And in This Corner...
Good ideas are wonderful things. Thomas Edison had a good idea that morphed into a great idea and somewhere in the excess of five thousand experiments that good idea became the electric light bulb. Everybody has good ideas and sometimes someone says, "That's a really great good idea, let's do something about it!" The problem arises when that someone is a politician or someone who wants to do good. Either one of those two groups should cause the good idea person to go hide in a dark closet with a bottle of scotch until the good idea goes away.
An outstanding example of a good idea that fell into the wrong hands is Political Correctness. I first encountered Political Correctness when I was very young and made a comment to another young man who was of a different color. He discussed it with me in the schoolyard during recess and I experienced my first bloody nose. You might say the concept of Political Correctness was hammered home. It has nothing to do with Political Correctness but my next memorable bloody nose came one day when another young man implied that my mother and father indulged in "the dirty". I was offended at the concept and besides they were far too old for such disgraceful behavior, they were in their early thirties at the time. Looking back on it I really don't think they did such a thing anyway. My father was very aware of my existence and I truly believe that he didn't want to take the chance of producing another one.
One example of Political Correctness getting out of hand is a tendency for a certain segment of the female population to insure their identity by using the hyphen when they get married. Susan Smith marries John Jones and assumes the new name of Susan Smith-Jones. She does this because she wants to maintain her identity as a person, not just John's wife. Somehow she has neglected to realize that she had assumed her father's identity in the first place. Her mother was Mary Williams when she married Tom Smith, shouldn't Susan acknowledge her birthright and her mother by being Susan-Smith-Williams-Jones? What about the grandparents? Susan has two sets of grandparents and there are four names there that should be acknowledged. If Susan carries her mission of identity to a logical conclusion the act of addressing a letter to her would cause my computer to go into permanent brain lockup.
Then there is the problem of addressing a letter to someone named Susan Smith, I don't know if Susan is a Ms. or a Mrs. I have a 50-50 option of getting it wrong. In the real world it is a fact that if you are faced with a 50-50 option you have a 90% chance of getting it wrong. I don't want to call her Susan because I don't know her and this is a formal business letter. I don't want to start the letter off with "Dear Susan" which implies an assumption that we are old and dear friends. Chances are that is not the case since most business letters I write fall into the category of asking for something, begging for something, complaining about something, or just in general having a problem. I am not looking for a pen pal, I am not seeking friendship, I just need some help in a problem area and am not seeking a lifelong relationship. Besides my wife wants to know why I'm having correspondence with someone named Susan. I normally resolve the quandary by not writing the letter and letting the problem seek its own solution.
Political Correctness has produced generations that are spending their time being offended. I have forced myself to stop holding doors open for women since I have had unpleasant encounters with members of the opposite sex who feel that I have assumed they cannot open a door themselves. I have had doors held open for me no doubt because the holdee has assumed that I'm an old phart. I know I'm an old phart and I thank the person for holding the door, I don't feel offended, although I have probably offended a nearby lawyer who has just witnessed a sound case of offensive behavior in the Political Correctness arena that could enrich both of us.

