One Week. Still Alive.
My liberal friends are freaking over the prospect of the 45th president. But to be fair and balanced, I’ve decided to give the new president a chance. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I think I’m going to enjoy the “post-reality era” in American politics.
Sure, the things he said during the election seemed scary. But he changed his mind so many times about so many things so fast and so often that we don’t really have a clue what he’ll actually do as president. He doesn’t; why should we? My guess is that he’ll bring back torture by forcing terrorists to watch his news conferences. Then he’ll appoint Vladimir Putin to the Supreme Court. And he’s going to find every one of the 3 to 5 million illegal aliens who voted for Hillary and deport them no matter how long it takes.
He’ll probably be the last white man ever to be president, so we might as well just sit back and enjoy it. Back when America was great, white men had it made. Now we have to compete with “women” and “people of color” who get the good jobs instead of us because they’re “more qualified.” Having a white man as president again could be huge for oppressed men like me. (Except if Steve Bannion finds out I’m Jewish, I’m finished.) But I digress.
So far I love his cabinet. The best that money could buy. Instead of draining the swamp, he sold it to us and moved it into the White House. Maybe the cabinet doesn’t look like America, but it does have two women and both above 8.75 in looks. That Nikki Haley, she is hot.
He started off promising to build a beautiful wall that Mexico would pay for. But as of now, it might be a fence instead of a wall, and only part of the border, not all of it, and the Mexicans won’t pay for any of it; we’ll pay for all of it. I know he’s only been president for a week, but is America great again yet?
— Andy Morris-Friedman, Hadley
Editor’s Note: This two-word poem was submitted by a local artist.
Inauguration
Fools Russian
— James Kitchen, via email
Cowabungled
That was a very nice cover story in last week’s Advocate about the “Turtle Power! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Samurai Heroes” exhibit at the Springfield Museums. I hope to get down there to see it soon. However, I found it ironically amusing that, after making a point in one sentence about correcting a “common misconception” — that Kevin Eastman and I conceived of the TMNT while living in Northampton — the author of the article goes on to create another misconception at the end of the very same sentence by claiming that “the truth is that first Ninja Turtle was drawn in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”
As most students of TMNT history know, this is incorrect. The first Turtle was drawn by Kevin Eastman in Dover, New Hampshire, where Mirage Studios was first located (in the dining room of the house my wife and I were renting). It’s possible that this confusion may have arisen due to the fact that Kevin and I premiered the first issue of the TMNT comic book at a small comic book convention, which was held at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in May of 1984.
— Peter Laird, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator, via email
Correction: The Jan. 5-18, 2017 article “How to Get Off Heroin” did not give the correct last name for the Bridge Home in Springfield co-founder who was quoted. His name is Dr. Bill Cosgriff. Also, the article used a former title to describe Susan O’Connor’s job. She is the program director of the Carlson Recovery Center, BHN, in Springfield.
