Showing posts with label political correctness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political correctness. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 02, 2019

We have reached our sell-by date as a country


Let me try to get my head around this thing: Nike yanked a special-edition Fourth of July shoe because Colin Kaepernick was offended by the Betsy Ross flag "because of its connection to an era of slavery."

Two immediate reactions:

1. Supportive as I was of the kneeling protests during the national anthem at football games and the like . . . Nike and Colin Kaepernick can kiss my red, white and blue ass.


 2. The Constitution of the United States has an even more intimate connection to the "era of slavery." Perhaps we need to just rip up the whole fucking thing and call a merciful end to a country that seems to have attained -- and blown past -- its sell-by date.



We're outta here, bitches. And we're keeping the beef.

Thursday, June 20, 2019

And lead us not into tempta . . . oh, screw it


The Democratic Party has become so woke . . . and so puritanical . . . and so alien to the spiritual concepts of grace and forgiveness . . . and so beholden to its most extreme voices . . . and so intent on demonizing its own peculiar versions of The Other -- so solipsisticly intent upon becoming a funhouse-mirror reflection of Trumpism -- that there's really no more point, actually.

Joe Biden
Our only alternative now is to watch the United States reap what it has sown and for us, somehow, to find ways to bear the unbearable pain of watching one's country die an agonizing death from a condition that hasn't the decency to kill one expeditiously and just be done with it. Oh . . . and manage, somehow, not to end up destitute, imprisoned or dead as the sociopolitical malignancy consumes the body politic.

Normally, I would counsel seeking refuge in one's religion. Then again, I am Roman Catholic, and I know from the bitter experience of the past two decades that, institutionally, my church will be worse than useless as shelter from the storm. As for the evangelicals, Southern Baptists and the like . . . their institutional feet are on fire, and their asses are catching.

Really, when the woker-than-thou are stooping to Trumpian tactics to smear Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden as some sort of cryptoracist enabler of Jim Crowism, what the hell chance do the rest of us stand?


THAT "joke about calling black men 'boys'" came as Biden spoke off the cuff at a New York fundraiser, lamenting the loss of the sort of political comity that allowed him to work with even the likes of the notorious longtime senator from Mississippi, James O. Eastland.

Here, from a pool report by The Wall Street Journalis what Biden actually said:
Mr. Biden then recalled his time serving in the Senate. “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Mr. Biden said, briefly channeling the late Mississippi senator’s Southern drawl. Mr. Biden said of Mr. Eastland, “He never called me boy, he always called me son.”

Mr. Biden then brought up a deceased Georgia senator, “a guy like Herman Talmadge, one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys. Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
THE DISINGENUOUSNESS with which Biden's remarks are being characterized by presidential rivals Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris and any number of other party Jacobins is staggering, even by contemporary Americal political standards, which have been influenced by Donald Trump -- and not for the better. Obviously.

Let me add that I choose to characterize the criticism of Biden as cynical because I find it difficult to believe that reasonably accomplished politicians -- or journalists -- can be that goddamned stupid. But Donald J. Trump is president of the United States, so I totally could be wrong on that account.

And the cynicism (and perhaps abject numbskullery), it runs as deep to the left as it does to the right -- leaving sanity stuck in the middle and shit out of luck.

For a taste of that, let's listen to a segment from today's edition of All Things Considered on NPR:


 
LET'S JUST get something straight. And as a born-and-raised son of the Deep South -- a son of a certain age even -- I am well-positioned to set something straight:

"Boy" is not always and everywhere a racialized term of derision.

Eastland, the onetime Mississippi segregationist, was old enough to be Joe Biden's father. In the South -- and I have no damned idea how Yankees addressed men young enough to be their offspring in familiar settings -- it would not be uncommon for someone of Eastland's age and generation to informally address a whippersnapper as "boy." It had nothing to do with race.

If the addressee were African-American, it could have something to do with malignant racialist intent. Or not. It merely could have been a case of cluelessness, or momentarily forgetting that it was fraught to address a young black man the same way you might familiarly speak to a young white man.

I am 58 years old, Southern and male. If I had a dollar for every time I have been called "boy," by my parents, older relatives, acquaintances and even buddies, I could say "screw it all" right now and move to an island paradise far, far away from this insane, imploding country.

