Get Dave Letterman On the Phone

On Monday, I kind of took a jab at my wife over her saying that they killed Obama Bin Laden.   Well, I apologize because everybody seems to be having trouble getting the name right.   Now, normally I would laugh at the fact that FOX News got it wrong.   I’ll let you stew on that for a bit.   However, it seems that CNN, local news affiliates and even people can get the names mixed up just as much as Geraldo Rivera.

Check out 1:02 for the huge fail.

Now, as I was coming back from lunch during my day long sit-and-wait-to-be-told-that-I wasn’t-going-to-be-picked-for-jury-duty, I passed by one of the televisions which was showing HLN.   The crawl at the bottom was “NYC FIREFIGHTERS REACT TO OBAMA’S DEATH”.

As an amateur humorist and lover of all things quirky about language I have to find the funny in all this.   In our time, we have had a murderous Al Qaeda leader named Osama Bin Laden and a President of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama.  Now, what are the odds that, one day, these two people with similar sounding names would cross paths where one would end up being killed during the others Presidential term?  It boggles the mind.

As we move through the life cycle of this news story, there will probably be countless other grammatical slips and I hope that we have the common sense to realize what they are and move past them.   However, I’m sure somewhere in the White House, Michelle is asking her husband about his ‘other wives’.   At least, I hope she’s joking about it.

With that, I leave you with the only possible to tie this all together.

Dave at the 67th Annual Academy Awards

March 27th, 1995

I Was Scooping Up Cat Poop

Everyone wants to have that philosophical, frozen in time debate about where they were when something happened.

“Where were you when…”

Our parents had the ‘When Kennedy was shot’ for their generational question.   Mine was, ‘When the Challenger blew up’.   The tail end of that generational question will be, ‘When 9/11 occurred.’  The new generation will have a tossup.   Will it be, ‘When Michael Jackson died’ or ‘When Osama Bin Laden was killed’?

Given that the average teenager has limited experience with Jackson’s music, apart from Akon working with him in his final years, I’m thinking that Bin Laden’s death will rule out.   Just saying.

In any case, we have way too many ‘moments in time’ for us to keep remembering every little detail.  However, I have the feeling that when anyone ever asks me where I was when I heard Osama was killed, I will be able to recall exactly what I was doing.

I was scooping out cat poop from the litter box.

My wife yelled down to say, “They got him.  They killed O[inaudible].”

I said, “What?”

She yells down again, “They killed Obama[inaudible].”

I dropped the scooper into the litter box.  My heart jumped into my throat.  Someone just assassinated the President?!?!?

“Pause that, shit!  I’ll be right up.”

Turns out the first time she yelled down she said, ‘Osama Bin Laden’.   When I asked her to repeat it, she flubbed it and said, ‘Obama Bin Laden’.

Regardless of malapropisms, I stayed up an extra hour to watch all the coverage and nearly slept through the alarm this morning.   My thoughts swayed between relief that they had finally gotten the man responsible for planning the 9/11 attacks to fear that retaliation would commence while we celebrated.  After all, there is a need for Al Qaeda to establish relevance in the wake of this news and that scares me.

Then I heard the news that they buried the body at sea.  That’s just flipping wonderful isn’t it?  We just endured the onslaught of Donald Trump crying, “Show us your papers, Obama” for the last few weeks, now we’ll have continuous cries of “Show us the body.”   The naysayers will probably do the following.

1. It’s election time.  Obama is using this to boost numbers.
2. The body was conveniently buried to cover up that he has been dead or is still alive.
3. This is to take focus away from the birthing issue.

Has it really come to this?   Are we really that divided of a nation that we look at every little thing that goes on as a conspiracy?  Can’t we just take a little comfort in the fact that a terrible person has come to justice, one way or the other.  I’m not going to go out and dance in the streets but I’m glad that those affected by the attacks in 2001 are one more step towards closure.

I’m also glad I wasn’t doing anything embarrassing when I heard the news.   “Where was I when Osama was killed?  Oh, I was in the bathroom, having an intestinal issue.  It was taco night.”




As a footnote I would to extend my sincerest support for those who have fought and died to protect us from harm.  I also commend SEAL Team Six for pulling off this operation with as little loss of life as necessary.



Ready to Lead, Ready to Follow, Never Quit