If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in one of its shadier, more dangerous, rulings, more than a decade ago, then:
How come I can’t hug Exxon Mobil?
How come Boeing never sends me birthday presents?
How come The Keebler Elves never show up at my house to borrow flour? (You know those little elf bastards need flour.)
How come corporations need celebrity pitch men? (No real person needs Matthew McConaughey advertising how awesome they are…although now that I write this, that would be pretty cool.)
How come Pepperidge Farm makes me pay for cookies? (My grandmother never made me pay for cookies, and according to Supreme Court logic, she was herself, unbeknownst to me, in fact, a corporation, and a sweet and very loveable one at that.)
If people are corporations, then:
How come my children don’t send me quarterly earnings reports? (Do you know how useful that would be?)
How come getting drunk and yelling at your boss will get you fired? (Most of us do this every single Thanksgiving and are rarely fired from our families.)
How come I can’t buy stock in the Phillips family down the road? (They look like a pretty good investment.)
How come Nebraska has never offered me a tax break to relocate to Lincoln?
How come no football teams have ever offered to name their stadiums after me?
If you have answers to these persistent and annoying questions, please mail them to Washington D.C, c/o One of the Five Worst Supreme Court Decisions Ever. While you’re at it, feel free to ask them for answers to questions like “If corporations are people, then are pogo sticks more like water buffalo or wharf rats?” Or “If corporations are people then why has no ever tried to outsource my racist aunt to India?” Or maybe “If corporations are people then why is my family’s water cooler talk more about how disappointed they are in me than making fun of K-Pop YouTube videos? I’d prefer the YouTube discussion.”
In case you haven’t yet realized it, I’m coming down pretty hard on the side of corporations being not at all, remotely, in any way, in no way, in no universe I know, like people. Sure, sometimes corporations give people money, but they also give money out to buy chairs and windows and cheap one-ply toilet paper and cubicle walls and other assorted nonsense. Just because both corporations AND people spend their money on dumb shit doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Lottery winners and professional athletes spend money on dumb shit, too, and no one is trying to trade them on the New York Stock Exchange.