Love hurts. I know. Because of my passion for one Italian girl, this column was censored in its entirety in March, 2015. Here’s a slightly updated version.
“I didn’t realize it until I laid eyes on her in the flesh. Assemblymember Michele Fiore, R-Gomorrah South, is the embodiment of the Italian girl my mother always wanted me to marry.
“Alas and alack, I was born 30 years too soon. Blame my parents. I do.
“I had only seen photos until I beheld her in the legislative hallway. The petite blonde looked every bit like the ‘young hot little girls’ she announced she desperately wants to protect by giving them guns to take to school. (She also says she wants to shoot Syrian refugees.)
“She sauntered past me wearing an extremely form-fitting little black dress. I was standing with several police lobbyists. I noted that Ms. Fiore openly brags that she packs serious heat at all times, even in the legislative building. But she wasn’t carrying a purse.
“Women often carry guns strapped inside thighs, noted the female officer standing next to me. But Michele’s black mini was so tight that any garter holster would have been a very unconcealed weapon.
Rather matter-of-factly, I offered that “the only place she could conceal her .45 is down with her 38’s.
“I know she can shoot, but can she cook? Mama would want to know,” I added.
“I fantasize seeing her in that little black dress, wearing an apron in a big kitchen cooking pasta…
“Later that week, Machine Gun Michele testified in favor of Republican Assemblyman Jim Wheeler’s Pop Tart gun bill. Because a kid in another state got busted for chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, the Douglas County cowboy wants to make all Nevada student gun hijinx immune from prosecution.
“St. Joan of Fiore to the rescue! She reportedly showed fellow lawmakers a lower calorie example, a two-inch gun charm she wears around her neck.
“Two inches. Dr. Freud, call your office.
“The romance is in trouble,” I concluded.
The new Tribune boss was not amused. Censorship of the above parsimoniously prurient prose generated high irony. The interim Tribune editor had been boss of the Nevada Press Association.
I was crudely reminded that freedom of the press is limited to them what owns one.
The editor simply e’d that the material was “not suitable.” That’s saying a lot because at one time or other, the Tribune has published all seven of legendary comedian George Carlin’s seven words you can’t use on TV. Several of same have appeared in the Barbwire as well as in countless other items since 1988. (Please note that there are no dirty words in the above.)
People wondered where the Barbwire went, so I offered this online explanation: If you thought the column trashy, wait till you see the photos, easily accessible on a Las Vegas radio station’s website and viewable via the expanded web edition at NevadaLabor.com/
In August, 2015, the infamous editor nuked me yet again.
“The light side of prison escape” was a gag list of what may have been going on in the minds of two convicts who had engineered an ingenious escape from New York’s infamous Dannemora supermax,
For instance: “Head for Nevada. They’ll never find us at Burning Man…The things you gotta do these days to get an agent for your book…Whatta ya mean that a Monopoly ‘get out of jail free’ card is no good?…I wonder if that woman who helped us will lose her job…I’d hate to be the union rep stuck with defending her…Now will they hire my brother-in-law’s security consulting firm?…Brazil hasn’t got an extradition treaty with the U.S. How do we find Joe Conforte’s phone number in Rio?…I’ll miss the meatloaf…My only regret is that we’ve never had children.”
I write wistfully of the above love’s labors lost because now-Las Vegas City Councilmember Fiore is back in the news, defending her former landlord, brothelmeister and probable Nevada Assemblymember Dennis Hof, R-Pahrump.
“Legislators who say they don’t want to caucus with Dennis Hof need to put their big girl or big boy panties on and figure it out,” Fiore said in a TV interview with journalist Ray Hagar.
My erstwhile fantasy fiancé, among other lawmakers, roomed at Hof’s west Washoe Valley home (since burned down) during the 2015 session. Fiore also told Hagar that some of her male legislative colleagues…er…sampled…Hof’s wares during legislative brothel tours.
Hey, you can’t pass legislation without fact-finding, can you?
How old-fashioned. Facts don’t matter in the age of Czar Donaldov.
Gotta hunch they still would to my dear sainted mother. But love conquers all.
Michele, call me.
NOW, AS THEN, APOLOGETICS. Copious mea culpas to all my feminist readers for the above sojourn into male chauvinist piggery, but the heart is a lonely and pasta-craving hunter.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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