Please don’t say anything to Junior E. Lee about this but I had several people come up to me after a recent speech to ask why they had not seen his observations in the paper recently. If he knew that, he might ask for a raise.

For those of you who are new to the planet — and judging by some of my recent mail, I think an extraterrestrial being currently resides among us — Junior is general manager of the Yarbrough Worldwide Media and Pest Control Company, located in Greater Garfield, Georgia. He is one of the most respected political analysts in the country as well as being a certified pest control professional. That is a rare combination.

Junior tends to shrug off such praise. It is his studied opinion that there is not that much difference between a politician and a Powderpost beetle. Junior says a pest is a pest is a pest. I defer to his judgment but I have never known of a Powderpost beetle who was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is more secretive about its doings than a Chinese tong. At least a Chinese tong doesn’t write legislation for our intrepid public servants to introduce as though they thought it up themselves. I must remember to broach that subject with him at some point.

People were anxious to know what Junior E. Lee thinks about the 2016 presidential campaign and those running for the job. When I got home from my speech, I called Junior to see if he had any comments, not telling him the audience was more interested in his opinions than in mine. That hurt.

Luckily, I caught him just as he was leaving Arveen Ridley’s place where he had sprayed the ticks in Arveen’s barn. I asked Junior what kind of spray he had used. He said red enamel; that Arveen liked his ticks all shiny and fresh-looking. I thought I heard Arveen laughing in the background.

I told Junior that while I appreciate a joke as well as the next person, I wanted to talk about the current presidential campaign because a lot of you seem to be anxiously awaiting his views and it was likely his analysis would be a major factor as to whom you would support. I hope I didn’t misrepresent you but that was the feeling I got after my speech. And it doesn’t hurt Junior E. Lee’s ego to hear that kind of stuff.

Junior said the national Democrats remind him of chameleons. They change their color depending on the environment they are in. I asked him what he meant by that. Junior said all Democrats care about is getting elected. If they need to look blue or green or whatever to get the votes, so be it. It didn’t matter to them, just as long as they got elected.
He said the most noticeable difference in chameleons and Democrats is in how they run. Chameleons tend to run in a straight line. Democrats will do that also until they are elected and then they will lurch to the left but hope you were so busy noticing them changing colors that you overlooked that detail until you had already voted for them.

How about the Republicans, I asked? Junior said national Republicans tend to prefer being ideologically-correct to being elected. He said they are like spiders that will eat anything that moves, including another spider. They seem to forget the chameleon is their real enemy, not each other.

Junior cautioned that he wanted to be careful comparing Republicans to spiders because he might get sued for slander — by the spiders. Junior maintains that he can’t imagine a spider trying to remove the Speaker of the U.S. House or insulting the majority leader on the floor of the U.S. Senate or denigrating a war hero. I told him I could see where spiders might get upset with the comparison.
I told him you would want some suggestions about which candidates he thought had the best chance of winning their party’s nomination in 2016 but Junior said he would get to that at a later time. Right now, he had to make an emergency call to Aunt Flossy Felmer’s place. She had called and asked him to come remove her drawers and look for fire ants. Just like that story about spraying ticks, I never know when he is putting me on. Junior E. Lee is truly one of a kind.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb