So many oddities occur in Utah that most of us locals just don’t pay attention anymore. Every other day, another person is arrested and charged with stealing public money from whatever agency, police department or school district that unwisely trusted them with the keys to the till. A 13 year old girl runs away with a 31 year old man, and both are killed in a shootout. Bad enough the local stories make us locals sick, but some of our Utah embarrassments inevitably go viral.
Yesterday, after getting home from the office late, I vegetated in my room in front of the TV, avoiding the news, and got more than a few eye-fulls and ear-fulls of Utah. Beginning with Jon Stewart, who did not mention anything about Utah in his broadcast, but in his signature “Moment of Zen” at the end of his show, the video was of Utah’s own space alien in Congress, Jason Chaffetz. The former BYU place kicker and rising star in the teabagger era was answering a reporter’s query about R’s and D’s sitting next to each other during President’s State of the Union speech. The heat-packin’ Representative said that “he didn’t have a date” and was grateful that he “didn’t have to sit next to Rep. Weiner (D. NY).” I can see that Chaffetz being that close to a weiner could be uncomfortable for him.
Within minutes, I watched Stephen Colbert spend an entire segment of his show featuring Utah State House Republigoof Curt Oda of Clearfield, who has proposed legislation permitting residents to lawfully and humanly kill “feral” animals. Bashing them in the head or decapitation are included as defined “humane” methods. Colbert opined that this is proof that there are fun things to do in Utah.
The Utah follies continued with Jay Leno’s monologue, where he mentioned the bad press a local girls middle school basketball squad have received since beating another team 108-3. Although this is the typical score of prosecutor victories in Federal cases, it seems unseemly for girls to pour on poor sportswomanship.
Finally, the show “Ancient Astronauts” on the History Channel last night displayed a photo array of ancient pictographs in Utah, probably Anasazi stuff from the Moab area, as “evidence” of extraterrestrials visiting Earth in ancient times. The beauty of Southeastern Utah is also featured in a popular new film, “127 Hours” about the outdoor extreme sports enthusiast who cut off his own arm to free himself from a boulder in a tiny slot canyon. That advertisement flashed by about the same time as the sleeping pill kicked in, but I’d had enough by then.
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