"Sick" semper tyrannis

Last night, an odd thing occurred. There was a good show on PBS and no one asked for money! It was about the Lincoln Assassination, and John Wilkes Booth's bumbling escape plan. Any time you plan to commit such a heinous crime, don't let an actor be part of your getaway scheme. They rarely do well without outside direction.

But that's not what I'm yammering about today, and I only made the horrible pun in the title (Booth, a showman to the end, hollered "Sic semper tyrannis" (Thus ever to tyrants) after shooting Lincoln and jumping to the stage of Ford's Theater, breaking his leg in what must have been the most awkward stage entrance ever until the day Frank Sinatra brought Dean Martin onto the Jerry Lewis telethon) because when one is SICK, there is never anything good on television.

Why, when we were young, we loved snow days and sick days because in that horrible pre-VCR world, we got to see what the housebound enjoyed every day: Art Linkletter's "House Party," Mike Douglas, and Password, starring Allen Ludden ("The password is 'naptime'...... 'To Nipsey Russell...to Brett Somers Klugman....and to you at home...' ").

No more, although if you can hang on 'til three o'clock, Ellen DeGeneres puts on a pretty good show, and then comes Oprah with her collection of doctors.

And fans of jurisprudence - let's hear it for the judges and defense attorneys who work so hard to keep our criminals out of jail and on the streets! -can get their fill all day long. For crying out loud, there's Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Mills Lane, The People's Court, Judge Mathis, Divorce Court, Judge Hatchett,and Texas Justice. Now we know why so many crimes are being committed! All the judges in the nation are busy appearing on syndicated television shows, and have precious little time to bang down the gavel on the murdering thieving fingers of a repeat felon in downtown Baltimore when there are momentous cases involving someone's ex-girlfriend and the $753 bill for the fender she banged up on the Sonata, pulling out of that strip club parking lot the other night.
Hizzoner Larry Joe Doherty

And to the makers of Texas Justice: the show where people from deep in the heart of come on to settle their feudin' and rustlin' and divinin' rod issues: why are all these people wearing cowboy hats indoors? The coach of the Houston Oilers, Mr Bum "Bum" Phillips, refused to wear his 20-gallon Stetson inside the Astrodome! And these Cletuses (Cletii?) are standing around jawjacking in a court of law wearing hats.

There ought to be a judge show in which judges judge judges. And their wardrobes.