Fake news? Chortle. You can't make this stuff up.
Yeah, I'm back. That "two month suspension with pay" so they could thoroughly investigate me turned out to be five days off without a dime of compensation.
Management did offer me a $50 gift certificate to Neiman Marcus for my trouble, but after the 901J Gift Tax was taken out, along with the FICA, HMO deductions, Federal Withholding Tax, Credit Union deduction, Medicare and appropriate Arkansas state taxes, the gift certificate was worth $2.87.
I checked. Neiman Marcus doesn't have anything in its inventory that sells for only $2.87.
That's OK. Money was never the reason I've labored, lo, these 37-plus years as your Head Cat. Still, I think it is a lamentable commentary on our times that such an unsullied role model as I should be subjected to the whims of the president of the United States, who included me in his "fake news" list a couple of weeks ago.
The roster, which included The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, along with 43 other news outlets, reporters and columnists, was read with a straight face by White House Press Secretary (and former Little Rock Central High debate squad member) Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
When asked by Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Sanders said that the president singled me out -- along with Maureen Dowd, Bill Press, Carl Hiaasen and cartoonist David Horsey -- as examples of those who "fabricate information just to increase column readership."
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank those who rallied to my defense -- the loyal members of my fan club, the stalwarts of the ad hoc organization known as STOP (Stop This Obsequious Purge), and my friends among the intrepid staff at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette who manned the special Justice for Otus Hot Line phone bank.
Perhaps the most dismal of those dark hours came when I was subjected to a grueling line of questioning by the "independent" committee set up by the Arkansas Press Association to investigate the fake news charges.
I stated publicly that I would, without reservation, cooperate to the best of my ability with their inquiry. The committee, however, proceeded on the presumption of guilt.
A sample question: "To the best of your recollection, have you now or in the past 37 years deliberately fabricated all or portions thereof of your weekly so-called humor column for the purposes of intentionally misleading a naive and gullible public into believing that what they were reading was, in fact, not fictionalized for the general amusement or enlightenment of the subscriber?"
"I want to say one thing to the Arkansas people," I responded in writing. "I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not fabricate with that column, Otus the Head Cat. I never told anybody to fabricate, not a single time. Never. Those allegations are false."
Dissatisfied with what should have been the definitive answer, the committee followed with some abstruse legal jargon.
"For the purposes of this discussion," they said, "a person engages in fabrication, humorous or otherwise, when the person knowingly participates in or causes falsification of the facts with the expressed purpose or intent to instigate deceit or gratify the desire for falsehood of any person."
"I would hasten to point out to the committee," I responded, "the inappropriate employment of the term 'person' in this context inasmuch as I am not now, in my diaphanous celestial embodiment, nor in my previous corporeal duration, by any definition, a 'person,' since I was, and specifically still am, a feline, which should not be confused with a 'person,' as defined in the normal manner by reasonable people as 'a living human being, especially as distinguished from an animal or thing.'"
I put it more bluntly when I added, "Gentlemen, I am a cat. To be specific, I am since 1992 a dead cat. The column Otus the Head Cat is written by a dead cat. You have already spent more than $40 for doughnuts and Kinko's services in this investigation. Any more is throwing good money after bad."
They blinked, looked at one another and agreed. The matter was dropped last Tuesday with a terse email announcement to the staff. There was an immediate and impromptu display of joy and relief among my fellow Democrat-Gazette employees. Three or four of them poured out onto Capitol Avenue to cheer the decision and drink diet green tea Snapple.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that what goes around comes around.
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