•Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik: Have you ever actually been unavailable for comment?
•Kim Kardashian: Do you have any talent at all? And no, that thing you can do doesn’t qualify as a talent. At best, it’s a skill.
•Linda Ronstadt: Why didn’t you stay and fight for your beloved Tucson instead of moving elsewhere and then talking crap? (However, I still love all of your music.)
•University of Arizona Athletic Director Greg Byrne: Do you have one of those Time Turner things that Hermione used in “The Prisoner of Azkaban” that allowed her to be in two places at once? I could swear I saw you at a high-school basketball game at the same time a friend of mine saw you at a Wildcat game in McKale Center. It’s either that or you’ve discovered a way to squeeze 36 hours into your day.
•KOLD News Anchor Heather Rowe: Where does someone even find false eyelashes like that in the 21st Century? You do a good job, but those things are so distracting. You look like you belong in an Austin Powers movie. And instead of “Mole-y, mole-y, mole-y, mole-y,” he’d be muttering “Lash-ey, lash-ey, lash-ey, lash-ey.”
•Peter Doocy, the former Navy SEAL who went on Fox News to take credit for shooting Osama Bin Laden: Let me get this straight: You’re a member of a group of the baddest dudes in the world and part of what makes you so bad is that you train incessantly and when an incredibly tough mission comes along, you handle your business and then you never, ever, NEVER talk about it. Why, then, did you bitch out?
•Governor-elect Doug Ducey: Are you, by any chance, related to that guy?
•Former head of the defunct TUSD Mexican-American Studies program who now goes to conferences and picks fights with people: ¿Como se dice “beat a dead horse” en Español?
•Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller: Really?!
•Hillary Clinton: Are you just going to lie low until the Democratic National Convention and not come up with any fresh ideas, because that strategy worked really well for you in 2008?
•Arizona Wildcat football star Scooby Wright: When you get married someday, will the preacher have to say, “And do you, Maria, take this man, Scooby…”?
•Immigration activist Isabel Garcia: In all seriousness, if 1,000 sweating Liberians showed up at Arizona’s southern border, would you still be your usual strident self in support of letting them into the country? And if not, why not?
•Newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas: If Common Core hadn’t come along and given you a raison d’etre, at which Denny’s would you be working?
•Tucson City Councilwoman Regina Romero: If, as it has been argued by some (and against by others), there were no verification process in place, would it not be unfair to rescind the revocation process through which the negative action had not taken place?
One last question. I used to be on a radio show with a conservative friend of mine. He eventually tired of me and now the show has a strictly I’m-More-Right-Wing-Than-You-Are format. Anyway, this guy named Vince used to call in to give me crap. It was cool; I always enjoyed talking to him, although we almost never agreed on anything.
Well, after my last column, Vince wrote a comment that included: “Boring, Tom. Democrats are good. Republicans are bad. What’s next…the State House conservatives are evil? Or maybe more anecdotal crap about how your wife is a great teacher, so all public education is wonderful?”
My question to Vince is: What is all of a sudden different that would make me change my mind? Injustice is still injustice and good is still good. While it could always find ways to improve incrementally, public education is wonderful. It’s a big reason why America became a world power. Parochial schools do a good job and private schools are fine, but America is on its third century of educating EVERYBODY. It’s easy to see how public education became the whipping boy for the Far Right, but the assaults thereon are generally misplaced and almost always self serving.
Yeah, my wife is a bad-ass teacher, but so are a whole lot of other people who don’t get the respect they deserve because it’s far easier to scapegoat them than it is to give them the support they need to be optimally great at what they do.
As for state legislators being evil, I don’t believe that. They’re not evil. ISIS is evil. Child molesters are evil. The so-called conservative Republicans in the Arizona State Legislature are just wrong…all the damn time. They’re wrong and smug and mean. Those traits don’t add up to evil; they just add up to petty. They think narrow and act small. Instead of following the job description—educating our young, maintaining the infrastructure, and providing public safety and health care, where needed—they are obsessed with remaking Arizona into a dystopian Crackpot Disneyland for rich people, bigots, and religious fanatics.
Listen, Ayn Rand sucked while she was alive; she sucked when she wrote those books, and she still sucks now that she’s dead. That’s never going to change and neither will my disdain for people who get elected and then refuse to just do their damn jobs.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2014.
Good questions-especially to your friend Vince.
Wow. Have you went “psychic friends” on me Tom? What makes you think that the same dude who sparred with you on the radio is now commenting on your columns?
