Here's to the Ladies Who Lunch

By Dan Hagen

The oldest woman at the restaurant table of four also happened to be the loudest.

A flinty-eyed central Illinois matron in a prim blue-and-white jacket, she was telling her friends how someone she knew had decided to relocate because she’d heard a black man say he was going to move into a nearby apartment.

Painting by Leigha

“Now, I’m not prejudiced against blacks,” she explained. “But these Chicago blacks, they need to be in their own state up there. I think they’re prejudiced against us, if you want to know the truth. It’s that reverse discrimination.”

The women murmured agreement, and went on to discuss how someone else they knew had fallen and couldn’t get up, and how it was three hours before anyone helped her, and how they feared that.

Gee, I wonder why they think people might want to just let them lie there and rot?

I do hope, if that eventuality befalls them, that they happen to have left the TV on and tuned to their favorite channel, Fox News. That way, as they await their fate curled up on the floor there alone and afraid, they can hear the Fox & Friends folks scoff at racism and assure them that it’s a thing of the past in America.

Perhaps that will comfort them, somehow, in their hour of need.