Ask Matt Labash

Ask Matt Labash: A marriage proposal, Euro-screwed, and interrupting Barack O’bama

Matt Labash Columnist
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Editor’s Note: Have a question for Matt Labash? Submit it here.

Dear Matt Labash, After reading your latest, it has come to my attention that you might  be useful around the house and that if you are not gay,  I would like to marry you.  So… 1. Are you gay? And, if not, then  2. Will you marry me? Yours in sincerity (define “sincerity” though) – Mariana Nolan

I will take your questions in chronological order:

1. I am not gay, though I am an unqualified supporter of lesbianism, especially when they let me watch. When I do have sex — which I try not to do too often, in the interest of saving my strength for my parkour team, and because I like to leave the ladies wanting more — I only desire women.  Their soft caress. Their swan-like grace.  Their sweet whispers. Which, when you break my desire down into its component parts, actually sounds pretty gay.  Maybe I should butch it up a little.  Does anyone have Hilary Swank’s number?

2. I would happily marry you, especially if you’re hot and rich (What’s on the inside isn’t so important. Everybody has insides. But not everybody is hot and rich.) I am, however, indeed already married to a lovely lass. I would post photos of her, but don’t want my creepy readers asking me to send them pictures of her feet.  Not that I’m above posting those in the interest of traffic generation. Okay, here they are:

Sorry gents, she’s all mine.

Puh-lease can you explain the Euro debt crisis? What the hell’s the matter with them?!?” – A.C.

You mean besides them being European? As if that’s not problem enough? The place where their banana hammocks are too short, and their armpit hair, too long?  The place where they think soccer is a sport that warrants watching, instead of somewhere you take your kid on Saturday mornings because they’re too young to play tackle football? The place that birthed Roxette, Milli Vanilli, and Il Divo? The place where they think they’re entitled to statutory eight-week paid vacations and retiring in their mid 50s, which they compensate for by also demanding outrageous pension benefits, cradle-to-grave social services and midday naps? Who do they think they are? Journalists, or something?

Don’t get me wrong, I lived in Europe for three years, and it is one of my favorite ecumenical continents – a place where you are free to choose between atheism and Islam.   Also, they have lots of pretty museums, architecture and cathedrals, to remind themselves what they used to be before becoming hollowed-out husks of their former selves. Though they’re not too hollowed out, apparently. Now comes word that Europeans are even catching up to us in obesity rates. It seems that complaining incessantly about America does not count as cardio.

And now their best hope – their only hope, really – is for Germany, the country that nearly derailed the entire 20th century and the course of civilization, not to mention the Jews, to restore order. That’s encouraging.

Whatever the various micro-causes of the European debt crisis – real estate bubbles bursting, the unsustainability of members of the Eurozone playing by different rules, obscenely expensive public sector commitments, banking bailouts, general profligacy – the horror is amplified due to one incontrovertible fact: this is the first major crisis since World War II that Europe has been forced to face with the sobering knowledge that the U.S. can’t do anything to save it. At this point, we’re lucky if we can save ourselves. There’s a moral here somewhere, besides, “we’re all screwed.” But damned if I know what it is.

I have been an independent for years,  but do not want to be associated with the far right for the very reasons demonstrated by your out of control reporter. I have never seen in my life such anger and undisciplined behavior. You remind me of the religious groups Jesus had to contend with when he was on earth. My question to you is that given that it is never condoned to interrupt anyone during a speech, much less the President of the United States, what is wrong with you people that you do not condemn and dismiss the individual involved! – Greg Armstrong

You’re absolutely right. I will take Jim Treacher aside, and ask him to behave more respectfully in the future.

It is not proper to interupt the President of The United States while he is speaking. While it is fine to disagree with speeches or statements and ask the probing questions, it is not alright to interrupt. Wait your turn and ask any question you want. Use your reporter training and skills and not your rudeness and ignorance.  – Ronald J. Knight

I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you just said.  But clearly, you’ve never met a member of the media before.  Exhibiting rudeness and ignorance is part of our reporter training.

Your reporter is nothing but a rude, disrespectful bigot. I’m sure if it was a white president, things would be different. What a major league asshole.  –  Joe Blow

Because white presidents never get interrupted? Try this on for size, Mr. Blow.

Also, the Daily Caller reporter in question, Neil Munro, is Irish. And in addition to being all things to all people, Barack O’bama is too. Therefore, no matter how this confrontation is interpreted, it cannot be classified as a racist one.  It’s more of an intra-family squabble. Perhaps it’s time for another beer summit, for Munro and O’bama to sit down over a pint of Guinness, where they can clink glasses while uttering my favorite Irish toast:

“Faol saol agat, gob fliuch, agus bás in Éirinn” (“Long life to you, a wet mouth, and a death in Ireland.”)

Matt Labash is a senior writer with the Weekly Standard magazine. His book, “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys,” is now available in paperback from Simon and Schuster. Have a question for Matt Labash? Submit it here.

Matt Labash