These people need to calm down their bad selves


May 6, 2003

Normally, I think raving moral right-wingers -- you know, Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson and any number of other aging white dudes named "Pat" -- are prudish, anti-rights morons who need to chill out and remove the sticks from their arses.

Of course, about someone like me -- a freedom-loving alternative newsweekly editor/daily newspaper humor columnist who watches "Will and Grace" each week and gets most of the jokes -- they'd probably say something equally interesting. They may even call me a slut.

You may scoff and say that they'd be more clever or something, but in the case of Michael Savage -- a right-winger in the mold of the Pats, only with less intelligence, believe it or not -- you’d be wrong. Because that's exactly what he called a colleague of his, simply because she -- gasp -- dared criticize him.

Yes: Ashleigh Banfield, a NBC/MSNBC reporter who is best known for her coverage of Sept. 11 and the war on Afghanistan, criticized MSNBC for hiring the controversial -- some would say hateful -- talk show host. And in response, he called her a "slut."

Lovely.

But this is all beside the point, because some of the stories to come over the newswires recently are making me think that the Pats may have a point, aside from all the hatred and the name-calling and the hideous comb-overs.

First, there's this Reuters dispatch from Jerusalem, which was posted at CNN.com. I think the first paragraph says it all:

An Israeli policeman responding to neighbors' complaints about a rowdy all-female party received an unexpected welcome at the door when revelers mistook him for a stripper and began to take off his clothes and stroke him.

Wow. What is this world coming to? Women -- who live in the land of our LORD AND SAVIOR, heavens to Betsy! -- assaulting a police officer and "stroking" him? GASP!

It turns out the woman had ordered a stripper dressed as a police officer, and well, the neighbors got upset -- as we can all understand -- at the wanton debauchery. And when a real cop showed up, all heck broke loose.

Read on.

"She took off my shirt and untied my shoelaces,"; the officer was quoted by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily as saying about one of the partygoers. "She started stroking me and called on her friends to join in."

Abominable behavior! Terrible! Sickening! So sickening, it probably made the officer's week!

Then there's THIS story, from the Associated Press, which was also posted on CNN.com, which should certainly be abolished for daring post such filth, the First Amendment be damned:

When the chartered Boeing 727 reached cruising altitude, 87 passengers took off more than their seat belts. They removed their clothes.

What? No way. Let's read on:

The nude flight, billed by organizers as the first one of its kind, took off Saturday afternoon from Miami International Airport, headed for Cancun, Mexico. A Houston travel agency specializing in clothing-optional getaways organized the trip. …

"These are professionals who lead very stressful lives and are ready to let it all go," said Donna Daniels, co-owner of the Castaways travel agency and an in-the-buff traveler on the inaugural flight. "They are adventurers and risk takers. They don't even want clothes as a constraint."

There were limits, though. The captain and crew kept their clothes on. No hot coffee or tea was served for fear of spills.

Great jumpin' jehosophat! What is this world coming to? Nude air travel? I mean, what if they would have had to make an emergency landing? And -- please sit down for this observation -- imagine the visuals if the flight had gone through serious turbulence.

Can you imagine such a thing? I bet the Pats could. And would. Repeatedly.

Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan in exile in Arizona who's always wondered who in the hell came up with the phrase "going to hell in a handbasket" anyways. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and a column archive may be viewed at www.jimmyboegle.com.

1