Pluto is good and communism is bad

In 2007, I wrote an "unholiday letter."  One of the topics I addressed was the reprehensible movement to demote Pluto from its rightful status as a planet to non-planethood.  In the ten years that have passed, it has actually discovered that Pluto has five--rather than three--moons.  That is five times as many moons as Earth! 

Enjoy!

Normally, I try to be tolerant and understanding of opinions and perspectives that differ from my own.  There are limits, however, to how far I am willing to go.  Last summer, the disgusting psychopaths finally did it!  Yes, I am talking about the reprehensible decision to demote Pluto from its rightful status as a planet to non-planethood.  You might argue that these bozos—however incompetent they appear to be—were well intentioned, but as former President Dwight D. Eisenhower remarked, “Well, if the driver of your school bus runs into a truck, hits a lamppost, ... You get a new bus driver.”  With Pluto being by far the most eccentric of all the planets, this is a thinly veiled attack on eccentrics.  As an eccentric, I am deeply offended.  As God puts it in a cartoon that sets the record straight, “I could have sworn that I made nine planets!”

      As one of their justifications for their outrageous act, some of the bozos point out that a larger astronomical body has now been found orbiting beyond the orbit of Pluto.  So what?  Why be so stingy?  As I understand it, neither the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, the Tibetan Book of the Dead,  the Bhagavad Gita, or any other source of religious authority decrees that the number of planets orbiting the sun most be in the single digits.  According to my calculations, the surface area of Pluto is a whopping 17.95 times that of the State of Texas?  Those who consider this “too puny” to be treated as a “serious” planet are now messing with both Pluto and Texas.  By the way, Pluto’s surface is also almost twice that of the entire U.S.!

I am a reasonable guy.  I don’t think this would have been a particularly useful idea, but if the bozos and wanted to demote a pathetic planet such as Mercury—which has no moons—to non-planethood, I could have lived with that.  Wouldn’t that make more sense, especially since, in recent years, it has been determined that Pluto actually has at least three moons instead of just the first one discovered a few decades ago, to sacrifice the more pathetic planet?

If the bozos had come out the idea that Uranus should be demoted because it spins at an untraditional angle, their unmitigated bigotry would have been immediately decried by righteous people around the World.  Why have people been more tolerant of prejudice against an eccentric planet than one that is axially challenged?  Discriminating this way is no more fair than punishing Jupiter for its red spot—or taunting Saturn for harboring an excessive number of moons.  Are the psychos trying to punish their mothers for a bad childhood by forcefully destroying the mnemonic “My very excellent mother just sent us nine pies?”[1]

The one thing I will say in defense of the psychopaths is that they at least waited until after the passing of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930.  Implementing the demotion while he was still alive would have added injury to the insult that he was never awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor that he so richly deserved for his discovery.  Professor Tombaugh’s wife remarked after the announcement of the act of travesty that her husband had come to peace with the situation, philosophically remarking “Whatever it is, it’s out there.”  I have to say that is an exceptionally generous attitude toward those clowns.

Last year was not the first time that the lunatic idea came up.  If it had been, an argument could have been made that the perpetrators acted hastily on a poorly thought out idea.  I remember clearly back to the tremendous sorrow I experienced when the bozos first embarrassed the profession of astronomy by proposing to rob Pluto of its birthright.  I did not realize how many righteous individuals actually shared my perspective and I was deeply touched to hear the righteous indignation that emanated.  I thought the psychos had learned their lesson when the idea was abandoned in the face of the backlash that had resulted.  I had been lulled into a false sense of security.  I simply could not conceive the evil of which those psychos were capable.

The good news, at least, is that the bozos do not have the power to tyrannically impose their misguided perspective on those of us who know better.  Pluto will always be a planet to me, and presumably to the vast majority of good, decent people around the World.

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[1] Not having gone to elementary school in an English speaking country, I only learned of this device after the controversy started.