Hold Still, I'm Aiming

This week’s column is dedicated to the cliché “Low-Hanging Fruit” on account of my having heard it used in sentences no less than five times last week, and, since I can’t chew out my own ear drums, I have been driven mad.

When I think of low-hanging fruit I don’t think of easy things I can do to save money for a corporation. We had apple trees in the back yard when I was eight years old, and stupid kids next door, and so when I think of “low-hanging fruit” I think of stupidity and flinging apples at people’s heads. Not that I would do such a thing, but it feels good to think it.

The biggest stupidity of today, one that can’t go unmentioned, is the stupidity of Al Qaeda in Britain. Let’s reflect on this a minute. These guys have attacked Britain by bombing London. They bombed London! Gee, let me think, now, hasn’t someone tried that before, I’m sure I’ve heard of it, maybe I can find it in, I don’t know, a BOOK somewhere. Oh, yes, here’s this book that says if you bomb London, the first time they say, “Pardon?” It says the second time you bomb them they tell a cutting joke about you that you can’t get because you’re not smart enough. Then the third time you bomb them it makes them angry. So my first apple is for the Al Qaeda cells in Britain who claimed responsibility for last Thursday’s bombings. Stupids!

My second apple is for the members of the city council of Atlanta, Georgia, who are giving serious consideration to a plan to rid downtown Atlanta of panhandlers with a law that states that their presence “contributes to negative perceptions” of Atlanta. That’s right, I’m supposed to think badly of Atlanta if they have panhandlers, like every other city in America or the world, but if they chase their panhandlers down, lock them up, beat them, or send them to someone else’s city I’m supposed to think Atlanta is heaven on Earth.

I can hear the tourists now. “Why look, Martha, this city’s got no poor people! I wonder how they do that?” “Probably it’s because everybody who lives here gets a big cash Christmas present from Ted Turner himself, every year! I’ll bet it’s as much as a thousand dollars!” “You’re probably right, Martha! Hey, let’s sell the farm and move here so we can enjoy the fabulous wealth that oozes up out of the streets in Atlanta!” “Let’s!”

The rest of my apples, for this week, are mushy rotten apples up-side the head for every single local government out there that has instituted or is planning to institute a massive plan to house homeless people without taking the shortage of housing that causes homelessness into account as part of the plan.

It always happens like this: a city official says “Our city can solve homelessness. We will first put the homeless into housing, paying their rent for them to start with. Then we will treat any addictions they have, give them needed training, and they will get jobs, and they will be able to start paying their own way.”

And every time it goes wrong exactly the same way: the affordable housing (what the government is able to bear the cost of) doesn’t exist. One stupid government after another installs these liberal sounding compassionate programs, and one stupid government after another finds out that even a city government can’t find the cheap housing that the homeless people couldn’t find. Because it isn’t there to be found! That’s why so many were homeless, stupids! Have an apple!

Disclaimer: no actual apples were thrown during the writing of this column. The author has in fact never smacked anyone at all with a rotten apple, even including Johnny No Brain and his sister, What’s-Her-Name No Brain, and his half-brother, Big Lips Little Brain, 48 years ago, no matter what they say. Besides, they started it.