Ditto for "son," which is used in a gentler context than "boy." This is not brain surgery; what Joe Biden was saying isn't particularly opaque, and it shouldn't be controversial in the slightest.

Then we get to the unspoken implications of "woke" Democrats' condemnation of Biden for even attempting to work with (or even associate with) past segregationists in the United States Senate.

One implication is that grace does not exist. Another is that people's views cannot moderate or change over decades. Yet another is that those we deeply disagree with cannot be engaged with, only targeted and destroyed. And if someone is -- or was -- a racist. . . .

In the moral universe of what is emerging as today's Democratic Party, there is no redemption, only condemnation. We know where this road ends -- where the internal logic of this worldview dictates that it must end.

In the universe of woke Democrats, my Southern self was obligated to condemn and hate my racist Southern parents, along with every last one of my racist Southern kinfolk. In this moral universe, if I had failed to denounce them -- to expose their thought crime -- I would have been as guilty as they.

In this universe, one is nothing more than the worst thing one believes or the worst thing one ever has done, for which there is no forgiveness or redemption. Ever.

But if you want to write an article comparing and contrasting your various abortions -- abortions, plural -- then declare one, which came at age 41, the best ever . . . well, that's something not only to be tolerated but, indeed, celebrated. On the New York magazine website, no less.

AND AMERICA, such as it is, is supposed to think Joe Biden is guilty of some sort of fucking moral outrage here? Or that Donald Trump is the real problem here?

Donald Trump is a problem -- a massive problem. But he is not the problem.


That large swaths of the Democratic Party have a problem with what Biden said -- or at least want their own "low-information voters" to think folks should have a problem with it -- bodes well for the re-election of a massive problem.

But even if we somehow do manage to rid ourselves of this turbulent president, that just leaves us with the Democrats. If our only choice ends up being between the devil and the deep blue sea, we might find that a decisive contingent of voters might loathe Trump but also figure he'd put us out of our national misery a hell of a lot faster.

Monday, June 10, 2019

I may not be woke, but I got common sense!


My father has been dead for 18 years, now, and his words keep coming back to haunt me . . . and mock the insane times in which I now live.

During one memorable kitchen-table argument -- where the young, college-educated me was sneering at some then-self-evidently incredible thing he was throwing at me -- the retired pipefitter's resentment of the degree he'd paid for was as subtle as an acetylene torch.

"You might have book learnin', but I got common sense!" my old man thundered.

About 35 years later, I get it. I really get it.

I may not be on CNN, but I got common sense. And any political party that is questioning whether "electability" is important in a system where candidates run for office, and the one with the most votes wins . . . has a big damn problem.

And the mental, cultural and philosophical rot in the Democratic Party is such that -- God help us all -- Donald Trump is going to win in 2020, just so long as he doesn't spark a depression or cause us to lose a war.

No,  I may not be writing stories for The Atlantic like Jemele Hill, but I got common sense. Which leads me to not even consider writing a couple of paragraphs like this:
Nevertheless, Biden’s elevation to front-runner is a testament to how much President Donald Trump has shaken the faith of those who believe the White House could better reflect what America looked like.

This is perhaps Trump’s most crucial victory yet: successfully persuading Democrats—especially African American voters—not just to lower the bar, but to abandon the idea that inclusion and bold ideas matter more than appeasing the patriarchy.
HOLY SHIT on a $7.99 shingle, Batman! Alas, 1968 repeats itself . . . this time as parody.

Well, yeah, Donald Trump might be the end of American democracy, if not America itself . . . but . . . but . . . if we run someone who can beat him . . . does that mean we're giving in to The Man?

The bat-shit, it burns! Doctor, my eyes!

Meanwhile, this is the cover story in the current edition of The Atlantic.



I'M SORRY, Daddy. I'm sorry for everything.

I hope the last laugh you're having, free of this vale of tears, is a long and satisfying one.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee


Above is a thing that actually ran Wednesday in the college newspaper for which I wrote and edited more than three decades ago.

The headline: Free speech argument should not be used to justify hate speech. The headline soft-sold the column, actually.


Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. Obviously, The Daily Reveille at Louisiana State University ain't what it used to be.

