[colored_box color=”red”]Ted Nugent
Pity the poor addled brain of Anthony Edward Nugent, who hasn’t been the same since his one good Detroit band, the Amboy Dukes, released their psychedelic hit, “Journey to the Center of the Mind.” Too bad Ted never went there himself. All his trips seem to have taken him to the dark side on the fringes of our culture especially after he came down with an incurable case of “Cat Scratch Fever.” He recently called President Barack Obama “a subhuman mongrel,” which may play well with the racist reactionaries running amok under the Republican circus tent but turns out to be the same vile crap the Nazi Germans dumped on the Jews before they built their death camps and really got down to business. Somebody should take Ted’s red-white-and-blue striped electric guitar and make him eat it.
David Samson
The present chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey wouldn’t be where he is today without the pull of his patron, Gov. Chris Christie. For three years, David Samson has scandalously led the board of the bi-state agency. Instead of making sure that the region’s transportation infrastructure functions smoothly for the benefit of everyone, he has perverted the Authority’s mission by helping to create a political payback machine dispensing favors and punishments depending on the whims of the angry fat man in Trenton. When the Daily News editorial page recently asked the Authority’s executive director, Pat Foye, a Gov. Cuomo appointee, whether Samson had the “moral authority” to run the Port Authority, Foye bluntly said, “No.” According to the News, Samson’s law firm has “represented three parties who had business with the Port or stood to gain from PA actions.” Christie’s abuse of the PA has taken a severe toll on both sides of the Hudson. It’s time to sack Samson.
Tom Perkins
Venture capitalist Tom Perkins has a silicon chip on his shoulder the size of the Fernando Valley. The California high-tech elitist who once penned a trashy novel called “Sex and the Single Zillionaire” recently put his money bag where his mouth is by giving a speech in San Francisco titled “The War on the 1 Percent.” As if—it ’s really the other way around! Before that public appearance, Perkins, who must suffer from a persecution complex, wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal comparing protests against America’s corporate overlords to the Nazis’ Kristallnacht, when Hitler’s goons terrorized German Jews and destroyed their businesses. Perkins insists there’s a parallel, telling his audience at the Commonwealth Club that “if you pay 75 percent of your life’s earnings to the government, you are being persecuted.” His solution: “You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar in taxes…A million in taxes, you get a million votes.” At least he’s honest about his avarice. But that doesn’t absolve him from deserving a Pink Slip in the name of democracy.
Sam Zell
The Chicago billionaire dubbed “the grave dancer” for his propensity to profit from real estate bankruptcies and failing businesses may not give a rat’s ass about the workers he’s laid off, or the companies he and his henchmen sucked dry and ruined as they walked away with their pockets plush with cash. But he sure does share the pain of the poor plutocrats who aren’t feeling the love from the ungrateful masses. Taking a page from Tom Perkins (see above), Zell recently said on CNBC, “The one percent are getting pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so.” Americans “should not talk about envy of the one percent, they should talk about emulating the one percent. The one percent work harder, the one percent are much bigger factors in all forms of our society.” So, furloughs for the employees and golden parachutes for the top brass when a company goes bust? That’s a fair business plan to a big wig like Zell. How this sleazy bastard ever got his hands on the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and Newsday is a tragedy. He did as much damage to those properties as if he’d ridden through their newsrooms hell-bent on his Harley. Zell should be forced to sell sodas at Wrigley Field for the rest of his life.
Michael Sam Sr.
The father of one of the most famous National Football League hopefuls epitomizes the offensive challenge that Michael Sam Jr. will have to overcome repeatedly now that he’s come out as the NFL’s first openly gay draft prospect. Sam Sr. was so repelled by his son’s trailblazing disclosure that he went to Applebee’s “to have drinks.” He added that “I don’t want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment.” What kind of environment might meet this Texas patriarch’s approval? “I’m a-man-and-a-woman type of guy,” the dad said, boasting to The New York Times that he’d taken his older son to Mexico so the kid could lose his virginity to a prostitute. We wish the young All-American Sam Junior a long life on and off the field. We wish to slap his intolerant dad with a Pink Slip right upside his head.
Orlando Findlayter
Orlando Findlayter is a bishop at his Brooklyn church, a wealthy homeowner in Lynbrook and an ardent supporter of Mayor Bill de Blasio. He got unwanted attention recently when he avoided a night in a New York City jail after being busted for allegedly making a left turn without signaling. Officers on the scene discovered that the insurance had lapsed on his vehicle and later found open warrants from Findlayter’s missing a previous court date to handle a civil disobedience arrest at an immigration reform rally. Instead of stewing behind bars as would have happened to most citizens, innocent or not, the lucky bishop of the New Hope Christian Fellowship went home free thanks to a very timely call from the newly elected mayor, who had reportedly made inquiries with a high-ranking New York Police Department official about Findlayter’s fate. De Blasio has defended his call, insisting that he didn’t ask for a favor and that the local precinct commander had already decided to release the bishop. More tellingly, both Rev. Al Sharpton and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani reportedly agree with the new mayor that his intervention was not that big a deal. That’s not how we see it. The bishop served on De Blasio’s inaugural committee and clearly benefited from political favoritism. He deserves a Pink Slip for his penance.
