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the last word (tm)Vol. 14/No. 7 - 421st issue - October 3, 2005
NFL FASCISTS RUN WITH THE BALL ON STADIUM PAT-DOWNS Surprise, surprise! The right-wingers are at it again! (As if you thought they weren't!) The NFL - which seems to stand for Nazi Fascist League, judging by its latest fiat - has reduced itself to a tired symbol of corporate despotism by demanding that all of the stadiums where its teams play start frisking every spectator who comes to a game. That's right, frisking. Every fan. Did America lose a - ah, never mind. First of all, how many decades has football been a major spectator event in America - without such fascism being foisted on all its fans? We've survived that long without pat-downs at games, so why is the NFL doing them now? The Super Bowl has already been afflicted by this right-wing tyranny since 2002 - a fact largely unreported by the media - but only now is it expanding to regular games. You can be sure that treating every football buff like a prisoner won't prevent violence at the games. If an innocent fan ever gets knifed at a game where the pat-downs were used, the NFL is going to end up eating crow - just like everyone else who supported the burgeoning police state only to see a subsequent increase in the problems they claimed to be combating. (Example: school shootings became more common following the "zero tolerance" boom.) Besides, if there was enough of a security risk to justify the searches, wouldn't law enforcement have already insisted on them? Spokespeople for the teams have warned patrons to show up more than a half-hour early for the games if they want to see the kickoff, because the friskings are so thorough. Here's a better solution: Let's boycott the games so we don't have to worry about it at all. Tyranny questioned locally The NFL expected that nobody would dare to challenge this fascism. The league hoped and assumed that everybody's self-respect had been agonizingly pulverized by America's 25-year descent into a police state. But, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Bengals fans proved the NFL wrong by calling Hamilton County officials to complain about the pat-downs. Even Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters - a conservative Republican - said the pat-downs are an illegal search because they were to be conducted by a private security business hired using the taxpayers' money. Deters's statement is a rare recent example of a Republican and purported conservative doing something right. (Savor this uncommon moment!) As a result of this, the Bengals agreed that no pat-downs would be conducted before this past Sunday's game. In an unusual irony, Cincinnati was the only NFL city not to have the pat-downs this past weekend. Furthermore, county commissioners - Democratic and Republican alike - were less than pleased about being sent a bill from the Bengals for $60,000 to cover the searches. Commissioners have announced their intent to ignore the bill, because the pat-downs are illegal. Of course the Bengals - and the Reds - already fleeced Hamilton County taxpayers out of millions of dollars to build new stadiums they didn't need, so the county is morally justified in not paying the bill anyway. Because of the NFL's abuses, Congress should pass a law prohibiting games from being blacked out on TV when the games fail to sell out. You'd have to have not very much self-respect to actually go to a game and subject yourself to being frisked when there's no security concern to justify it. As for me personally, I will not attend or even watch on TV an NFL game until the league's pat-down policy is abolished. Even if the Bengals make the Super Bowl and the halftime show features strippers reading excerpts from The Fight That Never Ends, I still won't watch it. I had to relearn as an adult how to deal with bullies like the NFL rightists, and I have enough self-worth not to allow myself to be frisked just to go to a fucking football game. When you contrast the current actions of the NFL and others versus the way America was in the 1970s, the amount of decline is just downright depressing. And this is not to mention that the whole pat-down mandate is part of the corrupt corporate system: It harms fans and desensitizes the public for even more tyranny, but it helps a bad economic and social system to fester and grow, with no regard for the interests of society. This system is the same that has increasingly marginalized those who were already the least powerful, to the benefit of wealthy corporations and economically secure individuals. We urge you to boycott the NFL until its frisking policy is consigned to the dustbin of history. SURPRISE! AT&T CONTINUES TO BEG AND WHINE! If you read our previous ish - which I'm sure you did, because that's what cool people do - you'd know that another hilarious knock-down, drag-out, humiliate-'em showdown with America's Toilets & Testes was about to get under way. And you knew I'd savor it (almost as much as I'm savoring Tom DeLay's much-deserved indictment and Ernie "The Truth Stretcher" Fletcher's ongoing corruption scandal). Sure enough, things have gotten even more Toilety & Testesy in the past month, as AT&T has sent no fewer than five (5) letters or bills demanding payment of the $15.86 I don't owe. One of the first of this series is a letter explaining that the charges I disputed were correct after all - even after I went through all the trouble of calling AT&T, faxing them, and being told on the phone by their representative that the charges were an error and that I was right. A later letter from AT&T sniffs, "Although I am sure this was an oversight, a prompt payment will place your account in good standing with AT&T." Excuse me for a moment, but...HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! An oversight??? Hell, I did it on purpose! And