And In This Corner

I find the current crisis running rampant through the American automobile industry fascinating. In the 1960’s I was a youthful foreign sports car salesman in California. I choose that profession because I loved sports cars and wasn’t in a position to buy one. But I found out that if you were a salesman you got a demonstrator. Sounded great to me, I got one to drive, hung around sports car people, and got paid for it.
There was a national trade newspaper called Automotive News that came out ever so often, I have forgotten the frequency, which reported the nation’s automotive news. Rather a clever name for an automotive newspaper, don’t you think? It’s important to keep that type of thinking prominent when you consider the American automobile manufacturer.
I remember one particular news item of the time that discussed the impact of foreign automobiles on the domestic market. At that time Detroit considered itself the center of the automotive world and pooh-poohed a possible threat by the foreign import on domestic production and sales. The article claimed that nationwide foreign sales only amounted to three to four percent of the total automobile sales in this country.
The reason that article has stuck with me is that I clearly remember that where I was located, Los Angeles County, foreign auto sales ran in the thirty percent range. No one in Detroit had noticed that California had become the mecca for the automobile nut. Cars were a way of life in California and cars that provided what the buying public wanted were selling like Levi’s priced at $1.98.
I was working at a small sports car agency when the owner got a wild hair and decided to pick up the then unknown line of Japanese cars called the Datsun. Rebellion in the ranks! We were “sports car” salesmen; we weren’t going to demean ourselves selling those Japanese rice burners made of surplus Campbell soup cans. Unfortunately, we would get trapped by a customer who would shove us into a corner and force us to take their money so they could drive away in one of those rice burners.
To understand the next point you have to know that we were selling English sports cars. Time passed and one day we realized that we were selling these Japanese tinker toys and they never came back! That was unheard of in the sports car world, especially in the English sports car world. We found out, to our surprise, that Datsun was a very good automobile. It started, it ran, it kept on running, it got good gas mileage, and went down the road without parts falling off.
Time passed again and one day Detroit noticed that a Japanese tsunami had swept across the country and anti-Detroit waves were battering their sacred premises. People were drifting away from the lumbering Detroit hulks and actually buying those ridiculous little gas powered baby buggies. Detroit immediately took action, called in focus groups, consulted designers, conducted market surveys and said, “Very well, if the American public wants small cars we’ll give them the biggest small car in the world, and the most luxurious!”
The rest of the story is American automotive history.

And In This Corner...

The State of Washington, like many different states today, has found itself in a very difficult financial position. The members of the govern ring party of this state all claim that they had nothing to do with an out of control budget, it seems to fall into the category of “the dog ate my homework”. Governor Chris Gregoire has promised to bring the current budget into line with a series of taxes that give new meaning to the word usury.

One of her budget cuts was to increase tuition cost up to seven percent at the state universities. After that increase and several other state wide increased taxes and fees she found that the budget was still out of hand. The Governor then cut the budget thirteen percent for the state’s four year universities. She then made very vocal political promises that she was not going to further increase the fees or taxes on the students of the universities in the state.

In the first week of March she proposed that students pay a temporary surcharge during the next two years to help make up for higher education budget cuts. Sen. Joe Zarelli, the ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said that sounds like a tax or fee to him, but the governor’s office disagrees. “We don’t view it as a fee. We view it as a temporary charge in lieu of greater tuition increases,” said Pearse Edwards, the governor’s spokesman. “It’s supplemental and temporary.”

It would appear that we have revisited that famous phrase “it depends on what your definition of is is”. In the state capitol of Olympia a surcharge doesn’t seem to be the same as a tax or a fee. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language looks at Olympia’s definition differently: TAX-a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand, FEE-a charge in payment for professional services, SURCHARGE-an additional charge, tax, or cost.
The blame can only be placed where it belongs, over two centuries as a country and we still believe what politicians choose to tell us. It is our fault, we elected them. In the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

Kids Today Have It Tough

I feel sorry for the kids in school today, what are they going to tell their grandchildren?

Drop by any school in the morning or afternoon and look at all the school buses and parents cars lined up to shuttle the kids back and forth. The little darlings have to walk all the way from the school building to the curb. That’s adventure?

Just after I finished the fourth grade my parents moved to a ranch in the mountains of Colorado. During that first summer I got acquainted with the various cows, horses, dogs, cats and extraneous varmints that inhabited the ranch. Fall and school was the farthest thought from my mind.

As always, fall appeared and I was trundled off to school in the ranch pickup and properly enrolled in the fifth grade. The next morning my mother tucked a lunch under my arm walked out the back door and pointed across the pasture towards a distant ridge line, “School is somewhere around two miles away, just behind that ridge. See you this afternoon.” She disappeared back into the cabin to do whatever mothers do when they send their first born out to get devoured by mountain lions. After that first morning she didn’t even bother to point at the ridge line anymore.

