If you ever had the odd [mis] fortune of being responsible for several children at once, you must have noticed that there was that *one* child who would always cause dramatic misdeeds and even when confronted at the very moment his hand was in the cookie jar or her fingers were on the kitten’s tail or actually removing money from your wallet (what the Catholics would call In flagrante delicto) and we would more generally describe as caught RED-HANDED said child would look at you with a mixture of innocence and indignation and say “What????“
Apparently this philosophy has figured heavily in the civic minds of St. Matthews, where they spent most of yesterday writing back folks that they
- A) had been misunderstood and falsely accused
- B) knew nothing at all about what happened
- C) knew something about what happened but surely never harmed the beavers in any way
- D) upon reflection may have ripped the dam but never flattened the lodge and
- E) oh you mean flat area in the photo with the bulldozer tracks on it?
At no point did a responsible politician, with the sincerest interest in his community, step gallantly forward and say, yes I requested this thing be done for the good of our citizens. Or widows and orphans. Or whatever. It honestly made me think of this sketch, which when I saw it so many years ago I assumed was an exaggeration. I would encourage you to watch it again count how many times Palin’s character is willing to lie, obstruct, distract and generally excuse his behavior. I count 12 if you don’t include the possible effort to derail the complaint with a gender argument at the beginning.
Obviously, we can’t all respond like this grand master to an assorted-chocolate-box of bald-faced lies. Sometimes robustly delivered lies can take our breath and leave us sputtering in disbelief, looking around for a witness, or wondering if we possibly misunderstood. Obviously It’s going to require the spirit of John Cleese to get these folks at St. Matthews to fess up to what was probably a phone call to public works and a discrete request to ‘Bubba’ to take care of the problem, knowing full well what he would be likely do.
In the meantime your heart can be consoled by this remarkable tale of kindness to beavers, weirdly from the middle of beaver-killing Nova Scotia, where a family of beavers moved into the ditch behind a River John home and was apparently welcomed with open – er- apples!
The video actually makes me a little anxious, but their heart is clearly in the right place and the story could soften public attitudes in a very beaver phobic region….sooo…..
