The Chinese Groundhog Flips its Shadow - op-ed kinda /sorta

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Chinese Groundhog Flips its Shadow

Americans are a people of faith. We believe that if a bunch of old drunks wearing frock coats and shabby top hats roust a rodent out of its sleep the Cincinnati Patriots will win the SuperDooperBowl. Or something.

If a presidential candidate sees his shadow he or she wins the Iowa caucus, whether or not he wants a caucus, and then there are four more weeks of winter because the Chinese bought the groundhog and all rights, copyrights, and patents appertaining thereunto, and, like, stuff.

Groundhogs from China crumble in the sunlight, you know. They just don’t make groundhogs like they used to, nossirree Bob and Chang.

No one is quite sure what a caucus is. Is it one of those spacecraft-looking coffee makers, or is it some sort of prize that can be pinned to a corkboard next the children’s 4H awards?

In Iowa delegates to the summer political conventions are chosen by people moving about in groups, possibly a Hegelian melding of chess and dodgeball (please note that Ford and Chevy people never play dodgeball). This confusion is said to constitute a caucus, just like it says in the Constitution.

Some six Iowa precincts were declared to have tied results, which is remarkable, and the ties were broken and delegates chosen by tossing coins, which is even more remarkable.

More remarkable still is that six different coins in six different precincts chose delegates for the same candidate. Maybe the coins were texting each other via unsecured servers.

The Grassy Knollistas were quick to challenge the coins’ citizenship. Were they natural-minted coins? Were any of them from, say, Canada? Is our next president being chose by a perfidious foreign Looney or Tooney and not by a God-fearing, Yankee-Doodle Susan B. Anthony?

Who would have thought that coins were permitted to vote?

If coins can decide the results of elections, then they can determine the outcome of football games. After the playing of the National Anthem, the referees, coaches, team captains, and other members of the 1% meet in the multi-million-dollar stadium paid for by working people with proper jobs, and the anointed flamen flips the sacred coin into the air, asking the gods of earth, water, fire, air, and four bars of connectivity to pick a winner.

And so it comes to pass, but not with a pass.

One team sulks and demands an instant replay, the other team sprays fizzy-water from Flint, Michigan about wastefully, and everyone goes home with his neuromuscular systems intact.

Everyone takes away a Chinese tee reading “I Survived SuperDooperBowl L” and featuring a graphic of a groundhog voting because, after all, this is what the lads suffered and died for at Valley Forge.

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