Let me put it this way: I read Anjana Nair's column in the Reveille, but I'm having a hard time believing that a piece arguing against freedom of speech and the First Amendment -- and let's be clear, if you're against free speech, no matter how distasteful, you are against the First Amendment -- appeared in a newspaper that would not exist but for the linchpin of our Bill of Rights.

(Trust me. This is Louisiana we're talking about . . . and LSU. Without some serious constitutional badassery covering its 6, the Reveille likely wouldn't have made it past 1934. Actually, the Reveille almost didn't make it past 1934. Interesting story. Anjana Nair probably never heard about it.)

Milo Yiannopoulos
This . . . this because of Donald Trump, Republicans behaving badly and . . . and . . . Milo Yiannopoulos was coming to town! (Cue the panicked population of Tokyo fleeing from Godzilla.)

Apparently, Milo Whocaresopoulos is some sort of ragingly gay, alt-right media whore who specializes in Internet misbehavior and pissing progressives off. And he likes Trump.

And Trumpkins like him because all the right people really, really hate him. The latter group includes Anjana Nair.


So, allow me to throw some quotes at you from this opinion piece that I have a hard time believing actually ran in a newspaper at an institution allegedly devoted to unfettered inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge.

QUOTE:
"I once thought I loved free speech. As someone involved in media, the First Amendment was my best friend. That is, until I faced the reality that people, like they do to all good things in the world, abuse it and use it as justification for reckless and hateful behavior."

QUOTE:

"Walters says it is unreasonable to limit free speech just because someone is afraid of getting their feelings hurt. In the real world, he says, there are no safe spaces or trigger warnings. 
"Walters is partly right: To stop a message because it might offend someone is not a justification for censorship. What is justification, though, is the fact that the free expression of hateful ideas has led to an environment of tension between the groups who are perpetuating such speech and the groups who are targeted by it. This in turn leads to an atmosphere in which only the ones inflicting the harmful speech feel comfortable.
"Let’s be real: The only people who feel the need to defend their freedom of expression behind the First Amendment are those who are clearly misusing it as a platform to attack censorship in its entirety.
"Even Walters admits that there are limits to free speech, such as not being able to yell 'Fire!' in a movie theatre when there isn’t one. Why does that exception exist? Because it causes a sense of panic and fear when there’s no justified reason for it — just like hate speech."
QUOTE:
"When the First Amendment was written, it couldn’t have accounted for Twitter battles and social media showdowns influencing human opinion and behavior. It couldn’t have foreseen the existence of people like Yiannopoulos and Trump, who force us to define what abusive speech is." 

END QUOTE. (Thank God.)

Oh, mercy me. Pass the smelling salts; Generation Y has the vapors.

Really? Loutishness is a modern construct unknown to our forefathers?

REALLY???

Come now. Public reprobates, demagogic invective and "hate speech" hardly were unknown in 1789.

In fact, by Miss Nair's standards, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams should have been locked up for being mean in public, what with all the "hate speech" flying around during the campaign of 1800:
Negative campaigning in the United States can be traced back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his VP.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."


AND THEN Adams' people got around to l'affaire Sally Hemmings.

It may be a novel concept to those who cannot remember a time when "social media" didn't exist, but hateful people always have been quite effective at hounding the "vulnerable." Perhaps a bit more slowly than today, but effectively nonetheless.

The only difference today is that there seems to be a market for professional cranks like Milo Whateveropoulos to get onstage somewhere and say out loud what my generation's halfwits used to scribble in men's room stalls. Yet that so threatens our precious snowflakes on college campuses that they're willing to upend our entire constitutional order to stamp out societal angst.

Yeah, that should work out really well in reducing tension on campus.

The only conclusion I can draw from this column being published in an actual newspaper on an actual college campus is that today's morally preening hand-wringers stand as complete reprobates next to yesteryear's utter libertines. I think the following Oscar Wilde quotation is apt when considering the Trumpkins and Milo Whositsopoulos:
"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”

COME TO think of it, it applies pretty well to this Reveille column, too.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Remember, man, that you are dust


This cartoon comes from the 1928 edition of the Baton Rouge High School yearbook, the Fricassee.

