Such People Actually Exist - Burt Prelutsky's Last Article

Patriot Post ^ | 12-27-2021 | Burt Prelutsky

[Loud Mime]

Such People Actually Exist

I don’t have a bucket list. Unlike other, perhaps more normal people, I don’t long to see Paris, the Pyramids, or the Great Wall of China before I die. The way it works for me is that if I’ve seen it in a movie, I know I’ll be disappointed by the reality. That’s because in real life, the scene won’t be improved by a musical background provided by George Gershwin or Elmer Bernstein, and I won’t be strolling hand in hand with Audrey Hepburn or dancing with Ginger Rogers or even strolling and dancing with my late wife Yvonne. For the sake of reality, let’s leave it at strolling.

Whereas the temperature when I’m watching the movie will be a mechanically controlled 70 degrees or so, it could be raining or 105 degrees when I finally gazed at the Sphinx or the Eiffel Tower.

However, if I did have an item on my bucket list, it would be to meet all of you. But especially those of you who write to me so often that I feel as if I know you.

As it is, aside from a handful of old friends who do me the honor of subscribing to my articles, I have met only about nine or 10 of you when you visited L.A. and we had lunch together.

Until recently, all the encounters were very pleasant occasions. The sole exception took place the other day when one very nice couple from northern California brought a guest along.

She was an older woman, perhaps a few years younger than me, Jewish, who happened to live just over the hill, perhaps a dozen miles away in Brentwood.

In describing her, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps this was the couple’s attempt at matchmaking. If so, it was doomed to failure. I could no more contemplate marrying Diane, which, oddly enough, was the name of my first wife, than I could imagine tying the knot with Elizabeth Warren or Nancy Pelosi.

After being seated at a booth at my favorite haunt, Lulu’s, Steve, Fran, and I opened the conversation by sharing our conservative take about the news of the day. After a couple of minutes, Diane piped up to let us know how hurtful we were being.

It turned out that she was not only a Liberal, but one who took differing opinions to heart. She felt that she herself was being attacked. She was actually on the verge of tears.

Since I had done most of the talking and had assumed that we were all, politically speaking, on the same page, I took pains to ease off.

Rather than grind her into the dust, which would have been extremely satisfying, I simply asked her why she was a Democrat.

Instead of answering the question, she began to attack Donald Trump. It is not an exaggeration to say that if she had been referring to Hitler, she couldn’t have been more vehement.

Since I actually wanted to know what could make a person sound so completely unhinged, I granted that even though I considered Trump the greatest president of my lifetime, I could see where people might consider him boorish and regard his tweets as juvenile and be offended by his schoolyard nicknames for his political opponents.

But, while I granted she might not wish to date him or see him installed as the rabbi at her synagogue, I challenged her to name a single thing she objected to that he had done as president.

Instead of mentioning even a single issue, such as rescuing the economy; negotiating peace treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbors; making life more difficult for Russian oligarchs; placing tariffs on Chinese imports; forcing our NATO allies to pony up their dues to NATO; moving our embassy to Jerusalem; and re-building our military, she called him an anti-Semite.

Even when I pointed out his pro-Israeli stance and the fact that his son-in-law is an observant Jew, and his daughter is a convert to Judaism, meaning his three grandchildren are Jewish, she refused to be budged. She simply repeated the insult.

Clearly, she had heard some idiot at CNN or MSNBC say it, and that was good enough for her.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t mind the lunch at all. It provided me with a firsthand experience that I had previously only had vicariously when watching dodo birds like Joy Reid, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, and Juan Williams on television. But those people are paid to speak those foolish lines, like actors in a bad movie. I had always assumed that nobody in real life truly believed that nonsense.

It seems Diane did and does.

It left me wondering how someone as intelligent as Mollie Hemingway can remain married to Mark Hemingway, who is, politically, in perfect sync with Diane. He even despises Donald Trump with a similar fervor.

So how is it that those two are still married after 15 years, and I could barely make it through lunch with the deplorable Diane?

⦿   Somehow, I had missed the news about G. Gordon Liddy’s death this past March. I always considered him the most interesting member of Nixon’s inner circle and once spent a pleasant half hour being interviewed by Liddy on his radio show.

It was only recently, though, that I heard he had made two of the more quotable remarks on the topic of the Second Amendment. The first: “I believe in gun control. Hold the gun steadily and hit what you aim at.” The second: “I can no longer own guns due to my conviction for conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping. But Mrs. Liddy owns 27 guns, some of which she keeps on my side of the bed.”

⦿   Speaking of guns, I have never understood why the NRA never made a stronger case for themselves and for the Second Amendment by producing TV commercials showing compelling enactments of private citizens using guns to protect themselves and others from those who ignore all gun laws. Or, perhaps even better, they could have the heroes, who come in all ages and both sexes, describe the scary event in their own words.

Instead, they rely on press releases and a single page in The New American to report those instances when regular Americans successfully thwart those scumbags intent on robbery and rape by taking advantage of their constitutional right to blow the head off any putz out to harm them or their loved ones.

⦿   Arthur Lourea passed along a meme that shows the multi-acre facility Australia maintains for the incarceration of the un-vaccinated. The caption reads: “Stop calling it a concentration camp! It’s just a facility run by the Australian government where you’re relocated by the military, detained and kept without a trial, and pursued and arrested if you manage to escape…all in the name of public safety.”

⦿   Janet Hooper shared a meme that suggests that “If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and four U.S. presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.”

