Well, well, well, if it isn’t everyone’s favorite one-man minstrel show, Lloyd Marcus. One might think our buddy Lloyd having given up sense, dignity, and basic human respect to chain his star to the plummeting train-crash that was the “Tea Party Express” might be going through something akin to buyer’s remorse just about now.
Well, if you thought that, you just don’t know Lloyd. He paid too much for the mandatory lobotomy to stop now and has decided to engage in wingnut’s favorite game: Privilege Fails.
Now, you think that might be difficult for LLoyd, what with being overly melaninated and a one-man-pride parade, but Lloyd should be committed, I mean, is committed to wingnut excellence.
And so has decided to take offense that a single show starring a muslim family has come into existence and thus has erased all Christian TV families from existence and catapulted us into Sharia Law.
Although I have argued that Republican presidents have the power to crush children’s testicles in the name of national security, I am offended at Obama’s abuse of power when he chose to ignore a procedural trick implemented by the Republicans to prevent recess appointments.
Forcing everyone to use C.E. instead of A.D. is just another way that Jews oppress Christians.
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Alternate Shorter Elizabeth Lauren, The American Genius; AD 2012 or 2012 CE?
True inclusiveness would be if the Jews adopted and embraced Christianity rather than making Christians feel bad with all their complaining about Christ.
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Another Alternate Shorter Elizabeth Lauren, The American Genius; AD 2012 or 2012 CE?
It wasn’t enough for the Jews to have crucified Christ the first time; they have to keep doing it over and over again.
Today’s wingnut butthurt is an old perennial and comes from someone calling herself Elizabeth Lauren over at The American Genius. This is Ms. Lauren’s second post ever, the first being one where she waxes nostalgic for the good old days of censorship which would have forbidden any poet from publishing a poem referring to genitalia. Today she’s climbed up on the cross and nailed herself to it over the usage of C.E. and B.C.E. in place of A.D. and B.C. Her argument seems mostly to be that it’s something the Jews baked up and this:
For a number of reasons, though, not only does the new dating standard fail in its desired effect, but it may ultimately cause unintended confusion and polarization, not to mention offense to the Christian majority.
Apparently people are missing tests and appointments and saying “Oh, you meant January 7, 2012 A.D.? You should have said so.” I’m already planning to try that. Of course, I may not respond in the same way when a restaurant tells me that actually my reservation was made for 9 p.m. on January 21 about four thousand years ago.
But, of course, the whole point is the “not to mention the offense to the Christian majority,” who apparently take offense at each and every breath drawn by anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their particular flavor of Christianity. Other offenses to the Christian majority: Jews refusing to name their children after Christian saints, Jews taking shelf space in the grocery around passover from Christian food and giving it to Jewish stuff like matzoh, Jewish stores being open on Sunday, and Jews insisting on putting those mezuzah thingies on their door frames as an open affront to their Christian neighbors.
This being The American Genius website, Ms. Lauren throws out a number of additional and similarly irrefutable arguments in support of A.D. and B.C., including one that I’ll call the Thor Appeal
We all in our daily lives, in a Western society with a lengthy and complex history, use a great number of names of pagan origin. Our weekdays — for example, “Thursday,” named for the Norse god Thor — originate in decidedly non-Christian cultural history.
This would be a really excellent argument, I suppose, if the dominant culture in the U.S. practiced Norse mythology and prayed to Thor in public schools, then the maintenance of the name Thursday might actually mean something.
Finally, Lauren argues that A.D. and B.C. aren’t offensive because people are too dumb to understand what those terms mean:
“Before Christ,” if one is concerned about sensitivity towards non-Christians, may not necessarily be viewed as referring to the belief system that Jesus is the Messiah, since it is not always known in contemporary culture that “Christ” means just that.
Similarly, making the reasonable assumption that Ms. Lauren doesn’t speak French, she can’t possibly be offended when I call her a putain because she has no idea what that means.
Anyway, I think that the proper solution is to get rid of A.D., B.C., C.E., and B.C.E. and replace them with A.B. and B.B. for before and after butthurt, with the index year being 2008, and I think you know why.
Although I was quite prepared to give the best headline ever award for “Santorum Surges” to the numerous headline writers that crafted this classic with, obviously, a knowing wink to what Santorum really means, that was before I stumbled across John F. Di Leo’s “The Democratic Party’s War on the Poor” over at The American Genius.
This is sometimes why I think our job here at Sadly, No! is too easy. (It’s a good thing we don’t get paid for it.) Where really is the challenge to ridiculing wingnuts when they whip up headlines that have no basis in reality at all? And again where’s the fun when the ridiculous headline is illustrated by a preposterous non sequitur? Di Leo’s proof of the Democratic Party’s war on the poor is an escalator in Medellin. As in Colombia. As in a tiny third world country about a zillion miles from the United States and partly in another fucking hemisphere and where the only Democrats there are a few tourists getting drunk in hotel bars in Bogota. Yes, that escalator in Medellin is, somehow or other, proof of a war of the Democratic party against the poor.
The escalator that precipitated Di Leo’s hissy fit was built so that poor residents of a ghetto in Medellin could go from downtown to their homes in 5 minutes, replacing a 35 minute walk up 530 steps on the side of a mountain. How could anyone object to that, you must be wondering, but, if so, you’ve clearly forgotten that these are the kind of people who get upset when they hear that an orphanage is lavishing its residents with macaroni and cheese rather than the traditional and biblically mandated fare of stale bread and thin gruel. (If you give ‘em mac and cheese, they’ll never want to leave the orphanage and will become permanent parasites stealing my tax dollars, etc., etc. You may be laughing now at the preposterous notion that anyone would actually make an argument like that, but, if so, just be patient for a few minutes and let Di Leo get there all on his own.)
Now, why do we turn to a foreign country for an example of the critical failing of the American Democratic Party?
Gee, John, you beat me to it because I was asking myself that very same question.
Because the way American conservatives and liberals react to this story of misguided social programs is the American economic debate in a microcosm.
If you’re thinking that John is going to totally make up the liberal reaction to this story, then our work is done here and you can skip to the next paragraph. According to John, silly liberals like the escalators because they help poor people while keeping them poor, particularly because the stupid beaners didn’t know to cover the escalators so that they will now be destroyed by the first rainfall and the liberals won’t really care that this happens because the rain is not their fault.
Of course, the conservatives, who are truly wise, take the real lesson from the Medellin escalator:
[W]e see that the mayor and his friendly press down there in Colombia have exactly the wrong attitude: they are spending $6.7 million to help return people to a shantytown every day. What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!
But wait, you ask, couldn’t this argument be made against any form of public transportation? Certainly, he’s not going to condemn public transportation as well, is he? Sadly, Yes!
We subsidize the public transportation of our cities so that the poor can ride in an air-conditioned bus or train for free or nearly free.
All this does not make it a joy to be poor, of course. It’s still a miserable life. But all these freebies, all these misguided little benefits, have warped the ability of individuals to rationally judge the delta between their current lifestyle and their potential future lifestyle in a job, their potential future lives in the middle class.
Whoomp, there it is: the mac and cheese argument. Air-conditioned public buses will make the poor want to stay poor forever because they can get on an air-conditioned bus anytime they want and luxuriate their lives away rather than working hard to buy their own air-conditioned car. If you made all poor people walk to work, every single fucking one of them would be richer than the Koch Brothers in just a few months.
So turns out that Sadly, No doesn’t really cover psychological care in its Health Plan, so I’m back on the streets after a handful of days. Fortunately (for given values of fortunate), my recent “episode” leaves me in perfect mental condition to work through some of the less…lucid of wingnut writings and bring some mangoes back for your “enjoyment”. On a completely unrelated note, Sadly No Industries disavows any responsibility for any psychological injuries caused by trying to read sense in what follows.
In Western tradition it is Hamlet’s inner being that matters, his soul. Until the mid-20th century the English language used words like “soul,” or “dear soul,” to address people in everyday conversations. You can still read it in Agatha Christie mysteries of the 1940s. Addressing other people as “souls” was a simple country habit, but one that invoked worlds of sympathy and mutual respect. The trendy Left celebrates Buddhism for similar expressions, like the respectful greeting “Namaste.” (I greet the soul in you). That is important; but it’s just as important to know that the same idea dwells at the heart of our own culture.
No, no, this is the lucid part. Part of an initial argument that since in Christian dominated cultures or in Western interpretations of Eastern concepts, the soul comes up a lot, that it must exist and be super important. That whenever someone uses short-hand to talk about humanity they are admitting the existence of a soul by its interpretation by a narrow section of Christianity. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Tintin adds an update: Guess who reads Sadly, No? Krugman does, and he gives Cerberus a link.
I imagine this job looks easy from the outside.
And you’re right!
I just find some wingnut saying something stupid, boot up the automatic witty retort software and hit stop when it hits 3 million words or so (and you thought verbosity like this was organic).
So as a special treat, I’m going to show you how we craft the articles you so love. So join us dear reader on this relaxing mango safari.
Let’s start with something simple. Let’s see… Ah, yes, this:
So Steve, as a paid flak for AEI, has often had the unenviable task of pitting wingnut fantasies against Paul Krugman’s tyrannical skills of actual facts and history. By the first paragraph, it’s obvious his Washington Generals’ performance to Krugman’s Globetrotters has begun to wear at his soul.
So Paul Krugman phoned in his periodic “Keynes Was Right” column today, arguing that the Obama Porkulus failed only because, like “true” Communism, it wasn’t tried vigorously or faithfully enough.
Yeah, the single watered down version of the economic model that ended the Great Depression totally discredits it and demonstrates why we need to continue trying the model that started the Great Depression and has had zero success (despite being constantly tried).
What officer? Projection? I don’t see any projection here. That must also be something liberals do.
Disabled people belong in institutions not in sympathetic newspaper stories
Surely, you think to yourself, not even the unspeakably vile Heather Mac (“with a white space”) Donald would write a column, even at America’s Shittiest Website™, complaining about a story sympathetic to the plight of autistic adults. Certainly, even she would not declare that such people are too icky to have their relationships described in a newspaper of general circulation like the New York Times. Certainly it can’t be true that Heather, in the waning days of the year would interrupt her vacation to labor over long blog post mocking people with autism as socially inept weirdos undeserving of the attention of normal people like herself when she could have been sitting calmly by the fireplace reading Atlas Shrugged and sipping a tall tumbler of White Zinfandel on the rocks. Sadly, No!
The feminization of journalism reached a new low this week with the New York Times’ front-page story on a sexual relationship between two teenagers with Asperger’s Syndrome.
You know perhaps Heather has been sipping too heavily on that tumbler of White Zinfandel on the rocks because this sentence makes absolutely no sense. Even taking for granted that feminizing something is a bad thing (which Heather, who more or less appears to be a woman, oddly takes for granted), how does this story “feminize” journalism. Did someone tie a pretty pink bow around it or sell the reality TV rights to Bravo?
Although the article in question runs to over 5,000 words, Heather zeros in on the several paragraphs that she seems to think talk about sex, but which in large part talk about kissing and cuddling, in order to ramp up her outrage that the New York Times would force her to read about physical contact between weirdos.
It gets worse. Next up: the couple’s erotic proclivities, recounted in excruciating detail.
Heather then quotes a few paragraphs dealing with a back massage, kissing and hand-holding. I was expecting to get a graphic description of mutual oral sex or something but, alas, the excruciating detail of their erotic proclivities scarcely makes it past what I think the kids still call first base.
Inexplicably, the Times fails to give us Jack and Kirsten’s favorite coital positions, or the details of their foreplay; such matters await in another article, no doubt.
One minute Heather was bitching that she was getting too much information and now she’s complaining that the story doesn’t tell us who’s on top. Am I the only one with a sneaking little suspicion that Heather is a little disappointed that she got all her tingly parts warm just to be let down by the absence of a money shot?
But if Heather is upset that she didn’t get a money shot, that doesn’t stop her from giving us one:
There may be a place for an exhaustive account of the most quotidian aspects of Aspergians’ lives in order to — I can hear the pitch now — “illustrate their challenges and triumphs in achieving personal intimacy.” That place, however, would once have been the Women’s pages. Now, every page of the Times is a Women’s page. Any hierarchy between public and private has been obliterated; what was once considered the “masculine” realms of politics, war, and diplomacy, worthy of front-page treatment, now possesses the same claim on the reader’s attention as the most treacly or gratuitously explicit details of people’s private lives. … Likewise, in many college history departments, courses in political history have been crowded out by a focus on previously “silenced” identity groups, usually female and non-white, rather than on individual (mostly male) leaders and thinkers.
I have to say that part of me is in awe as to how quickly and easily Heather can morph a story about two autistic adults into the perennial wingnut butthurt about the oppression of white men by crippled black Lesbian academics.
The “Aspergians have sex” story is not even a case of the “personal being political”; it has no political import. The couple is not oppressed by racist, classist, sexist, or heterosexist social structures; they merely respond to some emotional and social cues differently than the norm.
And to prove her preposterous notion that Asperger’s adults are treated just like everyone else and aren’t subject to any societal discrimination, Heather then, just a few sentences later, calls them “Asperger’s syndroids.” I suppose from her point of view she was showing her personal compassion for their plight by calling them that rather than simply “retards.”
I just have one remaining question. If any story unrelated to invading foreign countries, calling the President a Kenyan Muslim socialist or ridiculing the French (“politics, war, and diplomacy”) is only fit for a “Women’s” page, shouldn’t Heather’s own little rant about this be relegated to a new “Women’s” page at America’s Shittiest Website™? Isn’t she herself feminizing journalism? And if the measure of good journalism has something to do with a penis and testicles, I suggest that she try, no matter how hard and admittedly distasteful it might be, to look between her own two legs and see if she notices a penis and two testicles there. Or even, say, just one testicle.
