The man is everywhere … if that means Fox News and, ever so occasionally, other cable news outlets. If you’re even a minor political junkie, you can’t miss Cliven Bundy.

Mr. Bundy is a cattle rancher. His cows chew on federal grass, drink federal water, and cr*p all over federal land. (At least I think all of these facts are true. I’m a city slicker—and a pretty slick one at that, if I do say so myself—so I know from cows that their milk comes in a plastic container and their flesh is wrapped in paper or cellophane and Styrofoam. Maybe owners whose cattle graze on federal land provide their own water.)

What Mr. Bundy doesn’t do is pay for his use of federal land, like almost every other cattle rancher. He shovels some sh*t about sovereign this and sheriff that, claiming he doesn’t acknowledge or recognize or accept the federal government, with American flags flying behind him on the stage, no less. Only in America!

Government employees—there was a time when they were called “jackbooted thugs” and some people worried about them having black helicopters that would appear over the horizon, bringing “one world” government—showed up recently to take the cows, as payment for the long overdue grazing fees. That went over poorly and, to avoid bloodshed, the g-men retreated. (We had, and I heard him, former Graham County Arizona sheriff Richard Mack threatening to put women at the front of the group of busy-bodies there to scare off the g-men, so that if shooting started, there would be women dying as television images. People in my state elected this man? As the chief law enforcer in their county?)

It’s all over now, at least for the moment. Nothing to see here, move along! And, please Lord, can we move along. My mama—she’s actually my sisters’ and my Mother, but mama seems more fitting here—has taught us for forever to “forget about it” and “ignore it” when we’re speaking about unimportant things.

Cliven Bundy is surely an unimportant thing. A good friend described him thusly:  an “ignorant, racist, country hick.” My friend is right, but his comment really does a disservice to both ignorant and country people, for many people know not so much but are otherwise kind, decent, hardworking (and bill-paying). And country hicks are usually pretty cool too! (So are most people, whether they be smart or not so much, with abodes are in the city or the country!)

Back to Cliven Bundy! He’s a man who chooses not to pay his bills, while all about him his competitors do. (By the way, the grazing fee regimen came into existence during the Ronald Reagan administration, so it was hardly a liberal-commie plot.) He’s a man with the ugliest of awful views about others. And he’s only special because his anti-government agenda lines up nicely with the agenda of a crowd who want the levers of power so they can enrich themselves and their friends. Oh, and he’s also special because of cable news, which ignores almost nothing it ought to ignore, and pays attention to almost nothing that matters, and is in doing so way out of synch with my mama!!!