stated? He has not encouraged or discouraged his “followers” to vote for or against any candidate in the upcoming presidential election, and I defy you to find evidence of such in print or as a sound bite. Shame on you for acting as propagandist.
Nov 14, 2007 - 10:57 am