I hope some of you remember Mike Royko, the magnificent Chicago newspaper columnist. Mike usually wrote about things that angered or puzzled him, but every now and then he’d haul off with a “politically un-correct” column for laughs (and hidden wisdom).  He died about 20 years ago. Here’s one of his last columns. Somehow it seems to apply today just as much as it did back then:

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The national polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose admitting any Cuban refugees to this country. I’ve concluded a poll of my own, and it shows the same results.

My poll was limited to just one person — my friend Phil T. Slobb. I didn’t have to poll anyone else because he has always been an accurate barometer of public opinion.

The poll consisted of the following questions and his answers.

“Should this country have let Cubans in ?”

“Hell no. We should never let in any kind of foreigners.”

“None?”

“That’s what I said.”

“What are your feelings about Poles?”

“We shouldn’t have ever let them in. The big dummies can’t even speak English. I got on the Milwaukee Avenue bus a few nights ago, and it was loaded with scrub ladies going home and they were all jabbering in Polish. Why do we let them come here and scrub floors of our office buildings when we could hire good Americans to scrub floors? Did you hear about the two Polacks who hijacked a submarine? They asked for a million dollars and two parachutes. Hah!”

“What about Italians?”

“If we had kept them out we would never have  wound up with Al Capone and other bums like that. We shouldn’t let one more Italian in. Hell, what do we need them for? We can cook our own spaghetti. You know why Polish jokes are so short? So Italians can  understand them.”

“And the Irish?”

“Are you kidding? The Micks are nothing but a bunch of political crooks. What have they ever done except run for office so they can steal my tax money? And the ones who didn’t run  for office became cops  so they could shake me down.  All the Irish ever contributed to this country was municipal corruption. By the way, do you know why Irish  wakes last three days?”

“Why?”

“So they can make sure the guy is dead, not just drunk.”

“Do you have any feelings about Lithuanians?”

“Yeah. They’re almost as dumb as Polacks, and they’re twice as mean. The day we let the first Loogin in this country, the average IQ dropped by ten points. Do you know how a Lithuanian pilot navigates an airplane?”

“How?”

“By reading street signs.”

“How about Bohemians?”

“Look, those people are all the same — Bohemians, Serbians, Yugoslavians, Latvians, Hungarians, Slovaks.  They’re cheapskates, and all they want to do is stick a lamb on  a stick and roast it, drink beer, and play loud music on their mandolins. You can’t even pronounce their names. They’re as bad as Polacks and Loogins. You know how you can tell the mother-in-law at a Bohunk wedding? She’s the one on her knees picking up the rice.”

“I don’t suppose you care much for Greeks?”

“What do I need a Greek for? I know how to make hamburger. I went to a Greek restaurant once and they were all jumping around to that Zorba music and snapping their fingers, and when I ordered cheese they set it on fire. You know how many Greeks it takes to change a light bulb? One to put it in and the other one to burn the place down for the insurance.”

“And the Chinese?”

“No Gooks of any kind. Chinks, Japs, Koreans, Vietnamese, none of them.  We’re always having a war with one kind of gook or another, so why should we let them in? And the rats have screwed up the economy with their little cars and TV sets. I say no more gooks. Do you know what sound a Japanese camera makes? Crick.”

“What are your feelings about Jews?”

“What do you think? Every used car I ever bought was from  a Jew, and they were all clunkers.”

“What about the French?”

“Those people eat snails, and anybody who eats a snail is a creep.”

“I won’t even ask you about blacks.”

“Don’t bother. You couldn’t print it.”

“But they didn’t ask to come here.”

“Then they should leave.”

“I don’t suppose you care about other Hispanics, besides the Cubans. Mexicans? Puerto Ricans?

“That’s right. I don’t care for them. You know why a Puerto Rican can’t use a checkbook? Because it’s too small for him to spray his name on. Hah! Pretty good, huh?

“I gather then that you think this country should not have let anyhone in except the early English settlers.”

“”I wouldn’t have let them in either. What do you think hillbillies are? If the English hadn’t come here we wouldn’t have nearly as many hillbillies as we have now. We’ve had hillbillies in  this country for 200 years, and what have they contributed? They invented stock car racing and the demolition derby, that’s all.”

“Then there’s nobody you like.”

“I like Americans.”

“What kind oif Americans?”

“The ones that are already here. Like me.

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As I said, that column is 20 years old. Does it remind you of anyone today? Can you spell Tea Party?

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                                                                     FIGHT FORTH

I hope all my buddies out there are doing well today. It’s 83 here in Montana, and raining. Go figure.

Here are a few notes that have been roaming aound the desk for a week or so:

I send a big juicy kiss to Ellen Goodman, whose latest column carries two jeweled goodies:  She names the senior Iranian cleric who declared that earthquakes were caused by women who didn’t dress modestly. (I wish I could send Lady GaGa to sit on his lap), and, before you Christians can get too uppity, she comments on  the Vatican, which recently ruled that ordaining women is as grave a crime as pedophilia. 