I first saw it some 37 years ago, when I was layout editor of the 1979 edition of the Fricassee. Some of us were going through the yearbook archives, leafing through all the old editions of our school's annual that we could find in the cluttered old cabinets of our cluttered old classroom . . . and there it was.

Even back in 1978 or '79, even for those of us Baton Rouge public-school kids, who went to segregated schools -- legally segregated schools -- until just eight years before, the cartoon was striking. Stunning, actually.

Yes, it was the open racism -- the naked, unvarnished and unapologetic racism. But more than that, it was that kids our age -- a decade or more before our parents would be that age -- would be that ugly, that publicly and that casually. This was something powerful enough to give pause to a generation, black and white, raised in the midst of, then in the dark shadow of, Jim Crow.

We had grown up with the crazy aunt in the Southern attic. For many of us, the N-word was something we heard every day. For others of us, the N-word was something used to describe us every day.

"Humor" from the 1924 Fricassee (Click to enlarge)
FOR SOME OF US, rank hypocrisy was a virtue that our culture had developed in the years since 1928. Southerners of a certain age can explain to you . . . well, can try to explain to you how there are worse things than being a damned, two-faced hypocrite. For instance, one worse thing is not being one.

Another worse thing is white Baton Rouge, circa 1928 -- of living with a horror you cannot experience as horror at all.

Can you imagine the wretchedness of living with a  conscience that dead? Or, more charitably, a conscience that unformed and uninformed?

Is there much in this world worse than glib, cheerful and constant evil that one commits, thinking of it all the while as an obvious virtue?  

Oh, I imagine many people today could imagine that . . . if only they were self-aware enough to realize they're living it.

AT ABOUT the time we on the Fricassee staff were getting acquainted with just how far our forebears could let their racism and bigotry hang out, Kansas (the rock group, not the state) had a Top-40 hit, "Dust in the Wind."
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
ALL THE STAFF of the 1928 Fricassee were dust, and to dust they have returned, no doubt. All their hopes, all their dreams, most of their works . . . dust.

That cartoon? It endures. There it is, frozen in time to judge and be judged.

We see the thing today, and we proclaim judgment on that which now is dust. The thing itself, it emerges from nearly nine decades past to stand in yellowing witness to a creator and a culture. To dust . . . dust from the ash bin of history.
 
That casual racism, the glib reduction of those unlike themselves to objects of ridicule, belies the notion that for some, others are indeed The Other, and The Other is less human than oneself, or perhaps not human at all. And if a group is less human than oneself, or not human at all -- and certainly if they're less powerful -- you can do whatever you like to them.

That's human nature. That's our fallen condition, and it's as old as Adam. We, of course, don't recognize -- or refuse to admit -- that, because Baton Rouge High, 1928.


Because Selma, 1965.

Because Birmingham, 1963.

Because Montgomery, 1954.


Because Berlin, 1933.

Because Fort Sumter, 1861.

Because. Just because.

SO HERE we stand, Donald Trump, 2016. Many American whites have decided that old hatred is the new black, and we get to be as ugly, and bigoted, and in your face as we want because a rich, vulgarian scumbag of a real-estate tycoon and reality-TV star is "telling it like it is."

"Telling it like it is" isn't, of course. Instead, it's just more of those same old lies that we prefer to hear -- the stinking spiritual and mental garbage we find so much more palatable than the God's honest truth.

Today, "fighting political correctness" just means we no longer have to bother with the virtue of rank hypocrisy, that mechanism through which malefaction pays backhanded tribute to virtue. Nowadays, we prefer our evil straight up.

"Telling it like it is" brings us back to Fricassee 1928. "It pays to read the signs."

A bit of virtuous hypocrisy from the depths of Jim Crow . . .
an ad from the 1952 Pow-Wow, the yearbook of Baton Rouge's
Istrouma High School. Click on the ad to read.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

I have three words for this


As I write this, 129 people are dead and 352 lie wounded in Paris after coordinated terrorist attacks attributed to ISIS -- the Islamic State in Syria, Etc., Etc., and So On.

Apparently, some delicate flowers out there are upset this is taking away from the coverage of the "terrorist attack" at the University of Missouri, where rednecks wielding AR-15s and hand grenades slaughtered hundreds of students of color and left hundreds more grievously wounded. . . . Oh, wait.

