Dear Otus,
As I drove past last weekend, I saw scores of protesters in Riverfront Park holding some sort of candlelight vigil, but I missed what they were up to. Can you fill us in?
-- Edward Reilly,
Little Rock
Dear Edward,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and, yes, I have all the pertinent details for those who were out of the loop.
The gathering, estimated by local officials as numbering 280, were members of the Central Arkansas El Nino Anti-Defamation League. This is a group of local weather enthusiasts who were protesting that the Trump administration has blamed the wildly fluctuating Arkansas weather -- snow and sleet last weekend to temperatures near 80 this week -- on Mexico and its El Nino weather system.
The weather was cold and damp and it was a disgruntled gaggle of CAENADL members in Riverfront Park. A few yards behind them, swollen by recent rains, a khaki-colored Arkansas River roiled on its journey toward the Mississippi.
Flecks of foam flitted among driftwood felled from distant hectored banks. The sodden sky hung flaccid with lint-tinted clouds and tried listlessly to rouse itself for the occasion. It failed and spent an apathetic hour in slouching lassitude.
The local chapter was announcing it was joining the league's national protest against the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's mandate that its 193 owned or operated stations "must run" editorials supporting President Trump's incessant tweets blasting El Nino and the Mexican government for sending it across our Southern border.
"El Nino very, very bad," read one tweet. "Blame Mexico and their refusal to pay for my big beautiful wall. Our heroic National Guard is on the job. Despite the constant negative press covfefe."
In Little Rock, KATV is owned by Sinclair. And, ironically, the station boasts that its four veteran meteorologists have between them 113 years of weather forecasting experience.
"We don't need corporate stooges dictating what our local weather team reports," protest leader Barry Alan said through a bullhorn. "Having to read what Sinclair sends out undermines public faith in their meteorological objectivity."
Alan then quoted former CBS newsman Dan Rather's recent post on his Facebook page:
"News anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, words meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn't journalism. It's propaganda. It's Orwellian. A slippery slope to how despots wrest power, silence dissent, and oppress the masses."
And this Sinclair quote (Upton Sinclair): "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
If the wildly vacillating spring weather is not the fault of Mexico and El Nino, then what?
According to literature handed out at the protest, the weather is being manipulated by clandestine fake weather governmental entities in order to divert the public's attention from the failing Trump administration.
Trump's woes include everything from legal troubles involving porn stars, an embarrassingly inept cabinet that changes week to week, an ill-advised testosterone-fueled trade war that threatens to gut untold thousands of American jobs, increasing special prosecutor evidence of collusion with the Russians, and criticism that Trump has visited his country clubs on average once every 4.5 days since he was inaugurated at a cost for Air Force One of $40.3 million.
"Altering the weather as a political distraction is an abomination and an affront to the natural order," Alan said, "and we urge all right-thinking Americans to join us in our demand that the government cease blaming the El Nino weather pattern on Mexico."
The group then marched to KATV at 401 Main St., and nailed a thesis, "Disputation on the Indulgence of Power," to the door. It outlined the "unholy" alliance between the Sinclair sub rosa manipulators and the Trump administration.
"This protest is completely unwarranted and the product of well-meaning, but misguided individuals," said a Sinclair official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The Channel 7 weather team personnel are, and always have been, consummate professionals. They will be at their posts come hell or high water. And high water is what we expect since the Mexicans are sending another storm front our way this weekend."
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that Grape Nuts consists of neither.
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Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
HomeStyle on 04/14/2018