Dear Editor:
Matt Parker and Trey Stone, the creators of “South Park,” even on their best day, can’t outdo Zimmer and Bhalla in their brutal yet painfully typecast creation of the Vape Van controversy. We saw two wealthy, transplanted, and self-styled progressives use social media and their grip on the heavy hand of government to publicly bully, shame and threaten the livelihood of a rough around the edges working class man from a longtime local family after he was recorded uttering a trigger word in a private dispute.
Zimmer and Bhalla’s tweets to the community defaming Vape Van Man were on par with any suicide-inducing Facebook cyberbullying I’ve read about. Zimmer is clearly dependent on virtue-signaling to keep herself in the limelight now that her fifteen minutes of fame following Hurricane Sandy have long passed.
Shortly after her overly broadcast take down of the Vape Van proprietor for violating a speech code, Zimmer tweeted that she and Hoboken will stand by the Paris Climate Agreement. How the mayor of small city will abide by a non-treaty of nations to which she and the city are non-signatories is a mystery to me. I hope that doesn’t mean that our property taxes are going up so that Zimmer can funnel money to rent seeking eco-plutocrats like Elon Musk and American jobs to third world Superfund sites.
All of Zimmer’s virtue signaling, however, can’t hide the fact that she supports foisting another Goldman Sachs alum on New Jersey. Insanity is defined as repeating something and expecting a different result. Electing Murphy after Corzine’s disastrous tenure is insanity. Bhalla clearly has a taste for identity politics and fancies himself a leader in the (anti-Trump) resistance but substitutes his own brand of headgear for the once defining beret and smoldering Gauloises of La Résistance.
In addition to his public shaming, Vape Van Man was forced to perform two of the primary Hail Mary penances of the church of Political Correctness, attending a multitude of diversity and anger management classes! Very hilarious, but very cliché. Vape Van Man should, however, count himself lucky that his atonement does not include multiple viewings of “An Inconvenient Truth.”
In summary, in this we have the makings for the best ever episode of “South Park”: the rough around the edges Vape Van Man, the Vape Van itself, a forbidden trigger word, Zimmer and Bhalla tormenting Vape Van Man a la Punch and Judy, anger management and diversity classes, etc. It writes itself. My only suggestion is to substitute an engorged Andrew Weiner inadvertently catching the initial incident on his I-Phone as he’s shooting a selfie.
Daniel Cillie
