Editor’s Note: Every Saturday morning, we take a break from hard news to let Hermina Hermelinda Obregon, a.k.a. Miss Mingo, share her insights with readers. She’s a recovering newspaper reporter living in a bungalow off Duval Street in Key West. At least that’s what her official biography says, if you can believe that. She answers the day’s pressing questions about life, the news, and the best happy hour prices.
DEAR MISS MINGO:
Last week you said U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville is “widely regarded as the dumbest human being ever to serve in Congress.” I shared that with a friend, and now she says events have overtaken your assessment, what with Sen. Eric Schmitt’s remarks this week. So who is dumb and who is dumber?
Winning a bet in Wauchula
Dear Winning:
Yes, even I must reassess that question now.
To put all this in perspective, in my column last week I recounted Sen. Tuberville’s warning that the airline industry is plagued by pilots, flight attendants, and others who dress as “furries,” and adopt animal fursonas, and that this is something we should all find terrifying.
I even asked readers to rank flying furries against other potential threats to our survival. More than 500 readers responded. Here were the results:
Then came Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from the Show Me State of Missouri, who claimed special prosecutor Jack Smith “has lied before to Congress” when he secretly flew to Atlanta to conspire against Donald Trump. He had evidence, he said: actual text messages from Smith and a friend in which his cover story was that he was going to be in Georgia to attend an Atlanta Hawks game.
Schmitt thought he had Smith cornered. He called him a “dirtbag.” He even told him that before he responded to the accusations, he’d give him “a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.”
Which is when Sen. Amy Klobuchar jumped in. Schmitt didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Smith wasn’t in Atlanta. He wasn’t attending an Atlanta Hawks game. He was on the East Coast attending an Iowa Hawkeyes basketball game. The women’s team. Because he’s a fan of superstar Caitlin Clark.
“Before calling someone a ‘dirtbag,’ the Senator should have had his facts straight. An apology is in order,” Klobuchar wrote on social media. “Glad one of us knew the difference between the Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes!”
So, we have one U.S. senator who frets over furries and another who can’t tell the difference between a college women’s basketball team and an NBA team.
I really can’t say who is dumber. Get them both dunce caps.
DEAR MISS MINGO:
How can we actually rid our country of the Menacing Maniac in the Manor? Like his businesses, everything he touches fails. Clearly, the USA is on that list. We don’t need WW3 when we have WWT.
Please help.
Ticked in Tally
Dear Ticked:
Love your rhyming!
Trump once bragged we’d soon be so sick of winning. Most of us are sick, all right, but not from winning, not from having to choose between filling our tank or filling our bellies, with an undeclared war raging, with a president consumed with ballrooms and renaming everything in creation after himself instead of doing his job.
We’re sick all right.
What to do. I know this is terribly old-fashioned and conventional, and I guess that’s because in many ways I’m a little old-fashioned myself, but the answer is simple:
VOTE.
And talk it up with your friends, and make sure they vote. This is no time for complacency. Our democracy is in a state of emergency. We need a regime change, and it starts with removing the Republican monopoly. That requires a huge voter turnout.
DEAR MISS MINGO:
When the moment we’ve all been waiting for finally happens, what will happen to all the money he has been stealing? Will his family just get to keep it? We likely won’t even know just how much taxpayer money he has been pocketing until long after this nightmare is over.
Befuddled in Bradenton,
Jack
Dear Jack:
That’s an excellent question. Looks like a job for a special prosecutor. I hear Jack Smith could be available.
DEAR MISS MINGO:
So, if you’re so old-fashioned, is that what you drink, Old Fashioneds? Get it?
Clever in Clearwater
Dear Clever:
No. I’m not a bourbon girl. But I am a 21st-century enlightened bird, and I believe in D.E.I. — Drink and Eat Indiscriminately. So, if that’s your thing, you be you. I won’t judge. Much.
Got a question for Miss Mingo? About life, the news, or clever ways to avoid paying bar tabs? Write to her at MissMingo@Tropic.Press
Want to know more about Miss Mingo? How she got her start? And whether she really lives with two cats—Deadline and Dateline—and a pet iguana named Skippy? You can find her official biography, such as it is, here. If you’re bar hopping on Duval Street in Key West and spot an intriguing woman in a pink hat that you suspect might be Miss Mingo, you can always offer to buy her a Cuba Libre. Will it actually be her? Is there an actual her? Life’s a mystery.
And now, some shameless advertising…
The official Tropic Press Store is now open and ready for business. You can order your very own Miss Mingo merch online. All sales are final. Check out the store here:
Editor’s Note:
Congratulations to Miss Mingo, who recently won the Florida Society of Professional Journalists’ Sunshine State Award for Best Blog and Newsletter.
You can support her work by subscribing to the Tropic Press newsletter (and, honestly, we need the help if you choose to become a paid subscriber, because her bar tab is killing us).
Help us pay Miss Mingo’s bar tab. Really, it’s worth it. She’s a far more amusing writer when she’s had a couple.
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I think the perceptive Miss Mingo needs to fly into the Florida Legislature and come up with a list of our dumbest (and most dishonest) members. That would be entertaining and probably require a three page answer.
I love Miss Mingo. Would she want to run for office? Please.