Kansas City News Blog

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Until today, I didn't know that the imaginary deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that political reporters are always sleepily invoking included an "abortion card," but according to Fred Logan's Campaign Blog at KCTV Channel 5, Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline is "playing" one. I know "playing the race card" is a lazy, assy-smelling metaphor for the deployment of race-based political tactics, but doesn't "playing the abortion card" pretty much encapsulate Phill Kline's entire life?

I bet his wife would tell you that he never talks about anything other than late-term abortions, ever — not even regular old blastocyst-removal abortions. And then, after 20 minutes of yammering about abortion across the dinner table, he says, "But enough about my day," followed by some things that just occurred to him about abortion. It's like accusing genocide of playing the "ethnic-cleansing card" or accusing orgasms of playing the "shuddering ejaculation followed by deep, forgetful slumber" card.

This morning's post is weirdly extra-mean — click here, or on this valuable Honus Wagner baseball card playing the equally valuable race card:

Michelle Obama's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits or something: Michelle Obama is coming to Kansas City on Thursday to meet with some area working women and discuss all of their economic challenges and whatnot. It's a tough old Calvin-pissing-on-a-Ford-logo world out there, and if their lives are anything like my working woman's man's life, Obama is going to hear a lot about shopping for doctors willing to refill yet another hydrocodone prescription, the staggering weight of a working woman's multiple DUIs and the audacity of hoping that the collection agency that bought up your payday loan debt from the King of Kash doesn't find out your new phone number.

And if my life were more like Saved by the Bell, I might try to sneak into the meeting by wearing a dress and talking in falsetto. I mean, more falsetto than normal. But that sitcom shit always backfires — I know from hard experience that you can't get away with running from table to table at a restaurant when you accidentally ask two women out on the same night, and that you can't trick a child by replacing a dead puppy with a similar-looking puppy.

A Multitude of Talent's When I was a kid, my frequent nosebleeds resulted in a painful nasal cauterization procedure. There were some high jinks involving a wet floor and some kind of a collegial office prank, and in the ensuing malpractice mishap, the electrocautery device went way too far into my nose and burned out a tiny, vital part of my prefrontal lobe. After that, I developed what my new doctor said was "impaired empathic response," whereby I am unable to resonate emotionally with any of you automatons — which is so great! Because otherwise, I might feel pity and compassion for the poor half-wit who posted this ad on Craigslist today. And that would just be a shame. Soliciting editors for freelance writing work with a string of indifferent capitalizations, poor grammar and the extraneous third nipple of punctuation — the plural apostrophe — I thought for a minute that it might be a fake ad. I mean, $35,000-$40,000? I wish I lived in the computer-generated fucking Matrix where you're denying the existence of spoons, because here in the rough, carbon-choked real world, I feel lucky to have dental coverage. I'm sorry — I know this is some mean, vicious shit, but I have a condition. I mean, Jesus, people. Anyway, here's an archival screen-grab: