Fred, Wilma, and Sarah

OMT Countdown to Glory: 112 Days until Bush is gone
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“I need to know if she really thinks that dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes”.

— Matt Damon on Sarah Palin

Here at OMT, we like Matt Damon. One of the most popular actors of his generation, he also comes across as a smart, funny guy, who doesn’t take himself too seriously. When Paramount decided to revive the Star Trek movie franchise, placing its focus back on the characters from the original series, Damon stepped up and said that he’d love to play Captain Kirk. No less an authority on the role than William Shatner gave Damon his blessing.

But alas, ’twas not to be. The producers have cast another actor in the role of Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek XI, due to be released next spring. We think that’s a damn shame. Matt would have been ideal in that role.

We also like him because his politics are very much in line with our own, which gives him special dispensation for a multitude of sins, committed and uncommitted. We learned this technique from Gerald Ford.

Consequently, since Matt Damon has repeatedly spoken out publicly against Sarah Palin, well, we just feel that that it’s our civic duty to issue him an honorary OMT Buddy-Boy award for his efforts, complete with commemorative certificate and two free beers at Dunning’s bar in Regent Square, should he ever be in Pittsburgh. It doesn’t expire, so he can claim it at any time.

Barbra Streisand also wrote a scathing piece skewering Palin the other day on the Huffington Post, which we enjoyed immensely. This qualifies her for an honorary OMT Honey-Girl award, but we felt it best to hold off on that one, because, although we love Babs, she scares us.

Probably the only thing about this whole Sarah Palin nonsense that gives us any comfort at all is that there are so many people who feel the same way we do about it. It makes it just a bit easier to take knowing that there are others out there who are just as appalled as we are when it seems that with each passing day some new horror about her is revealed. And each revelation casts a cold, unflattering light not only on John McCain’s decision making, but also his apparent complete disregard of the importance of the office of the Vice Presidency.

So, when the Los Angeles Times reports that Sarah Palin, already known to be a strong proponent of teaching “intelligent design” alongside evolution in public schools, believes that dinosaurs lived side-by-side with humans, at a time in history when the ancient Egyptian civilization was flourishing, against all scientific and archeological evidence to the contrary, we can understand Matt Damon’s exasperation.

Hell, we share it.

Never mind that in all of the depictions in Egyptian hieroglyphs there is no mention of dinosaurs, and no drawings of them on pyramid walls. For as prolific as those people were, artistically, you would think that there might have been at least one pterodactyl flying around the pharaoh’s head. Or a temple statue of a tyrannosaurus rex with a lion in its mouth. Or perhaps a picture of the pharaoh riding on a brontosaurus, complete with a canopy over his saddle, and legions of slaves following behind to clean up what must have been the incomprehensible amount of shit that a beast of that size would have been capable of producing.

No matter. Palin still insists that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time“. When it’s pointed out that prehistoric fossils and tracks of dinosaurs date back millions of years, Palin insists that she’s, “seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks“.

We think that Sarah’s been nipping at the rat cheese.

But, as incredible as it seems, we think that we can understand how she might have arrived at such a bizarre conclusion, her being stupid notwithstanding.

It turns out that back in the 1960s, when Sarah was just a young fawn, the local CBS affiliate in Anchorage would broadcast The Flintstones on Sunday mornings, between CBS’s two landmark religious programs, Lamp Unto My Feet and Look Up and Live. Sarah’s parents would plant her in front of the TV on Sunday mornings while they went outside to perform their weekly before-church moose ritual, because Sarah was too young to understand the theological implications of moose-gutting.

Her gaze fixed on the black-and-white screen, young Sarah was unable to discern the difference in the content of the various programs, and assumed that The Flintstones was just another religious program, an animated interpretation of the Book of Genesis. This had a tremendous impact on her young, impressionable mind, and eventually formed the entire basis of Sarah’s religious, scientific and political world view.

Certainly, dinosaurs were everywhere in the world of The Flintstones. They used them as beasts of burden, as appliances, and they even ate them. And it wasn’t just dinosaurs. They even had mammals that, according to that party-pooper Darwin, came millions of years after the dinosaurs, like mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. All of those pesky things that scientists kept uncovering that flew in the face of the bible’s teachings were all happily reconciled by The Flintstones. It set her young mind at ease, and became the bedrock of her faith.

Even more so than the bible itself, this innocent little cartoon series illustrates the fundamental concepts behind “intelligent design” in a way that any moron can understand. Even a moron like Sarah Palin. When viewed through this lens, Sarah’s thinking makes all the sense in the world.

And when the Flintstones and the Rubbles named their kids Pebbles and Bam-Bam, we can even see the inspiration for Sarah and Todd’s choice of names for their own children.

Why wouldn’t we want to have this taught in our schools alongside evolution? Episodes of The Flintstones could serve as marvelous teaching aids, and the kids would enjoy learning, to boot. And with the kids otherwise occupied, the teacher can sneak down to the lounge and have a quick smoke. Or a puff on the crack pipe.

While the Chinese and the Indians are training the next generation of engineers, doctors, and scientists, we can feel superior to them in the knowing that our kids are getting a proper education, steeped in those all-important Judeo-Christian-Hanna-Barbera values. God will make sure that we’ll come out ahead of the Chinese and the Indians. Hell, those heathens don’t even believe in Him.

Next time, we’ll be discussing Sarah Palin’s vision for America’s future based on the technological prowess and social mores of The Jetsons.

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♫”Palins,
Meet the Palins,♪
They’re a modern stone-age family.♫
♪They hail from Wasilla,
It’s a place right out of history.
♫They’re the strangest folks you’ll ever meet.
They named their all kids after the streets.
♪When you’re with the Palins,
You’ll have a yabba-dabba-doo time,♫
A dabba-doo time,
♫You’ll have a gay old time”.♪ ♪

Well … maybe not a gay old time, exactly …