I’m going to start off serious for a moment. It’s actually kind of frustrating that of all of the things to get the Republicans in trouble, it’s a motherfucking tax cut for the middle class that’s sticking on them. They’ve been openly bragging about how they’ve been working for Party First and have openly sacrificed the only chances a lot of people have had to survive entirely to “deny Obama wins” and extend the Depression into 2012 to hurt Obama’s re-election chances and have abused every single legislative trick to basically ensure that the Democrats could pass nothing even if they wanted to, not even confirmations on Cabinet members and executive staff.
But no, what sinks them is them doing that “how will this hurt Obama” game to a middle class tax cut. Because tax cuts are sacred, don’t you know? Ending the Depression, keeping people from losing their shelter and dying on the streets? Pff. Small potatoes to our Holy God Lord Tax Cut.
But you didn’t come to hear me bitch. You came to hear wingnuts bitch and me mock them.
As you wish, dear reader.
Chalk one up to President Obama. He’s got a 2-month extension of payroll tax cuts in the teeth of opposition from those wascally Wepublicans
Aw, poor babies, did you get bitch-slapped so hard, everything you eat tastes of copper? Here let me give you some iodine to make it all better.
so that two months from now we can have the fight all over again.
Well, seeing as how your whole fight was just an attempt to hang Obama on “he raised middle class tax rates during a recession” in the 2012 election, you could just not fight it next time and thus not look like chumps.
Oh wait, we’re talking conservatives. It’s now going to be their “Right to look like a Chump” and they’ll fight to the death over the chance to do the same fail all over again just in case there was anyone left in the universe who didn’t notice that “we’re just against tax cuts” meant “we’re for giving all the money to the rich.”
I suppose that the president’s chief objective in this vicious little fight was to remind the voters which of the two parties was the Stupid Party.
Shorter Chris Chantrill: “It’s Obama’s fault we were stupid amateur chumps who knocked ourselves out on our own nunchucks.”
It’s been a good break. I killed an interview and I got to spend Christmas with family perpetuate the War on Christmas with my army of lesbian feminist demons. So what does the internet have for my return?
Sigh, okay, how to explain the backstory on this one? if you have been out actually spending time with loved ones instead of scouring the internet for news, you may have missed that the Republican Primary’s search for Not Romney has gotten to the point that the Republican bigwigs have been terrified that perennial also-ran Ron Paul might have a chance and fired the opening salvos accordingly. This means our lazy media has actually almost started looking into Ron Paul’s positions and actions, such as his long-standing political newletters and their various conspiracy theory ideologies and massive racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. Since then, Paulbots have been out on force at any blog that mentions them** to try and argue that the sky is green and thus Ron Paul and the Libertarian movement aren’t really racists.
Got all that?
Good, now forget all that, because frankly who gives a damn and besides, this former staffer gives us much fresher mangos in his overzealous urge to defend his old boss. Let us dive in.
I’ve noticed in some media that my words have been twisted and used for an agenda from both sides. And I wish to set the record straight with media that I trust and know will get the story right: conservative/libertarian-conservative bloggers.
Because they have a fantastic record of not twisting words towards an agenda. Oh wait, this is the famous Palin definition of the term, where quoting someone verbatim and providing the context is “taking their words out of context” and “twisting them around”.
Is Ron Paul a “racist.” In short, No. I worked for the man for 12 years, pretty consistently. I never heard a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews come out of his mouth. Not once.
And you can trust him on that, white Southerners are the best judges of what is and isn’t racist. Like when rappers use the word n***er but right wing bloggers aren’t allowed to. He’d be able to see that as racist faster than anyone!
He has frequently hired blacks for his office staff, starting as early as 1988 for the Libertarian campaign. He has also hired many Hispanics, including his current District staffer Dianna Gilbert-Kile.
And as we know, bigots never ever hire and employ members of the minority they are bigoted against. Especially when they are trying to appear less biogted as a desperate attempt to curry favor with left-leaning white college kids who are looking for a “reasonable conservative” or “an alternative to the two-party system, man”.
I don’t even know why I’m talking about it, seeing as how it never happens.
One caveat: He is what I would describe as “out of touch,” with both Hispanic and Black culture.
Oh? Really? Why, please, do go on.
He is completely clueless when it comes to Hispanic and Black culture, particularly Mexican-American culture. And he is most certainly intolerant of Spanish and those who speak strictly Spanish in his presence, (as are a number of Americans, nothing out of the ordinary here.)
There is absolutely no racism in his body, as long as you never ever make him aware that you are in any way a black or hispanic person.
And he completely freaks out the second someone speaks Spanish around him like literally hundreds of non-racist grandmas around the country.
“Hello, 911, what’s your emergency?”
“I heard two unsavory types speaking that secret devil language, I think they may be one of those gangbangers I hear so much about.”
“Mr. Paul, please stop calling.”
Is Ron Paul an Anti-Semite? Absolutely No. As a Jew, (half on my mother’s side)
Wait, wait, wait. You really felt the need to bring this up? Don’t you have to wait for the accusation before you start defending them. If someone introduced me to a guy by going “Is he a serial killer? Absolutely No.” I might have to start wondering exactly why he felt the needed to be pre-emptively defended.
I never heard anything out of his mouth, in hundreds of speeches I listened too over the years, or in my personal presence that could be called, “Anti-Semite.” No slurs. No derogatory remarks.
Wow, Ron Paul had the self-restraint to avoid calling you a kike bastard or refer constantly to your jew nose. Give that man a medal for that astonishing work on behalf of a hated minority.
He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
Memo to anyone left-leaning who finds themselves agreeing with Ron Paul on anything. He is not supporting it for the same reasons you do.
So yeah, most people might see the oppression and lack of real representation of the Palestinian people as a civil rights issue.
Ron Paul just thinks that waiting for Christ’s return to get rid of all the Jews in the holy land is a waste of damn time. But, no anti-semitism. Just like the rest of the evangelical Christian “allies of Israel”.
On the incident that’s being talked about in some blog media about the campaign manager directing me to a press conference of our opponent Lefty Morris in Victoria to push back on Anti-Jewish charges from the Morris campaign, yes, that did happen. The Victoria Advocate described the press conference very accurately. Yes, I was asked (not forced), to attend the conference dressed in a Jewish yarlmuke, and other Jewish adornments.
Who’s a good little set piece? You are!
Ah, how cute and totally non-bigoted it is to force your minority members to perform as ornaments to block accusations of bigotry. And so very humanizing too! Yes it is! Yes it is!
Now, dress up in your silly costume for a cookie. Good staffer!
Is Ron Paul a homo-phobe? Well, yes and no. He is not all bigoted towards homosexuals. He supports their rights to do whatever they please in their private lives.
Demonstrated by his strong voting record on…
You know, I can’t keep a straight face for that one, so I’ll just note that he’s got a 38% record on gay rights from HRC and getting a 100% from them is so easy, certain people’s moms have done it by accident.
He is however, personally uncomfortable around homosexuals, no different from a lot of older folks of his era.
Oh do tell.
In 1988, Ron had a hardcore Libertarian supporter, Jim Peron, Owner of Laissez Faire Books in San Francisco. Jim set up a magnificent 3-day campaign swing for us in the SF Bay Area. Jim was what you would call very openly Gay. But Ron thought the world of him. For 3 days we had a great time trouncing from one campaign event to another with Jim’s Gay lover.
Snrk. Sorry, I’ll be more mature.
Snrk.
The atmosphere was simply jovial between the four of us. (As an aside we also met former Cong. Pete McCloskey during this campaign trip.) We used Jim’s home/office as a “base.” Ron pulled me aside the first time we went there, and specifically instructed me to find an excuse to excuse him to a local fast food restaurant so that he could use the bathroom. He told me very clearly, that although he liked Jim, he did not wish to use his bathroom facilities. I chided him a bit, but he sternly reacted, as he often did to me, Eric, just do what I say. Perhaps “sternly” is an understatement. Ron looked at me directly, and with a very angry look in his eye, and shouted under his breath: “Just do what I say NOW.”
He loves gay people as long as they aren’t doing anything gay like using his toilet. His gayness could rub off on the toilet seat, corrupting his anus and making him desire the man-cock. Do you want to live in a world where Ron Paul is a slavering gay lust beast?
Of course not. No one does. So let us salute this proud patriot!
“Bobby,” a well-known and rather flamboyant and well-liked gay man in Freeport came to the BBQ. Let me stress Ron likes Bobby personally, and Bobby was a hardcore campaign supporter. But after his speech, at the Surfside pavilion Bobby came up to Ron with his hand extended, and according to my fellow staffer, Ron literally swatted his hand away. Again, let me stress. I would not categorize that as “homo-phobic,”
So he believes that the touch of a minority member will corrupt his very soul and is literally terrified of the idea of any type of contact either direct or indirect by a gay person. But to call that homophobic?
That’s just mean***.
It’s his foreign policy that’s the problem; not so much some stupid and whacky things on race and gays he may have said or written in the past.
Yeah! It’s the few locations where his bigoted nuttery interferes with conservative orthodoxy that are the problem, not a level of bigotry that might make George Wallace say “hey, now!” Damn liberals, always making a big deal out of the wrong thing****.
I think we can all agree that the hole Ron Paul dug himself into is not at all at the same height it once was, thanks to this article*****.
*That’s the real name, no funny edits needed or possible. Well played nutjobs. Well played.
**You’re welcome for the incoming troll infestation, by the way.
***There’s some stuff after this about some meanness surrounding a lone female staffer who may or may not have been the fall guy for an embezzlement scandal (one of several in the Paul campaign) which was totally worse than all the faithfully transcribed bigotry and thus caused him to leave. I’d recommend checking it out for those with strong enough stomachs to leap off the boat.
****After this there’s a long bit about the war votes that get so much press by Paulbots. Naturally it points out that its Paul’s isolationist xenophobia that is the root of those votes, though there’s a funny line where he blames the famous “almost no” vote on Afghanistan on “being under the spell of left-anarchists”. I didn’t include it, because this is already so long that some people died of scroll fatigue. By the way, I’ll notify your next of kin immediately.
*****I’ll also note that the staffer didn’t even try to defend against the sexism charge. What, Ron Paul doesn’t think there should be a government, except for a singular office which is wholly obsessed with women’s vaginas and what women do with them? Yeah, I don’t even got nothing. It truly is refreshing to see someone so committed to the excavation once down in the hole realize briefly that an extra tunnel into the depths of Moria, might not be the best idea.
ABOVE: Erika Johnsen (left) and two lucky duckies in a Chinese sweatshop
As my special Christmas gift to everyone, I offer you the relentlessly perky Erika Johnsen at Clownhall who displays the rare talent of seeing the bright side of other people’s suffering, a talent no doubt aided by the fact that Erika’s most painful moment so far in her brief life was when her mother bought her a pink cashmere sweater instead of the green one she had specifically and clearly requested.
Liberals should just shut up about child labor and sweatshops and acknowledge that they are simply the way the beneficent and invisible hand of the free market makes sure that poor children don’t starve to death.
Now for some tasty mangoes:
This is another example of the type of headline that I never in a million years would have imagined myself writing, but yes, it’s true–I unexpectedly find myself jumping to the defense of the Kardashian family, of Kim Kardashian-fame.
Is anyone else but Erika surprised that she finds it more remarkable that she would defend Kim Kardashian than that she would defend child sweatshops? You shouldn’t be because one of the questions on the wingnut welfare eligibility exam is to write an essay explaining the benefits of child sweatshops, poll taxes and climate change. (Cheap clothes! Republicans win!! Vineyards and beach resorts in Northern Scotland!!!)
The liberal media, of course, has never taken umbrage with debauchery or poor judgment; in fact, they glorify it and bring it to the masses, because hey, it sells! But the liberal media do find themselves egregiously, outrageously, morally offended when they perceive that an ostensible slight to their bleeding-heart code of ethics, including the supposed exploitations and injuries caused by free enterprise, has occurred in their out-of-touch, uneducated community of ignorant idealogues.
In other words, the media isn’t allowed to talk about the exploitation of child workers until they start complaining about people in sitcoms fornicating off-camera. It’s a little known fact but talk about sex on television has ruined more children’s lives than sweatshops have. Think how much worse off those sweatshop children would be if they actually had time to watch television or even the money to afford a television. Am I right?
Working long hours in hot, smelly, boring sweatshops for a very small wage does sound extremely horrible, especially in a deplorable communist nation fraught with government-sponsored human-rights abuses like China.
No argument from me, but something tells me Erika is about to tell us that it’s not as bad as it sounds based on her own experiences working for more than a decade in a sweatshop. Well, maybe not based on her personal experience, although having to do the dishes when she was a teenager seemed pretty sweatshoppy at the time, which is what now allows her to opine so authoritatively on sweatshops in third-world countries.
But here’s the question that the inane faux-crusaders currently boycotting the Kardashians’ clothing lines are utterly failing to ask: for the laborers working in the factories in these Third World countries, what are their alternatives?
You know, people should ask themselves that question more often. If the northern aggressors had realized that the alternative to slavery for blacks was a poor, disease-ridden, Godless existence in an African jungle, we could have totally avoided that Civil War business.
The alternatives to sweatshop labor in these usually socialist/dictator-controlled, poverty-stricken countries often amount to child prostitution, sexual slavery, the drug market, getting malaria while breaking your back in a rice paddy, or just living in squalor and starving to death.