When the snow got too deep to walk in my dad took me down to the bar and rousted out a retired cow pony named Chief for me. To my dad he was a cow pony; to me he was an elephant with a horse skin on him. I couldn’t possibly reach up far enough to get a saddle on him, which was the first step to riding him. I assumed that was the first step since my dad had left to go do foreman things. I stepped back and studied that monster realizing that he wasn’t going to shrink and I wasn’t growing that fast. I learned to hoist my saddle up on top of a corral rail, climb up there with it and wait for Chief to wander past me whereupon I would fling the saddle on his back. Sometimes I missed when he wandered fast. I learned to compensate since he only knew two gaits, slow wander and fast wander.

The years have passed and somehow that small school house has magically changed its location. Not only has it gotten further away, there have appeared insurmountable mountains and raging rivers ‘twixt me and that seat of learning. Did I mention the bears?

Listening to my contemporaries talk to their grandchildren I have found out that back when they were kids it seemed to be a standard policy that no school was ever placed closer than five miles to any student. And every one of those students lived in an area where there were blizzards 365 days a year, interspersed with dust storms. “I remember back in nineteen-ought-and-froze-to-death, the year of the GREAT blizzard (as opposed to the everyday blizzard that took place in May) I had to chop a cord of wood, slop the hogs, and lug well water before I even made the trek to school and then…..”, and the story goes downhill from there.

And that’s just the average story, I have heard of some kids that really had it rough!

What are the kids today going to tell their grandchildren? “Rough? I’ll tell you it was rough back when I went to school in Selah. I remember one time when the temperature must have been in the thirties and I had to make that entire one mile trip in a school bus with a busted heater!”

You know, somehow that just doesn’t sound the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a tremendous amount of respect for our elected politicians, it’s when they start talking about a “kinder and gentler” Internal Revenue Service that I end up rolling around on the floor with a towel stuffed in my mouth.

I have been among the select few who have participated in the modern interpretation of the Spanish Inquisition referred to by the IRS as an “audit”. It took place in a grey fortress in the Los Angeles area. After a humorous interlude involving a full body cavity search I was ushered into a steel grey cubicle furnished with steel grey appliances of torture that the steel grey occupant tried to pass off as a desk and chairs. He very quickly established the ground rules pertaining to our friendly visit; he pointed out that that it would be far easier if we all agreed I was guilty saving a great deal of aggravation and utilizing the remaining time working out just exactly how guilty I was. I was one of the lucky ones, I was able to leave the building with an empty briefcase and an extra pair of socks, the right one had a hole in it.

That was my first one. A few years later it was my turn again. Fortunately I had remembered the routine from the first audit and arrived for my second one fully prepared. I had the deed to my house, the title to my car, my bankbooks, credit cards, negotiable bonds and various other items of value. I simply walked back into the steel grey cubicle, piled the big stuff in the corner, signed the paperwork giving all my worldly goods to the United States Government and threw myself across the desk begging for mercy. The IRS agent recognized that I knew the rules and rewarded me by allowing me to keep my wife.

With national elections hovering in the future, many politicians are already looking towards the insecurity of having to go look for work and they are casting about frantically for a popular issue. The IRS is a natural. If they are a Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Socialist, Communist, Whig, Federalist, or Independent they all recognize the common bond of IRS dislike rampant in the hearts and minds of the voters. Mass appeal, mass support, and they have no danger of accidental alienation. Not even from the employees of the IRS.

The people lurking in the hallways of the IRS fear not for they know that nothing will really change. Two reasons: one, these same politicians have their returns audited by the IRS. And, two, to change the attitude and policies of the IRS all employees of that agency who have been ruthless and irresponsible in their duties will have to be discharged. The taxpayers of the United States cannot afford to pay unemployment benefits to the entire Internal Revenue Service agency.

What are you?

For some strange reason my life is showing an increase in social obligations, I seem to be doomed to spending an increasing amount of time at parties, dinners, functions, and being around groups of people I don’t know. At some point during the festivities someone is going to find me lurking in the corner wondering why my martini tastes like kerosene and start a conversation with me. Invariably, after the usual party patter is out of the way the question is asked, “What are you?”

