By Rosalie Tirella
… and let it go, Harley! Let it go!
We love State Senator Harriette Chandler. She is as progressive and decent as they come, but her lawsuit against former political opponent William J. Higgins Sr. is silly – especially during the holidays when the money she and Higgins will squander suing the hell out of each other could be better spent on things like turkey and all the fixings for the folks at the local homeless shelter. Or mittens and hats for inner-city kids whose parents don’t own cars and have to walk Worcester’s mean streets when its 14 degress out! (Years ago I was one of those kids!)
When you think how blessed Senator Harriette Chandler has been – attending the best colleges, getting the best jobs, having a husband who loves her, living in warm lovely home in a safe and beautiful neighborhood – and I drive down streets like Charlton and see: thugs putting baseball bats in trunks of cars, thugs going to car windows and slipping thier hands in to exchange white packets for (your guess) or a 30ish-year-old women just standing in the middle of the sidewalk so drugged out, yu think she’s going to fall right over … . I mean, this is what I saw just last month outside the PIP!
My life and my travels make me wanna take Higgins (who is comfortably middle class in Northboro) and Chandler and knock their heads together! Knock some sense into both of these … very vain people.
Chandler should know this by now: Everyone gets slimed in today’s sleazoid all-American culture. It really is the age of soft porn in America! Whether it’s the way we dress, the movies we see, the video games we play, the talk radio station we listen to, the cable TV news show we watch, the reality shows to which everyone is addicted, we Americans are drowning in a cesspool of vitriol. It is called FREE SPEECH! And believe me there are so many examples of soaring rhetoric and lovely, elliptical phrases … . Unfortunately, they are stuck in most Americans’ college Intro to Poetry text books. It really sucks, Harley! I oughta know, having swum in the cesspool of the Telegram and Gazette’s Dianne Williamson columns or, like I said, tuning into Fox News. Or: having had to strike back, when all I really wanna do is … go on long walks in the park with my little Husky-mix, Jett!
But if we curtail the rantings of an old fart like William Higgins (whose free speech is not half as toxic as Glenn Beck when he out and out LIES about President Obama or the tea party nuts when they mangle the US Constitution and call our President Hitler and say truly horrible things about Democrats and unions) then you and I won’t be able to freely express ourselves.
Besides, I saw a TV clip of Higgins yesterday: He was wearing oxygen tubes when he was debating you! He was connected to an oxygen tank! He is ancient and very very very fraile – maybe in the early stages of dementia!
Harley, drop your silly lawsuit and get down on your knees and thank God that you are one of the few truly, truly lucky people. Don’t turn my Christmas – or the City of Worcester’s holiday season – into a muck-fest!
This past year you worked with ex-cons and their supporters to pass the CORI reform law. This was great news to people, who may have committed a crime years ago, and can’t get a freakin’ minimum wage job collecting shopping carts at the local Price Chopper! I have known a few poor souls like this!
Please, Harley and William, come together. William, apologize to Harriette and admit that what you said were fabrications made up in the heat of the political moment. Lots of political candidates say crappy things about their opponents election season.
And, Harley, even if William doesn’t say he’s sorry, drop the lawsuit and move on.
Go buy a bunch of hats and mittens and drop them off at the Friendly House, and be swept up in the spirit of giving.
Happy Holi-(Holy)days!