Of course, by this measure you can argue for the benefits of child prostitution by noting that it still beats malaria in a rice paddy or starving to death. The only problem is that Erika doesn’t get cheap cocktail ensembles from child prostitution.
Sometimes a conservative has to go without unearned attention for minutes at a time. The experience is more painful than actual oppression could ever be. And you damn liberals don’t even care, do you? Bastiches.
So the wingnut cycle has worked themselves into a bit of a lather over “the protestor” being named Time Magazine’s cop-out, I mean, person of the year.
Now, the reaction of a sane person would be to go “who cares?” because Time hasn’t been remotely relevant for fucking years and the “Person of the Year” category especially has about the impact of a mosquito farting into a marsh.
But B. Daniel Blatt is no sane person and this meaningless acknowledgement that the OWS protests, the riots in Europe and the various protests still continuing in the Middle East, have occurred and had an impact is too much for his little mind to take.
In his post last week on Time magazine’s decision to name the Protestor as its “Person of the Year,” Ed Morrissey thought the magazine a “little late to ‘the protester’ story in terms of real impact“:
Oh right, Dan is busy trying to clamp down on the fail eruption of GOProud when one of the activists momentarily fell off the drug cocktail and realized “hey, our fellow conservatives are homophobes and some gay conservatives work against gay rights.” A moment I’m sure had the entire gay staff of GOProud (all three of them) shuffling their feet and whistling innocently. As such, he mostly links to Ed Morrissey (the inferior Morrissey), a man who can’t even get his web video show on PJTV and has to settle for Hot Air TV instead.
Some choice Ed Mangos:
In 2009, Time had the same opportunity to pick “the protester” when the protests were the Tea Party and Iran’s Green Revolution, which followed from Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, and so on. Who did they pick? Ben Bernanke.
Ah, that’s cute, they thought they were a real movement. Yeah, while the order came down from on high to high-speed fluff the Teabaggers and their 5 person rallies as the new hot flavor, I imagine Time Magazine’s gut choked on the thought of having to acknowledge them for all time.
And yes, how dare they pick a focus on the financial collapse rather than a bunch of racists having a freakout over Obama and the single pet Middle Eastern protest they decided to “adopt” as “their own” because a few conservatives switched their twitter feed to green.
When the Tea Party movement actually delivered results at the ballot box in 2010 in a historic midterm drubbing of Barack Obama’s Democrats — they lost 68 seats, the worst outing since 1938 — they could have hailed The Protester then, too. Who did they pick? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Oh, that’s cute.
You mean the less than impressive traditional swing-back and conservative voting patterns we see in a midterm post new president election? The one that wasted a chance to take the Senate as well because of all the teabaggers deciding this was their moment in the sun. And all those Teabagger candidates now leaving the Republicans staring over the vast precipice of looming irrelevance while a guy with a stick pokes them and urges them to jump.
Yeah, you’re lucky that Time didn’t deconstruct that. And yeah, again, Mark Zuckerberg had a movie about him thus insuring people would pick up a Time Magazine with his face on it and it was Time’s last shot to honor Facebook before it started its slide into irrelevancy.
Now back to Dan’s mangos:
What impact, he wonders, “has ‘the protester’ actually had in 2011?
A lot? I mean, we’ve got the recall election in Wisconsin, the Occupy movement turning into a National franchise, those European protests and riots that got the EU to think twice about selling the farm to the 1% and those Middle East protests that didn’t just go away because conservatives decided they were bored with it and done changing their twitter streams green.
Has the Occupy Movement, such as it is, had any kind of ground-breaking impact on politics in the way the Tea Party did in 2010 and still does in this cycle?
Oh yes, the impressive snrk impact of the Hoverund 12. Yeah, I think OWS met that “impact” when the first doobie was passed around and someone said “hey, we should like totally Occupy Wall Street, man.”
And this is the problem when you believe your own bullshit. Yeah, the guys who pay your salaries did send out the marching orders to every news organization in the country to cover a small smattering of hardcore conservatives having a freakout over “black president” as if it was the Green Revolution, but it never was anything more than a media stunt, a desperate attempt to distract our mayflay attention public from the fact that the 1% were looting the remaining deck chairs before they get off the Titanic.
And then here came this genuine populist organization, which actually remembered who broke the economy and how time works (things that cause things happen before the things they caused). And despite the media and the police pulling out all the stops, the movement not only stayed but grew and became national.
I would say the way you and your owners shit their collective pants over how this wasn’t in the script says quite a bit about the impact it had on everything (though nice wording to focus only on election victories seeing as we won’t see the impact on that until next year).
Not even close, and even people on the Left have begun washing their hands of the literally pointless display.”
Ah, that’s the cutest thing ever. The fake movement is desperate to erase the real movement and has been fantasizing about how “it’s losing impact and will go away soon about five seconds after the first bongo drum solo (a fair reaction to bongos, I’ll admit). Yet it still wants to pretend it’s got a seat on the table.
I’m sorry fake movement, you failed your masters. The real populist message got through. The 1% have already deleted your numbers from their phone and decided to skip the middle man and just buy the police to take care of the problem.
Have fun on the unemployment lines with the rest of us.
I’m sure your vast skills will get you a job in no time.
Well, the folks in the various Occupy movements did chant the right (er, left) slogans (at least according to our friends in the MSM).
Yes…because of all that air time they got in the liberal media versus the complete silence the Teabaggers got. Why, even Fox News has been tripping over itself to cover every cities version of Occupy, hailing rallies of 5 people as the people’s voice finally being heard and trying to motivate the crowd to make them seem louder while panning away from any images that might speak poorly of the protestors. Meanwhile, the Teabaggers, despite having numbers in the thousands, had to fight for even a local news mention while cops tried to beat and harass them at every turn and whatever media attention they got was all about what violent lunatics they were because of what someone in the general vicinity of them did that was 20 times less awful than what was being done to them on a regular basis.
It was a harrowing time for Teabaggers, but it paid off. There has been a growing sense of outreach and the message has been received by many, tapping into the real populist worries that have been ill-served by a bought-and-sold media chasing fad astroturf movements like OWS.
Yes, you are absolutely right, America’s Dumbest Homosexual. It is an outrage and you have totally valid complaints that aren’t at all based in whiny complaints that your band of lazy ass mouth-breathers don’t get to monopolize the airwaves simply because your rich daddies bought the media.
Waaah! Oh wow, the unabashed IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION of that last statement knocked me into the Bizarro World for three paragraphs.
You might be many things this Solstice season, but you can thank your Pagan Gods that you aren’t Dan Blatt, America’s Dumbest Homosexual.
I’m going to level with you all, the mangos I’m bringing back aren’t simply just rotten, they are vile disease-ridden pestilence factories, carefully toiled over by seven archdemons to make sure they contain the absolute epitome of the worst of humanity. R.S. McCain isn’t simply a terrible person, he is a man trying to be the worst person in the world.
