The Miami Herald's Fred Grimm is probably Florida's resident expert drollerist, and his drollery is seldom so barbed or smart as it was in Wednesday's column: "To Legislature, enemy is us." Check it out, if you're in the mood for some lightly depressing weekend reading.
"Gotta have us some enemies," he writes. "Enemies being 'bout as necessary to politicking as money."
He then explains who the enemy is this season, and it turns out it's just about everybody -- everybody, that is, who lacks sufficient media acumen, cash, or clout to deflect blame for our current messes onto some other patsy.
Teachers are enemies, we discover, which is why we ripped away their
tenure without funding their performance raises. Their students are the
enemies, which is why we're bilking them to the tune of $400 each.
Incredibly, in this brave new world of libertarian cutcutcut, even the
subjects they study are enemies: "History, calculus, analytical
geometry, anatomy, zoology, and Spanish" no longer count as "core
curricula" and are therefore disposable.
Kids who wear droopy
pants, school boards, public workers, judges, the developmentally
disabled -- there are a whole lot of enemies, and you can read about
them here. (One class that Grimm neglects to mention is "people who
photograph cows," even though he broke the story that first identified
them as enemies. Jesus! There's so many enemies, Fred Grimm can't even
keep track! Unless, that is, he's leaving out cow-photogs for darker
reasons. What's your game, Grimm? Are you an enemy now too?)
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