Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: The Suspense Is … Nonexistent: Your superior correspondents make a few election predictions

Same Old, Same Old

Unfortunately, Little Rhody’s election of statewide office holders on November 6 has less suspense than a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew detective novel.  Thank all gods for term limits so we don’t have to stage this type of embarrassment in 2022.

The state’s Republican Party has become the longest running joke in the Biggest Little. Barely able to find anyone willing to enter a race and become cannon fodder for the Dems, you know you are in trouble when a gold-plated blowhard like Joe Trillo actually turns his back on the party to run for governor as an Independent candidate. But at least he has brought some life to this year’s election, albeit through making people guffaw and point at him every time he runs his boat aground, or puts on a TV ad that even he can’t make it through without losing the plot.

By now you may well have shot out the screen on your TV because a Raimondo or Fung ad came on with more frequency than a spot for drugs designed to cure all your ills from leg cramps to migraines (side effects may be death — good work, Big Pharma), but here’s the P&J skinny nonetheless.

Governor Gigi will beat Allan Fung in a walkover. We certainly do not agree with Raimondo on many issues or with her “I’m always right” approach to the office and her off-putting and ill-disguised naked ambition. But the Queen of Wall Street should realize that after the UHIP fiasco, the DMV’s ongoing problems, the pension reform when she was state treasurer and the clueless and ludicrous “Cooler and Warmer” bomb, she’d be lucky to steal a US Representative’s seat from either David Cicilline or Jim Langevin down the line. So send notes to your investment banker and hedge fund manager buddies in New Yawk, Gigi, and tell them they can stop talking you up to The New York Times as presidential timber. Now there’s a good laugh.

Past the nominal battle for the governorship, the Democrats would win all the other races if they ran backward. A pretty good indicator is when you don’t even know the names of the GOP candidates who are challenging their entrenched incumbents. That’s with the exception of the lunatic (Hey, you can’t say that – Ed.), pardon us, rather eccentric Compassion Party (who dat?) candidate running against the highly qualified former US Attorney Peter Neronha for the empty attorney general’s office left open by Peter Kilmartin being term-limited.

Low profile Lt. Gov. Daniel McKee should order the bubbly for November 6 now, along with Treasurer Seth Magaziner. And our favorite, possibly the most efficient and likeable office holder of all, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea can join in, albeit with fine Puerto Rican rum. Now there, Gigi, is a woman with a political future.

At the big time office on the scoreboard, US Senator, our old buddy Sheldon Whitebread should mop up GOP opponent Bob Flanders. In a way, this is too bad, because while Sheldon is a fighter who has produced the goods for Little Rhody, Flanders is a very serious candidate, if not the only one the GOP has to offer. While P&J differ with some of his policies and tactics, Flanders is smart, has cojones and isn’t afraid to speak his mind. But Bob, please avoid calling Whitebread a “doofus” and “buffoon,” it only reflects badly on you. And besides, insulting people in power is our job, so butt out.

While P&J always urge you to vote as a responsible citizen (and no cheap effing excuses), statewide offices notwithstanding, you should especially step up and be heard in your local elections. Because, to use dazzling prose, if you’re going to get porked, they’re the ones who will do it to you, first and worst. No vote, no can bitch down the road.

Black, White and Red-Faced 

Phillipe and Jorge were astounded and then appalled by this headline on page 2 of the October 26 edition of The Urinal:

“Police: White man kills 2 black customers at store”

Are you shitting us? This is so over the line that you’d expect to see it in a KKK newsletter. More than 20 years ago, P&J chastised The Urinal’s editors for a similar aberrant blacks-versus-whites headline, and they were properly embarrassed and contrite. Is anyone proofing the content before it goes to press these days?

May we ask of The Urinal’s executive editor, Alan Rosenberg, normally highly ethical and as solid as a rock, if we should be looking for another attention-grabbing header, like “Jew shoots 2 Christians at bagel shop”? This is disgraceful in 2018. A public apology is called for. This is off-the-charts offensive, and just plain wrong in a paper that prides itself on quality. No longer, folks.