Well, it's been a long time, six years and change, since I felt I could look my fellow citizens (most of them anyway) in the eye and not wonder just how simpleminded they might be.
Of course I am talking about the election results, locally and nationally, from last week.
I have mainstream friends, less cynical than I, who say, "We've got our country back."
I wouldn't go that far. The current Democratic Party is not my dad's Roosevelt Democrats; in fact, these centrists in liberal glad rags are not even LBJ's Democratic Party.
And across the country, people irritated at an unending war and an economic rape of the lower and middle classes are more than irritated that gay people want to be married. Numerous states banned gay marriage or refused at least to support it last Tuesday.
This is backward thinking in a country where the conjugally joined are outnumbered by the solitaries for the first time in recorded American history.
But who in their right mind (an important qualification) can feel too bad seven days after Rummy is forced to resign and eight days after the voters of Washington state have overwhelmingly told Mike McGavick to go back to economically disenfranchising workers and their families for his own benefit - lay off 1,200 SAFECO workers, give self $4-million bonus and then claim you "care" about the average citizen - and leave the public coffers alone?
Even Maria Cantwell, a centrist sheep in radical wolf's clothing, and not much loved by sheep or wolves, was able to slam dance Mike Mick G.
Nationally, most voters responded just as Washington's did, saying, finally, "Enough, Georgie Porgie, please, enough."
Locally, Seattle voters overwhelmingly agreed with me, a guy who hasn't stepped inside a strip club in more than a decade, that if there are going to be strippers dancing for paying customers, let them dance as close they wanna, just like they do down the road in less yuppified (so far) Portland.
The vote against the 4-foot rule for dancers is a vote for adulthood over false prudery. It is not the strippers who are causing a 50-percent divorce rate among Washington state adults.
It is not the strippers who have reshaped the state's population to the point that single people outnumber married people for the first time.
It is our money-mad, people-who-ain't-got-don't-really-count culture, not Déjà Vu, that is the problem area.
I still have no plans to get a lap dance anytime soon, but if I do, I am glad most voters agree it should be a lap dance, not a no-touchy, no-lookee farce.
We Americans are adults, right?
Let's take the ball and run with it. How about legalized prostitution to take the runaway teens off the streets and out of the clutches of violent pimps and body traffickers?
And, even though I don't smoke it anymore, how about legalized marijuana for those who do still pass the pipe?
As an ex-smoker and a still-steady wine drinker, I can tell you honestly, I know more dangerous-driving drunks than crazed, gateway-to-meth pot smokers.
Let's grow all the way up and join the rest of the civilized world in a couple more areas.
In non-election news, political correctness is not something our allegedly touchy-feely Northwest has a lock on. From Winter Haven, Florida, comes the sad story of Paul Goward, a middle-aged, 6-foot, 190-pound, physically fit 60-year-old police chief who was forced out of his job for sending a memo exhorting the doughnut-laden officers on his force to shape up and lose their "jelly bellies."
It seems fat boys and girls on the force were offended that their chief actually wanted them to be in as good a shape as the physically fit gang bangers and other assorted felons they were losing foot chases to.
"Take a good look at yourself. If you are unfit, do yourself and everyone else a favor. See a professional about a proper diet and a fitness training program. Quit smoking and limit alcohol intake.... We didn't hire you unfit and we don't want you working unfit."
This incredibly logical and politely worded memo cost the man his job.
Seems he hurt the fat folk on the force's feelings.
Maybe being unfit doesn't disqualify a person from writing a newspaper column or driving a Metro bus, to take two examples close at hand, but if you are a street cop, you should be physically fit.
If you ain't, and you ain't willing to try to be, you should be a parking meter cop.
It isn't about feelings. It isn't about political correctness. It isn't about inclusiveness.
It is logic.
If you are out there allegedly protecting the citizens, you should be physically capable of doing so.
If not, you shouldn't be a cop.
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