My stock answer is, “Cranky, out-of-sorts, grouchy, and tired of suffering idiots.”

Without hearing a word of what I’ve just said they respond brightly, “I’m German-American”. Or Swedish-American or one of any number of hyphen Americans that seem to be so “in” today. The identification of an individual based on ancestral background has replaced the equally boring, “What’s your sign?” Personally I’d rather go back to being a Pisces and listen to a brain deadening analysis of my psyche by some white wine imbiber who believes our lives are influenced by the meanderings of Ursa Minor.

The “what’s your sign” people are much easier to deal with than the current crop of hyphen Americans. The vast majority of these uncomfortable people seem to be looking for a place in society that they can’t create for themselves. It is not good enough for them to be an American, they have to be something else American.

Let’s use me for example, or not, as you please. When this question arises at a social gathering I have the impulse to scream “FIRE!” at the top of my lungs and jump out the nearest window. This is not always practical and there are times I get locked into the conversation. Then I am forced to admit that I don’t know what else I am other than American. All the members of my family are Americans, and the large majority of their friends are Americans.

This does not even slow down the hyphen American who’s hot on my trail. “Well, you must be Irish, you have an Irish name.”

I try to point out that I have a friend named Boeing and he’s not an airplane.

That doesn’t work and they bore in for the kill, “You should be proud of your Irish heritage, you shouldn’t try to hide it.”

I’m left with the impression that should go out, buy a funny shaped hat, drink lots of Irish whisky, and talk with an unintelligible brogue to be acceptable in this person’s circle of friends.

Let’s assume that I am of Irish descent. Only assume, mind you. My ancestors obviously left Ireland for a very good reason to come to the United States. Once here they became Americans. Their offspring were Americans, and their offspring, so on and so forth for many generations. No connections with Ireland, no desires to join the IRA and blow up women and children in department stores.

I’m an American with no apologies. No hyphens. No second guessing. Am I always happy to be an American? No. I argue with my government, the courts, the tax laws, and my morning newspaper. Could I do this in any other country? No. Do I want to be anything but an American? No.

I live in an imperfect country in an imperfect world. I do know that I live the best country available and I’m grateful of the foresightedness of my ancestors, whoever they were, that chose to move here.

Some people are here because their ancestors were brought here against their will. That was then, this is now. Nothing can undo that, history has one constant and that is that it is unchangeable. Talk to the vast majority of these descendants of forced Americans and you will find that they do not want to live in the country of their ancestors.

My major problem with hyphen Americans is they feel this deep need to inflict their concept of their culture on the rest of us.

If that’s the purpose of the hyphen then I demand equal rights. If I am descended from Irish immigrants I want my supposed culture inflicted on you. Since I must respect your hyphen, you must respect mine. I demand that one day a year be set aside as Irish Culture Day and everybody paints themselves blue and hangs from trees.

I will, as a free American with a hyphen, accept no compromise on that.

Introducing Terry Sexton

Terry Sexton was a writer for The Dean Martin Show, The Carol Burnett Show, and Laugh In.

He wrote comedy routines for Rowan and Martin, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Will Jordan, Skiles and Henderson, and Frank Gorshin. He also wrote Robert Goulet’s Australian Tour.

In the 1960’s Terry Sexton was writing commercials for Fred Arthur Productions, a nationwide advertising agency located in Denver, Colorado.A commercial he wrote for a bank in Kansas City won a “Clio” for the agency.

As a stand up comedian he performed at the Beacon Club, the Bali Hal, and was house comedian for the Woolhurst Country Club in Denver, Colorado.He appeared at The Underground and was house comedian for the Aspen Country Club in Aspen, Colorado. He was a regular performer at the Spotlight in Santa Monica and Ye Little Club in Beverly Hills.

In the 1970’s he realized that he could no longer tolerate the seamy side of the entertainment industry and had to find a career that had a higher degree of ethics and morality. He became a car salesman.

In 1992 Terry Sexton and his wife, JoAnn, started the Jethro Gazette.