If you value your good day, I’d urge you to stop reading and just skip to the comments section.
There is no shame in it and I’ll provide a shorter for you. After that, it’s all downhill from there.
I am a terrible human being who has figured I’ve gone about as far into racism as I can, so I’d like to break into sexism to diversify my hate portfolio.
Full pubic hair removal, according to Herbenick’s studies, is most common among sexually active women . . . who are not in monogamous relationships.
Like pierced bellybuttons and tattoos, this is a trend popular with hussies, harlots, trollops, tramps, vamps, floozies and whores.
How does one expend the thesaurus for the word slut and fail to hit a single term that has been used in the last 50 years? Are they also dolled-up tommies committing scandalous peccadilloes with other rapscallions, daddy-o?
This question, a citing of an article reacting to shaved pubic hair in traditional wingnut fashion, at the exact time it is starting to be fazed out. Is answered with his charming post title. As you’ll see later, he also reacts to it in the other traditional wingnut fashion, that is interpreting stupid things women do to try and please the patriarchy (like increasing itching and lowering protection of the genitals in order to “please” a man based on his expectations from porn (which are only in place because it makes the vulva look bigger and thus more aroused when the parties dry-hump each other)) as if they were feminist inventions to offend his sensibilities.
Cause if you are going to be scum, why not be an ignorant hack as well?
That article was linked by Professor Glenn Reynolds, who can’t be judgmental like that, because it would probably be a civil rights violation or something. He’d have the entire UT Womyn’s Studies Department picketing his office if he dared express disapprobation of ”sexually active women . . . who are not in monogamous relationships.”
Some sentences try and convey important information or potential arguments. Others simply exist to demonstrate that the writer in question deserves never to have sex with anything other than his right-hand and even then the police should be checking for roofies. This is the latter.
It’s not just wrong, it’s fractally wrong. Each new section contains more wrong that feeds on other wrongs to just play a painfully loud whistle that this man is a contemptible waste of flesh.
And they don’t call ‘em “Volunteers” for nothing. IYKWIMAITYD.
HAHA HAHA HAHA! You are a waste of humanity who should be skullfucked to death immediately by the biggest black man on the planet.
The fine Southeastern Conference tradition of trash-talking one’s football opponents — 37-6, Roll Tide! — certainly extends to the opponent’s womenfolk. For example, everybody in Tuscaloosa knows why Auburn installed artificial turf at Jordan-Hare Stadium: To prevent the homecoming queen from grazing.
Remember this every time a Southern Gentleman tries to allude to the “Southern tradition of chivalry” and argue that Southern men are nicer than Northern men because they open doors and say “ullo ma’am”.
No, not the obvious and insulting sexism. I mean the complete fail of comedy.
See, you need artificial grass. Because your homecoming queen, see because she’s the prettiest person at your school, would try to graze on it. See, because she’s a cow. See, it’s funny because she’s fat. Do you get the joke yet? DO I NEED TO SPELL IT OUT?
Fuck, if Sadly, No! paid that much for that quality of jokes, all of my posts would be nothing but me farting loudly and saying “but see, it’s funny because you can’t actually smell it or hear it over the internet.”
By similar token, while I don’t want to say that all Tennessee coeds are wantonly promiscuous, there are certain words you can’t spell without “UT,” among them “slut” and “put out.”
R.S. McCain, you may continue your abject hatred of women (everyone knows they aren’t people anyways) in peace, but I beg you to stop murdering comedy in the pursuit. Comedy is an innocent, man. It had nothing to do with this. Just let it walk away and it can just be between you and me. Quick, Comedy, kick him in the nads.
Do Tennessee fans take umbrage at such ribald putdowns? Of course they do — and that’s exactly my point. If promiscuity did not inspire an instinctive moral horror, then there would be no offense in saying that UT coeds put out like Pez dispensers.
Holy fuckballs, is he still on about UT? Just because Professor Dipshit teaches there (thus permanently devaluing their education standards) and R.S. McCain worked himself into a frothy mix about how calling all young women sluts might arise a complaint by people who aren’t mouth-breathing competitors for the World’s Worst Person award?
And yeah, the more you say X women are sluts who put out indiscriminately because you decided to quote-mine some other wingnut’s pulled-out-of-his ass speculations on what type of women shave their pubes (hint, it’s women who are dating men who have such a thin grasp on reality that they think how women look in porn is how they are “supposed” to look and thus hair is “a sign of dirtiness”. These are not feminist enlightened men), the more it just shows you to be a man complaining that X young women you assume are sluts aren’t sleeping with you.
And going back to the original whine, what would be the problem with either “sexually active” or “in a non-monogamous relationship”? Oh right, the assumption that anything other than repressed Christian woman giving free handjobs in the Church bathroom is a dirty slut who can’t resist spreading her legs for anyone.
Ah, virgin/whore complex, making men who believe in it look like total prats for most of Western Christian history.
Contrary to feminist dogma, the stigma attached to “sexually active women . . . who are not in monogamous relationships” isn’t a learned response inculcated by The Patriarchy, but rather a reflection of our innate sense that such behavior is contrary to the social good.
I have seen a good number of things regarding men and women labeled “natural”. From love of shoes to differences in math aptitude to the ability to read. I’ll admit that “slut-shaming” is a relatively new one on me. By that I mean, the last time I encountered it I was reading an Elizabethean play.
Who will ever return these poor time-traveling wingnuts to their proper time instead of trapping them in this confusing modern society they are helpless to adapt to?
Our basic sense of right and wrong can be ignored or suppressed — evil can and is “normalized” by our popular culture — but the moral sense can never be entirely eradicated. However much society tries to pretend that Good and Evil are not valid categories, our moral sense will find expression in some way.
ABSOLUTE MORALITY says girls are dirty skank poo-poo heads with cooties. Nyah!
Also, R.S. McCain. Let me just see if I got you correctly? When made aware of the existence of women’s vaginas, you immediately launched into an incoherent tirade about how all young women are sluts, and how refusing to believe that women are slutty vile creatures is a sign of pure evil or part of the secret campaign against men by feminist conspiracies?
And you expect us to believe you are straight because…?
The feminist campaign against “slut-shaming” is thus doomed to failure, because being a slut will always be a shameful thing, no matter how strenuously the political correctoids try to prevent us from saying so.
It is amazing how Slut Walk has managed to take the drooling incoherent cretins of the world and reduce them to even more drooling incoherence. It’s kinda like the gay marriage arguments. Sure they rode a good long while on “it’s bad”, but when asked to demonstrate in court how that was so, all they had left was sputtering outrage.
If I had known that the question “Why?” was the antidote to wingnuts, I’d have invested in air-dropping the word over the wingnut death camps that Obama is rounding them up into…oh shoot, wasn’t supposed to reveal that.
And if any feminist is offended by my saying so — good. You deserve to offended and often, and by someone who knows how.
