Los Angeles natives who, in the aftermath of the city’s race riots, went on a gun-buying frenzy in order to feel safer just don’t get it.
And, speaking of the LA unpleasantness, what are we to make of Republicans who blame the rioting on former President Johnson’s Great Society social programmes (why stop there? Why not blame Truman’s New Deal while you’re at it?) and the liberal attitudes of the 1960s? People who believe the best way of dealing with the poor is to remove the safety net which keeps them from starving in the streets just don’t get it, just have never gotten it and just never will get it.
National Hockey League team owners who employ goons to maim superstars, the players a lot of fans buy tickets to see play, also just don’t get it. And, if they drive the best players out of the game, they’ll stop getting it altogether.
Saskatchewan’s provincial legislators, who recently passed a law forbidding the use of video or audio tapes of sessions for humourous or satirical purposes, don’t seem to realize that what they do is far funnier than how they look or sound. Clearly, just not getting it is not confined to national public figures.
Business leaders who mercilessly attack the New Democratic Party government, then wonder why Ontario’s investment atmosphere is so poisonous, really just don’t get it. The province’s workers will get it, though. Through the neck.
Three years after the Exxon Valdez remade the Alaska shoreline, the oil tanker’s skipper, John Hazelwood, will be teaching at State University of New York’s Maritime College. This just goes to prove that even people who are highly educated can just don’t get it.
People who preach the sanctity of human life while supporting the bombing of abortion clinics with their silence, still just don’t get it. They originally didn’t just get it when they preached that a fetus was an independent living being which needed the protection of the law from conception to the moment of birth, but should be left to fend for itself forever after.
In the same issue that it ran articles attacking Ontario’s Blue Box programme, The Globe and Mail sponsored an ad praising it, which reads, in part, “When it comes to successful recycling programmes, it would be hard to think of a better example than the Blue Box…” The Globe should be on permanent just don’t get it alert; still, you’d think the editors would read their own paper!
People who believe that sending a rock through a window makes a strong political statement just don’t get it – perhaps they should try another language. On the other hand, people who use such violence as a pretext to ignore this society’s racism just don’t get it, either – but, then, they aren’t really trying to.
US Vice President Dan Quayle, who this week said, “I am a strong supporter of single mothers,” even though last week he blamed the image of single mothers portrayed on the television series Murphy Brown for declining moral values and race riots, must think the rest of us just don’t get it. Any politician who believes people’s memories don’t extend as far back as last week should replace his speech writers, who are really the ones who just don’t get it.
Senators who have been preaching fiscal restraint to ordinary Canadians while approving a $125,000 facelift for the lobby of the Victoria Building, their offices, just don’t get it.
Senator William Kelly, who claims, “The price is marvelous,” really just doesn’t get it.
Senator Romeo LeBlanc, who insists that the changes are needed for security reasons, even though the architect has stated that all the changes are ‘cosmetic,’ also just doesn’t get it. I’ll bet there are a lot of taxpayers who would be happy to give it to the Senators, though, in various creative ways and unusual places.
Eight different mines in the Foord coal seam have ended in disasters which have taken a total of 178 lives; 85 miners died in an explosion on 1918, for instance. A feasibility study done in 1986 warned of fires that self-ignited underground. A 1989 report by the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology warned that the seam “constitutes an increased spontaneous-combustion risk.” Provincial mines inspectors demanded action on a dangerous level of coal dust in the mine in six separate reports issues within the last year. Documents show that the concentration of coal dust in the seam was twice the level allowed by law.
What can be said about the company that opened the Westray Mines, where 26 miners recently died in a methane explosion believed to have been ignited by a coal dust explosion, and the government that gave them financial breaks and waived safety requirements to allow them to do it?