Join the boycott; it’s great for business

It looks like Sneezeville is going to keep on fighting the pigpen battle. Cletus Stumpwater brought in an out-of-state pig and upset the whole town. It doesn’t matter that every home in town has a pig or two, this was a Yankee pig, and half the town was up in arms. The other half said, “Pigs is Pigs” and supported Cletus. Otis Sneezleweed, grandson of Sneezeville founder, said, “My daddy had pigs and my granddaddy had pigs and if it was good enough for them it’s good enough for me.” The leader of the anti-Yankee pig contingent calls himself Napoleon Boney-Parts, but is really Cletus’ younger brother Ralph.

Ralph, I mean Napoleon, has organized a boycott of the Sneezeville Sentinel and your faithful reporter Carlotta.

He decided that either myself, or our part time reporter Half Whitt is responsible for bringing Cletus’ pig to town. I’ll be happy to state for the record that the only thing I want to do with pigs is to have them served to me for breakfast. Raising pigs is too much work for Half, so I know he wasn’t involved either. What happened is that Napoleon started telling people that our paper was pro-pig. If he had taken the time to read, he would have seen that we were just doing what a real newspaper does and that is to print all of the facts so the people have real information to consider.

He thinks we should be like the old Sneezeville Social Register, and just ignore the pig situation and hope it goes away. He’s also mad because we won’t print his letter to the editor like they did. He thinks his opinions are the same as facts.

In his letter, he called Mayor Slump a “Liar and a Thief” and several other names. Although some of his charges just might be true, unless he can prove it, we won’t print it. We make it a policy not to print libel, it is poor business, it isn’t good manners and most of all we don’t like spending time in court. The old Social Register prints his letters and he thinks that is the way newspapers are supposed to be.

He may have really believed he was telling the truth at first, but now he knows he isn’t but he’s made his stand and is going to stick with it. There is an old proverb that says, “Real hate is saved for people WE have wronged not those who have wronged us.” He organized a “boycott Carlotta” group called “Napoleon hates Carlotta’s Gutz” and spends all of his spare time telling people not to buy the Sentinel. As far as we are concerned, “there is no bad publicity.” We’ve seen our sales increase either because we did such a good job of reporting on the pig situation or because thanks to him more people know we are here. WE also know that he is still reading us because he is telling people what we do each week. You can’t ask for a better compliment than that.

Some of the participants in the boycott are advising people to read the Sentinel and put it back on the rack so we don’t make money from them. Golly gee, another great compliment. “We aren’t going to buy it, but we’ll steal it.” Shucks, if they are willing to steal it, we’ll give them a copy. I hate to see someone sell their character for a measly 10 cents. Then again, some people’s character isn’t worth 10 cents so I guess we’ll have to take it on a case-by- case basis. If your character is worth over a dollar and you don’t have the dime, come by The Sneezeville Sentinel Office located just next to Cletus’ pigpen and we’ll give you a copy.