Redneck idiots yelled the N-word, and somebody drew a swastika in poop.

As bad as that is, and as much as that needs to be dealt with, it's not the wanton slaughter of 129 people and the wounding of 352. And I have three words for those hysterical and solipsistic nervous Nellies who are demented enough to think it is.

Unfortunately, this is a family blog.



HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Look away, look away, look away . . . PC Land


Oh, for peein' in a bucket!

The self-righteous forces of perpetual, politically correct outrage now are eating their own, being that rednecks are proving too feisty a target. Because that's what bullies do.

This today from The (Baton Rouge, La.) Advocate:
Online protests have led New Orleans-based singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco to cancel the songwriting and performing retreat she’d scheduled for June at Nottoway Plantation and Resort in White Castle.

The retreat’s plantation setting and its history of slavery drew a frenzy of angry Web posts over the weekend as well as condemnation from websites such as Jezebel and Change.org.

Jennifer Donald, guest services manager at Nottoway, said Monday that the resort’s general manager is out of the country but he will make a statement when he returns next week.

A performer long identified with social activism, DiFranco announced the cancellation Sunday via a lengthy statement posted on her website.

DiFranco’s response read in part: “I have heard you: all who have voiced opposition to my conducting a writing and performing seminar at the Nottoway Plantation. … My focus for the Righteous Retreat was on creating an enriching experience that celebrated a diversity of voice and spirit.”
LISTEN, I've toured Nottoway more than once. Sometimes, the "moonlight and magnolias" stuff can get a little thick. But. . . .

I. . . .

Umm. . . . 

Really?

This is what is consuming the sanctified minds of the correcter-than-thou? Really?

You know, folks, there aren't any slaves there now. The proceeds from conferences and tours aren't going to the local Klan. This is the best you can do? This is what you do with a limited number of hours in a day? With only so much attention to devote to stuff?

This is the stuff on which you waste your waste time and attention? Really?

ON THE other hand, I agree that Ani DeFranco ought to have canceled the Nottoway event. And she ought to have moved it to Duck Commander headquarters in West Monroe -- not because everyone should agree with Phil Robertson or turn him into some sort of pop-culture hero, but instead because that's the kind of extended middle finger that bullies of any stripe deserve.

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Because we're so #*@!& brilliant


This is the part of the blog where I commit cultural suicide in the Age of Political Correctness by acting like a Catholic who actually believes all that sh*t.

This self-immolation moment was prompted by Rod Dreher's blog post correctly calling out "progressives" who have the gall to disingenuously hector social conservatives that if they'd only been nicer in opposing same-sex marriage. . . .

Yeah, right. Now we're getting lectures on civility from folks whose default position involves employing the word "hater" or "bigot" when referring to people like me who think marriage may be many things, but that none of them involve, nor ever in human history has involved, a union of two men or two women.

Human dignity is one thing. But recognizing the inherent dignity and rights of persons never has precluded society denying them any number of heart's (or groin's) desires for the sake of the greater good. Throughout history, sometimes "the greater good of society" has meant something as simple as not cracking open Pandora's box.

The long span of human history has taught us a few things about what works in building a stable, healthy society . . . and what doesn't. Sometimes this wisdom comes to us through the mists of time as part of the teachings and taboos of our great religions. Think of the Ten Commandments, for instance, as God's way of telling His children "Don't put your hand on the hot burner of the stove."


Eternal 2-year-olds that we are, this is rarely compelling. Likewise, as we see today, rarely do we find ancient religious teachings and societal taboos against any manner of things -- like homosexual activity and, now, gay marriage -- compelling.

FOR A COUPLE of centuries or more, we've treated the earth itself as another thing with which we might do as we will. As if all creation belonged just to us, to use as we will and to abuse as we might, laying aside the consequences for another day.

Another day has arrived. The consequences now asserting themselves include a radically warming climate, which we now know is a direct result of centuries of wantonly belching carbon emissions into the air in pursuit of industrial might, ever more creature comforts and three automobiles in every garage.

In 1870 or 1912 or 1957, we merely thought we were building a better life through industry. Prosperity through petrochemicals. Greater happiness from greater consumption.