⦿   It took a while but I finally recognized that Faucism is just another way of spelling Fascism.

-----

Burt died on December 17, 2021

[Loud Mime]

Burt’s writings included many episodes of MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Dragnet and others. He was a true Hollywood Conservative.

[Lurker]

He will be missed.

L

[muir_redwoods]

I have never been able to get a single rational response out of an anti-Trumpervwhen I ask what he has done to annoy them so much.

Yes, he’s rude, a bit crude and a bit too thin-skinned but he was a great president. I also don’t understand why people feel this need to like the president. I love baseball but there’s not a single current player I want to have lunch with. Likewise, I don’t have to like a great president to be able to recognize his greatness.

[dynachrome]

“Faucism is just another way of spelling Fascism”

I like that.

[Jolla]

The way it works for me is that if I’ve seen it in a movie, I know I’ll be disappointed by the reality.

uh, no. Travel is the only expense that makes you richer.

[rlmorel]

"...I believe in gun control. Hold the gun steadily and hit what you aim at.

I can no longer own guns due to my conviction for conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping. But Mrs. Liddy owns 27 guns, some of which she keeps on my side of the bed..."

Heh, that's great!

As for being disappointed when you see these things in person:

• When I went to Paris as a kid, I thought it was a big, dirty city with the Eiffel Tower. My dad gave us kids the option of paying the fee to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, or being able to buy more Cokes to drink that day, and we all voted for the Cokes.

• When I went to the Egypt in the USN back in the Seventies, the Pyramids did not disappoint. Even more, that was when you could climb them, if you were brave or stupid enough to try. I climbed about three or four levels IIRC, and I was astonished at how high that was. But even though I felt safe there, it was clear that the higher you went, the more sandy and crumbly the stones became, the more narrow the footholds became, and the more likely you were to slip, so I didn't go any higher. I heard that some time after that, they closed them off so you couldn't climb on them (which made a lot of sense to me) because some tourists (I heard stupid US Navy sailors) fell to their deaths.

• I went on an unplanned road trip some years back (I had a huge amount of vacation time that I was going to lose, and my wife didn't have any) that took me on this path:
  
  So, I was kind of excited to take my path through St. Louis where I could see The Gateway Arch. I had seen a documentary in high school about it many years ago, so I had this vision of a great arch, filling the sky, sitting astride the Mississippi River with a leg on each side. I drove through St. Louis at 01:00 AM, and had been warned not to stop there after hours as it was a dangerous part of the city, so I was content to look at it, and...good gosh. The thing was puny compared to what my mind had made it out to be! I was so let down...

[caver]

Good article!

I did not know that he had passed.

[21twelve]

I have been various places that are spectacular but not quite what I had imagined them to be (Alaska glaciers, Norwegian Fiords, Alps, Asia, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Florida Keys, Carribean Islands, etc.) All great places and lots of great memories and fun.

The only place so far that has lived up to those expectations was the Great Barrier Reef.

[Loud Mime]

uh, no. Travel is the only expense that makes you richer.

I agree. Burt was pretty much a home and restaurant body. He did take the final trip on the Queen Mary as it went to Long Beach. He hated it. No air conditioning, lousy food and too many people on a boat for too long.

[cuz1961]

he’s rude, a bit crude and a bit too thin-skinned

/

When told that , reply

Well, so are you /-)
Or
Do you even own a mirror ? /-)

[Laslo Fripp]

The only place I’ve been to that I don’t care about returning is New Orleans.

It reminds me of the old urinal in Fenway Park. It stretched around the entire wall, complete with the odor.

[alexander_busek]

Since I had done most of the talking and had assumed that we were all, politically speaking, on the same page, I took pains to ease off.

A conservative who meets for coffee with his two dear, old conservative friends - and a new person with whom he is not yet acquainted - may chat with the two dear old friends about politics (but he wouldn't and shouldn't simply assume that the new acquaintance is on the same wavelength).

Leftists, in contrast, will consistently address a new acquaintance DIRECTLY and make "knowing" pejorative comments about conservative issues and/or personalities, expecting the conservative to nod in agreement.

This is my personal experience.

Regards,

[JohnBovenmyer]

A friend and fellow world traveler of my folks said he’d seen just two facades that lived up to their reputations. One was the Taj Mahal, the other was Sophia Loren!

[alexander_busek]

The way it works for me is that if I’ve seen it in a movie, I know I’ll be disappointed by the reality.

Jolla: uh, no. Travel is the only expense that makes you richer.

"Travel" need not mean visiting the Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower. It can mean roaming through little German villages...

Regards,

[Loud Mime]

I lived for years in one of those little German villages (dorf), I loved it!

[John Milner]

After many interesting articles and photo essays on Ayer’s Rock (now PC called Uluru) we finally took that once in a lifetime trip to Australia.

It was kind of underwhelming. I always assumed there were no other similar rock outcroppings anywhere around, while in fact, there are tons. Not as big as Uluru, but still, just kind of a big old rock plateau. So I was not as impressed as I planned to be.

[Robert DeLong]

I share his sentiments regarding Diane. However, not sure if I could have even finished lunch with her there. 🙂

[Jolla]

It can mean roaming through little German villages...

Exactly and one cannot get that from movies.

[Wonder Warthog]

"I have never understood why the NRA never made a stronger case for themselves and for the Second Amendment by producing TV commercials showing compelling enactments of private citizens using guns to protect themselves and others from those who ignore all gun laws."

Because the TV networks will not sell advertising space to the NRA for such vignettes.....