On Cootie-Powered Idea Theft

     On Cootie-Powered Idea Theft

      Normally, when you steal an idea from someone, then that person gets to keep the idea. In fact that person gets to take credit, and boast ‘at last you have caught up to me’.  But what if you could steal someone’s ideas in a way that they can’t take credit, and must even repudiate? What if you could steal an idea out of someone’s head, so they don’t have it any more?

      Impossible, you say? But we have witnessed just this happening with Barack Obama versus the Republican Party. Over and over he has taken their ideas, which they have repudiated! He has stolen so many of their own ideas out of their heads that they must now run on bad ideas, or no ideas at all!

      Why is this so? How is it even possible? I blame Cooties.

      Cooties are a children’s schoolyard fiction. They are a kind of invisible magical lice, undetectable to the bearer, but intolerable to everyone else. They contaminate individuals, and anything that individual touches. They come in Boy and Girl varieties; Boy Cooties on boys, Girl Cooties on girls, each repulsive to the other sex. In theory they can be cured by Cootie shots, but in practice the only thing a child can do when approached by someone with Cooties is to run away.

      It seems that the Republican Party thinks that Barack Obama has Cooties. Therefore he must not be touched, and nothing that he touches may be touched either. Normally Cootie-bearing would be career-ending for a politician, but Obama has found a way to turn Cooties to his advantage. For not only does he have Cooties, but anything that he’s for also has Cooties, and must be avoided by all right-wing-thinking people.

      Therefore all he need do to deprive his political opponents of a useful idea is to say that he is for it. That gives the idea his Cooties, which they must flee. He keeps the idea, they lose it; he has stolen the idea out of their heads. Beware the power of the Cootie!