Inside Looking Out: Never Mind

Back in the ’70s, the TV show “Saturday Night Live” portrayed a character named Emily Litella, played by Gilda Radner. She became famous for her comic TV news editorials.

Emily was hard of hearing, so when the host of the TV newscast asked her to speak about a current event, she heard the topic as something else. Here’s an example of one of her comedy skits.

“Emily, what are your views about violence on television?”

“Violins on television!” she remarked. “Who wants to hear that? All that screeching noise comin’ from these ladies dressed up like they’re goin’ to a wedding and they’re scratchin’ up and down with that stick. It sounds like a bunch of cats dying and you can only imagine how upsetting that must be to cat lovers, specially those who have a whole house full of them critters.”

“Emily,” interrupted the host. “That’s vi — o — lence on television, not violins.”

“Oh,” she said with an embarrassing smile. “Then never mind.”

Let’s have some fun. I’ll take a few topics from some of Emily’s skits and give you my own twist of how she might respond.

“What is your opinion about the Equal Rights Amendment?”

“The Eagle Rights Amendment? I’m absolutely for it. Eagles should have rights too, you know. I mean they should have the right to swoop down and pick up a mouse for lunch without somebody gettin’ all offended about mice having their rights too. And what about them being told they gotta be the bird of America? I mean, really? I ain’t seen no eagles flyin’ anywhere lately, so how can they make ’em the national bird? That should be chickens. They’re everywhere, even in the grocery stores. The only right a chicken should have is the right to be on my dinner plate tonight.”

“What’s your view of conserving our natural resources?”

“I’m all for it. We need to conserve our natural racehorses because if we don’t, then where we gonna get the horses for the Kentucky Derby and all those other derbies. I mean natural racehorses are better than unnatural ones, you know, the ones they shoot up with drugs to make them go faster. And that’s another thing. If unnatural horses become drug addicts, we’re gonna need some pretty big rehab centers to hold ’em all.”

“Are you for or against euthanasia?”

“I don’t really care about youth in Asia. I mean they got their problems there and we got ours here. Actually when the youth in Asia come here to go to school they do better than American kids. Before you know it, we’re gonna have a Chinese president in the White House. I hope he can speak English and I hope he doesn’t make us all eat wonton soup and that seaweed noodle thing. I mean if I wanna eat seaweed, I’ll just go down to the Jersey shore, jump in the ocean, open my mouth and suck in all the seaweed I can get. And it won’t cost me nothin’ either.”

“Do you favor the death penalty?”

“Now why would I do that? I’m hard of hearin’ as you know, so I ain’t favoring no deaf penalty. And what they gonna do? Make me pay more taxes? Kick me outta church cause I can’t hear the priest talkin’ about God” And by the way, you think God wants a deaf penalty? He should have a penalty for all the big mouth people who shout at me when I keep sayin’, “Huh? What did you say? So the big mouth yells louder and louder until I get a headache and I gotta go take some pills. Then I get addicted to the pills and then I gotta go to rehab, but there’s no room for me cause they got all them unnatural horses shoved in there taken up all the space!”

“What about making Puerto Rico a state?”

“Are you for real? We’re gonna make Puerto Rico a steak? What, are we gonna do, cut up a hundred cows, glue the meat together, grill this giant steak over the Grand Canyon after we light up all the trees down below. And then what? Ship it on a boat the size of Texas? Then what? They gonna want a baked potato to go with the steak so we’ll have to go to Ireland and dig up all the potato farms; get all these potatoes and bring em back on a hundred planes and drop em like bombs into an oven the size of Pennsylvania. And can you imagine it they want a chocolate cake for dessert?”

“I think it’s time to stop now because you got all the topics wrong.”

“Oh I did? Then never mind.”

The message on her answering machine was, “Hello, this is Emily Litella. I’m not home right now, but I will call you back as soon as possible. Just leave your name, number and what time you called after you hear the sound of the Jeep.”

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.