January 9

January 9. Well, it’s been a banner week for TV news, so once again The Jourmudgeon offers his Facebook friends a summary of The Most Important Stories in the World. As always, The Jourmudgeon apologizes if his understanding is a tad garbled here and there. The Jourmudgeon has ordered a replacement part from Amazon for his broken give-a-shitter. So far, it hasn’t shipped.
1. Dozens of news outlets observed National Drooling Inbreeders with Firearms Week by descending on the Armed Drooling Inbreeders Convention at a bird sanctuary in the Oregon desert. A highlight of the convention was the celebrity appearance of Ammon Bundy, who was the focus of “Married… with Children,” a multipart Fox Network documentary in the ’80s. Mr. Bundy was willing to pull himself away from his latest enterprise, nursing a federal loan guarantee for his Phoenix area business, to spearhead the Inbreeders Convention’s theme: Let’s Get Government Off Our Backs So We Can Pay 10 Times More for Grazing Rights from Private Landowners. TV news personalities’ attempts to interview convention delegates suffered frequent interruptions from the sound of delegates shooting themselves in the foot. Another highlight of the convention was the competition for the coveted Shallow End of the Gene Pool Award, as delegates vied for credit for the decision to meet in a bunch of nondescript federal buildings in the middle of nowhere. There was consensus that future conventions need to be held more often. Following invitations from several Republican Presidential candidates, delegates began planning the armed takeover of next month’s Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
2. In other Gun News, firearms rights advocates at a Town Hall meeting broadcast by CNN criticized President Obama for finally acknowledging his constitutionally mandated duty to enforce the law. Repeatedly, and with increasing frustration, they tried to make the president understand two fundamentals. The first was articulated by Presidential Candidate Pat Paulsen in 1968: “Without guns, how can we shoot anybody?” (Paulsen ran as a write-in candidate, so it was impossible to determine how many votes he won. It was almost certainly less than the 2.9 million garnered by another comedy candidate, Ralph Nader, in his successful 2000 effort to make George W. Bush president.) The second gun-rights fundamental cited in the Town Hall broadcast was first enunciated by Homer Simpson when he was not allowed to buy a handgun because of a mandatory waiting period: “Three days? But I’m mad now.” Gun control advocates, meanwhile, unfurled a bold new slogan in their ongoing campaign to explain their fecklessness: “Voting? What’s That?”
3. The family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Cleveland boy who was shot by a police officer who mistook his pellet gun for something more deadly, reacted with anger and sadness to a grand jury’s refusal to indict the officer, and the prosecutor’s defense of the grand jury’s inaction. In a ray of sunshine for law-and-order advocates, though, the grand jury and prosecutor were considering charging Tamir posthumously with Acting Like a 12-Year-Old and Being Too Big for His Age.
4. The names of confused friends and family members of several Republican presidential candidates began showing up on the news when the candidates finally started dragging them out of the closet. The occasion was a forum in New Hampshire, where officials have acknowledged that pretty much every citizen in the state is addicted to heroin, and warned that the New Hampshire Primary might have to be called off because everyone will be dead by then. Candidates, realizing that their drug-addicted friends and family had gone from Ultimate Political Liability to Invaluable Political Asset overnight, took turns pulling them, blinking, into the spotlight, out-empathizing each other with their Nearness to the Problem. “I knew this guy in law school, or someplace, who was an addict,” Chris Christie said. “Yeah? Well, my daughter was an addict, but she’s getting better,” Jeb Bush acknowledged. “So?” Carly Fiorina shot back. “My daughter lost her life.” “Huh,” said Donald Trump. “That’s nothing. I personally died twice after my hair inadvertently became addicted to heroin during post-operative recovery. The heroin was prescribed by a Muslim doctor.” John Kasich saw his poll numbers plummet after he was forced to admit that all of his friends and relatives “are pretty normal.” He was also sanctioned by the national Republican Party for attempting to use the forum to address substantive issues. “You’re all wimps,” said Ted Cruz later. “My daughter will never be addicted to heroin, because I spank her.”