The madness spreads

Opinion

March 31, 2007

By Stoney Hardcastle The McAlester News-Capital Sat Mar 31, 2007, 04:53 PM CDT

There is another March Madness besides basketball. It is federal budget time again in Washington and, as usual, the fur is flying. If our elected officials are as big of liars, or are as dishonest, stupid and immoral as their political opponents claim they are, then they should all be in prison, or at lease wearing a house arrest monitor on their ankles. But when the smoke clears away there will be a lot of handshaking, backslapping and our great country will continue go grow in spite of anything our leaders can do. And while this sideshow is going on in Washington our troops are being killed in Iraq, with no end of the war in sight.

This is a thought. If retired Sen. Gene Stipe would collect all the news stories about his escapes and mold them into a book, no doubt it would be a best seller — and he will make more millions. When the book is released, for certain, there will be more investigations and another media frenzy.

I received a call from a new resident from Idaho to our area she said she keeps hearing people talk about getting an Okie Credit Card if gas goes higher, so she was curious. For all you newcomers and less informed, an Okie Credit Card is a three or four foot piece of rubber or plastic hose. Any good ol’ boy can teach one how to use it.

Other than sports and a few other programs, television is getting more boring each day. Most of what we are getting are reruns. News channels are about three minutes of current news then reruns of day-old news. The weather people are all trying to be comedians. It is amazing how the CNN news channel, within minutes, can come up with an expert on any subject for an exclusive interview.

After all that, then here come the commercials, with old time medicine show snake oil pitchmen selling weight loss books and pills that will take 100 pounds off in 30 days while a person eats all they want and sits on a couch all day. Next are the hour-long automobile ads, bad credit, no credit, nothing down, no payments for a year, no one turned down.

I agree with this coffee shop conversation I over heard between two lady office workers: One said, “I am bushed. Spent all morning making telephone calls for the boss. After all that button pushing and not hearing a live voice I am sure that automated phone answering service must be the work of the devil.”

Springtime means a mess of poke salad and an Indian breakfast of scrambled eggs and chopped wild onions. Wash all that down with some sassafras tea and you have your spring tonic.

Stoney Hardcastle

Wilburton

Stoney Hardcastle is a retired educator and writer from Wilburton.

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