We’re opening today with a report from Owl Chatter’s Dirty Old Man Dept. The day every man in America has been praying for has arrived. Stormy Daniels is back in the news. The NYT Arts section reviews the documentary that tells her story. It’s a decent review, but who cares? We’re just ecstatic she’s back. Thank you, Jesus!
We sent Phil out on the assignment and, as expected, we’ve lost contact with him for days now. Here’s a shot from our files.
Lookin’ good, Babe! Take it easy on Phil. He’s not well.
It’s Philip Roth’s birthday today, born 91 years ago in Newark, just about 30 minutes from OC headquarters. Jersey is proud to call him one of theirs. I heard him interviewed once, on NPR. He was talking about the days before Portnoy’s Complaint was published. He called his parents to warn them about what they would be facing. The book will make an enormous splash, he told them, and they will be besieged by calls and camera crews from news stations all hours of the day and night. He suggested they get away for a few days, to avoid the crush. He later learned that after he hung up, they called relatives convinced that he was delusional.
One of my favorite lines of his was from The Great American Novel. There was a baseball game and a slugger named Yamm was batting in a crucial situation. The hometown crowd was yelling his name — YAMM! YAMM! YAMM! YAMM! And Roth wrote: “Starving savages invoking their potato god for rain would not have made a louder racket.” Something like that — I’m pretty sure I got the first few words right. Roth himself said his favorite of his books was Sabbath’s Theater.
Several years ago, I tried to get into an account I set up with the U.S. Treasury for some savings bonds I had for the kids. Of course, I had forgotten and lost the passwords, etc. so I called the 800 number and explained my situation. The woman on the line asked me for the answers to the security questions I set up for the account. “Who is your favorite author?” She asked. Arrrrgh. I like a bunch of writers and didn’t remember which one I put down. As I was dithering, she said: He wrote Goodbye, Columbus. Philip Roth! Of course! She gave me access to the account. So much for the Treasury’s crack security systems.
Happy Birthday. Rest in peace Philip Roth.
The puzzle today focused on what some in Crossworld call DOOKS. You look at the clue and you look at the answer you got which is DOOK and you can’t make any sense out of it. What the hell is a DOOK? Then you realize it’s DO OK. Two words.
Today’s puzzle was a real dook-a-rama. It’s by Lynn Lempel whose first puzzle (of 102!) appeared in the NYT back in 1979.
So you might be wondering how in the world is “Choice between a haircut and manicure?” DOORNAILS? But then you read it as DO OR NAILS. (DO = hairdo.)
And how is GOON SQUAD “Continue with your routine, cheerleaders”? And then you see it as GO ON SQUAD.
egs today: I understand that TSA is going to put further restrictions in place. Instead of just asking for IDS, they’ll also examine EGOS and SUPEREGOS.
He also added some DOOKs for us. The best was: Crucial step in bowling: Let _______. (Answer: GOOFBALL.)
So much crap is blamed on God, it’s a wonder he or she doesn’t have more of a bad name. All the wars, the gay bashing, the forced marriages, stuff like genital mutilation, the ruined lives from abortion denials, and the list goes on and on. But this year’s Oscar for “Greatest Monster Blaming God” goes to (fidgets with the envelope): Mary and Jeremy Cox, of Anderson, Indiana! They took their efforts to kill their child in the name of God all the way up to the Supreme Court and even the Supremes wanted no part of it, thank God.
At issue was the life and death of their beautiful child, a teenager who is a transgender girl. [OC note: We have not seen her. We are using the adjective “beautiful” because all children are beautiful.] Mary and Jeremy are devout Christians who believe a child should be raised according to his or her gender at birth. So rather than obtaining help for their child, they pressured her to give up her gender identity (to put it mildly, see below). At some point in her struggle she developed an eating disorder. Eating disorders have the highest morbidity rate among mental disorders. So this kid was at risk from the high suicide rates for trans kids, and from self-starvation from the eating disorder.
The State of Indiana got involved back in 2021 when Child Services received two reports of abuse or neglect, related to the teen’s transgender identity. One accused the parents of verbally and emotionally abusing their child because they did not accept that she was transgender.
A judge ordered that she be removed from the parents’ custody, get treated for the eating disorder, and participate in individual and family therapy. The state argued the teen’s eating disorder might worsen if the parents regained custody. The parents were told not to discuss transgenderism with their child outside of the therapy sessions because of the connection between those conversations and the eating disorder.
The parents said the state violated their parental rights, their free speech, and their free exercise of religion. “We seek only to raise our child according to our religious beliefs and best judgment,” they told the court. “This case is about the state taking a child from fit parents.”
The State said the parents’ beliefs were not the issue. Their failure to address the eating disorder justified the removal of the child. The Indiana appellate court upheld the decision, and the Indiana Supreme Court refused to take the case. Finally, just yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take the case as well. So it’s over.
The Indiana appeals court summed it up: “The parents have the right to exercise their religious beliefs, but not in a manner that causes physical or emotional harm to the child.” Yup. She could have died, you f*cking morons. The goddamn State had to step in to stop you from harming your own f*cking kid — are there no depths to which you idiots will not sink?
God added: Hrrrrrrrumph.
Between venal state legislators trampling on trans kids for political gain and brain-dead religious lunatics, what chance do these beautiful kids have? We wrote about one who was buried from bullying just a few weeks ago. How many dead trans kids will be enough? How many?
George! Grab me a fresca — I’ve upset myself.
Let’s go off with a tune tonight. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 