Trentonian Columnist: City Needs Plan For Obama Assassination

Trenton is a city in New Jersey, and it has two newspapers, one of which is The Trentonian. (You follow me here?) And The Trentonian has a columnist named L.A. Parker.

And, today, the columnist with a name disturbingly close to the company that brought us L.A. Lights shoes wrote a column titled Activist: City needs plan for Obama assassination. Oh, yes, what will happen to Trenton if its most famous native son, Barack Obama, is assassinated? They better have a contingency plan!

Anyway, here’s the best paragraph:

Whether you believe James Earl Ray acted alone or Lee Harvey Oswald fired without conspiracy or that John Wilkes Booth delivered a monological historical intervention, assassination remains a showstopper of U.S. human energy.

The column centers on a man named Paul Harris, who is the activist pushing for this contingency plan. And, oh, what clever writing do we have:

“The city needs a contingency plan in case Barack Obama becomes president and someone assassinates him,” Harris said.

Eyes rolled so far back into some listeners’ heads that they could look up and see activity in their occipital lobes. [...]

An initial thought believed that Harris ruined a whimsical tale with his negative vibe, almost as if I should skip a marvelous dessert because a tummy ache could occur should the three scoops of ice cream, walnut syrup, caramel sauce and Maraschino cherry be devoured in one setting.

There is a desire for a good scream: “Damn, Harris, can you just let me enjoy this gastrointestinal, let alone mental stimulation before you start a discussion about calories and antacids?”

Yeah, I kinda had the desire to scream that out, too. That exact same phrase! Who woulda thunk it?

Upon further review, Harris’ contingency discussion seems reasonable despite its overwhelming sense of doom.

For me it’s like heading home for a steak and potato dinner then being propositioned by a telemarketer selling grave sites.

Taste changes when mental synapses transmit perception and thought about being six feet under or having your ashes siphoned into a Chinese urn.

Man, this column has enough food metaphors to make Fire Joe Morgan proud.

Anyway: Yeah, there’s no real explanation of what the plan would be, why Trenton would need a contingency plan or why this activist is pro-heartburn. I’m not even sure if my headline is correct now that I’m done reading the column. Does this column even have a point?

What’s really baffling me, though, is that I’ve been skimming the Trentonian for years now. I’ve been aware of L.A. Parker’s existence for a long time, but how did I not know he was this awesome until just today? It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to shout, “Damn, Harris, can you just let me enjoy this gastrointestinal, let alone mental stimulation before you start a discussion about calories and antacids?”