Cal Ripkin, I understand, was a professional baseball player in the 1990s or before. Cal Ripkin, I remember, took his hat off a lot. Cal — a shortstop for the Cedar Rapids Kernals — was getting old in a field.
The Cedar Rapids Kernels, who loved their old shortstop, are actually a minor league team in the Midwest League, a baseball organization that takes money from people in medium-sized cities to build stadiums for people in those medium-sized cities who think everyone should appreciate such a structure. It’s baseball, come on. What are you, Puerto Rican or something? Come on.
But Cal Ripkin didn’t actually play for the Cedar Rapids Kernels. He played for the Baltimore Oriels — a much wealthier team with a slightly sillier name. “Alright,” says The Idea Man. “Let’s make this good. I want something — are you fucksticks listening to me? — I want something that screams ‘eats worms and afraid of hawks.’ Okay, whatcha got.”
Anyway, the Cedar Rapids Kernels share the league with other cities where a cousin of yours might manage retail and make $8.50 an hour. Fort Wayne is also in this league and I was born there. We originally had Wayne the Wizard as our mascot because, conveniently, we are the Fort Wayne Wizards.
But some people, we’ll just call them “pastors”, got upset with this apparent allusion to witchcraft. So now our mascot is a dragon.
Cal Thomas, a neoconservative columnist to whom newspapers curiously enough pay money, is not from Fort Wayne. He is, however, most appropriately described as a deviant religious bigot and might have had Wayne the Wizard crushed to death if he was, in fact, a Fort Wayne native.
In his critique of the Iraq Study Group report, Thomas dismisses the notion that we could be safe by doing nothing less than indiscriminately killing every Muslim in the entire world.
Enemies like this understand only one thing: power. They do not keep promises, or honor treaties and agreements that do not serve their primary interests. For them, those interests include humiliating the United States, securing Iraq for the acolytes of Osama bin Laden and then moving on to challenge America in other places and finally on our own soil. The problem is that if we wait to crush them until they reach our shores (and too many are already among us), it will be too late.
Not on our soil! Soil?! Why, that is surely thus a term we resolve to defend the noblest of warefaring. Truly so. Is not soil the most honeyed of all linguisticisms? Yes? To wit: an anachronism.
Now, Cal, there are two things you are not allowed to do. One, quote George Orwell. Two, and I apologize for harping on this point, indiscriminately kill every Muslim in the entire world.
George Orwell said, “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” The Iraq Study Group Report won’t contribute to our safety. Finishing the job we started, by whatever means necessary, will.
Oh well, at least you have this fascist dickhat on your side. But never Wayne. No, never him.
