"Appropriate" questions for the next GOP debate

Candidates, we are aware that previous debate hosts have actually asked questions dealing with issues and obviously not been aware of your flawless pasts.

 Questioning your views without due respect over your monumental statures is a clear sign of disrespect and a misunderstanding of the First Amendment. We know your open-minded supporters and yourselves  clearly know the media roles are to be PR flacks to absolutely promote your views.

No wonder you and they were so angry at the upstart media for not fawning over you and taking everything you say as Gospel. Fox is right, you should not have to put up with negative questioning or questions about the issues.

For this last broadcast debate, we present you the following questions for your approval ahead of time. If any of these offend you, please let us know and we will profusely apologize and correct them.

• Brother, tell us how you love Jesus.
• Your worshipfulness, explain your wonderful plan to do away with taxes for the rich, and the awful minimum wage, thereby stimulating the economy.
• Great one, why should Americans vote for you?
• Righteous one, please talk about your fantastic program to deport all immigrants and restore American purity.
• Financial genius,  what how would you cure the socialist Social Security and Medicare?
• Oh Holy One,  please tell us about your Godly ideas of how you would restore religion to every home.
•  Reverent respecter of life,  refresh our memories of how you will stop abortion, increase the death penalty, and increase the bombing of our foreign enemies.
• Highly successful executive and wise stockholder in military contractors, shower us with your brilliant ideas of putting all those international troublemakers in their places and keeping them there. 
• All: How will you save the country from what we all know is the anti-Christian, pro-Muslim, evil, socialistic, un-American dictatorship we have been subject to during Obama's rule?

Dr. Seuss at the "debate"

I will not, will not
watch this snot,
I will not, cannot
avoid the pot--
What they say
is so much whey
I will not, will not
join the lot
I cannot, cannot
buy the plot.

I tried, I tried
to stay away
But couldn't bear
not to hear
what they say
and how they play

Tis finally the season
for a little reason
Not the blather
and all the lather
from all the nuts
with their "buts,"
Can we have just a little
sanity with all the spittle?

If it goes right or if it goes wrong
we know the press will take the prong
Blame the media
or even expedia
but don't admit
you're a twit

Double, double, toil and trouble
Witches' brew for the bubble
Get me the pliers
To pull out the liars.
Why do you bother
to say one thing and mean the other?
Is this a debate
to make us relate
Or just a show
with  lots of blow?

It’s late, it’s late

And I won’t wait--

If that’s a debate

I’d like a rebate.

I want to whine
but the fault's not mine
they're out of time
and I want more wine.

Who is this fellow Clark?
That he thinks he's a lark?

You don’t need to hark

As he tries to make a mark--
Just don't go with him to the park
in the dark

When I was an Oklahoma Republican--chapter one

I grew up "liking Ike." How could you not, as a kid in grade school on Sandia Base in Albuquerque?

The world was full of promise and fun, of riding bicycles to school with friends. Lower middle class gringo in integrated schools--Mexican, Indian, black, gringo--it never occurred to me that there were people who were imprisoned by poverty or greed or crime, by lower or middle or  upper class prejudices.

In high school, I read "Conscience of a Conservative," by Barry Goldwater, and believed. I came to Oklahoma Christian College when Henry Bellmon was trying to be the first Republican governor of Oklahoma. The Democratic one-party monopoly in the state was corrupt and needed a shakeup. Of course I became a member of the Young Republicans. I'm a Southerner and Texan. Being for the underdog is in my genes.My brother Jerry says I like to be cantakerous. Guilty.

First hint that something was wrong was when I heard a fellow "Christian" at OCC refer to my debate partner as a "Nigger." Arthur Smith was a ministerial student from Valdosta, Georgia. I can still remember one of his phrases: "Blood is the red thread that connects Genesis with Revelation." My East Texas mother was prejudiced, but told me never to use that word. "I just don't want to live next to them," was all she'd say. Given where she was from, that was a huge leap of acceptance, I now know. Arthur and I subsequently lost a debate tournament at Abilene Christian College, when we had clearly won. The judge, a Texas "Christian" raked us for not being respectful. It took me years to understand why. He hated black people.

On the way home we stopped in Wichita Falls at a drive-in to get hamburgers. They almost didn't serve us. Why? Because Arthur was black. "You can order, but you can't eat here," was the reply. I was ready to leave. Arthur was hungrier than I. I just didn't understand.

When we returned to Oklahoma from Iowa years later, and I was fortunate enough to buy into a partnership with Donald J. Morrison of the Waurika News-Democrat--thanks to some money from my mother, I joined a real Democrat in business. He couldn't stand my politics, but tolerated them. I rejoiced when Reagan was elected. He always maintained that Democrats cared for the working  people. When I wrote an editorial about Bartlett and the progress of Oklahoma, he about came unglued--thinking about his work with Kerr and the building of Waurika Lake.

We were on the edge of Little Dixie--Jefferson County--less than 200 Republicans out of 9,000 residents, and thousands of cattle along the Old Chisholm Trail. So I registered Democrat so I could vote in the primaries--where all elections were decided.

Still, I rejoiced at the election of Reagan as president. Morrison--my friend, my mentor, my model of community journalism's excellence-- is laughing in his grave now at where I've evolved.

chapter 2 soon