Yes, be proud of your ability to…offend people by being an asshole. I wasn’t aware being an asshole was a particularly difficult trick, especially when you’re talking about openly attacking the humanity of a segment of people. If that was my job, I could fart that out in a lunch break and go back to my Feminist Conspiracy meetings a fuck ton earlier.
The sad thing is that you don’t know how. I mean, you manage it, because you are inherently scum, but as far as effort, this isn’t even good trolling. It’s rambly and reveals way more about your personal issues than anything else. I mean, come on, R.S. McCain, if you’re going to be the Worst Person in the World, you need to up your game, man!
And also thanks for admitting that you and your fellow wingnuts are only in it to “offend feminists” and other liberals. Because everyone knows in times of high unemployment and overly large numbers of people dying from preventable causes, that pissing off a group of people just trying to fix shit is the most important issue of all.
UPDATE: Roxeanne De Luca asks the key question:
Young women of the world: have you all gone mental?
Yes, the key question on all of our lips was whether young women have gone mental.
Indeed. The insecurities on display — “Will the guy who picks me up in a bar be disgusted if I my nether regions are not ‘well-groomed’?” — are a perfect illustration of how sexual “liberation” has resulted in a new slavery: Women now groan under the yoke of sexual expectations created by pornographers.
Cause everyone knows pornography didn’t exist before 1969 and the pornography industry is directly connected to the philosophy of the “sexual revolution” and leftist philosophy in general.
You can tell by how the blue states and areas consume the most porn and have the most strip clubs.
Unions are bad. This isn’t so much a truism for the brave warriors of National Review Online, but rather an article of faith. Every Sunday, they gather around the dark portal in their best Sunday clown shoes and sacrifice rubber chickens on the altar to reinforce their faith.
And it makes it difficult when the other article of faith is that management and business can do no wrong. A tenuous position to hold in this era of massive layoffs, outsourcing, and of course the 1% mooning us in the street after collapsing the global economy.
But Josh Barro is no mere neophyte to the order. And he knows that the two beliefs can be brought together in one glorious explosion of bullshit.
In his “Theodore Roosevelt” speech in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama heaped praise on a Minnesota company, Marvin Windows and Doors, for its worker-friendly policies. Marvin weathered a recession that battered the construction industry without laying off any of its workers.
Apparently the order came down from on high for conservatives to try and hide the obvious racism and contrarianism that Obama brings out in them, by praising the parts of Obama’s speeches and plans that are his compromises to them and their worldviews.
It’s a first step?
The president is right: When times are tough and the amount that companies can spend on labor declines, it is usually better for the economy as a whole if that pain is spread across all workers in the form of compensation cutbacks than placed on a few in the form of layoffs.
Well, yes, when the choice is between those two, then yes it can…well depend on the situation. It’s sort of like being the Donner Party. You can all take the risk of freezing hungry and tired in the night or take the hard hit of eating Harold (he knows what he did).
And such decisions usually have little to do with “amount available to spend on labor”, but rather “amount willing to spend on labor”, often seeing unilaterally breaking employment agreements and contracts that were instrumental to getting the workforce you had for X years as a “necessary evil” of making the company more money to send to stockholders.
But let’s take a closer look at the Marvin model that Obama is praising. The president noted that Marvin’s workers “agree[d] to give up some perks and some pay,” but there wasn’t really an agreement — the workers’ options were to take the pay cut or quit. As one incensed FireDogLake contributor notes, Obama is praising a non-union company for unilaterally cutting its workers’ pay. And the cutbacks to compensation were substantial.
So he praised a unilateral gutting of worker’s rights, slashing salaries, work hours, any possibility of raises, promotion, and a number of the few remaining benefit programs that could help the workers get out of the dead-end job which was now officially a dead end job. And this, given the lack of a union, was the lesser of two evils in our dysfunctional economy where labor has about as much strength and impact as the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I can see why the wingnuts are salivating.
While all of that is painful, the avoidance of layoffs is a major offsetting advantage. But this model works only where compensation is not collectively bargained. Marvin’s non-union workers don’t engage in collective bargaining, and neither do federal employees (for wages and benefits), so it was possible to force concessions on them.
And by knocking that hooker unconscious and tying her up in my bedroom, it was easier to force sex on her, but I’m not exactly clear what part of that is her fault for usually resisting that sort of thing.
Many state and local workers can use the collective-bargaining process to block wage and benefit concessions. Layoffs, which fall on a junior subset of workers, are more appealing than wage concessions to longstanding employees who know their jobs are safe — meaning that unions are not as afraid of layoffs as you might expect.
My word, unions resisting giving up the hard-fought labor rights they spilled blood over for decades to secure? Does their evil know no bounds?!?
Why I bet they even think that said victories were instrumental to having a motivated and skilled workforce and workplace recruitment back when the company was on top (including concessions on salary, hours, or safety for the promise of long-term benefits), those devious commie bastards.
Also, I didn’t know that unions were the ones in charge of firing employees or driving a company so far into the ground that the only choices to keep things running are firing a huge section of the staff or reducing their salaries and benefits to that of a retail worker.
Man, labor unions sure got powerful. They managed to completely eliminate management altogether.
Also, I’ll note that when the battle is between “factory is shut down” and “less benefits”, the unions have stepped up where management has refused, slashing their benefits and salaries while management, the management that brought the company down, keeps theirs the same. Many companies have started using this as a cudgel against labor, threatening to move the factory to a no-union state if the labor unions don’t match salaries and benefits to the poor abused suckers of those states.
Might explain the hesitancy when the threat is “sacrifice all you fought for or we’re firing a bunch of you”.
For example:
In 2010, when Gov. Chris Christie’s fight with the New Jersey Education Association was at its peak, his request was that teachers should take a one-year freeze on base pay — annual increases had been running at 4 percent for the previous several years — and contribute 1.5 percent of salary to pay for health benefits, up from zero in most districts. Concessions of this magnitude would have eliminated the need for any teacher layoffs due to cuts to state education aid.
Yeah, Chris Christieson, son of Christian Christensen did basically try a hard-sell unilateral violation of the contracts of teachers. Teachers already a segment of the population that subsists on poverty wages for one of the hardest jobs because of a crisis he created by deciding to underfund the schools even more than they already were.
I know!
Today I saw a similar show of oppression and lack of empathy for one’s fellow man when a bully victim turned to his bullies and told them to knock off that shit now or he would call his mom at work, thus totally ruining that bully’s whole rhythm and showing painful disregard for the wimpy kid the bully will have to beat up later to make up his hurt feelings. Sniff, it breaks your heart.
Christie got agreement on those concessions almost nowhere — unlike the Marvin workers, New Jersey teachers were able to say no, and they did. Layoffs ensued. Christie did eventually get higher teacher contributions toward health insurance, but only because the legislature passed a law to remove that matter from collective bargaining.
