Knock! Knock! Knock!

“Hello, may I help you?”

“Yes, my name is Bland. Agent Bland. This is my associate, Agent Person. We are with the Politically-Correct police, Humor-Impaired division. We would like to talk to you for a minute.”

“What have I done?”

“We have received numerous complaints that you may be singling out the humor-impaired in your columns. That is a serious charge. Federal law protects the humor-impaired, which includes special interest groups of every race, creed, color, sex, age, height, weight and shape in the nation except old white guys from Georgia. The first offense is punishable by having to sit and watch Nancy Pelosi put on her makeup in the morning. Now, we don’t want that, do we?”

“Gee whiz, no. Can you give some examples of where I may have unintentionally chafed the humor-impaired?”

“You refer frequently to Jimmy Carter as President Peanut. A complainant said, and I quote, ‘Having grown up on farms (first overseas, then later in the U.S.) I have the greatest respect for farmers, and I find your frequent put-downs of Carter as “President Peanut,” though no doubt intended as a humorous (albeit childish) metaphor to be insulting to farmers in general.’”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“We don’t kid about farming or (albeit childish) metaphors. And then, one of our drones intercepted a note sent to you regarding your column on atheists. As I recall, in proving the existence of God, you said God made turtles. That offended a graduate student at Syracuse University who said you don’t know anything about turtles. He says he does and to quit talking about God making turtles. Perhaps you were not aware that there are a lot of turtles in Syracuse. You just can’t see them because it snows there all year.”

“Dang, I can’t think of anything worse that being a frozen turtle in Syracuse, unless it is being president of the National Atheists and having to live out your godless life in Cranford, New Jersey.”

“We were just getting to that. That comment obviously didn’t go over well with some humor-impaired people in New Jersey. We would have thought you had learned your lesson when you poked fun at Detroit.”

“Oh, yeah. I do recall now that I got a lot of mail from readers defending Detroit. What I don’t understand is that most of the letters came from people who now live in Georgia. If Detroit is so great, why don’t they still live there?”

“We can’t be sure but we have reason to believe it is because that guy that looks like a bullfrog, Michael Moore, lives there. I can’t say I blame them for moving.”

“I know you are doing the talking here, but I would stay away from a reference to bullfrogs if I were you. That kid in Syracuse probably knows a lot about them, too. Where there are turtles, there are bound to be bullfrogs, even under four feet of snow.”

“Point accepted, but let’s get back to the humor-deprived, shall we? In one of your recent columns, you referred to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman as an ‘arsonist.’ According to one missive we found while rummaging through your sock drawer, a reader said, ‘The word “arsonist” being used to describe Gen. Sherman, I found to be very troubling. Using the term only gives the believers in “The Northern Aggression” reason to keep believing in the Confederacy.’”

“What if I told the reader that the old state flaggers were one of my favorite targets? I used to say their calendars were stuck on 1860 and they didn’t know the war was over and they had lost. I couldn’t wait for the hate mail to pour in. Ah, those were the good old days.”

“Sir, it looks like we aren’t getting anywhere here. You seem to get some kind of perverse pleasure out of tweaking the humor-impaired. Let me remind you that we have you on our Watch List. In the meantime, we would suggest you get some sensitivity training.”

“That is a great idea! How about if I hang out with an atheist turtle from Detroit?”

“I doubt seriously that would help, but it is certainly better than having to watch Nancy Pelosi put on her makeup. Good day, sir.”

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139.