Mary Sue McClurkin
Alabama State Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin is the author of an ant-abortion bill so extreme that it “would ban abortions before many women even realize that they’re pregnant,” explained an observer. Her legislation would make it a crime to perform an abortion after the fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Her bill passed by voice vote in the state house’s health committee and is now up for a full vote. McClurkin also made the claim that a baby is “the largest organ in a body.” An interesting idea sure to amuse medical schools across the country if it weren’t so stupid because skin is actually the largest organ. Until now, McClurkin’s proudest achievement has been passing a state law that required women to see an ultrasound image of their pregnancy before they had an abortion. How this anti-abortion radical misogynist got so much power over the bodies of other women in her state is a crying shame.
Vincent Puleo
Smithtown’s clerk, Vincent Puleo, waited until the required time had run out before sounding the alarm that Supervisor Patrick Vecchio—the longest serving supervisor on Long Island—and council member Lynne C. Nowick had not signed and delivered their written oaths of office to his office, conveniently located right down the hall from theirs. And so, even though they were sworn in Jan. 1, Puleo twiddled his thumbs until Feb. 5 before sending a letter to the town attorney that because of this formal lapse the offices were “vacant.” What was vacant was the place in Puleo’s thinking where common sense is supposed to reside. If he had political differences with the supervisor—and he clearly does—he should have dealt with them differently, and dare we say, maturely, not tried to pull a bone-headed bureaucratic coup. After all, the voters had spoken…and spoken…and spoken…how much they like the job Vecchio has been doing in their town. Perhaps Puleo should move to New Jersey, where we hear there’s a governor whose crew loves to play games like this just to mess with citizens’ minds.
Steve Harper & Leeana Karlson
He looks a little like Sting and she kind of resembles Britney Spears, but their appearance hardly matters because Steve Harper and Leeana Karlson are the Long Island radio personalities who’ve made themselves ridiculous in a misguided quest for ratings. Recently these morning show co-hosts on Farmingdale’s WKJY/98.3 FM played to the worst element in their audience by perpetrating a hoax that must have made them hoot off the air when they came up with this lame-brained publicity scheme but completely blew up in their faces when they broadcast it. This pair decided to invent a “totally fictitious” invitation to a fake birthday party in Baldwin for a girl whose parents, Steve and Leeana provocatively profiled, were supposedly two gay dads. And to make it zing, they concocted a reply from an intolerant mom who purportedly proclaimed, “I do not believe in what you do and will not subject my innocent son to your ‘lifestyle.’” Then, in the spirit of our age, they posted the offending reply from “the mother” on the station’s Facebook page and called out for a response: “Do you think she was right to write this?” Duh. Their producer should have posed Steve and Leeanna the same question. The radio-jock jerks got rightfully suspended a week for their homophobic high jinks but we want to add to their woes with a well-aimed Pink Slip.
Steve Yarbrough & Cathi Herrod
Arizona state Sen. Steve Yarbrough introduced a bill crafted by Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, that would have let local businesses discriminate against gays and other people on religious grounds. The notion would have turned the First Amendment on its head, enshrining prejudice under the guise of the freedom to practice one’s faith. As NBC’s new Late Night show host Seth Meyers mocked in his first opening monologue, Arizona businesses were “already putting up signs that say: Nice shirt, nice shoes, no service.” Fortunately, Gov. Jan Brewer let true American values prevail. A Republican who came under fire a few years ago for signing into law one of the most repressive anti-immigration bills in the country—the one that let police basically arrest anyone “on suspicion of being Mexican”—Brewer heeded the call from big businesses worried about boycott threats to Arizona, not to mention the National Football League, which hinted that its choice to hold the Super Bowl there next year was subject to change. Yarbrough and Herrod sure weren’t thinking straight.
Holtsville Hal & Malverne Mel
These two groundhogs are a pair of woodchuck chumps. Long Island’s furriest weather prognosticators have left us out in the cold. And that’s where they both belong, freezing outdoors, shivering their little marmot tails off as yet another blast of the polar vortex turbulence sweeps down from the great white north like the deathly ice creatures on the move in Game of Thrones. Why do these rodents mock us with their forecast falsehoods? Banish them to a snow drift off Middle Country Road! Face it, people, the winter of 2014 will never end! Punxsutawney Phil got it right. Even on an overcast day in Pennsylvania, the little fellow somehow saw his shadow and prudently made a beeline for his favorite burrow because he knew something his clueless Long Island cousins, Holtsville Hal and Malverne Mel, failed to figure out: we’re in for six more long weeks of winter at the least. Brrrrutal!
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