SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2016
These Fictitious People Still Sound A Lot Like Some People We Know
Here’s another column featuring the same sleazy 1980s characters at the satirical Patronage County Courthouse, to illustrate things going on hereabouts these days, so our Persons of Consequence might gain yet another useful perspective on the news.
These articles are Beloved Whistleblower Publisher Charles Foster Kane’s attempt to encourage undiscovered young writers, such as the struggling columnist below who shares his acute and surprisingly accurate take on local Politics as Usual in satirical Patronage County.
“Turkey Shoot” by James Jay Schifrin
Start taking your gratitude pills, folks. That way you’ll be suitably grateful next week on Thanksgiving Day. Except, of course, if you’re the turkey!
What better way to start off your holiday than a TV reunion with Howdy Doody on “Good Morning America?” Then there’ll be trips to the shopping center to buy Christmas presents. And I don’t know about you, but on my way over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house, I’ll be thinking about all those reasons we have to be thankful:
Thankful perhaps for the wisdom of Cincinnati’s City Council, who will somehow come up with a plan to make next year’s Labor Day Riverfest 100 percnt safe. If last year’s WEBN fireworks are televised, people can stay home and litter their own living rooms.
The long time-out is finally over, and the poor, deprived NFL football players settled for a paltry 46% share of the gross. Despite the well-deserved boos and 115 thousand no-shows at last Sunday’s games, bookies, bartenders, and the Ben-Gals are back in business, and the nation’s economy is well I the way to recovery.
Now that Ohio has passed a tough new drunk driving law, the same legislators who voted for it can now try to use their influence to get out of going to jail whenever they’re caught.
Next week Cincinnati will have a new mayor, and all of David Mann’s press conferences we’ve come to know and love for the past two years will be no more than a memory.
And soon ON TV will stop showing all those dirty movies late at night so that County persecutor Simon Leis and his merry men can arrive at work rested and refreshed to go after those people who are having more fun than the law allows.
Who says all the turkeys will be eaten on Thanksgiving?
This op-ed column first appeared in the Mt. Washington Press on November 24, 1982.