My dog defends the backyard like a right-wing talk radio host defends a GOP talking point, particularly one that contradicts time-honored conservative beliefs. She fights in a fever, and she never gives up. There’s no reasoning with her. She is insane.
If only the opossum that decided to venture into our backyard had been privy to that information. But it wasn’t. And for its ignorance, it ended up in my dog’s mouth, dangling like a preposition.
But as dedicated the pup is to protecting her property, she is easily fooled. Which was a good thing for the opossum. When my dog dropped it, the possum curled up in a ball and played dead. The dog lost interest, trotting off to accept a cookie and get a much needed bath.
Georgia hunters Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer evidently know a thing or two about playing possum. Last week the pair announced to the world that they had shot and killed Bigfoot. They had a photo. They claimed they had a body. They said they knew where there was more.
But say what you will about the claims of Whitton and Dyer (“They found Bigfoot? Hell, I found Jesus.”), there’s a part of you that wants to believe that the pair did exactly what they said they did. It’s the same part of you that hopes beyond all hope that when a politician gets fingered for shtupping a staffer, he has the cojones to cop to playing pattycake with someone other than his wife. (Speaking of a lack of brass ones, how about House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) who went out on a limb last week and said that Barack Obama had a 50-50 chance of winning the presidency. Talk about inspiring the troops.)
Well, wishful thinking is one thing, whether you believe in abstinence-only sex ed, the power of that Prius you just bought to stop Mother Earth’s hot flashes, or the viability of the Libertarian Party. It doesn’t mean P. Diddy. We need proof.
And proof is what Whitton and Dyer tried to provide. Unfortunately, the DNA they submitted was more road kill than it was the missing link between man and ape. This Bigfoot was a big lie.
Which, of course, shouldn’t have come as a shock to anybody who saw the photo of the monkey suit in a freezer. It was about as ridiculous as Henry Brown’s claim that he had no idea a bill he introduced on Capitol Hill would help a Kiawah Island developer.
It takes real chutzpah to do that. The kind that Cory Burnell once had.
Burnell is the founder of Christian Exodus, a fundamentalist group that encourages secession-minded sectarians to move to Anderson in hopes of taking over the local government and eventually the state legislature. Once that is accomplished, Burnell had planned to lead the folks in Christian Exodus right out of the Union. (Previously, Burnell was a member of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group with secessionist dreams.)
But there was a problem with Burnell’s plan. And it wasn’t the obvious one. He doesn’t live in South Carolina. And it doesn’t appear that he’s going to leave his home in California any time soon.
That no longer matters. Burnell has stepped down from his position as the head of Christian Exodus. And he’s passed the torch to Keith Humphrey. Maybe you’ll be shocked by this, maybe you won’t, but Humphrey lives in Oregon and has no plans of leaving.
How’s that for playing possum?
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