Hoosier hospitality, or something

 When I heard the news I jumped on my handy map app to trace the route, just to see if  Kristi Noem -- aka the Magda Gerbils of Homeland Security; aka Armband Barbie -- was as empty-craniumed about geography as she is about everything else.

Here's what I found: Speedway, In., is 78 miles from Miami County. It's a tad under an hour-and-a-half shot down U.S. 31 from one to the other.

But, sure, let's call the proposed Miami County site for Indiana's very own immigrant concentration camp the "Speedway Slammer," even if the Speedway in question is nowhere close. Cutesy names for ICE hellholes are Magda's thing, after all, and never mind the false advertising and grotesquery of it. That's for the little people to fuss about.

Besides, check out the alliteration! Why, how clever of her!

Aye-yi-yi. It's the lunatics' world now, and we're all just livin' in it.

This latest hits a trifle close to home, though, which means I'm gonna shake my bony fist about it for awhile. So, in its way, did the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when it got word of Magda's latest brain spasm. IndyCar pumped out a statement to the effect that this sure as hell wasn't IndyCar's or IMS's idea, and they had nothing whatever to do with it. In fact, no one even gave them a heads-up about it.

Which makes the Blob wonder if the lawyers are about to get involved.

In any case, as someone who's bent a knee to IMS for most of my 70 years, Magda's implicit linking of the Speedway to her Regime's mindless cruelty pisses me right off.  This isn't some quaint little bullring we're talking about, after all. It's Motorsports Valhalla, 116 years of tragedy and triumph and innovation, a monument to both the folly of man and his genius. 

Ghosts and history walk the grounds here, and you can feel both pressing close when you walk out of the place in May with the day's light beginning to soften. The past overlays the present like a double image then, Shaw and Vukovich and all the rest thundering through eternity in your head.

God. I do so hate it when I get maudlin.

But I am helpless against that affliction when it comes to the Speedway, so there you go. Magda and the rest of the soulless creatures can sit on it and rotate. You want to plunk down one of your gulags in my state -- and how long before they franchise them, Kristi's Kages For Scary Brown People or some such thing? -- at least show some damn respect. The Speedway is a state icon, and not to be trifled with.

Besides, there are closer places whose image to exploit.

South Bend, for instance, is seven miles closer to Miami County than the Speedway, according to my app. And Notre Dame is there.

Notre Dame! Why, I can see it now: Rockne's Rockpile. Or Hanratty's Hoosegow. Or Fair Catch Corby's Colditz For Carlos.

Of course, you involve Notre Dame, you risk involving the Pope. And he's definitely not down with this vile business.

Oh, yeah? Well, alliterate THIS, I imagine His Holiness saying.

Oh, wait. That's what I would say.