why in the Wide, Wide World Of Sports would I even want to have an account that's in good standing with AT&T? That's like having an account in good standing with, say, the Republican Party. (Notice also that AT&T uses a singular pronoun to refer to itself, even though the letter wasn't signed by an individual person.) Next sentence in their letter: "Lack of fulfilling your payment obligation to AT&T by the due date can result in an unfavorable account information that may be shared with credit reporting agencies." Now I'm really scared. Sike! Seriously, I don't look upon threats and bullying like this very kindly. If I wasn't such a nice, swell, harmless little guy, I'd ask a certain Mr. Stumbo about having extortion or racketeering charges filed against the ToileTestes crew. But instead I'm going to just chill and let AT&T do its worst to try to extort the money. It gets funnier. The next letter from AT&T threatened, "To prevent further collection action, a payment of $15.86 is required immediately." Ooh, I'm quaking in my shoes - not! This warning by the ToileTestes bunch is about as convincing as when that one Enemies List Think of how silly that sounds. But that's the only way I can imagine that AT&T can try extorting the money. What else can they do? Sue me? Any judge in their right mind would just laugh them right out of court. If the bill for $15.86 wasn't for a "subscription" that I never asked to be signed up for (that's called phone slamming), I would have paid it instantly. So who's ripping off who? Each month, I pay hundreds of dollars to utility companies, landlords, and Internet providers for necessary services Beg all you want, America's Toilets & Testes. LETTER FROM AN IDIOT It's always a barrel of laughs when some loser stains their boxers because something we write displeases them. We accept letters to the editor, but we also have this occasional feature called "Letter From An Idiot". For this feech, we reserve the right to publish the letter and laugh at it whether the writer likes it or not. And that we shall do. So - for your bemusement - let's cut to the chase on the latest hostile letter. It reads: "You're a complete narcissist. Not to mention delusional and pathetic. get over your teenage angst and be a man. When was the last time you had a girlfriend? good luck growing up." Hahahaha. This beezweezer accuses us of supposed immaturity - then uses an immature insult to imply that the editor of this fine zine lacks a romantic partner, despite having no proof that this is so. Whatta big hypocrite. TRAIN IN VAIN At long last, a hopeful note regarding the type of local nuisance we've had to touch on from time to time (because few others will). It seems that our friends and fans in Latonia have gotten mighty fed up with trains constantly blowing their horns at 3 AM, so they've taken their case to Covington City Commission. And guess what? The city's going to do something about it. Not so fast though. There's still a lot of federal red tape to endure before this sleep depriver can be calmed. It's a Contract With America thing, you see. Congressional Republicans - who talked about reducing paperwork - wanted to lift the yoke of regulation off their Big Business friends, so they just shifted all the paperwork off of corporations and onto city governments and people. Yes, we know the Republicans talked about states' rights and local control, but that only applies to states and cities doing things the Republicans want, you see. Furthermore, a new federal rule that was just enacted by the Bush regime this year restricts local autonomy regarding gratuitous train noise even further. So the request to tone down the trains during the middle of the night still has to be approved by the ruling federal regime. You have to wonder why the cities put up with this shit. If it was just the train whistles, it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal, but it's not just about that. It's about bullying by a bossy, pro-corporate federal government that doesn't respect the citizenry. The principle matters most. If Latonia residents have their reasonable request approved, trains will still be permitted to blow their horns in case of a real emergency. But the constant tooting in the middle of the night will no longer be allowed. And you know what that is, folks? Yes, that's an Allowed Cloud! The proposal to make the trains quieter simply revives a policy that existed in that neighborhood prior to a decade ago. We encourage leaders here in Bellevue to follow Covington's lead. While the city of Bellevue wasted thousands of dollars erecting signs skeeping about loud car radios even in the daytime, it has failed to act against trains and power tools making even more noise at night while people are trying to sleep. Reading us online? Click on these words to go up to our index! (Copywrong 2005. Online edition created with Internet Exploder 6.)
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inductee who I attended Cline with threatened during morning assembly that he was going to summon his "army" to kick my ass. I get this vision in my head of a van with the AT&T logo pulling up in front of my apartment building and a group of uniformed, masked agents popping out of the back of the van. Under this hypothetical scenario, the officers then knock at my door, brandishing a hammer and threatening to smash my piggy bank to obtain "their" $15.86.
that they provide, so it's not like I'm a deadbeat who refuses to pay bills I rightfully owe. I do recall failing to pay a bill for another business once about 5 years ago, in much the same way as I've done with AT&T - but, as with AT&T, I was justified in not paying. On other occasions though I've been damn generous: I've just been waiting with basted breath for the revolution to rein in the "new economy" so future bills take a smaller bite out of my earnings.