PRESIDENT ARCHIE BUNKER

During the “I’m Pretending to be Listening/Photo Op” session that was held in the White House, that found mass shooting survivors and their families sitting down with President Archie Bunker, an inveterate photographer was able to get a close up shot of President Bunker’s handheld notes and every single thing that came out of his McDonald’s apple pie mouth was pre-scripted.  

Everything.  Even the words,  “I hear you.”

And there you have it.   Look no further for the absolutely no solution to come.

I refer to our current President as Archie Bunker, for many reasons, but today it’s to remember Archie’s solution for dealing with skyjackers.   

His idea: ‘“arm the passengers.”

Now as laughably absurd as that is,  I think we are one step away from arming the students.  First of course, we will arm the teachers.  Then the parents.  Then the students.

Lunch will be at High Noon.

Because we are just steps away from the wild, Wild West.

The answer to the opioid crisis has never been more opioids but that is always the resolution of Murder, Incorporated aka the NRA.

The NRA once upon a time was a whole different kind of animal.   It was literally a club for enthusiasts.  

Today it is billion dollar marketing lobby.   It’s about making as much blood money profit as they can.  Even if it means shooting your four year old in the face.  They would consider that collateral damage.

Perspective:

Even me, a nice Jewish boy from Queens, grew up shooting guns.  For sport.  In camp.  And  we’re not talking Boot Camp.  We’re talking Camp Diana-Dalmaqua which at one point featured both archery and rifle ranges which was as lethal as making lanyards.

There we were, lying on twin mattresses, out in the woods, like a small army of Andrew Garfields, learning the proper way to shoot targets.   I loved the smell of the discharge.  No, not mine.  The gun’s.   I loved getting those fancy, framable marksmanship certificates.

We little boys of the fifties, grew up umbilically connected to our Fanner Fifties and Davy Crockett pistols and muskets.   They were no doubt an extension of our penises to come, that made us not so much gun crazy, as deeply connected to our heroes.

Anyone in those days that shot s TV or Film gun was heroic.   Private Eyes.  Cowboys.  

There was a very thick dividing line drawn between boys and girls.

Girls would spend their time desperately trying not to burn themselves or their cookies on the lightbulbs of their Easy Bake ovens,  while we boys made all the boy noise we could with our greenie stick em’ caps.

We played war, because, well, there are war games.  We role played.  On any given day, I went from David Simon, pudgy Jewboy to Wyatt Earp, Sugarfoot, or Little Joe.  I misheard the title and thought Paladin was the star of Half Gun will travel.  I had a Yancy Derringer derringer spring contraption on my arm, that with a flick of the wrist, would pop out the tiny gun right into my shooting hand.

Toy guns were our transition objects.  We went from breast to binky to bullets.

None of this was harmful and in truth actually helped us cultivate our aggressive nature.  Sports served the same function. MEN swing BATS. MEN threw TOUCHDOWNS and TACKLED.   MEN swatted tennis balls like they were tiny yellow aliens and later would simulate guitar playing with their rock and roll racquets. 

We got to sit next to our dads for those rare, exclusive, one on one, just him and me time,  in ballparks, feet tapping on a crunchy carpet of peanut shells, passing the invisible peace pipe back and forth while digging deep for that Cracker Jack toy, as we privately conferred like wisemen about the fate of our team.  My sister Ellen, went to see The Sound of Music but dad and I went to the Roy Rogers rodeo at Madison Square Garden.

Eventually boys grow up and all they want to do is play with real life dolls and before we are forced to play house, we want to keep using our penises for uterine target practice.  Hopefully missing.

Few boys ever become full blown and few girls grow up to be full blown women.   

We are hybrids of maturity.   

Some days we are all man.  Other days all boy.  Tantrums can return. Little boy heartache (which I happen to be experiencing right now  in between audible weeps).

We privately miss our mommies and daddies a lot more than we will ever admit.  The same goes for women.  When our inner little boys and  our inner little girls meet, face to face, naked in bed, that is when at the moment of climax, we temporarily morph into men and women, though sex at its best is when it becomes a foreplay date. 

The phrase fake it till you make it suddenly sprang to mind because I think that’s what most of us do most of the time.  

We can be Henry the VIII sloppy when it comes to the way we handle our grown up responsibilities.   At any given moment, either worn down by life, by our kids, or by our massively disappointing mates, we can suddenly break into a million pieces and our soul siren goes off, which sounds exactly like the plaintive howl of a gassy three month old baby.

So, when it comes to talking about guns the problem it seems, is that we are not all grown ups at the same time.  Anyone who was there: at the scene of a mass shooting, trust me, even if they are aged Sandy Hook six or seven, become instant ADULTS.

Real life, especially when it is dispensed by AR-15 bullets,  throws you right out of your cozy little life bed, like a major earthquake, and forces you to growup in one to two seconds.

To me, those who care more about their own second amendment rights—-which has become massively distorted from its original intent and what it literally says,  are self-indulgent babies.  

And then Wayne LePierre within a week of yet another death toll that he as been primarily responsible for, suddenly emerges, like primordial ooze or like Moses in a Hugo Boss knock off suit, coming down from the mountain (ironically taking over the role from Charlton Heston) waving his tablet with its one, single second com-amendment and, like the unctuous, QVC snake oil televangelist that he is, reminds all his baby followers that someone wants to take away their toys.

Which leads me full circle to the Oval Office, where we had to watch our on-the-spectrump President, who showed up in Parkland to pose, smiling with both his opposable thumbs up,  standing side by side with our inflatable First Lady as if his sparkling, Apprentice-based personality which is about as effective as a grocery store appearance meet and greet,  was all that was needed to wash away the blood that was flooding knee high in the streets.

He is Archie Bunker.  

In fact he grew up just a few miles away from the Bunker residence.  He is also King “Norman” Lear: a washed up, impotent fool whose kids are circling him like the ravenous buzzards that they were raised to be just waiting to celebrate and cash in the day that his body is lowered into that cold, dead ground.

What is desperately needed right now are the guidance of parents.  Grown ups.

The GOP, which spends our money like four year olds (and then demands our Medicare and Social Security, like public school hallway bullies) to pay for the economic messes that they create over and over and over again,  are made up of two distinct personalities.  

Those who are just stock market pigs in chest high shit and those who are illiterate lemmings who actually take seriously what The National Enquirer, Rush Limbaugh  and Fox News have to say.

The one thing that both parts share is a stupefying form of selfishness.  They want.  They demand.  

They will not listen.

And when they snap, they let their military weapons do the talking.

The gun culture is complicated only because the lines are so blurred.  Sure, there are collectors.  There are people who want to protect the sanctity of their home.

But also invited to the party and welcomed like family are the mentally ill and let us be reminded that one of the very first bill that Trump signed was the one that made it far easier for the mentally ill to buy guns.

We wouldn’t allow them to play with matches, but we have no problem with their buying the kind of weapon that was meant to assassinate battlefield enemies  as possible.

Right before Parkland, already on the table,  was a bill that would make it easy for gun owners to conceal and carry over state lines.

The only answer for me, is that we need the grown up, some grown up, any grown up in the room to be the voice of reason.

To put the naughty kids in time out.  To threaten to turn the country around if they don’t stop fighting.

Oh.  I just thought of who that is.

Jesus.

Muhammad.

Allah. 

But then again, who listens to their parents?