Tuesday Briefs: Ejection and Dejection

Bomb away: Even if you were hiding in a cave in Pakistan your wi-fi connection and internet search engine has informed you, hard as it was to believe, that Virgil Van Camp’s interminably long squawk at the Amarillo Globe-News has finally come to an end. If you’ve been reading the New York Times you won’t know about Virgil but you will know about what’s going on in Pakistan.

Yes, Amarillo’s best known and most beloved ignoramus, bigot, jingoist, war monger has been bumped off his perch. The letters of appreciation are pouring in: “I can't think of a time I didn't agree” writes one ditto-head. "He reminded me of a long-lost era when life was much less complicated" says another misty-eyed reader. Oh how conservatives long for the Dark Ages or the “man against beast and we all lived in caves” good old days.

Don’t expect any letters to be published that are critical about his racism, intolerance or hypocrisy, just soppy tributes to his unique opinions and courage, strange compliments when so many folks around these here parts share his views and the AGN has worked diligently to cover his white, flabby, carbuncled ass (or so say his shower mates at the Downtown Athletic Club).

What is truly astonishing is that even when Van Camp wrote in his area of “expertise” – civil aviation – he got things wrong. Whether due to his “small talent,” senility, or the possibility that Amarillo’s crack aged aviator put his flight hours in at the kiddy aeroplane down at the supermarket, the stock boy isn’t talking. Even more stupefying, after all the years writing about flying and being such a sure cockpiteer and thinking himself a great writer, is that he should end his literary career with a simile about riding horses: “Now it's time to hang up my spurs.”

Spurs? No ball-tipped three-point landing? No folding your ink-stained wings? No closing the hangar door on your dull quill? Spurs!? Is it because all this time you’ve been buzzing around on one of them dang irritating horse-flies you buggering (or so say his shower mates at the Downtown Athletic Club) old coot?

Ejection seat: As of today it seems Sagan has escaped the ax-man, but not William Seewald, who bid his fond farewell last week. It just wouldn’t be fair to chuck out a right-wing extremist and hang on to someone slightly left of center. Seewald was just too intelligent, cogent, and open-minded to be matched against Van Camp, so it’s surprising he even lasted this long.

While Van Camp made his exit a backward-looking, self-centered nostalgic retirement, Seewald by contrast looked at the present and future of our country. He also acknowledged that his exit is making way for change. Since Van Camp and Seewald never cost Less anything but ad space, columns on the virtues of panty hose, laser surgery and sales at Dillard’s will get Kanelis’ immediate attention.

Doubtless we will see no letters shedding tears over Seewald’s departure. As the AGN praises diversity through its elimination, expect a wider variety of opinions from conservative patriots insisting we maintain and uplift our Freedom Form and Stay Free to the max.

Rip chord: D*ve H*nry’s argument against evolution by thinking it absurd that Tyrannosaurus Rex turned into a bird was just about the most bird-brained thing he’s said in a while. Of course, considering D*ve H*nry’s existence makes a very poor argument for Intelligent Design.

A number of us here at PTS appear to have readied responses to H*nry’s idiocy (more on the entire controversy later) but in the most shocking development of all the AGN actually published a letter in rebuttal.

Now, it is extremely rare when the AGN publishes a letter daring to show that H*nry is wrong (read “utterly daft”). What Dr. Hurd evidently does not know, writing from Dana Point, California, is that scientific facts are quite irrelevant in the Amarillo Globe-News.

According to the Kanelis Fairness Doctrine, intelligent people must present reasoned, fact-based arguments. Conservatives may respond with anything from groundless ideological talking points to ad hominem attacks. Scientists and intellectuals living in Amarillo long ago discovered that offering facts is like walking into a Skinner Box. Instead of a cogent rebuttal they receive a rude shock from the local troglodytes. And Kanelis wonders why, with his completely impartial Fairness Doctrine, local Ph.D.’s decline his invitation to weigh in on various issues.

Never fear. Kanelis will make sure the creationists get their say. There will be a severe Bible thumping and Dr. Hurd will learn his lesson. As for D*ve H*nry, though his evolution from sportswriter to top imbecilic editor defies commonsense, he remains the second most successful dinosaur of all at the AGN.