I finagled the Naughty and Nice lists to check out surnames starting with B, and sure enough, the big red guy plans on adding to my already extensive collection of coal-stained Christmas stockings.
I’m not complaining. I saw who else was on the combustibles list.
For Fort Lauderdale City Commissioners committed to building a $344 million steel-and-glass replica of the giant sand worms of “Dune” and calling it city hall, a 1950s-era Erector Set. Cheaper, and less likely to eventually show up as a joke on late night TV.
For Marco Rubio, a calligraphy course. You’re probably thinking that the secretary of state and acting national security adviser has much more important things to do. He does! But he still made time to switch State Department letterhead from straight-up sans serif typeface to curlicued serif because sans serif, which helps people with poor vision read, is too woke. It’s true. The vision police are onto us.
“I wonder if it’s all a bit of a distraction from what the State Department is actually doing,” mused Tobias Frere-Jones to the New York Times. You may not recall that Frere-Jones created the Gotham typeface used in campaign material by a young Illinois senator on his road to the White House, where he later poked fun at our Sweet Potato in Chief one night, thus setting Taterhead on the campaign trail and the rest of us on the road to ruin. So yes, children, serifs matter.
Those scamps over at the EPA deserve a little something special, too, for their bold Make Formaldehyde Great Again campaign. The agency is rethinking just how much of the lethal preservative is safe to inhale. Very consumer friendly: Cut down on funeral expenses later by getting a start on the whole embalming thing today, while you are still breathing. Which you won’t be for long. Because you will be inhaling formaldehyde. Circular, yet cost effective.
For Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a rest. As in: Give it a rest. Santa knows you’re running for whatever and need the anti-woke headlines to get you there but paying private law firms up to $875 an hour to do your publicity litigation? This is the same coal-worthy financial and legal acumen you showed when $10 million in Medicaid settlement money was diverted to finance the governor’s pet political campaigns against two ballot initiatives: one legalizing recreational marijuana, one loosening draconian restrictions on abortion. Also for the AG: sneakers, to outrun that mess before a Leon County grand jury catches up with who did what.
Footwear for Lil’ Gov. White Boots as well! More ‘lil white boots! Because the $10 million was just part of $35 million siphoned away from such state budget fripperies as help for needy children; a legally dubious sleight of hand made on Ron DeSantis’ watch and benefitting Ron DeSantis’ political goals. Now, he is wading through deep thick stuff of his own making. Maybe two new pairs of white boots. Maybe extra-large.
Santa’s not likely to overlook Susie Wiles. Trump’s chief of staff spilled several beans about president-adjacent colleagues and is now furiously backtracking, apparently not understanding that 11 interviews with a Vanity Fair reporter wielding a tape recorder were going to be used. What she really did not understand was how comparing Trump to her alcoholic father would look in print. For Wiles this Christmas, a dime-store mousetrap clearly marked “Press parking. Drive on in.”
In exchange, Wiles owes quite a few people a big gift-wrapped apology. Saying Trump has an “alcoholic personality” insults alcoholics everywhere. Addiction is a disease. Trump is a Trump. Addiction responds to treatment. Trump responds to not very much these days.
Oh, I am leaving out so many, and not only from the igneous rock side of the ledger: a spare set of bouffant lips for Kristi Noem to more truthfully answer questions from Congress, kittens for the kind and for the rest us, the First Annual Bigly Splendid Ping Pong Peace Prize.
Enjoy the Merry.
Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer. Contact her at beall.news@gmail.com.
