I stopped in at the Arroyo Cafe

To order some Inauguration blues with a side of jazz, salsa & a Night in Black

It was Saturday morning and this varmint was hungry for a platter of therapeutic chatter and hungry as a javelina for some grub downtown at the Arroyo Cafe. I was so happy to see my old friend, the most famous waitress west of the San Pedro, the lovely Rosa.

Hey Fitz. How you doing?

I shook my head.

Oh, mijo, you’re bummed about the inauguration of-

Don’t say his name. Please. Just put some tequila in that coffee you’re pouring me, sister.

She laughed as she poured the usual cup.

I tell you it’s getting to me, too, old man. Carlos and I are scared to death for some of our family.

We got your back, sweetheart. All of us. Like this former preacher named Pavlovitz recently said, "No one is OK right now. At least, no one with working empathy and a knowledge of History who’s paying attention."

A lot of sleepless nights leaned on the counter.

Esa es la verdad, Fitz.

Can I get some avocado toast with this coffee? You know you are my favorite chingona.

Seguro, vato. You are my favorite old man.

Hey, do you remember a local morning talk show host named Timmy Truth- or maybe it was Freddie Freedom or Flush the John Justice?

Yeah, he was a real pendejo. They all were. I remember a joke about him from back then. Know the difference between that guy and the Hindenburg?

No. What?

One was a Nazi gas bag and the other was a blimp. They were all pigs. Racist cabrones. Called Mexicans “wetback” on the air. Can I get you anything else with that toast, your hippy food? Scrambled eggs?

Sounds good, Rosa. Yeah. You know, When I was drawing my cartoons I used to listen to all of them. To follow what the other side was thinking.

You call what they were doing thinking?

You got a point, Rosa. Kangaroo rats have bigger brains. Yeah, he’d demonize liberals constantly. Smear every liberal idea and local elected he could. Council people. School board members. Gays, minorities and women. With racist and sexist horse shit. Lies and more lies. El culo naranja wasn’t the first right wing bucket of Gila monster spit to lie. From morning to drive time. Just like Fox and Limbaugh. They taught a whole generation to blindly hate anything progressive.

The station loved the ratings. I guess. You want salsa on the side with those eggs?

Yeah. Thanks. You know, I wanted to go after their advertisers and to boycott the station but The Star wouldn’t have it.

Mierda de pollo!

He’d get his fan base riled up like a small town lynch mob. He’d convince his cracker barrel crackpots their ignorant yammering mattered. Toxic as Hell.

Rosa nodded, took my order and I got out my phone. Soon she returned.

Stop your doom scrolling, Fitz. Breakfast is here. More Coffee?

Gracias, Rosa. You know…

You know you say You Know a lot.

You know, I’d listen to our local village idiots call in to the talk shows about UFOs and chemtrails and fluoride in the water supply and the worse thing was no one ever questioned the bullshit they spouted. That’s where critical thinking died.

Why would he want to alienate his audience of chimpancés?

Exactly. Damn, Rosa, these eggs are good. So is the toast. It was just a matter of time before Talk radio became the underground radio for the nutty Nazi right and before you knew it they were empowered by these radio blowhards to throw out the moderates and take over the Republican Party and next thing you know Arizona elects Evan Mecham governor. A smal-town racist moron from Hicksville, Utah with a Pontiac dealership and a ridiculous toupee made from yak fur.

Si! Si! You drew him with a price tag hanging from his toupee!

That’s the one. Ev thought his Attorney General was listening in on him with “lasers” and that it was OK to call black kids “pickaninnies”. He tried to cast out gays from government and he rescinded Arizona’s Martin Luther King holiday. Well, the talk radio morons and their lynch mob followers had gotten their way. Like Molly Ivins would say about Texas, here in Arizona when our legislature was in session many a village was without its idiot. Ev was their King.

He made Arizona a laughing stock. Hey, Fitz, remember when Jon Stewart said Arizona was the Meth lab of democracy?

I sure do. You know, when he was removed from office I felt in my heart that as sure as Javelina stink and rattlers crawl that we’d never see the likes of him again. And here it is 2025 and we got a legislature up in Maricopa dominated by a pasture full of barely human cow pies in boots. They’re all Q-Anon crackpots.

And on Monday we have the inauguration of-

-Don’t say his name, Rosa. I’m eating here.

Have you watched the grilling of his nominees on cable TV?

Yes I have and they all sound like those wing nut whack job radio talk show hosts from the nineties. They won! They won!!

Fitz, I fear for the least among us. May the Lord protect us.

Rosa crossed herself.

What are you going to do, Fitz? Are you gonna watch the impeachment…I mean the inauguration of the felon on the steps of the capital?

You mean on the steps of the crime scene? Nope. You, Rosa?.

No way. I feel sorry for Lincoln who has to watch it from across the mall.

While that white trash shit show is going on I’m gonna go to the King Day celebration. And march. Starts at Reid Park.

Sounds good for the soul, Fitz.

I want to be with like minded folks. You, Rosa?

I’m going to take in the jazz festival with my Carlos.

Sounds good for the soul, Rosa.

I think later on I will throw on some black and head to the Hotel Congress to mourn democracy with my friend Randy. He calls it Noche en Negro. Night in Black.

Why don’t you and Carlos come join us?

You can count on it, vato.

You know, in the years ahead we got to stick together. Check, por favor.

It's OK if You're Not Ok. No One Who's Paying Attention Right Now, is.