Une Pastiche

I hate Daylight Savings Time. The only good thing about it is going off it . . . and next year, we'll have to wait even longer. Ugh!

On the other hand, DST means that baseball can't be far behind--let's play two! (And focus on the game, not on Barry Bonds.)

* * * * * * * * * *

Is it my imagination, or have nasty thunderstorms been occuring later in the day than they used to occur? I seem to remember being told once that storms form during the hottest part of the day--which means that we used to get tornado warnings and such from around 3-7 p.m. Lately, however, they seem to be starting at 7 p.m. or later. More anecdotal evidence for global warming? Or am I just getting old and upset with sitting up all night waiting for the things to pass . . . or for a lightning strike to blow up my TV again?

* * * * * * * * * *

I should have played the women's NCAA basketball pool, not the men's. I'd have had 1/2 of the Final Four right. Still, if the men's pool hadn't filled up with so many upsets on last-split-second shots, I'd have had at least 1/2 of the men's Final Four, too, instead of having bupkis.

This is why I much prefer baseball, even though I'd doubtless lose money on that if I were to bet. I enjoy the head game, the intellectual exercise of evaluating the teams. I have no interest in the money angle. I'd rather be right than be rich. Although being rich has its advantages, like being able to afford decent health care for all Americans.

* * * * * * * * * *

I see from an op-ed column in the Friday or Saturday (forget which--read both the same day) Omaha World-Herald that at least one doctor has exactly pegged the reason consumer-driven health care plans (CDHP) will never work: health care is not like buying a car, where you can go elsewhere or skip it if the price and other conditions are not right. Once you need health care, you need it NOW. And if you've already started receiving it, you cannot just up and leave, as a rule. The vaunted Free Market won't work under those circumstances. By definition, you are not really FREE to make cost-based choices. For this reason, too, utilities should not be creatures of the free market, and run by profit-driven companies.

I am no communist (certainly not in the "how it actually exists in the real world" as opposed to "how Marx presented it in his imagination" sense), but I can see that there are times when money/cost/profit are not the best bases for decision-making. Which is why I agree with Firesign Theater: "All Hail Marx (Groucho) and Lennon (John)!"

* * * * * * * * * *

The character Bill from "The Red Green Show" is a comic heir to Harpo Marx. I realized this while watching "Duck Soup" on TCM's April Fool's Day classic comedy films line-up yesterday. There's even a vague physical resemblance between the two of them.

But don't ask me to explain why my favorite comic characters tend to be the "wise/holy fool" kind. There is something quite profound about their wisdom being revealed in their innocence. Other such characters? Stan Laurel, Bullwinkle, Patrick Starfish, Odie, Opus, Linus spring first to mind. Feel free to add to this list.

Don't get me wrong: I also love the wit and word-play of such comic geniuses as Groucho Marx and Mr. Peabody. But I have always been drawn to the comic innocents--as opposed to the comic dumb, like Jerry Lewis. I don't care what the French think. A lot of Jerry Lewis's humor is not brilliant--it is cruel.

It must be the eternal optimist in me (which I try to suppress, usually without much success). I hope that the world can be the sunny place the comic innocents see it as being. It's a question of kindness, at heart . . . which is the other thing the comic innocents have in common: kindness is at the very heart of their characters.

* * * * * * * * * *

Yet the serious world intrudes. It is ever thus. I saw in David S. Broder's recent column on the immigration question that a poll was finally taken of legal immigrants, with the somewhat startling result that 81 percent of them think that illegal immigrants do not drive down wages "because they are doing the jobs no one else wants to do." Eleven percent disagreed; the other 8 percent apparently were undecided.

The pollster explained the reuslts by noting that most of the legal immigrants did not feel the illegals were in competition with them, and thus the legals felt sympathy for the illegals. As one woman, a legal immigrant and accountant put it, "I came first class. The illegals are coming coach--they do jobs I didn't have to do, and they live outside the law."

This is all well and good, but it begs the real question. The real question is WHY Americans seem so unwilling to take the jobs the illegals are taking. Is it because the jobs are that disgusting? I think not. It is because the wages for such jobs are way too low for what the labor involved is worth. Any number of Americans would take those jobs if they would be paid what the jobs were worth.

But I still have no idea about what is the best way to answer "the immigration question." So I repeat my call to you, my readers: give me your insights, your wisdom and your reasons. Right now, I feel like a cross between Diogenes and the Hebrews, wandering around lost, seeking answers. Help me out, here, won't you?