I miss Lewis Grizzard!

 I loved Lewis Grizzard's columns. I have also read several of his books. His books had great titles such as "Shoot Low Boys-They're Riding Shetland Ponies". Who can forget "Chili Dawgs Always Bark At Night"? I only wish that Lewis had not died so young. He passed away almost thirty years ago at the age of 47. 

If only Lewis could have held on for the Fani Willis Fiasco. This is a story made for Lewis to write about in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution or the AJC as those in Atlanta call it. Lewis would have given us the play-by-play as Fani lied to us all on the news. She's paying her boyfriend $250 an hour to handle a case for which he is completely unqualified. Could she not find someone to ball her for less than $250 an hour?  When she is accused of bad decisions, she takes the pulpit in a black church on Sunday morning to accuse the world of racism. Would Lewis have pointed out that Fani has the biggest balls in Atlanta? Maybe if Lewis had stuck around to write this story, Fani would not have needed to hire those two media-monitoring companies to inform her about her press coverage? I like to think that somewhere in heaven, Lewis is looking down and laughing his ass off.

Moving on, I hate the whole concept of Artificial Intelligence. We wouldn't need this if people weren't so frigging stupid. Last night, as I stood in the kitchen, the home phone rang. I rarely answer the phone because it is usually someone selling Medicare supplements. I looked at the caller ID and decided that I needed something to entertain myself, so I answered the phone. I said "Hello." The borg responded, "Hi! I am Marla, your Medicare consultant. How are you doing?" I responded, "Not worth a shit! And you?" My wife was sitting nearby and spit out her Diet Pepsi and started laughing. There was a pause of a few seconds and then came the response. "Oh! Thank you for asking." I hung up the phone. Now, I have to work on a better response for her next call.

I am fascinated by all of the people wanting to punish Trump for being successful in business. The Attorney General claims that this is all about Trump not wanting to pay the maximum rates for loans and insurance. Listening to her claims, one would think that the government in New York actually allows people to set their own property tax values. How many cases involving large businesses and former Presidents are heard by a judge who sends out bare chested pictures of himself to people who had the misfortune of being in a graduating class with him? Engeron put the "buff" in "buffoon". Engeron is the only judge who keeps his law clerk within arm's length in the courtroom to help him make stupid decisions. Did he ever "solo" on a case?

Clinton and Obama share a common background. Neither had a pot to piss in before they became President. Now they are both multi-millionaires. All of this on the President's salary of $400,000. WOW!!  So naturally, Latitia James investigates Donald Trump, who actually donated his Presidential salary to various agencies such as the National Park Service. 

Barry and Big Mike have book and movie development deals that have enriched them. When was the last time someone asked you, "Have you read the latest Obama book?" or "Have you seen the latest in the Big Mike movies?" Yeah, you can get back to me on that.  These deals are just deferred bribes and payoffs. 

We won't get into Hillary making a fortune in cattle future trading in ten-month period while Bill was Governor. She invested $1,000 and it generated almost $100,000 for her. No chance of something illegal there? Now, the Grifter family has the Clinton Foundation. Quick! Name a project that the Clinton Foundation is doing right now. No fair Googling an answer. 

Make no mistake about it, Letitia James, Fani Willis and "Fat Albert" Alvin Bragg are out to get Trump because he is a rich white conservative. 

If only Lewis was here today to write about this whole mess. I will leave you with this Lewis Grizzard column from 1993. It's one of my favorites.

If y'all don't like Dixie, Delta is ready

By: Lewis Grizzard

I don't care what they do to the Georgia state flag. They can put a big peach on the thing as far as I'm concerned. They can put Deion Sanders' smiling face on it.

And let it be known that the opponents of the flag, with its reminiscence of the Confederate banner, will bring down that flag.

One way or the other, color it red, white, blue and gone. It's politically incorrect and all the things that are deemed such have no future in this country.

We elected Hillary Rodham Clinton and the ban on the gays in the military will be lifted. It's a done deal. Like it or not, the Georgia state flag has no chance either.

The issue on my mind is white Southerners like myself.

They don't like us. They don't trust us. They want to tell us why we're wrong. They want to tell us how we should change.

They is practically every s.o.b. who isn't one of us.

I read a piece on the op-ed page of the Constitution written by somebody who in the jargon of my past "ain't from around here."

He wrote white Southerners are always looking back and that we should look forward. He said that about me.

I'm looking back? I live in one of the most progressive cities in the world. We built a subway to make Yankees feel at home.

And I live in a region the rest of the country can't wait to move to.

A friend, also a native Southerner, who shares my anger about the constant belittling of our kind and our place in this world, put it this way: "Nobody is going into an Atlanta bar tonight celebrating because they've just been transferred to New Jersey."

Damn straight!

I was having lunch at an Atlanta golf club recently. I was talking with friends.

A man sitting at another table heard me speaking and asked, "Where are you all from?" He was mocking me. He was mocking my Southern accent. He was sitting in Atlanta, Ga., and was making fun of the way I speak.

He was from Toledo. He had been transferred to Atlanta. If I hadn't have been 46 years old, skinny and a basic coward with a bad heart, I'd have punched him. I did, however, give him a severe verbal dressing down.

I was in my doctor's office in Atlanta. One of the women who works there, a transplanted Northerner, asked how I pronounced the world "siren."

I said I pronounced it "si-reen." I was half kidding, but that is the way I heard the word pronounced when I was a child.

The woman laughed and said, "You Southerners really crack me up. You have a language all your own."

Yeah we do. If you don't like it, go back home and stick your head in a snow bank.

They want to tell us how to speak, how to live, what to eat, what to think and they also want to tell us how they used to do it back in Buffalo.

Buffalo? What was the score? A hundred and ten to Zip.

The man writing on the op-ed page was writing about that bumper sticker that shows the old Confederate soldier and he's saying, "FERGIT HELL!" I don't go around sulking about the fact the South lost the Civil War. But I am aware that once upon a long time ago, a group of Americans saw fit to rebel against what they thought was an overbearing federal government. There is no record anywhere that indicates anybody in my family living in 1861 owned slaves. As a matter of fact, I come from a long line of sharecroppers, horse thieves and used car dealers. But a few of them fought anyway -- not to keep their slaves, because they didn't have any. I guess they simply thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

Whatever the reason, there was a citizenry that once saw fit to fight and die and I come from all that, and I look at those people as brave and gallant, and a frightful force until their hearts and their lands were burnt away.

I will never turn my back on that heritage.

But know this: I'm a white man and I'm a Southerner. And I'm sick of being told what is wrong with me from outside critics, and I'm tired of being stereotyped as a refugee from "God's Little Acre."

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, and I'll probably have to say it a thousand times again.

Delta may be hurting financially, but it's still ready to take you back to Toledo when you are ready to go.

-- Published Feb. 5, 1993