 The really strange thing about the Catholic church is the fact that women are its backbone. If it weren’t for mothers nagging their kids to attend catechism and mass, there’d be no church. If most men weren’t pushed into attendance, you could hold your average mass in a phone booth. Does the church still demand that women have their head covered when entering a church? They did back when I was a captive.

I don’t really know what to  make a country that  has statistics such as these:  21% of Americans believe there are such things as witches and warlocks.  32% believe in ghosts. Only 39% of us believe in evolution. Most Americans can name the seven dwarfs, but can’t name even three members of the Supreme Court. Nine out of 10 high school students can’t find Afghanistan on a map.  Most Americans can name Larry, Curly and Moe as the Three Stooges, but can’t name the three wings of the U.S. Government as Executive, Judicial and Legislative.

My stomach hurts when I think of Glenn Beck speaking from the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. A man that insensitive should be kept in  a damp rubber room with four pounds of black widow spiders and a mentally disturbed wolf.

The Bozeman  police log has been quiet this week. I only have three entries for you:  A caller heard a loud rumbling noise on the Erwin Bridge at 2:30 a.m. Investigating officers found an elderly man pulling a cart. He said he had been thrown out of his home and was trying to find a place to sleep. The officers gave him a hotel voucher.  And another  caller said there was a kid walking down North 22nd Street with a snake around his neck. She wanted to know if that was legal. She was informed that it was. Then came a call from a man who said his ex girlfriend broke into his mobil home and stole a notebook he uses to “log down incidents inolving her.”

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I’m getting pissed over this Muslim situation.

Being a good American I believe in religious freedom for all — even though I think all religions are either silly, stupid or dangerous superstitions. But, as the man said, they can do whatever they want as long as they don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses. Who cares what the hell religious people do? If orthodox Jews want to wear long curls and odd square little hats, or if Catholics like to sprinkle each other with “holy water” and incense while lighting little red candles and praying to statues, that’s fine.  If some Southern Baptists want to tickle rattlesnakes in  church, what the hell — Just leave me out of all that bull-pucky.

Normally I think they should be left alone to practice their myths as long as they don’t endanger me.

It’s the people who insist I live by their ridiculous rules that make me angry. Just this week a gang of fundamentalist Christians manged to get our advances in stem-cell research brought to a dead stop because of their twisted beliefs. Vitally important medical science is stopped dead in its tracks because of some bible-thumping jackass. I don’t like the fact that the Catholics are fighting against homosexuals at every turn, and , instead of saying, “I don’t like abortion, so I won’t have one,” they say, “You can’t have one either.” They’d like to have the Ten Commandments tattooed on my ass (Five on each cheek)

When I lie in  bed at night, trying to figure how to solve the world’s problems, I often bite my pillow when I think about what religions have done to the world.

Now — about these Muslims.

I had a “What If” moment last night.  What if a bunch of psychopathic idiots in a country called Goofystan decided to start religion which ruled that women and cows were of equal rank, except that the cows could run around naked whereas all women had to live inside a walking tent,  with nothing but their eyes showing — and those eyes better not ever, ever look at a man and lead him into evil temptation. What if they said that they could perform rustic rusty surgery on young girls to make sure they didn’t like sex and ruin men’s souls? What if they said it was your duty to kill someone who didn’t agree with them? Hell, you could kill someone for even drawing a picture of God. What if  this new religion said it was okay to stone a woman to death for adultery, but never mentioned any punishment for male participants? What if it was okay to throw acid in the face of little girls who dared to go to school? What if they ruled that it was okay to set fire to children of disbelievers? What if they encouraged suicide bombings, as long as it was done in the name of Allah? What if they could actually convince their men that they’d find 72 virgins waiting in heaven as soon as they died in a blaze of blood and terror for Allah.

And what if they said “Okay. It’s time to move to America and make some converts?”

That’s what scares hell out of me. They say that there are now roughly 6 million Muslims in the USA. I know that they are mostly kind, gentle people. I’ve heard it said that 90% of American Muslims are just like all the rest of us — good, decent citizens. It’s that other 10% that makes my eyeballs spin. If 10% of the American Muslims are batshit crazy I don’t want to send out any Welcome Wagons.

What I really want, and insist on, is for the mullahs or imans or whatever the hell their leaders are called to stand up and loudly denounce that 10%. They can’t really expect to be welcomed here until they assure us that they don’t agree with their insane fundamentalism. I want a Muslim leader or two (or 50) to say, “We don’t believe all that madness. We just want to practice a quiet, peaceful religion.”

I sure as hell don’t like being associated with anything Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich or those other mellon-heads are saying — so I’m begging for relief from worry.

But, until I start hearing such statements from rational Muslims, I don’t want their maniacal cousins living in my neighborhood.

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