DEAR SCOTT —
I remember when you sailed away, so long ago. Your 1992 demise was wedged between Halloween and the presidential election, upstaging both. In case you’re not getting The Mighty Signal in Heaven, some appendage-wagging sex-slave-owning gomer from Arkansas won. His name escapes me. In between trying to re-poison Snow White, his voodoo wife has been beheading chickens and running for the Oval Office every 13 minutes since. So far, we’ve dodged the bullet.
It’ll be 30 years this fall, since you’ve been gone, Scott. The SCV has more people than Commie-B-Word China and they’ve pretty much ironed out all the wrinkles and wrapped fences around oaks so they won’t escape. On every corner, we’ve planted burgertoriums, pot shops and car washes for the homeless.
Back in this paper’s riotous days, I’d bet 90% of the locals knew — and dreaded — who you were. Former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, great heir to the valley’s jefe, Henry Mayo Newhall, and this Mighty Signal’s grand editorialist and Cyrano, they certainly had to hide the women and children in the root cellar when you published one of your infamous, front-page, Death To Traitors editorials. Personally? I never could see how anyone could object to the execution of traitors. What else are we supposed to do with scoundrels?
It’s an entirely different valley today, Scott, an entirely different America. You wouldn’t recognize either. I suspect it would hurt your heart. You always had such high hopes for both, always saw the smudges on the soul, yet, more clearly, saw that impossibly bright light of glorious possibility that burns within us all.
Earlier in the week was the Fourth of July. America is such a darn fine place to live, best in the history of civilization. And yet, Independence Day, 2022, a quarter want to incinerate the country, a quarter carry a sheep-like indifference, another quarter are too dumb to chew gum and the rest of us weep. Lunatics murder children at parades and thugs — state-sponsored — kill our police.
From your vantage point, behind a high cloud, what would you write about? May I share something? Satire today is beyond tough. Events come already nuts, prepackaged, stupid and self-satirizing. Like a Kamala Harris press conference. We’re willfully tearing our communities apart, not so much here in Santa Clarita, but, signs are undeniable. America owns two-dozen-plus major population centers a blackout away from anarchy. Worse? Voters keep voting for anarchy. Sexual perversion seems to be the new requirement to join a teachers’ union. The FBI and Department of Justice are labeling parents at PTA meetings as domestic terrorists. Here’s one for you, o’ esteemed car collector: Gas? It’s six-bucks-plus. Not a tankful. A gallon. Not making it up. Bureaucrats — the abject donkey girl scouts and booger-eating morons of the American foodchain — are running most aspects of our lives and they seem to be without number. I don’t know if they have branches on clouds up there, but hold on to one.
Joe. Biden. Is. PRESIDENT…
Need I remind that’s the same Dolt from Delaware, who was regarded by 50 years of congressional colleagues as the dumbest person in American history, is president? Joe’s a 7X-threat: angry, nuts, incompetent, a crook, a liar, inarticulate and senile. Wait. Came up with three more X’s — pervy, ungrateful and a bully.
The 10-X President.
It’s easy to blame Joe. He’s a buffoon and easy target. It’s us. Some 80 million stupids voted for him. In 30 short years, America’s institutions have become so dishearteningly vulgar. We slurp pornography and education invites the debauched to dance madcap in nursery schools.
I am so disappointed with Hollywood. Monday’s Fourth of July? Stars were cursing the very country that blessed them where they could earn adulation and fortunes. America worships ingrates, elects perverts and stands by helplessly as barbarians torch our communities. Our solutions? Worship more ingrates. Elect more perverts. Passively slouch, hands in pockets and watch helpless and ashamed. We are writhing like some hapless Old Testament victim, tied in a Gordian Knot of our own making. (Did you like the mixing of Old Testament and Greek allegories in the same sentence?) There’s not much left to that holy pronoun of “We” anymore. I’ve wondered if America is facing extinction — not from climate change, not from some phantasmagorical Rube Goldberg mousetrap, buried below Panama, about to snap two continents together into a new mountain range, but from a collective, self-destructive ego, spiraling toward oblivion.
Sigh.
You know what we say in the Opinion Business — “Blah-buh-blah-buh-blah…”
Scott? I’ve a daughter now, almost 20. She’s a delight, a quiet beauty. She has a dark sense of humor — you’d love her. Your wife, Ruth, would double love her. I’m not supposed to mention her by name in my writings, but this alleged family member is taking the art world by storm, studying in Italy as we speak. Elections are a blink away, with more than a smattering of the usual idiots poking holes in the ozone layer with index fingers. Halloween’s right before that. I’d love to go trick-or-treating with my not-so-little girl again someday. I never had that muscle to turn back the smallest clock. Still. It’s sweet to imagine. My girl and I could traipse door-to-door, begging for chocolate. I could go as Hope and she could dress as Despair.
My girl tends to favor her mother.
I miss her. Miss you. Miss, at times, so many dear people. I so miss my country. I’d like to be able to pass along America to her, the one will all the invisibles — integrity, honesty, love, freedom, joy, the search for our own, divine purpose.
Be seeing you, dear friend and mentor. Certainly not soon as there’s epochs more deviltry in the cards for me.
You take good care of yourself Up There. Rest. Hydrate. Use sunscreen in the rarified air. Keep up on your current events, dear Scott…
John Boston is the most prolific satirist in world history. Ergo, visit his own publishing company, johnbostonbooks.com and empty your checking accounts.
