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Ne hell of a good columnBang, Bang, Bang: Arizona We Need To Talk

Dear Arizona:

Sit down next to me. We need to talk. I get you, I really do. You are the Charlie Sheen of states except grayer, harder of hearing and you pull your pants up to just below the nipples. I know, I really do, that the good old days were when Coolidge was President, Clara Bow was a spicy tomato, and a rousing Saturday night was racing the other kids to see who got to use the bathtub water first.

At first you made me laugh. No other state has a law on the books that forbids donkeys from sleeping in a bathtub. The whole making it against the law to ride a horse up your statehouse steps to the second floor makes sense to me also. Still, I would have loved to have sat in your state house when the debate was going on as to decided whether or not a woman should own more than one “back massager.” I even forgave you that you were so racist that you voted against giving yourselves a day off of work to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and basically had to be threatened by the federal government so that you would finally go along with the rest of the country. Me, for an extra day off, I would celebrate the anniversary of Newt Gringrich’s third divorce, when he left his wife in the hospital with cancer. “Heartless woman, getting cancer and losing her hair from the chemo when you were bedding your young, hot assistant. That woman was a buzz kill, whining and throwing up all over the place. Throw me a beer. Here’s to Newt. Thanks for the day off.” Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been nothing but entertainment for me. He is like your crazy uncle Eddie who stays up all night listening to Art Bell and believes in black helicopters has been put in charge of guarding prisoners. Your minutemen, basically six good old boys patrolling the border in a pickup truck, were classic. It was like Barney Fife stepped out of “The Andy Griffith Show” into real life, but the state was smart enough not to give them a bullet.

Just three years ago there was talk in some circles that you were no longer a red state but were becoming a purple state. Phoenix was booming. John McCain was a maverick that was willing to work with the Democrats. Your governor was a female Democratic named Janet Napolitano who showed the nation the Arizona spirit and courage when she spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, less than three weeks after having a mastectomy.

Maybe it was the heat? The recession? A full moon? One day the rest of the country woke up and you were eating your own hair and playing with your poop. It was like Lord of the Flies except Jack, Piggy, Ralph and the boys are being played by seventy year olds with liver spots, tooling around on rascals. There were the crazy gun laws, the “papers please” law, the attempt to rolling back the citizen clause in the Constitution, the death panels, your governor talking about nonexistent headless bodies in the desert and having what can only be described as hot flashes in the middle of her debate for reelection, the tea partiers, and your newest crazy effort, SB 1433, which would allow Arizona to pick and chose which federal laws it will enforce and follow. (The Arizona Republic stated that SB 143 would allow Arizona to secede from the union without having to officially do so.) Comedian Jon Stewart wondered aloud where he was going to find humor when the Bushies left the White House. Who knew that one state named Arizona would do all it could to make Mississippi proud.

Still I was not prepared for SB 1610. Every state in the United States has official symbols, usually a bird, an animal, a rock, a song, or maybe a mineral. I still remember my second grade teacher, Mrs. Coffee, teaching the class that Iowa’s official symbols are the oak tree, the Eastern Goldfinch, the Wild Prairie Rose, the Geode, and although I have no clue what the words or the melody is, our song is the “Song of Iowa” by S.H.M. Byers. State symbols are harmless things that have something to do with the history of the area with the primary purpose of making school children extremely sleepy. (For example, the official drink of most states is milk, the official dance is square dancing, and zzzzzzzzz. What, what, I’m awake.)

The whole purpose of an official symbol is to be non-controversial. With the exception of Moxie Cola, the official soft drink of Maine, which was original sold with the claim that it helped get one’s manhood back, think Viagra in a bottle, it is hard to find anything interesting about most state symbols. None of them are designed to kill people, well, maybe Grits, the official prepared dish of Georgia, but that is only after four or five decades of eating the stuff. Arizona is about to become the first state to have an official firearm, the Colt Single Action Army revolver. (It is in a race with Utah which wants to make the Browning Model 1911 automatic pistol its official state gun.) Let me repeat, Arizona, you are so crazy that you are going to have an official state firearm. Take that Eastern Goldfinch. It should be noted that Colt has never manufactured or is currently manufacturing the Single Action Army revolver in the state. It is supposed to “epitomizes the Wild West heritage of Arizona.”

What is next? Missouri: the first official state beer, California: the official state marijuana plant, New Jersey: the official state toxic waste dump, West Virginia: the first official mountain top strip mine, Alabama: the official state trailer park, Montana: the official white supremacist compound, or Utah: the official Osmond (I vote for little Jimmy.).

It is surprising that no one has mentioned that a Colt lobbyist, Todd Rathner, was pressing the flesh and spreading the cash around the Phoenix state house in a decision that took 120 seconds of committee time. Now, I am not saying that the Colt revolver was not used during the territorial days, but hundreds of such weapons were used, especially in the Tonto Basin Feud and various massacres of innocent people. I am saying it such make people uneasy that a state symbol can be bought and sold. It does not matter how you feel about the second amendment. The graveyards are filled with people who have changed their opinion on how to understand it.

One of them is nine-year-old is Christina Taylor Green who was shot in the head on January 8, 2011 in Tucson when Jared Lee Loughner tried to murder Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in front of a Safeway. This is where my humor leaves me. I got no jokes, no zingers or punch lines. A beautiful little girl and five other people died because a nut carried a gun and used it. Arizona should be ashamed of itself. A talented woman is still working on learning how to talk and walk again. A tragedy and Arizona is pushing to name a handgun as their official weapon. Maybe comfort can be taken that it was not a Glock. No matter what side of the second amendment you are on, it should be put off for a year or two at least. It is called taste, class and Arizona does not have it. Arizona spent two minutes, two minutes to decide, two minutes… bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…about the time it took Jared Lee Loughner to change twenty people’s lives forever and too many friends and family to even count. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang… There is nothing funny in that.