It was a much fairer venue on “talk radio.” I haven’t forgotten Mark Twain (or whoever) admonishing
one to “never pick a fight with folks who buy ink by the barrel”. I feel very constricted writing in this little box. I will try to hold my own however.
We actually agreed on quite a bit during your years chatting with Emil.
We both loved Popeye’s chicken. We both found Mohammed Ali quite fascinating.
We also agreed that Sean Hannity was a bit of a dullard. I think that hippies and race hustling poverty pimps bored the hell out of both of us if I remember correctly.
Have a wonderful Christmas and I will pick a public school fight with you after the Holidays. Oh yeah, we both love that Jesus guy. There goes your cred with this Weekly bunch.
Oh, to answer your question. I thought that the world going to “hell in a hand basket” might have changed your mind a bit. Guess not…………later V
There has got to be more readers than the three of us. There are so few comments to read I may have to start reading the articles.
Come on Tucson.
I was banned by the weakly a while back. Maybe that is why you don’t have readers. This is a test to see if I am still banned. If not I will be willing to read and comment on Ralphs or whatever writing.
Okay, I am un banned. My question to Mr. D is : Concerning your question to Vince, “why would I change my mind”. Your mind could be changed if you were open to an idea, a new concept, etc. Hanging on to the same old dogma, DNC talking points, , etc. without looking at the whole picture and unintended consequences is not good for you and your readers. Do you want to be a reporter or a spin doctor? Your article was funny till you started on Vince. Then you fell off the left side of the page.
Some of us come here to “temper” your news.
Why can’t we go back to a trust but verify procedure in journalism?
WMDs are so yesterday.
You nailed it Harlan. Our esteemed journalist, radio host, nuclear scientist ,and basketball coach has never been open to changing his mind while on the radio or in his column. This usually indicates a pride issue.
The worst of all sins if I remember right.
Even when he would get his ass handed to him in a ” talk show” debate, Tom was right back espousing
his tired doctrines the very next week. Kind of like the football defensive corner who gets burned repeatedly by the wide receiver, but keeps yapping at the guy who has beaten him consistently.
I advise that you quit wasting your time. Every point in the article is easily refuted, but why bother
when some people aren’t really listening anyway.
Although claiming to be an “industrial strength Catholic” you will notice that Tom seldom mentions the “injustice” of late term abortion, evil child molesting priests or what big government dependence
has done to minority neighborhoods.
As for calling people ” petty and small ” while referring to the new Guv as douchey, what can you say?
I also think that Margaret Sanger “sucks”, not Ayn Rand. Merry Christmas
Well said, Vince. I touched upon the same thing 2 weeks ago. You can talk facts until you’re blue in the face to Tom and his ilk. It just won’t sink in. He let me down again this week. So what’s wrong with working in Denny’s? Maybe,with this wonderful Obummer econemy, it’s all a person can find. Maybe some people simply aren’t that bright. Not everyone is blessed with the brains your 2 kids have. Better they should sit on their asses waiting for a Gov’t check? I don’t think so. And what the Hell did Ayn Rand do? The poor woman is dead and buried. Give her a break.
Actually, I don’t see anybody changing their minds on anything, especially the commenters. Yet you bunch gripe that Tom isn’t open to new ideas. Talk about the kettle calling the pot pig-headed. Tom is actually a middle of the road guy. He makes sense to a much wider audience than you ever will. You guys are like Jehvoah’s Witnesses. You keep pounding on Tom’s door, knowing that your religion is the only true and right religion and that every government, business and church in the world is either downright controlled by Satan or is heavily influenced by “him”. Ayn Rand made it abundantly clear that selfishness is the most important emotion. You guys (an informal term that includes women) rant like John Gault, never questioning your premises but always coming to the same conclusions. Tom recognizes, like the rest of us, that you cannot escape your own convoluted logic. I’ve read a lot of Ayn Rand’s books. Have you read anything by Karl Marx? You don’t have to drink the Kool Aid to learn something from him. Be open minded if you do. You might learn something.
Kentop. At least I never said something about my friend Tom’s wife ( that’s right, friend) that was so vulgar the Weekly pulled it. ( 6-6-14). Self-rightous asshole.
Let’s face it, by the time Diane Douglas looked up “raison d’etre”, she would have forgotten the question.
CW13. With friends like you, who needs enemies?
Why not ask Tom. Like I said, I never had any of my comments pulled because they were judged to be vulgar and uncalled for.