I learned recently that one of my all-time favorite rural/aggie columnists got his hide nailed to the proverbial wall by Political Correctness. It seems that a few farm wives — most on social media and most not direct readers of his column — took exception to my friend’s humorous Top Ten List of “above and beyond” farm wife qualities.
The result was predictable. My friend the next week explained that it wuz time to put his column on the shelf — perhaps temporarily and perhaps permanently — when humor causes more ire than laughs or grins. So, now his faithful readers — those of us with a sense of humor and thick hides — are now deprived of enjoying his weekly column.
To my way of thinking, the birth of Political Correctness coincided with the first peal of the death-knell bell for American humor as we used to know it.
Taking ethnicity, gender, age, work-place entanglements, and spousal disagreements off the humor table opened the door for coarseness and disgusting language to pose as pseudo-humor.
That’s the state of American humor today. Old-time humor is dying or dead. The old-time comedians and comediennes of days gone by like Johnny Carson, Red Skelton, Johnathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coco, Phyllis Diller, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Jack Benny, etc., are probably spinning in their graves at what PC has done to American humor.
Maybe, just maybe, could it be that we’ve become too thin-skinned and hyper-sensitive?
At any rate, as a sign of protest to all the politically correct protestors, I’ve written a Top Ten List to counter the one my columnist friend got his hair singed for. So … here’s my:
Top Ten ways to pick out a hen-pecked farmer/rancher:
- Never complains about the pleated Chino slacks his wife buys him for work pants.
- Claims he prefers flower bed maintenance to spraying weeds and brush.
- Not only removes shoes and socks, but washes feet, before entering his domicile.
- When choosing a tractor for the day’s work, always chooses the ancient tractor with the ragged umbrella to the new one with the air-conditioned cab.
- Says he chose a Chihuahua for a farmstead watchdog, rather than a Pit Bull, because highly audible barking is more of a deterrent than silent biting.
- Keeps area around his favorite easy-chair neat as a pin.
- Claims antique auctions and flea markets are more interesting any day of the week than cattle auctions and farm dispersals.
- Says his reaction time has slowed too much to run the head-gate at the working pens.
- Reflexively puts the toilet seat down every time, everywhere.
- Maintains purchasing a pink pickup was his personal preference.
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That should put me directly in the crosshairs. Fire away!
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Holy, smoke! It was 59 degrees this morning. That followed several days of cloudy, rainy weather. Now we need some dry weather to dry out the corn and let the soybeans bloom and fill pods. Damphewmore Acres has become a crab-grass and foxtail sanctuary and all the tomatoes are cracking wide open before they ripen.
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Last weekend, ol’ Nevah and I and our Arkansas friends, the Penn Cilpushers, got together in Kansas City to attend a KC Royals baseball game. We got to enjoy a Royals victory for a change because usually my attendance guarantees the Royals a loss.
The next day we toured the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in downtown KC. We spent a very informative couple of hours at the museum. There’s a Jazz Music museum in the same complex and I’d like to visit it someday.
Our trip made two weekends in a row spent in over-crowded cities. Think I’ll say home in the peaceful Flint Hills for awhile and enjoy the fall flowers.
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Thanks to an aging reader for the following:
- Once, all villagers decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered – but only one boy came with an umbrella. That’s FAITH.
- When you throw a baby in the air, she laughs because she knows you will catch her. That’s TRUST.
- Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but we still set the alarms to wake up. That’s HOPE.
- We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That’s CONFIDENCE.
- We see the world suffering, but still we get married and have children. That’s LOVE.
- On an old man’s shirt was written a sentence: “I am not 90 years old. I am sweet 16 with 74 years experience.” That’s ATTITUDE.
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I’ll quit with those words of wisdom. I’ve probably gotten myself in enuf trouble for one week. Have a good ‘un.
