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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

(On the 40th anniversary of my father’s death)

Two days ago, I returned from a weekend in San Francisco to learn that my father  had died.  Sam Prelutsky was born in Russia, in 1901 or 1902.  He never knew for  certain.  It didn’t seem to bother him. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

During last year’s presidential campaign, Joe Wurzelbacher raised a lot of hackles in liberal circles when he got Barack Obama to admit he was in favor of the federal government redistributing America’s wealth.

It was a landmark moment. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

I am one of those people who have loved baseball nearly my entire life.  Even though I was born in Chicago and moved to L.A. when I was just a kid, I was never a fan of the Cubs, the White Sox or the Dodgers.  Instead, I rooted for the Boston Red Sox, probably because of Ted Williams, who was not only the greatest hitter during my lifetime, but the man who gave up the better part of five seasons to serve his country as a Marine pilot during World War II and again in Korea.

As I grew older, I became even a greater fan because I appreciated the fact that a number of their greatest players, including Williams, Bobby Doerr, Jim Rice, Dom DiMaggio and Carl Yastrzemski, spent their entire careers with the team.  However, by the end of 1995, I had grown totally disenchanted with the Sox, and not because they could never get past the Yankees.  I was plenty used to that.  What I couldn’t accept was their dumping future Hall of Famer Wade Boggs and sending 18-year veteran Dwight Evans off to finish his career with the Baltimore Orioles, while hiring one punk after another.  By signing the likes of Jack Clark, Kevin Mitchell and Jose Canseco, they began to resemble baseball’s equivalent of the Oakland Raiders.  It was as if they had sent their general manager down to the local post office to check out the Wanted posters on the wall. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

I’m not of the opinion that a person has to be perfect in order to point out the failings of others, but liberals take it to such an extreme that you have to wonder if they have any self-awareness at all.

I mean, when someone like George Soros, who collaborated with the Nazis, compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, am I the only one who wondered if he meant it as a compliment?

Or take Janeane Garofalo, who says stupid things with such regularity you might take her for a sulky teenager even though she’s 44 years old.  Because she is an ignoramus and has the self-righteous attitude of an adolescent brat, she was a perfect fit for Air America, where she and Al Franken competed to see which of them could attract fewer listeners. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

I was born in 1940, which means that during my lifetime 13 men have been the president of the United States.  For many of those years, I was a Democrat.  As was the case with Ronald Reagan, I didn’t feel I had left the party, but that the party had gone stark raving mad and left me.

By and large, I don’t find the baker’s dozen to be overly impressive, either as leaders or as individuals.  There are only three or four of them I can even imagine being friends with or wanting to have as next-door neighbors.  But there are only two of them, Carter and Obama, whom I regard as unmitigated disasters.  While it took Carter four years in office and 29 years out to achieve his greatly deserved recognition as an incompetent, a phony and a sanctimonious anti-Semite, Obama has pulled it off in just a few short months. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

In all of history, so far as I’m aware, there had only been two famous tea parties.  At the first one, Samuel Adams and a few of his freedom-loving friends pitched several crates of tea into Boston Harbor.  The second was the one Lewis Carroll wrote about, a madcap affair with the March Hare, the mad Hatter and the narcoleptic Dormouse, ganging up to give Alice a hard time.

All of that changed on the 15th of April, when a series of tea parties took place all across America.  Even I, who try to avoid crowds, attended a gathering here in the San Fernando Valley.

If you believe the creeps in the MSM — and why would you? — we were all dues-paying members of political fringe groups, and none of us would think about leaving the house without first donning our little aluminum hats. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

During the presidential campaign, we were told that Barack Obama was another Lincoln.  At the time, I recall thinking that he might very well be another Lincoln, but certainly not Abe.  Then we were told he was another FDR, which was certainly closer to the truth, and not just because they both smoked cigarettes and made Narcissus look like a shrinking violet.  But, now that he’s been in office for a while, he mostly reminds me of Wile E. Coyote.  He thinks he’s very clever, but he keeps falling off the cliff while holding the anvil he intended to drop on the Roadrunner.

I felt that those people who insisted last year that, down deep, Obama was a Muslim were being unfair.  While I had to question what sort of Christian would have sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church, soaking up all that racist swill for 20 years, at least the Trinity United Church of Christ wasn’t a mosque.  But I have to confess Obama seems to be doing everything he can to make me question my earlier judgment. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

I have always contended that anybody who seeks the presidency is an egomaniac, every bit as certifiably crackers as those poor souls wandering around the grounds of the asylum insisting they’re Napoleon.

Still, I’m generally willing to cut people a reasonable amount of slack.  But it’s quite another thing to pretend that a community organizer with just four years in the Senate, two of which he spent on the hustings, is qualified to be the leader of the free world.  Even if I approved of his left-wing agenda, I’d find it impossible to make a case for him.  Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d send this Napoleon wannabe to Elba. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

The way that liberal politicians and Hollywood celebrities carry on over the plight of poor people, you might easily get the idea that they actually know some.  They don’t.  Why would they when they only hang around with each other?

Those two groups are made up entirely of narcissists.  Who else would want or need to exist entirely in the spotlight?  They’re like moths.  The irony is that, physically, the two groups couldn’t be more different and, yet, on a per capita basis, they probably spend the same amount on Botox, collagen and plastic surgery.   When it comes to nips, tucks and hair transplants, alone, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, have spent enough money to keep several poor families in vittles for years to come.

Speaking of appearances, I can see the attraction of politics.  In no other field, except perhaps for rock and roll, are so many homely people described as highly photogenic sex symbols. (more…)

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by Burt Prelutsky [scriptwriter]

Although I would like to believe that every single article I write springs full-grown from my brain as Athena was alleged to have sprung from the head of Zeus, such is not always the case.  Sometimes the notion results from a confluence of events, which is a fancy way of saying I don’t pay for other people’s ideas.  I steal them.

For instance, in the past couple of weeks, I received e-mails from two far-flung friends that sparked an observation.  In the first, Steve Finefrock of Oklahoma reminded me of the shmoo, a creature introduced over 50 years ago by Al Capp in his comic strip, “Li’l Abner.”  The shmoo was a magical little pear-shaped entity that lived only to serve man’s wishes.  If it even thought a person was hungry, it would die happily to feed him.  It had the ability to taste like chicken or steak, its eyes could be used for buttons and its whiskers made fine toothpicks. (more…)