"C'mon, show a little backbone, will ya?" said Jock to Indiana Jones, regarding Indy's concern about the large constrictor found in his cockpit.
Over the years a lot of folks have given quite a bit of thought to the idea of the backbone and its relationship to america. No, not the kind of backbone meant in the Indiana Jones repartee above, but the idea used to describe the core, the primary support or foundation of our country.
There's always been a belief that the manufacturing sector, with the alphabet names like IBM and GM, is the backbone of america. Other folks claim that small businesses, which provide about 75% of all new jobs, are the backbone, while farmers and ranchers, which produce most of our foodstuffs, contend that they are the real living backbone of our country. Some also believe that the telecommunications industry is the real backbone, while Google and Microsoft are battling over which one is the honest to goodness informational backbone.
according to Trent Lott, the highly motivated young people who make up our armed forces comprise the backbone of our nation, while Saxby Chambliss says that the backbone of our nation's domestic defense are the men and women in local law enforcement and emergency services. and Robert Teeter thinks that there's a need for a new program in Washington, with a backbone of anti-bigness. Jerry Moran swears that rural america is the backbone of our country and provides many of the essential components to the economy.
Years ago, when I was cop, drove a black and white automobile, took many of my orders from a Motorola radio and stopped all manner of jakes and John Does with pressing alcohol addictions of varying sizes and shapes, who used to swear to me that the distillers--Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Old Mr Boston, Dutch Rub, Sterno and such--were the backbone of america in uncertain and halting turns of phrase, which I'd describe as thick and slurred in my reports. I also found that the backbone I encountered on the beat often inhabited wrinkled paper bags which were twisted around the necks of their contents to hide their identities.
Orthopedic surgeons say we all have problems with our backbones, too, especially in the lordosis end of things. and we'll suffer hairline fractures later in life due to a lack of calcium and begin to stoop, even without the progressive burden of crushing taxes and the terrible weight of the outlandish perfidies found in the New York Times. and now we find out that chiropractors can't do much for us, either, what with all of their painful re-alignments and hokey-pokey and mumbo-jumbo and charges through the roof. Nope, all kinds of doctors tell us, as do our increasingly dear HMO's, that our superannuated backbones are tricky doggone things.
and now the noted liberal kibitzer Katrina Vander Heuvel comes forward on aBC's This Week to take the pain, confusion and medication away and to explain that the real solid backbone--behind all the foolishness which has so ineptly and shortsightedly described what was thought to support our nation, its commerce, its defense and its self-sufficiency in comestibles--in america is the illegal immigrants, who, "…do suburban lawns in this country. They take care of the kids. The economy would be in real trouble (without illegal aliens)." My land--the true backbone revealed at last by an undoubted and erudite expert in the field. I mean, you can tell she's a crackerjack on felonious wanderers, grass snipping and runt harboring, after all, she's gotten prizes from the aCLU, written a Russian feminist newsletter and she's been to Princeton--a tidy package.
Like an Einstein revealing the interrelationship between matter and energy and then producing a single beautiful equation linking them, Ms. Vander Heuvel, in a few apt and extremely simple sentences, has forever welded baby sitting, lawn mowing and the survival of our national economy into a single highly symmetrical thought process--all under the simpering visage and the accompanying low-brow antics of a clearly agitated George Stephanopoulos--a feat no less heady than albert's, and one that puts all the short-sighted poppycock about backbone, farmers, IBM and small business on the rubbish heap for good.
But not content at simply exposing the honest to goodness economic girders which anchor the real foundation of america and which actually allows its economic life's blood to gush in ever greater volumes--because of bottle washing, cholic, the purchase of small Japanese pick-up trucks and the growth index associated with disposable dipes--she deftly moves on to cut the cloying white sheets away from that shuffling cheap race baiting white supremacist and illegal alien pursuing Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.
Ms. Vanden Heuvel, after explaining that the reform bill backed by Mr. Tancredo--who has, according to Ms. Vanden Heuvel picked up all the dreaded attributes of Mr. David Duke, without half the charm she so values-- is "draconian," un-american," and "very dangerous," went on to predict that 2006 will be the year of the immigrants' rising, forgetting of course, the past however many years of just the same behavior and the related lack of response.
How will Mr. Tancredo go on after being so shamefully kicked around and maligned by an avid Ivy Leaguer with perfect hair and nails? Will he ever be able to fully recover from these haughty left-wing blasphemies and return to his work? Can he ever return to Congress without hiding his head in shame as a result of his televised unmasking at the hands of Ms. Vanden Heuvel?
Will Ms. Vanden Heuvel be capable of climbing back down from the dizzying heights she attained with her spontaneous televised economic theorem--one that puts the transparent musings of Malthius and Keynes firmly on the back burners and on the same dross heap as the old definitions of backbone--and be capable of mingling for a few short moments with those of lesser achievements again? Will she ever be able to return to television without another breathless audience awaiting a similar brilliant explosion of the scientific method from her factually packed and heated frontal lobes? Can she parlay this outpouring of free thought into the issuance of a series of tingling and vivacious reference volumes designed to outdo that awkwardly plebian and hollow Oswald Spengler and his own light vacation reader, Der Untergang des abendlandes?
Luckily, we have progressive people of the caliber of Ms. Vanden Heuvel, who can take the complicated issues, like economics, illegal immigration and the much maligned backbone, and reduce them--reduction ad adsurdum --to the simplicity we need to grasp their finer points. and her ability at tossing those bright handy and inoffensive labels like "white supremacist" around without a care in the world--baring her openly liberal credentials for all to see--are breathtaking and worthy of yet another award for her library wall, if room remains.
as for our own country's backbone, who'd have thought, at least until last Sunday, that it would be provided by illegal aliens mowing lawns and baby sitting.
Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the 'fair use' exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Views are those of authors and not necessarily those of Canada Free Press. Content is Copyright 1997-2024 the individual authors. Site Copyright 1997-2024 Canada Free Press.Com Privacy Statement