Hey, Ronaldo! Your Latest Act Mucho Bologna

To: Ron Rankin, Kootenai County Commission.

Subject: Ethnic Language Cleansing.

Aloha Senor Dummkopf, Bravos, if not kudos, are in order for your mucho loco plan to protect North Idaho’s language from an invasion of un-American nouns, adverbs and adjectives.

Last week, you once again displayed your acumen as a political weasel. You skillfully bamboozled your lemming commission comrades into declaring English as the official Kootenai County lingo.

Viva la nincompoops!

This should once-and-for-all end cruel speculation that Bumpkin-onics is the Kootenai County mother tongue.

Example: “Y’all hold the Cal-a-fornan’s neck, Jethro, whilst ah tie th’ knot.”

Critics of your English-only law have tried to paint you as a racist jerk.

As one who has watched your right-wing escapades since the late 1970s, I know this charge is only half right.

Remember when you tried to pad the North Idaho College board of trustees with Mormon candidates? Or when you duked it out with a political enemy in the parking lot of Coeur d’Alene’s old North Shore Hotel?

But I’ve never seen an ounce of racism in your headline-grabbing, self-absorbed, shallow-thinking and publicity-starved antics.

In fact, keeping the language the way God and Webster intended may actually end Kootenai County’s status as a most-favored Aryan Nation.

Thanks to your efforts, Richard Butler and his jack-booted ninnies will no longer be free to conduct their official monkey business in German.

That means no more “Sieg Heiling” or the ever-popular white supremacist greeting, “Ya, ya, der Fuehrer’s Wiener schnitzel.”

The Klan clones will be forced to go crawl under the rocks of a friendlier goose-stepping hideaway, such as Argentina. Or Bonner County.

Tell Mark Fuhrman to leave a light on.

Keeping Kootenai County foreign language-free, however, is bound to create some temporary havoc.

Some of the trailer park crowd will have to scrape the name plates off their rusty Rancheros. Wealthy Hayden Lake sophisticates must do the same to their fancy Coupe de Villes.

There are other problems.

A quick Yellow Pages scan reveals the following restaurants that must be immediately Rankinized: Tito Macaroni, El Toro Viejo, Eduardo’s and Third Street Cantina, Takara’s Sushi Bar.

Like you, I’m not very good with foreign languages. But I think I’ve come up with some appetizing American alternatives.

How about - Tom’s Noodles ‘n’ Cheese, A Lot of Bull, Big Ed’s Bar and Grill, Third Street Canteloupes and Tammy’s Mighty Good Raw Fish.

By the way, what the heck is a Kootenai? That sounds suspiciously alien to me.

Perhaps the biggest dilemma is how you deep-thinking commissioners will grammatically cleanse Coeur d’Alene.

After all, having a French-named seat of an English-pure county government is like putting a mongrel glob of salsa on top of a wholesome, lily white cake.

The traditional translation of Coeur d’Alene - “lake of leaded waters” is not a suitable replacement. Bad for tourism.

I propose dropping a couple of letters, scrambling the rest and adding an extra U.

That way Coeur d’Alene becomes “Our Duane,” which, when you think about it, probably should have been the town’s moniker all along.

And as long as we’re name dropping, Rankin doesn’t sound like it waltzed over on the Mayflower, either.

You should change your name to something that fully describes your decades of service to Idaho:

Ron Rancid.

, DataTimes