“Neanderthals are hunter-gathers. They are protectors of their family (sic) They are resilient. They are resourceful. They tend to their own.” Marsha Blackburn, United States Senator, Tennessee.

Neanderthals are extinct. That fact shows their total inability to be resilient, resourceful, and to tend to their own. So much for that evolutionary success story.

Senator Marsha Blackburn is of the ilk to be a Southern Belle, but nothing in her life suggests she has ever liked or known Neanderthals. Her husband is not. If her daughter is dating a Neanderthal, she would tell the Senator. Is the Senator’s son a Neanderthal? That judgment is better made by women his own age.

Which Neanderthal attributes does Marsha prize? Neanderthals beheld the sun as a God, and the moon has his wife. Being unsanitary was part of their lives – they left their garbage in caves where they presumably slept. Did Neanderthals use the same cave space as potties? Were Neanderthals careful where their off-spring played? Did a pandemic finally wipe Neanderthals from the face of the Earth? Did the Neanderthals ever wear face masks? Did they eat food off rocks of strangers? Did they bathe often, or where they just hairy, stinky hulks of jockey height?

When Neanderthals were on the hunt, did each of them go to eating the kill, right off the carcass, rather than cook it? Did Neanderthals eat fowl when it had not been cooked to 165 degrees Fahrenheit? Did Neanderthals use soap and water and sing “Happy Birthday” twice when washing their paws? Did Neanderthal’s spit or regurgitate stuff during dinners with their families?

Are all the Senator’s constituents homo sapiens sapiens? Is Curt Shilling the sort of Neanderthal the Senator likes? Has the Senator learned over the years that constituents have retroluted on the genetic track, and they are truly Neanderthals? Depending upon the number of affirmative answers from the Senator, it may be time to quarantine Tennessee from the remainder of America to protect homo sapiens sapiens from the Neanderthal crowd.