No potshots here – just space-wasting reader comments

Welcome to yet another installment of Reeeader’s Windbaaag.

This is the forum that allows my readers to purge their inner demons without fear of being identified, verified or mortified by being forced to wear that purple monstrosity Zoe Saldana wore to the Academy Awards.

(The poor woman looked like a human Lilac Parade float.)

The following excerpts have all been culled from actual phone calls, e-mails and restraining orders, with my thoughtful responses in italics.

•John complains that our time-honored traditions of “no accountability for anyone in authority (police, fire department hijinks, River Park Square debacle …) have turned Spokane’s city government into one worthy of a banana republic.”

Look, pal. If you’re going to badmouth our burg at least get the nomenclature right. We don’t live in a banana republic. It’s a “Spokana Republic.” Got it?

•“In these days of shrinking news coverage,” writes Pat, “I’m appalled the paper would waste space with the likes of your column.”

Pat, my column has been a Spokesman-Review staple for the last 26 years. And that’s due to three things: 1. My tireless work ethic. 2. My undying support from city officials. And 3. A safety deposit box containing photographic evidence of certain authority figures engaged in, shall we say, Enumclaw activity.

•“When are you going to take a shot at the local Tea Party members?” asks Gary.

Sorry. I draw the line at taking potshots at the politically paranoid. Especially when some of them just might shoot back with real bullets.

•Chuck says he enjoyed my recent column on the gambling raid at a Twin Falls retirement center, but “my wife didn’t think it was appropriate to call senior people geezers.”

She has a point. In the future I will stick to the more acceptable terminology as found on the Internet, like: “coots,” “codgers” and, my personal favorite, “coffin-dodgers.”

•Earl is upset because The Spokesman-Review stinks. Literally.

He says he opened the paper a couple of times to find that it “reeked with a sickening sweet fragrance.”

Earl blames scented perfume ads and has asked me to do something about it because, “if it is you who takes this complaint to your boss, I am sure he will take it seriously and hopefully will discontinue accepting stinking advertisements.”

Earl, I wish our odor problems were due to highly profitable perfume company advertising. But these are hard times. We’d put scratch-and-sniff Limburger ads on the front page if the cheesemaker paid cash.

Unfortunately, that odor offending you is not Chanel No. 5. What you’re smelling is the sickly sweet death stench of the decomposing newspaper industry.

•“We are really tired of you continually bad-mouthing the bus plaza,” writes Doris.

Probably not as tired as I am of having to dodge the sidewalk phlegm puddles whenever I dare walk past the bus plaza.

•“One of your best columns today,” writes J.S. last Sunday. “If it was a meal, it would have been lobster at The Coeur d’Alene.”

Now that’s irony for you. With all the pay cuts and furloughs, I couldn’t afford a lobster bib at The Coeur d’Alene.