Serving the Metropolitan Area

Since 1872

March 15th

EAT the SQUEAMISH!

By Jack Parnell - retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate

Syndicated by Acme Features

"It's not always best, in the long run, to maximize pleasure or freedom in the short run."
	- Mike Barone, in the Washington Post
"You're neither one thing nor the other, you see. A really grand sinner must be a man who is bold and who makes up his mind. And so you must be melted up."
		- The Button-Moulder to Peer Gynt

Now and again, I've made referral to the Squeamish; one of Amurka's most unpleasant constituencies as a body can encounter. Almost as intransigent as the China lobby, though not half so generous. As I will explain, in good time, Virtuecrats tend to fly off the right wing, the neo-lib politically correct off the left... Squeamishness, well, call it the ugly center of the bat, as both wings sprout from.

The Squeamish (as distinct from Amish, who live simply and produce useful commodities) live mental lives of great complexity in looking for stuff to take offense at... usually "on behalf of" lesser creatures... children, minorities, fetii, animals, rainforests... who, mostly, wish heartily that the Squeamish would simply go away. Most are well-off and educated, if superficially... "I think that activism itself is a privilege," one talking head let the snake out of the bag. "Let's face it, to be able to go to all of these meetings you have to have either some kind of economic, educational, or other kind of privilege."

I guess that you could make the case for Squeamishness being a product of the Hollywood fifties. Black and white sitcoms like Ozzie, Father Knows Best and the Beaver posited a rote community of white picket fences and invisible coloreds - behatted fathers with invisible jobs bleating out "hello, honey, I'm home!" A nostalgia for such past as never existed, except on television... Anglo-Indian journalist Shiva Naipaul compared Americans of the squeamish classes to the race of Eloi in the H. G. Wells book and movie "Time Machine", living off credit and selling off their ports to Dubai. They "play and fashion garlands while the ravenous Morlocks plan supper below."

And the Squeamish-American President appointed into office by his father's judges after losing the Y2K election decides... like a seven-year-old kissing up to her teacher... that Iraq must have Amurkan-style democracy, whether they want to, or not.

Wilhelm Reich, somewhat more callously, contended the Squeamish know exactly the consequences of their stance... "As bitter as it may be, the fact remains: it is the irresponsibleness of masses of people that lies at the basis of fascism of all countries, nations and races." Because NIMBYhood requires one to have a back yard, Adam Smith was... two centuries ago... prescient in his warnings that liberal elites, "fortunate and proud", would begin to wonder "at the insolence of human wretchedness, that it should dare to present itself before them, and with the loathsome aspect of its misery, presume to disturb the serenity of their happiness."

Didn't help that most as raised heck in the '60s, then went disco in the '70s, had to face the ravages of time... against which the sex, drugs and rock n' roll dwindled down to an occasional Viagra, Rogaine or bootleg Zelnorm and elevator music. The zero tolerance grows tolerable once a body's tolerance for excess flees, breeding mean thoughts of "...why should those damn kids get to be so happy?" and reality television like that where aspiring artistes competed to replace some Aussie in this band, as hanged himself. (Like the Rev. Dennis Peacock, I blame "Satan" Claus as a poor role model, a moral miscreant socialist who eats too much and laughs too much to be let loose round vulnerable children.)

So declare war on cellulite, dive for the cellular and call cops! One by one, outposts of risky hedonism colonized in the '60s have been squished under the thin, sour high heels of left, right and dead center Squeamishness like unwanted kittens and puppies, euthanized in humane societies "for their own good". AIDS happened, turning sex "cool and mean", reflected Michael V. Miller, spawning a sublimation industry of dirty words, bitter games and hollow simulations.

Sea World Orlando threw up a "Key West Village" with mechanical manatees and plastic palms, Hemingway-spouting pizza servers and ceiling fans (but no homosexuals, gnats or alcohol). "Pretty pathetic!" scoffed Jimmy Weekly, City Commissioner for the real Key West. Disney, speaking of Papa, released another animated version of "The Old Man and the Sea", reprogrammed with singing fishes and fishermen, too... the big fish got away at the end, so the Old Man settled for curly fries at one of those new Caribbean Pirates IV fish franchises. "It is our hope that nobody will be offended by the film," a Disney spokesperson squeaked, last July.

Orwell warned us... once the State finishes with our bodies... our minds, history and heritage are next course on the Squeamish menu. We're not quite far down the well-intentioned Squeamish road to thoughtcrime as the Euros or Iraniacs, among others, but we do have all these new "civility" laws as allow politicians to gavel down and close off public comment that they don't appreciate. At least that vote to boot Babe Ruth from the Hall of Fame for drinking failed last winter, as did another attempt to kick FDR off the dime for alleged adultery… but the postals did airbrush Freud's pipe off'n his stamp as, also, cigarettes from the lips of Jackson Pollock's 53-centers, and the good city patriarchs of Fort Worth bobbitted this cattle sculpture as turned out long in more than the horns.

"We had requested a steer," apologized Roland Mackie of Sundance Square Management. "We got a bull."

Them Squeamish remind me of this joke Russians told during the Commonism: Three farmers eked out miserable livings on a collective farm 'til, one day, an angel appeared... part of the heresy since, of course, there weren't no such things as angels. Anyway, this angel granted the usual three wishes... though, being Russian, that broke down to only one apiece. The first wished for a chicken, for eggs, the second... a little cheekier... for a cow, so he could have his own milk. The angel gave them what they asked for, then approached the third. "I'm a true believer," he said, "in the necessary equality of all men, even under a God as doesn't exist. Kill my neighbors' livestock!"

The Commonists are gone, now, went National Review on us selling petroleum, electronics and credit but... if those difficulties with al-Qaida, the Costa-Rican solidarian bombers and Army of Horus, last year, haven't convinced the Squeamish of the existence of real evilment splintering through American skylights... we in the CNC, at least, are keepin' one uninsured eye out for such real Morlocks as lurk behind the alcohol-free, organic microbrewery.

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