With credit to a great sportswriter named Jimmy Cannon, who first wrote a “Nobody Asked Me But” column…
Nobody asked me but…
The other day as I was walking on 42nd Street near Third Avenue I looked up at a street sign and got a lump in my throat. There was a sign naming the street: “Jimmy Breslin Way.” Jimmy was my friend and my hero and like millions of his fans I miss him. The first thought I had when I saw the sign was, “I would give anything to read a Breslin column about President Donald Trump.” In 1989 Breslin wrote about Trump, “Beware always of the loudmouth taking advantage of the situation and appealing to a crowd’s meanest nature.” Only Jimmy had that wonderful writing rage to give Trump the bashing he so richly deserves.
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What ever happened to food stamps? During the Obama administration you read every week how many more people were applying for food stamps. Today, food stamps have disappeared from the news. Truth is, food stamp applications are dropping fast. In Kansas, the amount of people receiving benefits was 75 percent lower two years after the Kansas governor reinstated work requirements. That tells me that people who need food stamps are still getting them and that’s good, and people who were “gaming the system” are running for the hills, which is even better.
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Here’s my favorite country-western lyric of the week. The subject? Growing old:
“Just like an Eskimo don’t need no Frigidaire,
I don’t want your rocking chair.”
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As much as I can’t stand Trump and believe he’s the most dangerous president in our history, when someone tells you that Trump is messing up in his handling of the murder of Jamal Khashoggiby Saudi Arabia, ask them, “What would Obama do?” I know Obama would make a great speech and threaten to report the big bad Saudis to the rough-and-tough United Nations. Now that would scare the bejesus out of those murderous towelheads.
Forget what the media says. Just ask yourself, before any international incident, “What would Obama do?” Hint: The answer is an eloquent “nothing.”
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If you like your detective novels hard-boiled, I’ve got a winner for you. The hero’s name is Detective Sean Duffy and he’s a coke-snorting, weed-smoking, hard-drinking cop who makes Sam Spade look like RuPaul. The action takes place in Northern Ireland during the “Troubles” and Duffy keeps checking the bottom of his car for bombs before he starts it. The author of the Duffy series is Edgar Award-winning crime novelist Adrian McKinty from Belfast, and he is right out of the Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett school of in-your-face writing. Start with the first of the Sean Duffy books, “The Cold Cold Ground.” Want to sit back and enjoy listening to the books? Buy the audiobook from Audible and let the incredible voice of Gerald Doyle read you to sleep.
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Speaking of great books: If you have an 8- to 15-year-old girl or boy in your life, introduce them to the theater through the eyes of a lovable mouse. Get your favorite kid a copy of “LuLu the Broadway Mouse.” This is the fantastic debut novel of stage and television actress Jenna Gavigan. It’s the sweet, funny story of a wonderful little mouse named Lulu who lives in the Shubert Theatre and dreams of a career on Broadway. Get kids’ eyes off a cell phone and onto a good book. Buy “Lulu” today. Read it yourself. It’s that good.
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What do you want to bet that in the more redneck parts of Florida, and in some other parts of this country where idiots live, this Halloween some moron will think it’s funny to wear a Cesar Sayoc mask.
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How are the New York Football Giants like an opossum?
They play dead at home and get killed on the road.
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Here’s the best explanation of politics sent to me by a man who wrote:
My son was flunking out of college so I told him, “You will marry the girl I choose.
He said, “No.”
I told him, “She is Bill Gates’ daughter.”
He said, “Yes.”
I called Bill Gates and said, “I want your daughter to marry my son.”
Bill Gates said, “No.”
I told Bill Gates, “My son is the CEO of the World Bank.”
Bill Gates said, “OK.”
I called the president of World Bank and asked him to make my son the CEO.
He said, “No.”
I told him, “My son is Bill Gates’ son-in-law.”
He said, “OK.”
And thus began the practice of hiring morons to work in influential positions of government. The practice is unbroken to this date.
And that’s exactly how politics works here in America.
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