Looking for funny news this week, I found this: A federal judge in Philadelphia ruled that cities can’t be denied federal funding just because they’re deemed to be sanctuary cities.
Hours later, the Department of Justice sent letters to 29 cities, counties and states threatening to deny them federal funds because they are deemed by the Department of Justice to be sanctuaries to undocumented immigrants.
Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice is like the mean, stupid, rowdy drunk who picks a fight with one guy at a bar and then, after that one guy handily lays him out on the counter with one punch, tells everyone else in the bar, “And I’m going to do the same thing to all of you other creeps next.”
Seattle and King County got letters that told them they have to submit a joint response by Dec. 8. That is as drunken funny as drunken funny gets. Sessions is huffing his own fumes, isn’t he?
Now I’m picturing the drunk in the bar, still flat on his back on the counter, saying, “Y‘all got till a count of 10 to get outta here before I start in pounding you. Or else I’ll start in pounding you. One. Urp. You’d just better do it right now. Ten.”
I can recommend the celebrated response of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe during the Battle of the Bulge in France, late 1944, as the Germans demanded surrender. Seattle and King County should submit the one word response: “Nuts.”
Another historic model our city and county could do well to emulate, if it’s felt by our leaders that a longer and more detailed response is called for, is that of the 1676 Letter of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, whose army they faced and who demanded their surrender.
You can see a translation of the original letter on Wikipedia. Warning: They used pretty foul expressions to indicate their opinion of the sultan and his demand.
In formulating a version for Seattle and King County’s response to the DOJ, I’ve felt the need to ratchet down some of the vulgarity.
So here is my humble first draft of a response very loosely adapted from the Cossacks’ letter with an eye to cleaning it up while retaining the spirit. Hopefully it is more appropriate for our time and this context:
“Dear Jeff Sessions, Department of Justice, lawyers and pencil pushers! O Jeff Sessions, Alabama devil and devil’s spawn, what from-hell kind of lawyer are you that would lose a lawsuit to a chili cheese dog representing himself? Your lawyers are so incompetent they have to live off pigeon droppings. We’re not afraid of them or you.
“You shall not order our governments to bend to your will, so you may as well go back to selling your rump to lobbyists for money and to satiate your lust, you foul and foul-smelling gangrened toilet attendant, you latrine engineer who always takes his work home to eat, launderer of filthy gym shorts, slimy crawling abomination beloved by goats and sheep, pigs and donkeys for the services you render them in their nether parts. You are both a thief and a prostitute of America.
“Head of the U.S. Department of Injustice, armpit of all the world and Capitol Hill, prideful idiot among idiots, unholy grandson of a Jefferson Davis impersonator and a tick that he sat on that had once fired a mighty fart at the Union.
“Festering pimple under our left eyelid. You are the windward half of every dirty farm animal that ever turned to avoid the wind.
“Your face is ugly.
You wanted our response by Dec. 8. We don’t live by notes in your calendar. Make love to your calendar sideways.”
Seattle and King County, feel free to make all the edits you like if you choose to use this suggestion of mine. You might want to tack on a postscript telling the DOJ when to respond to your response.
I’d say give them one day.
Do unto others as they’ve done unto you, only better and quicker.
Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor and three times homeless. He has been involved with Real Change since he supplied the art for the first cover in November of 1994. This is his weekly column Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd.
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