In 2057, our children and grandchildren will be paying for our ignorance -- and arrogance -- with brutally hot summers, vicious storms (and more of them), wilder winters and coastal cities slipping under the whitecaps of the swelling seas. Who knew?

Well, 60 years ago, we certainly had no idea. We possessed more hubris than knowledge and more optimism than ecological imagination. This was reflected in our actions, and actions have consequences . . . which someone will have to pay.

REGARDING society's wholesale acquiescence to the "gay agenda" and the acceptance and normalization of same-sex marriage, we're now hell-bent on turning taboo and societal norms upside-down within a generation. What we today proclaim as normative and just, 25 years ago was deviant and unthinkable.

With that kind of overturning of the wisdom of the ages -- with that kind of societal rush to judgment -- what could go wrong?

What could have gone wrong with the explosive growth of no-fault divorce? The normalization of procreation outside of marriage? The resulting explosive growth of single-parent households?

What could have gone wrong with the attempt to fix some of the above with more and more legal abortion? With creating a contraceptive mentality instead of a let's-build-a-family mentality? Yes, we have our "freedom," but someone has to pay the bill for it. Oftentimes, that would be our children.

Every time, it's the taxpayer. If there's a recipe for widespread poverty and social instability, "First, you have a kid but not a husband . . ." is the sociological equivalent of "First, you make a roux. . . ."

But in 1960, or '65 or '72, who the hell knew? Well, yeah, those religious nuts, but they're hardly an objective source.

"Haters" never are . . . until we're counting on them to help us clean up one of those "Who knew?" messes we've made for ourselves and now can't escape. Not only are we arrogant and ignorant, we're also presumptuous.

Good thing those Jesus-freak Gumps are too hatefully stupid to catch on to that, right?

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Hate is not a family value. Right?


So . . . do you think this might be a case where politically correct types, in a frenzy to wipe out "hate" -- I'm sorry, H8 -- have fostered hate against the "haters" in the name of "love," only to encourage a hate crime?

If that indeed is the case with the shooting today at what some regard as H8 Central, otherwise known as the Family Research Council in Washington, it would be the most unsurprising thing in the world. When you begin to dehumanize the "haters" in the service of what you hold as a righteous crusade of liberation, you not only have just made yourself indistinguishable from your enemy but you also have unleashed a darkness unlimited by ideology.

The darkness doesn't know "rights."

It could care less about "justice."

Diversity? Homogeneity?
It's all the same to the abyss.


I WOULD IMAGINE the extent of one's outrage over the events reported by The Associated Press today is largely determined by which side of the culture war you're fighting for. We're Americans, and that's what Americans do these days.
An armed man walked into the Washington headquarters of a conservative Christian lobbying group Wednesday morning and was confronted by a security guard, whom he shot in the arm before the guard and others wrestled him to the ground, authorities said.

The man was taken into custody by the FBI and was being interviewed. Authorities did not identify the man or disclose where he was being interviewed. The guard was taken to a hospital in stable condition.

FBI spokeswoman Jacqueline Maguire said the man got into an altercation with the guard. However, police and FBI officials said it's too early to know the circumstances of the shooting, which occurred around 10:45 a.m. at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, or whether it was connected to the group's activities.

"We don't know enough yet about him ... or mentally what he's thinking," said James McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office.

The Family Research Council confirmed in a statement that the security guard was employed by the group.

"Our first concern is with our colleague who was shot today," the group's president, Tony Perkins, said in a statement.

The Family Research Council advocates conservative positions on social issues and strongly opposes gay marriage and abortion.
DID I MENTION that FRC head Tony Perkins had been strongly supportive of Chick Fil-A and the stance of its president, Dan Cathy, against same-sex marriage?

I wonder what the Buchanan Obama Administration will have to say about ginning up the hate -- sorry again . . . H8 -- to the point where some start to think the final solution is some version of a Final Solution?


NEVER MIND.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Ach! Der tinks vee can do vitt Facebook


There are lots of conversations you could have about the whole "gay marriage" debate.

There are substantive discussions you could have pitting the secular, civil-libertarian arguments for men marrying men and women marrying women against the sociological, historical and religious reasons against such.

