Dear Santa Claus,
What’s good? We kind of fell out of touch for a while there, and that’s my bad. If we’re being honest with each other, I stopped believing in you in 1999. But this Christmas, I need you to do me a few favors. Coal needs to be handed out most liberally.
For instance, the entire Bush administration deserves some amount of coal for obvious bull-honkey. But Georgie Porgie Pudding n’ Pie and his diplomatic team seem to be demanding enough coal to stoke their stoves this December, considering their continued refusal to sign the international ban on cluster bombs. Apparently not using bombs that explode and spray shrapnel, often into the faces of children who find and detonate them months after they are dropped, will endanger our troops somehow.
For supporting unnecessarily harsh methods of killing that endanger civilians in the name of a shaky argument that covers up ulterior motives, George W. Bush, Robert Gates and their colleagues need a stocking full of your lowest-grade coal.
Also, a little further to the north, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been begging for weeks to get smacked upside the head with a bag of ore. He successfully orchestrated a shutdown of Parliament to sidestep a vote of no confidence that would have thrown him out of office.
And then there’s the shit that hits close to home. I hope, Santa, that you’re ready for a story.
Last Wednesday, I was in the foulest mood I’ve been in for quite some time. I walked out of my dorm on my way to my 9:40 a.m. class when I saw three men in suits walk merrily by. This is a pretty rare occurrence on campus, so I followed a hunch and asked, “Do you gentlemen work for Sodexo?”
“Yes, we do.”
I considered my words carefully. I knew they were on their way to negotiate the new contract with the union representatives, and I didn’t want to antagonize them too much. “Do the right thing, gentlemen,” I said.
They walked away and, without a backward glance, one mumbled derisively, “We always do, but thanks.”
Santa, I know you know what these assholes want for Christmas: a union contract that forces their workers to pay for their own health care. Workers who make little more than minimum wage and sometimes have to decide between eating and heating their tenement apartments are forced to pay for their own medical insurance by an employer that takes in more than $7 billion a year.
Instead, perhaps you could come to College-in-the-Woods’ Onondaga Hall. We’ll meet up, take a trip to Wegmans and make all these dicks a nice, piping hot coal pie. We’ll hold their noses, shove it down their throats …
And then we’ll go out and give gifts to all the good girls and boys. Merry Christmas to all. And thanks in advance, Santa.