It’s obvious that we’re currently suffering through some sort of nationwide spike in lunacy. And while the most obvious manifestation of America’s recent detour into dementia was a laughably incorrect end-of-the-world prediction (unless the Rapture actually occurred on May 21, and this column is—as we’ve long suspected—the sole reading material in Hell), a corresponding increase in local loonies has also invaded our once-commonsensical commonwealth.
Don’t believe us? Well, just take a gander at these completely random acts of insanity that have occurred in Virginia in just the past few weeks:
First we have 31-year-old Michael Creath Jones, a Hanover-area hellion who has a slight problem with authority, to say the least. The trouble began when Mr. Jones drove his car, sporting a nifty handwritten license plate with the words “Virginia” and “private use” scrawled on it, past a state trooper. Needless to say, the officer’s curiosity was piqued, and he promptly pulled Jones over to discuss the man’s unique vehicle registration strategy. It should come as no surprise that Jones’ traffic stop etiquette—which involved locking his doors, providing multiple fake names, and declaring himself a “free citizen on a free highway”—was as unorthodox as his “sovereign citizen” vanity plate, and he soon found himself subdued and packed off to Verona’s Middle River Regional Jail on charges of resisting arrest and driving without a license, among many others.
Our second cracked character is Virginia Beach businessman Henry Allen Fitzsimmons, a prominent restaurant owner and all-around deviant whose philanthropic impulses apparently got all mixed up with his twisted libido. According to three women whom he allegedly “mentored,” Fitzsimmons lured young ladies into his “Spencer Scholarship Program” with promises of free college tuition and lodging, but soon began applying idiosyncratic conditions that gave new meaning to the phrase “academic discipline.” Chief among them? Vigorous bouts of bare-bottom spanking for alleged missteps and infractions. In retrospect, the women probably should have become suspicious when they saw that the program paperwork was actually a Fulbright Scholarship application with the first word altered to read “Full Moon.”
Finally, we come to the most dangerous and demented oddball of all: U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Sure, his recent erratic behavior isn’t clinically anti-social or sexually deviant, but that doesn’t make it any less deranged. We’re referring, of course, to Cantor’s repeated and specific threats to blow up the entire U.S. economy.
As you may have heard, the United States recently reached its official spending limit, necessitating the implementation of extraordinary measures to prevent America from defaulting on its outstanding bonds. Now, while most credible economists believe that a debt default would be absolutely catastrophic, Cantor has repeatedly insisted that failing to raise the debt ceiling wouldn’t be a big deal. (He even claimed at a recent press conference that business leaders have told him “Don’t give in.”) To underscore his point, Cantor is even planning to bring a “clean” debt limit bill to the House floor, specifically so that he and his fellow Republicans can vote against it, thereby proving that the gun they’ve got pressed to the economy’s head is fully loaded.
Like we said: pure lunacy. In fact, if you ask us, it seems like someone could use a good spanking.