The other day, I was chatting with a dear friend who still lugged around one of those old-fashioned beasties upon his tightly wound shoulders we older people like to call, “… a job …”
A “job,” of course, means receiving one (1) dog yummy and head pat in exchange for one’s hourly toil. But, did the origin of the term have anything to do with the Old Testament/O Woe Is Moi figure — Job?
(Pronounced, JOE-bubbubbubhhh)?
The Book of Job is the ancient tale of The Original All-Around Great Guy, a man who does everything right, save for one thing. God seemingly allowed the devil (it’s a complicated, scholarly story about “which” devil the Bible meant; don’t ask) to test Job’s righteousness by essentially giving the Old Testament cowherder a serious, atomic “melvin.”*
(*A melvin is the act of grabbing the back of someone’s underwear and yanking it so fiercely in the direction of the planet Uranus it causes said victim to walk on their tippy-toes, crave showtunes and speak in castrato. / Merriam-Webster)
The guy, Job, worked like a dog his whole life. He lives the exemplary religious life. I wondered. Did a “job” came from “Job?” Nope. Didn’t. The lower-case and somewhat dull origins of “job” are traced to the early 1600’s, meaning a, “…single task, piece of work or something singular to be done.” Interestingly, a later sub-meaning of “job” comes from early 20th century slang, meaning, “… to cheat, or betray.”
Speaking of “betray,” this leads us to today’s trenchant think piece on Hunter Biden. You know? The weasly son of the weasly and yelling-out-of-context president, Joe Biden?
My dear pal from Paragraph One has worked harder than all of history’s peasants put together. Look up “Work Ethic” in the encyclopedia and there’s my friend’s photo, smiling gamely, waving two cupped fists over his head like a heavyweight champ. In contrast, there’s Hunter Biden. Drug addict. Drunk. Whoremonger. Liar. Cheat. Pervert. Conman. Child abandoner. Flasher. Dumbbell. To call Hunter Biden a mutt is an insult to mutts. And, after all that, what a pit of hell the poor wretch must live in. The fruit of President Biden’s loins is the epitome of The Grasshopper of “The Grasshopper & The Ant” fable fame. Both Hunter and The Grasshopper play all day. Winter arrives with a cold thud. The Grasshopper has spent his days, fiddling and dancing. He has no place to stay, nothing to eat, no warm clothes. The goodly Ant takes in his fellow insect.
I remember as a kid, adults tried to press upon me the moral of the story. They wisely claimed that you have to labor to build up your reserves, your home, your food stores, for those rainy days. Being a young, well — me — I annoyingly pointed out that the true moral of the story was that if you play your entire life, not to fret. Someone filled with ancient platitudes will take you in, feed and nurse you to wellness and content. So. Why work in the first place?
I was about 7. The adults? They didn’t have a snappy comeback for my take on noble Aesop’s fable.
I shared with my overworked friend that Hunter Biden is actually a chap to be admired, from an amoral point of view. Huntie does absolutely everything wrong, illegal, deplorable, hypocritical, gooey and despicable. You know. Like today’s Democratic Party?
Hunter can’t perform at anything approaching an adult or sane level. Yet, he gets himself a fat-salaried job as an executive on a major Ukrainian natural gas company. Better? The guy who hires him publicly notes the president’s son is dumber than a dog. Better yet? Hunter doesn’t know which end of a can of Pennzoil is up and can’t speak Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese and barely English. And yet, hourly now, the public wades through smarmy, waist-deep details of how Hunter, and it surely looks like his father, POTUS himself, made millions of dollars over the years in what is perhaps the biggest and most vulgar shakedown racket in American history.
The lives of Hunter and Joe leave a mucus-rich forensic trail.
Income tax evasion on tens of millions in foreign bribes? That’s only just the waistband of Hunter and Joe Biden’s soiled underwear. What, exactly, did the Chinese Communist Party and battalions of swarthy foreign actors get in return for Hunter’s comic inability to touch the tip of his nose with his, or anybody else’s, index finger?
I look at a score of actions from this Democratic administration and leadership. If one didn’t know better, no circle of college-educated folk could, on purpose, do more to divide and wreck one perfectly good United States. It’s almost as if it were by design. What was the deal, in the early days of the Biden administration, of selling part of the U.S. oil reserves to China? You know. Where the communists live? The ones who vow to knock over, like a cow on a steep hillside, America by the year 2050?
That explosion in a clown factory called the Afghanistan Withdrawal two years ago? Those of you not glued to “Laverne & Shirley” outtakes on YouTube might recall that in a seeming blink after the U.S. pulled out, Chinese business advisors were pouring into that faraway armpit, signing deals to export the country’s rich resources.
And that includes heroin.
Thanks to Big Guy Joe?
But, like a foolish, fiddling, coke-sniffing Grasshopper, Hunter will probably have the last laugh. And, probably, so will his father. There will be more committee meetings and outraged harrumphs and Why-I-Oughta’s from Republicans, yet, sadly, no firing squads.
But, in the end, the country’s easily duped, sitcom-watching and taxpaying ants will open winter’s door. They’ll let Joe and Hunter in to camp by the warm and cozy hearth and leave a slime puddle and no thank you note.
The most prolific humorist/satirist in world history, Santa Clarita’s John Boston has worked for The Mighty Signal since it came out on clay tablets. Visit his bookstore at johnbostonbooks.com.
