“Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail/Hoppin’ down the bunny trail …… Happy Easter, kidz! I’ve a question for y’all, my hoppity little hares: See this following list of words and phrases? If you’d be so kind, children, give it just a quick read-through, please?
• abortion • advocacy • antiracial • biased • biologically male • biologically female • Black • clean energy • climate science • cultural differences • disabilities • discriminatory • diversity • equality • fetus • gay • gender diversity • Gulf of Mexico • Hispanic • inclusive • inequality • LGBTQ • marginalized • marijuana • measles • minorities • multicultural • pollution • pregnant people • prejudice • privileges • pronoun • racial diversity • racism • science-based • sexual preferences • social justice • socioeconomic status • stem cell research • stereotype • transgender • transexual • underrepresentation • undervalued • vaccines • victims • vulnerable populations • woman • women.
We in the gay community are, of course, quite familiar with all that’s indexed here. But there is also a currently undisclosed common denominator binding together every single word on this list.
Anyone care to take a stab in the dark at what said similitude might be? Think it out amongst yourselves. No rush. Still stumped?
What you’ve all just read here, bois and gurlz, is a partial smattering of the now more than 250 newly-listed words (so far) that shall never, ever again see the light of day in Washington D.C. Uh huh. Scrapped, scrubbed clean and banned from every government website these words permanently forever now are. In perpetuity.
That’s right, folks: Outright censorship, courtesy of our Felon in Chief, is here.
Pay no mind to those cracking timbers you hear splintering ’neath the Capitol dome; tis nothing more than the collapse of our First Amendment’s rotted girders. “Jailed, at last!
Thank God Almighty, freedom of the press is jailed at last!”
Hence, rise and stand, everyone! Time to bow our heads, reverentially, cue the choir, pump the organ and sing: Bringin’ every girl and boy/Baskets full of Easter joy/Things to make your Easter bright and gay!
According to PEN America, who compiled our federal government’s newly-banned words list, “Any topic that has received recent attention from Congress, or widespread or critical media attention, may be subject to deletion or alteration. Even the term ‘cancer moonshot’ — which refers to a program that aimed to cut the nation’s cancer death rate by half — has been targeted for erasure, solely because it was started under the Obama administration, then championed by Joe Biden during his term.”
And how about those universal tariffs? Your Costco cart feeling ’em yet? What about your friends on campus? They still accounted for amidst L’Orange’s slipshod deportations, with his Black Marias snatching undergrads off the streets in broad daylight?
Apparently, even just a parking ticket now brands a foreign student as nothing more than dumpster trash, deserving of immediately revoked visas, with no explanation provided other than, “Get out of our country tomorrow, or we will escort you out the following day.”
Like, whatever happened to due process? Did this, too, just slink away ’neath the shadows of our complicit Republican majority?
In simultaneous goosestep with said majority, L’Orange is now requesting of Congress another $50 million or so to ramp up construction on our undocumented squatters’ concentration camps — excuse me, their “holding facilities” — with apparently only unfashionable clothing and/or tattoos necessary in order for someone to be rounded up and enjoy permanent residence within America’s new gulags. The official ICE argument is that anyone who’s dressed for picking peaches and sports permanently-inked patterns on their skin is, obviously, a gang member.
Bernie Sanders said it best: “We are the most selfish nation in the world.”
He’s got jellybeans for Tommy/Colored eggs for Sister Sue/There’s an orchid for your mommy/And an Easter basket, too!
I recall an interview from a foreign exchange student once. He said, “The only thing Americans can’t tolerate is inconvenience.” Boy, are we in for troubles ahead.
Of all the psychoanalyzing that the media is forever turning summersaults over, in their vain attempts to normalize Trump, not one single political pundit ever remotely mentions the infiltrating elephant loafing about Washington’s congressional chambers. It’s called Bone Laziness. Obviously, none of our elected officials are either mentally capable or professionally ethical enough to, God forbid, tolerate any consideration of a two-party-system compromise — despite this being the sole reason we hired them!
Meanwhile, defined by unruffled defiance and indolence, the smaller-than-life L’Orange scarcely can muster enough oomph to even think which golf clubs to have his caddy pack.
Trump’s doppelganger is hardly the wily Stalin, or Hitler, or even that portly plutonium-monger, Kim Jong Un. No, it’s Oblomov for whom L’Orange’s aspirations seek their zenith.
As in, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov.
Never heard of him?
Agreed, it’s a bit puzzling as to why author Ivan Goncharov never quite reached Tolstoy heights, especially considering that Goncharov’s depiction of Ilya Oblomov remains the original gold standard by which humanity can be so easily manipulated under L’Orange’s perfected alchemy of laziness, negligence, and stagnation: “A thought would flit, bird-like, randomly across his face, glint briefly in his eyes, light on his gently folded fingers, hide the furrows of his careless brow, and suddenly vanish from want of energy; then his face would radiate an even glow of unconcern.”
Hmm, remind you of anyone familiar, kidz? President Trump, in picking Putin to be his fuck buddy, clearly chose the wrong soulless Russian to emulate.
And, lastly, to be filed under Useless Trivia of the Month: The dire wolf — having vanished from planet Earth eons ago, and in no small thanks to a generous sprinkling of Jurassic Park magic and every pimpled gamer-nerd’s ridiculous Game of Thrones infatuation — has now been brought howling back from extinction! My, what a brave, new world is ours? In fact, if you ask my humble opinion, I’m thinking we may have just found Trump’s official new White House pet — at least until the dodo is brought back.
Now, ramp it up, my little bunnies! Time for our big finale! Pour your soul into it!
Try to do the things you should/Maybe if you’re extra good/He’ll roll lots of Easter eggs your way. Hippity hoppity, happy Easter day!
— Howard Lewis Russell
Please, send me your merry, merry month of May queries, all ye tender, young green sprouts: AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.