It was a bleary night. One of those where darkness closes in around the peripheral vision. Where the hands seem to flutter like butterflies in front of you, oddly detached from the rest of the body and reality. Yes, it was a different age: an era of herbal remedies and outlaw pharmaceuticals.
I have no idea how I stumbled across the Trinity Broadcasting Network that night, but I did. And there they all were, Born Again Christians in their finest pastel colored suits and white sateen dresses. They were slathered in garish makeup and dreadfully sincere. The subject that night was one of great concern. Subliminal Satanic Messages found on rock and roll recordings.
So, there I sat, transfixed, for well over an hour as these perfectly coiffed upscale tent revivalists played one song after another backward on a turntable. With each new LP came more startling evidence that the entire rock and roll industry was undermining the moral well being of America's youth with coded messages from Lucifer himself. Honestly, their fear and loathing was lost on me because I swear, the gruesome messages they were howling about were decipherable only by them. To my ear the sounds were nothing but gibberish, but then I don't speak in tongues either.
That was the night, the very second in my life, that I realized, understood with supreme clarity, that those people are as crazy as bed bugs on LSD.
Over the years I've had other brushes with this particular form of insanity. The Reverend Jerry Falwell, at a later date, warned of the grievous harm being done to America's children by the Tele Tubbies. He pointed out that one of them wore a head piece that was in the shape of a triangle, the known icon of homosexuals everywhere. Obviously Tele Tubbies were, according to Mr. Falwell, promoting the homosexual lifestyle to the very young. The mind reels. What sort of sick twist sits around trying to make such connections?
Later still, that well known fraternal organization, the Ku Klux Klan warned white children to not watch Barnie the Dinosaur on PBS because the guy inside the purple dinosaur suit was black. Who knew? How did they find out? Will this insidious infiltration never cease?
Apparently not, because the other day on Fox Business, anchor Eric Bolling pointed out that the newest muppet movie is an obvious piece of socialist propaganda. I promise, this really happened, you can google it. He assured the viewing public that because the movie heavy is named, Tex Richman and is an unscrupulous oil baron that Hollywood is brainwashing kids into conducting class warfare. His guest, one Dan Gainor agreed, "They hate the oil industry, they hate corporate America," he said.
There you have it from the source. Kermit, the green frog, is actually a red. Burt and Ernie are Trotskyites. Bolling and Gainor were both appalled at the cynicism of the left. "Why don't they leave children alone?" they whined.
Gentlemen, why don't you get a life? It would seem there is nothing that can be said anywhere that these paranoid Groupers won't fixate on. There is nothing that can be shown that can't be interpreted as anti, well, anti them.
All this would be laughable, except they are actually serious and they act on these hallucinations. Their insecurity goes as far as monitoring high school student's tweets. Sam Brownback's gubernatorial staff in Kansas does just that. Instead of doing something productive, like say run the state of Kansas, they came down hard on an eighteen year old's anti Brownback rant. They very nearly got her kicked out of school before Brownback himself reigned them in.
I don't know why I'm surprised. All of these people are the direct descendants of Big Joe McCarthy, a man apparently ahead of his time.
Yes, the entire country is besieged by a grand and dark conspiracy. The very foundations of capitalism quake as the muppets run amok on the wide screen. I can picture the sequel now. The title will be, "The Muppets, Yes!" The final dramatic scene will play out as the nation is in flames.
There among the shattered ruins of Wall Street stands a ragged Donald Trump, wounded and beaten. Before him looms a blood thirsty, dagger wielding, puppet. He looks into its eyes with weary resignation and says, "Et tu, Miss Piggy?"
Then the screen fades to black and credits roll to the stirring strains of "The Internationale."
Jim Henson and his old pal, Karl Marx will be proud.
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