I think the task of babysitting the excrable BoBo Brooks is beginning to get to Gail Collins. She’s turning mean:
… This brings me to my theory about how to calm the flu panic. We can pin everything on John Boehner, the speaker of the House.
Think about it. One of the worst side-effects of illness is the feeling of a lack of control. Your symptoms seem to descend out of nowhere. Picking somebody to hold responsible gives a little more sense of order to the universe.
“Nothing will make you feel better like finding somebody to blame,” says a new Facebook app called “Help, My Friend Gave Me the Flu.” That app, which is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, lets you prowl through the social network looking for which of your acquaintances got symptoms before you did.
This sounds like a terrible idea — you don’t want to ruin friendships over a transient ailment. John Boehner, on the other hand, is somebody you have never met. And the average case of the flu, no matter how unpleasant, is not as bad as two or three more fiscal cliffs.
Plus, so many people are angry at John Boehner already that he would never notice a few million more.
Of course, it was firmly believed by my Irish ancestors — especially the drunks — that beverage alcohol is both a defense against germs and a remedy for most ailments. If this is true, Speaker Boehner cannot possibly be a virus carrier… which makes his assignment to scapegoat status all the more appropriate, under Repub Rules. Repubs don’t believe in tainted scienterrific theories like ’cause & effect’; when bad things happen, they look for a target from their long list of “Stuff We Hate”. And since the flu temporarily reduces one’s IQ by at least 30 points, it’s obviously some kind of GOP plot…
Apart from the Flu / Norovirus Epidemic of 2013, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?