Eddie Lubitsch, The Last Angry Lawyer Weekly Editorial for November 3, 2007

This past Wednesday, hundreds of miniature Americans came knocking at my door looking for free stuff. They didn’t want jobs. They didn’t want education. They didn’t even want a chance to start over. These little leeches wanted candy and they expected Eddie Lubitsch and every other tax payer on the block to give it to them...free of charge with no strings attached. In return for these “treats” they gave me an implied promise not to perform “tricks”. In other words, if I paid them off, they wouldn’t soap my windows or throw eggs at my Studebaker. This isn’t cute, this is extortion and it’s time for it to stop.

The little mini-mafioso dressed up in disguises so that I wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a lineup and rang my doorbell in broad daylight. When I opened the door, they chimed out with their whiny little bird voices “trick or treat” and held open pillowcases already brimming with sugary booty they scammed from other people on the block.

They think I don’t know who they are behind their masks and makeup but I know who they are and I wrote down their names so that when they grow up and get jobs I can track them down and bill them for the candy they bilked me out of.

These munchkins today get enough free stuff without having to put the arm on upstanding citizens and people on a fixed income when it comes to Halloween. For starters, they get to go to school for free. There is no cost to learn how to read and write yet the little buggers fight their teachers every step of the way. They get a free desk to sit at, free books to draw lewd pictures in, and even free movies to watch during the classes on hygiene and sex education. Free, free, free. Then at recess, they get a free school yard to play in with balls and bats and all sorts of playground equipment that they use for free. They don’t have a worry in the world and all we ask in return is that they learn how to be productive citizens so there is somebody to take over the country when the rest of us croak off and go into real estate.

So these kiddos think they are owed everything. They think the world is their oyster and everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. Well I have news for you little rug rats, the world is not your oyster, it is your bottom feeding mud muncher and it is a cruel and ugly world out there and just because you are getting off Scott free today, don’t think that the gravy train is going to carry you into the future. You have got to work in this country to make a living and it is high time that you started. So Eddie Lubitsch is proposing a new ordinance to make Halloween less like a handout and more like work. It’s called Eddie’s Law and it goes like this.

Next year, on Halloween, you still get to dress up in your funny, or scary, or just plain stupid costumes but it’s no more free lunch for you...although if all you eat for lunch is candy you will eventually get piles and have to go to the hospital where they will do things to you that you won’t even find in a haunted house, so forewarned is forearmed. But I digress.

With Eddie’s Law, if you want to get some candy, you are going to have to work for it. For instance, if you want to jam a Snicker’s bar in your bag, you also have to take a double handful of dead leaves that are currently littering my lawn. Normally I would have to rake the leaves myself and put them in garbage bags to be picked up, but since you are here and you want some goodies, you are going to haul Eddie’s leaves away for him. Show me the leaves in your bag and I will show you the Good N Plenty.

If you don’t want to pick up dead leaves, there are other ways you can earn your prize. I have a lot of junk around my house that needs to go to the dump and I don’t have the time or the pickup truck to get it there. So, for every piece of candy you get, you will also have to cart away some of Eddie’s junk. Maybe it’s a broken toaster, maybe it’s a broken piece of drywall, maybe it’s some old pizza boxes and a sack of coffee grounds. Whatever I have laying around that needs to be pitched, you take it or it’s no sweet treats for you. It is a simple system of give and take.

If you decide in your immature little mush brain that you don’t want to help old Eddie out in this manner, you can still get candy by the simple system of barter and trade. You want my candy and I want something in return so bring along some stuff to swap.

Maybe, before you go out for your night of begging, you should go through daddy’s wallet and take out all of those green pieces of paper he keeps in there. You can’t eat paper you know and even if you could, it wouldn’t taste as good as a sackful of skittles. If there’s no paper in dad’s wallet, look in mom’s kitchen cupboards and see what there is to trade. You don’t like vegetables anyhow so why not swap a can of green beans for an everlasting gobstobbler? It makes sense to me and I bet it makes sense to you to, and that is all I am trying to do is to drive some sense into the youth of America so that they can take over some day...heaven help us.

And it is the fact that I give like this until it hurts, that makes me the last angry lawyer.

That’s all from me for now. Lubitsch over and Lubitsch out.