There is a discussion to be had about the constitutional ramifications of enshrining a vision of marriage that no one had until . . . well, the last couple of decades.

There is a lively debate to be had about upsetting something as foundational to civilization as the traditional understanding and purpose of marriage in, historically, the blink of an eye. And you could even kick around the entire "Hey, y'all! Watch THIS!" ambiance of the whole gay-marriage movement and how it has swept the globe.

WE COULD even get into how heterosexuals gravely wounded the institution with no-fault divorce, serial matrimony and the shack-up culture of the sexual revolution. We could have those discussions. Instead, this being America, which kind of looks like Weimar Germany, we can just smear our political opponents with all kinds of agitprop not dissimilar to what You Know Who deployed to great effect.

Because we all know the only reason to oppose gay marriage is bigotry or rank redneck stupidity. And if you know what's good for you, Cletus, you ignorant, hater hillbilly, you'll shut your f***ing bigoted mouth and get with the program.

Becauss vee haff veys, ja?

Right now, those "veys" are limited to being branded with a scarlet "H" -- for "hater." That and being mocked as stupid and backward.

I wonder what the rhetorical heirs of Joseph Goebbels have cooked up for Phase 2.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Just so you know. . . .

N particularly SFW. FWIW.

This cartoon is offensive.

Even though it may or may not be artificial birth-control enthusiast Sandra Fluke -- of Those Mean Catholics at Georgetown Won't Pay for Mine fame -- it is outrageous and sexist to portray that courageous young woman or any other liberated female as a battle-axish harridan, because
some people you just don't make fun of . . . fascist!

Indeed, Daryl Cagle
was shocked, shocked at the nastiness of Gary McCoy's work:
With the talk of Rush Limbaugh’s attack of Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke still making news, the only cartoon we received so far supporting Rush’s position has come from our conservative cartoonist, Gary McCoy. I thought this right wing cartoon was pretty nasty. In fact, it made me wince.
CAGLE'S READERS were even more outraged than that. Here's what one guy wrote:
"Wince”? McCoy’s cartoon is nothing but “hate porn”. This is just as bad as Limbaugh. Hope the backlash is severe.
HE WASN'T alone:
* It's also a lie, since no one is asking the 'government' to pay for anything - except, of course, insofar as the government insures employees, dependents, etc. like any other health insurance plan. But hey! When have the misogynistic rightwingers ever stopped popping their Viagra long enough to worry about facts?

* Rush Limbaugh is a foul person--foul minded and foul mouthed and McCoy's cartoon could have been sponsored by him, as it is equally foul. There is an attempt to put a statue of Limbaugh in the Missouri capitol building now. How can we stop this?, many of us are asking.
I'm not sure how to stop McCoy. I wonder if he had a mother, has a wife or daughters.


* This cartoon illustrates a disgusting lie, in a disgusting way.


ON THE OTHER HAND, this cartoon -- Taylor Jones' exercise in phallic satire -- is brave, cutting-edge commentary about the awfulness that is Rush Limbaugh, the churlish oaf who called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute.

Of course, two wrongs don't make a right . . . and if the first wrong is against the Right Kind of Person, nothing that one can say about
(or do to) the original wronger could be considered wrong at all. In fact, it is in abjectly nuking the "hater" that true greatness lies.

Some might call this "hypocrisy," but they would have small minds -- the haters. They're probably religious nuts with small penises.

Again, here's Cagle:
The big cigar and little “junk” in this Rush Limbaugh portrait made me laugh. I told Taylor Jones that it was a great cartoon, even though there won’t be many newspapers that will print it.
AND CAN we get a "Yay, team!" for that? Of course we can:
* Finally a true and accurate portrait of the Rush we all love and respect.

* he typifies what republicans are all about, and who can deny this?

* Rush seems to be against birth control, has been married 4 times and has no children....huuuuuuum.......it would seem that he, himself is birth control! Maybe we could some how package that sort of disgust and birth control would no longer be an issue!

* I KNEW it all along. Why he hates women. They hate him. There it is! He just can't figure out that women hate cigar smoke.
THAT'S ABOUT ALL for now, boys and girls.

Just remember, every day in every way, to put the New and Improved Golden Rule into practice --
"Do unto others, as you know they're really, really evil and have it coming."