Everybody Wants an Invite to the Party

Although humankind is constantly digging itself into one hole after another, it must be doing something right since others are breaking down the doors to join in.

First there was the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United that significantly expanded a flawed 1886 court decision enshrining the concept of "corporate personhood" and guaranteeing rights for corporations not even realized at the time by women, blacks and Native Americans.

In the Citizens case the majority determined restrictions on corporations' political contributions were an infringement of their First Amendment rights. The court did not clarify why ExxonMobil is an "artificial person" entitled to free speech but one of its gas pumps is not. I for one will never consider a corporation a person until Florida executes one.

Then there's a group promoting passage of personhood amendments to state constitutions declaring life begins at conception, presumably allowing embryos the same right to contribute unlimited amounts of political cash as Goldman Sachs.

If the recent ballot initiative had passed in Mississippi would pregnant women have to be counted as two persons for the sake of reapportionment and voting? What happens to your birth sign? Am I really an Aquarius instead of a Scorpio? Forget anchor babies. Illegals could simply skip into the country, do the horizontal boogey and demand rights for the resulting zygote-citizen.

Now we've got scientists arguing that since great apes have nearly the same genetic make-up as people, they ought to be given human legal status. Chimpanzees share about 98 percent of genes in common with humans, but by ignoring so-called junk DNA which doesn't affect coding the match is actually 99.4 percent. That's as pure as Ivory Soap.

True, apes' hygiene isn't all it could be, but on the other hand they haven't cost stockholders trillions of dollars in exotic credit default swaps; rejected a kid for kidney dialysis because of the small print in an HMO contract; or sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee in their crotch.

There are social implications, of course. For instance, will ordinances require a third bathroom in public facilities, something with stumps and leaves? Or how about the predictable flap over bilingual education. Urh. Urh. Cheee. Arrraugh! It surely would be politically incorrect to accuse someone of "monkeying around" or call a bully a "big gorilla." Maybe chimpanzees are offended when we call them "chimps."

Sports bars could take on a whole new atmosphere what with hairy creatures swinging from rafters, beating their chests and dragging their knuckles on the floor. Oh, wait, this is Florida. Sports bars already look like that.

So buck-up humans. We're still the envy of the neighborhood.