Dont Be Suing My Broke Ass in the Cradle of Crazy

PONTIFICUS MINIMUS OPINES

Photo by The Delta Bohemian

Instead of finishing the article I started late last night, which needs to be completed in about an hour by Delta Bohemian press time, more aptly akin to “river time,” a phrase Quapaw Canoe’s intrepid paddler John Ruskey refers to often when on the water and he and his wildly felicitous fellow strokers are free of society’s dependence on a constant recognition of linear time, I was surfing the “time-killer” and read an article about Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, being sued.

Stockett was sued (unsuccessfully) by her brother’s housekeeper for supposedly using her likeness in the book. Read the article in the Mississippi Business Journal for examples of the complete lack of class displayed by the housekeeper suing Stockett. She is shaming her momma acting like that–screaming, yelling, and “acting all tacky.”

Her actions are indicative of behavior too often seen in the lowest-common denominator: a group of unthankful, dole-riding, bellyaching, take-what-don’t-belong-to-them pariahs on capitalism, individualism, and a bunch of other ism’s I don’t have time to notate here, who would rather sue for what doesn’t belong to them than to be content with what their hands and minds have produced in a country where the “sky is still the limit,” even when difficult circumstances have deterministically stacked the deck against them.

This is America, where tenacity, creativity, affability, thankfulness, hard work and God’s favor can produce wonderful, productive lives with positive, multi-generational influence. Folks living in the Sudan and other third-world countries wouldn’t be whining about the things we whine about in America; they would be thrilled with one damn meal to give to their children, starving minute-by-minute, right in front them.

Shame on me, too! Am I not a member of a group of expectant Americans? Always expecting everybody else and every other entity to take care of us. As I used to tell my students when I was “reckoning” with them, “If this tirade doesn’t apply to you, then don’t take it personally, because it doesn’t apply to you.”

If Pontificus or his “starting-to-ballon-up-again-because-he’s-back-on-the-carbs” erstwhile brother, Poor William, ever write a book about “all y’all,” then please don’t be looking for a barrister to financially slay us. I am letting the world know now, upfront, that the characters we write about are not about any one of you specifically; they are about all y’all, every damn one of ya!

If you like what you read in a character, then tell the world you think it is about you, but don’t be suing my broke ass. If you don’t like a character’s traits or behavior and you think that character was based on you, then know that it ain’t! And, don’t be suing my broke ass.

If you decide to sue anyway and your attorney gets one of us larger-than-life, can’t-believe-they-found-a-wife brothers on the witness stand, we will produce no less than 10 examples of folks just like you who did something similar to what you did or who act similar to how you act.

America may be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but the Mississippi Delta is the “cradle of crazy.” We got characters you can’t find anywhere else on God’s green earth, and so many of them are transplanting themselves here, becoming what Madge refers to as semi-fixtures.

Between the native crazies, that’s all us folks from here, and the crazy folks who move here because they get us and know down deep we love crazy, we can produce a pretty damn good facsimile of someone matching the description of anyone the “money grubbers” want to convince a money-giving judge is them.

So, in summation, if the whimming lads ever “make it” and enjoy the financial rewards of selling what Cat Head’s Roger Stolle refers to as “tens-of-books,” then don’t be trying to sue our broke ass, just let us be! Thank you! Vaya con Dios! PM & PW

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