Big Bird And The Safety Net

Apparently, it's nothing personal at all. Willard actually likes Big Bird, or so he says, but ut oh, the aging Avian Television Star learned he might be out of a job during last night's boring, ill managed, stupefying debate. That's not how pink slips are traditionally delivered to aging employees. You might even expect better form from a guy who likes to fire people. And has experience at it. Lots of experience. But anyway, so it is, in a country without enough decent jobs and towering, long term, probably structural unemployment, that BB might soon be out of a job, allegedly to create other jobs. Jobs for others. Talk about redistribution. BB is just another aging teacher about to be excessed.

Let's face it. Other than the job he now holds, BB is probably not employable. It's unlikely he can get another job in TV. And that means, after his unemployment benefits run out, as they surely will, he'll be forced to move in with Oscar the Grouch, who apparently has landed in what passes for the safety net in this neighborhood, a garbage can.

No wonder OTG is grouchy. That's not much of a safety net he's got there in the first place. And to learn in such a strange way that BB, his colleague, was going, eventually, to have to share it with him is quite disturbing. Quite something to make one grouchy. OTG thought he'd hear in this debate about the domestic issues: energy, the environment, guns, LGBTQ rights, immigration, reproductive health, the environment, campaign finance, the drug war, and voting rights. But no. None of that, thanks in part to Jim Lehrer's idiotic questioning ("What are the differences between you?") and his complete loss of control. No. Instead OTG got to hear about Simpson-Bowles, whatever that might be, and the repeated bogus claims about $716 billion being taken from Medicare and that his colleague was going to try to move into his garbage can.

And to top it all off, Bert and Ernie were on the phone this morning to find out what the candidates thought about their civil rights.