Reading the news online this morning made me so angry that I wanted to hurt someone. Actually I wanted to hurt a bunch of people.
But since I’m a left-listing pacifist, I don’t really want to injure anyone or make them experience extreme pain. Maybe just make them feel a little discomfort and a whole lot of shame for what they’ve done.
In other words, I want to give them an OpEdgie Wedgie.
For my readers who may not be familiar with American youth culture or are not native speakers of the American version of English: Merriam-Webster’s defines wedgie as “the condition of having one's clothing wedged between the buttocks usually from having one’s pants or underpants yanked up from behind as a prank.”
Perusing the news about the latest mass murder on a college campus—the killing of 7 at tiny Oikos University in Oakland, California, makes me want to give an OpEdgie Wedgie to anyone who has ever voted for or advocated allowing people other than law enforcement officers to carry guns or bullets on college campuses.
And I’d like to give an OpEdgie Wedgie to Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy for voting that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband. My wild-running imagination wants these particular operations to leave an imprint of a swastika or hammer & sickle.
And let’s give an OpEdgie Wedgie to whoever in Obama’s Drug Enforcement Administration was involved in the decision to raid Oaksterdam University, a private school that trains people how to grow, package, retail, cook with and sell medical marijuana. Oaksterdam U. is located in California, where use of medical marijuana is legal. The raid represents the sheer stupidity of our drug laws as they apply to a relatively harmless substance that many people use to alleviate pain, subdue anxiety, counteract the nausea of chemotherapy or fight the effects of glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum deserves an OpEdgie Wedgie every day, just for being Rick Santorum. He really deserves three or four OpEdgie Wedgies a day, one for his constant use of racial code phrases, one for implying that African-Americans are the primary recipients of government assistance to the poor, one for wanting to inflict his moral values and religious beliefs on the rest of America and one for pretending to advocate for the working class while all along working for the ultra-wealthy.
Mitt Romney deserves a daily OpEdgie Wedgie for hypocrisy and a thirst for power that will make him say or do anything.
And while we’re at it, let’s give a daily dose of the OpEdgie Wedgie to Paul Ryan for saying his budget plan will end the federal deficit by closing tax loopholes, but never telling us which loopholes he will close. For details, see Paul Krugman’s article earlier this week titled "Pink Slime Economics."
Speaking of pink slime, let’s give a pink OpEdgie Wedgie to the manufacturers of this concoction of ground-up meat parts for claiming pink slime is all beef, forgetting to mention that the beef to which they refer includes connective tissue, cartilage and fat. They also forget that it’s not the beef we care about, but the fact that it’s been marinated in ammonia.
I have never gotten or given a wedgie, so until this moment, I never realized what a great release of pent-up aggression one can experience from pulling up someone else’s shorts, even if done only in the head. I feel much better. Relaxed, almost glowing.
All I have to do now is shut the news out and I think I’ll be okay.
