LEFT OUT By SUSAN BANKSTON
Way Out West Utah and a governor’s race are in the news.
I’m going to share two news items with you this month. Both of them are certified true, and you might want to take notes because some of the names are going to resurface in the coming months. First, let’s trot up to Utah, the homeland of men living on the corner of Nowhere and Remote. They’re the ones who didn’t have enough gas money to make it all the way to Alaska. They live in homemade cabins, and when they accidentally blow themselves up with homemade bombs, the local newspaper politely describes them as “loners.” Darlin’, you would not be living in Utah unless you were a loner. Recently, a 19-year-old Utah woman was charged, booked, and jailed for stomping on a pro-police sign and throwing it in the trash. This happened right in front of the county sheriff’s deputy who had just given the woman’s friend a speeding ticket. That deputy who filed charges described the brutal crime scene in his affidavit: “I observed one of the friends stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign next to where the traffic stop was conducted, crumple it up in a destructive manner and throw it into a trash can, all while smirking in an intimidating manner towards me.” She smirked. He felt intimidated. OK, so now who’s the snowflake, Wilbur? I have never been intimidated by a smirk. Pissed off, yes. I’ve even been embarrassed and disappointed, but not intimidated. Given the choice between being smirked at and having an angry mob hurling bricks at you, most police officers would go with a smirk most of the damn time. Please tell me: how is it possible to be intimidated by a smirking 19-year-old? That’s all 19-year-olds do. It’s their last year to be a teenager, so they smirk, they eat, they shrug, and then they start all over. I gotta tell ya, if that smirking teen had trashed a Black Lives Matter sign, they would have given her a medal, an AK-47, a cute camo hat, and a free license to hunt down liberals and shoot them in the ass. I guess I need to study Utah law to find out 26
AUGUST 2021
|
OutSmartMagazine.com
if rolling your eyes is also considered a terrorist threat. If so, I’d have to keep a bag over my head whenever I visited. For our next news flash, I need to introduce you to Allen West. Honey, this child is a shiver just looking for a spine to run up. West is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He was asked to retire after being fined $5,000 for beating an Iraqi policeman. (Are you listening, Utah sheriff’s deputies?) West also fired a gun near an Iraqi’s head during an interrogation. West retired to Florida, where he accidentally got elected to Congress by riding the wave of Republican victories in 2010. He served one term, and was soundly defeated the next two times he ran. After doing some talk-radio gigs, West suddenly up and moved to Texas to run for chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He won because the job description for that position includes the words weird, wacky, and preposterous. But that job didn’t last long, because West gets antsy if his name isn’t on a ballot somewhere, somehow. So of course, he’s now running for governor. Of Texas—a state that he’s just visiting. Sadly, West is running a campaign that ignores our biggest problem in Texas—an elec-
trical grid that’s about as dependable as gas-station sushi—and focuses instead on demonizing the gays. “We have a new religion that’s being put forth. It’s the religion of same-sex marriage,” he said, talking about a Colorado baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. My friend Thelma was not as upset about that “new religion” statement as you might suspect. She figures it means that with Governor West in charge, she and her wife, Juanita Jean, can declare themselves a church and never have to pay taxes again. Thelma says that she’d probably vote for the guy if it weren’t for all that stuff about beating people up and firing weapons. I want you to take a good look at Allen West’s campaign sign. I looked at it five times, and four of those times what I saw was Worst, not West. And that’s exactly what a West victory would be, Cupcake. Sorry, conservative Christians, but spending eternity with y’all is not the selling point you think it is. Susan Bankston lives in Richmond, Texas, where she writes about her hairdresser at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., at juanitajean.com.