And it’s teachers fault all this happened. They taunted him, made him feel small and no one makes Chris Christie feel small. So when they didn’t accept his ass fucking with no lube, he laid a bunch of them off, thus making the New Jersey school system even more understaffed and underserved to the community’s needs, and he managed to get the legislature to piss on their contracts and force the concession later just to show them who’s boss. Then they forced him to beat his spouse and kids and run over that homeless person. Why must over-powerful unions keep forcing assholes to be vindictive assholes?
Do they have no shame?
Liberals often point out that public employment has been declining in 2010 and 2011, partly offsetting job growth in the private sector. They bemoan budget cuts that lead to shrinking headcounts.
Yeah, it’s almost like they see it as a bad thing and thus think the conservatives should actually start allowing them to fund such areas, instead of deliberately sabotaging them and making them even more untenable as a back-end attempt to privatize everything.
But then they — including President Obama — defend a public-sector collective-bargaining regime that takes non-layoff savings options off the table. If liberals really want state and local governments to be able to maintain their headcounts, they should push to end collective bargaining for public employees, not to strengthen it.
Yeah! Once businesses are allowed to do anything they want with no labor checks against their power, the companies will totally stop laying off workers.
What’s that? We tried that? The businesses without unionized employees have the greatest periods of layoffs? And we found businesses just raced to the bottom, abusing and firing their labor force to raise profits rather than focusing on making and selling quality products people would enjoy? And that was also met with the same businesses then attacking the public safety net after removing their own contributions to pensions, unemployment, and health care for laid off workers? This request to eliminate collective bargaining once and for all is a transparent effort to fully transition us into being a third-world hell-hole?
But, but, unions.
They’re bad.
I’ve got the rubber chicken on the altar and everything.
Fine, but the dog I punch tomorrow is totally on you.
Jeannie Deangelis, perhaps because of her tragic resemblance to a wild-eyed giraffe on a methamphetamine binge, is, not surprisingly, all over David Axelrod for having made his monkey butt comment about Newt “Eye Of” Gingrich.
David Axelrod, who slightly resembles a proboscis monkey himself, has reintroduced name-calling into the political arena — specifically animal name-calling. Although the animal kingdom provides apt descriptions for many politicians (think Chihuahuas, sloths and the Aye-aye), thanks to political correctness, analogies have been banned from the animal farm.
Nevertheless, in an attempt to get the Obama 2012 campaign moving in the right direction, David broke with politically
correct protocol by tying monkeys on sticks to aquatic amphibians, saying about Newt Gingrich that “The higher a monkey climbs on the pole the more you can see his butt.”
The liberal PC police must have honed in on animal analogies during that lost weekend I spent in Rio dousing myself with cachaca and chasing beach boys because I don’t really remember when we liberals dropped the ban hammer on comparing politicians to animals.
Oh wait. She’s thinking of this:
There’s no denying that 74-year-old Marilyn Davenport, an Orange County, California Republican Party official described as “a ‘petite grandmother’ who taught Bible study and had a heart condition,” failed to use good judgment last spring when she sent an incendiary email featuring a photo of a Papa and Mama chimpanzee cradling a baby chimp that was Photoshopped to look like President Obama. . . . Marilyn’s profuse apology did not impress Orange County GOP chair Scott Baugh, [who] called for Nanny Davenport’s immediate resignation.
. . .
Marilyn Davenport’s obvious poor judgment aside, why, in some circles, does an image of a monkey instantly evoke racial overtones?
I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb by suggesting that Jeannie probably doesn’t know a single black person if she can’t see why referring to a black person as a subhuman primate found in Africa might have racial overtones. Hell, I think it’s safe to say that every time Jeannie sees a black person she either changes the channel or rolls up her car windows, locks the door and jams the accelerator to the floor.
During WWI, enlistment posters depicted Germans as ‘mad beasts’ that looked like King Kong, which makes one wonder if, at the time, the insult was directed toward Germans or gorillas.
And I’m sure that Jeannie wonders whether calling black people “coons” is insulting to the raccoons or to black people.
But Jeannie is saving for last her best argument as to why monkey isn’t a racially derogatory term.
How about Mr. Rogers? Fred hugged Koko the ape. Looking back from a more enlightened perspective, could the man in the tennis shoes who lived in an all-white neighborhood be the reason white cardigan-wearing people, based on their outerwear, look a lot like racists?
I would call that tortured logic, but it would be an insult to torturers. Best I can figure, Jeannie is saying that apes don’t remind racists of Negroes or Mr. Rogers wouldn’t have hugged Koko, which means that comparing a black person to an ape is a term of affection intended to precede some gentle cuddling and mild foreplay.
Moreover, by calling a doughy white guy from Georgia a monkey, David Axelrod may have unintentionally reclassified monkeys and placed them in the neutral category when it comes to racial overtones surrounding animal references, email imagery and political name calling.
At last we get to what is always the ultimate point anytime a white wingnut writes about race, namely that black people have no right to get all huffy when white people use racially derogatory language. Usually the reason is some variant of this: “Rappers use the n-word about other blacks, which makes it perfectly okay for me to do the same thing.” But I have to give Jeannie credit for a new and even more stupid variant: because one white guy once referred to one other white guy as a monkey, all white people are now perfectly free, indeed encouraged, to call all black people monkeys.
It’s this kind of intellectual rigor which keeps the loyal readers of Renew America coming back again and again.
ABOVE: Dafydd Ab Sammeyrch Ab Dyckwydd, Le Roi du Sammich
The whiny-ass wingnut butthurt of the day (perhaps the decade) comes from our old Sadly, No! friend, Dafydd Ab Hugh né Dafydd Ab Sammeyrch Ab Dyckwydd né David Friedman, whom regrettably we haven’t visited for ages. Dafydd’s butthurt du jour is that when he goes to restaurants the liberals now make him salt his own food. The horror, the horror!
Believe it or not, sodium chloride — table salt — is not a deadly poison. I have it on the highest authority. In fact, it’s a vital substance for human existence.
But lately, America seems to believe the opposite: that sodium chloride is indistinguishable from sodium cyanide, and just a few grains of it will kill you. At least, so I infer from the fact that, in virtually every restaurant I frequent, I must salt (and pepper) my own food; evidently, seasoning has become a crime.
Okay, I’m going to say it because you know you’re thinking it: Dafydd could use all the exercise he can get, even if it only involves hoisting a two-ounce salt shaker the three-inch distance between the tablecloth and his 18-ounce Porterhouse steak
This lemma flies in the face of traditional Americanism, of course. Under what used to be the shared ideology of the United States, and still is the dominant one, we must assume that most individuals know enough about their own needs and circumstances to weigh, intelligently, the risks they take against the gains they buy — pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Much more intelligently than can any small (compared to overall population) panel of experts hundreds or thousands of miles distant… and lightyears apart in worldview.
This argument might make sense if, say, liberals had turned salt into a schedule 3 narcotic, banned it completely and sent saltmongers to the federal penitentiary. But here Mr. ab Dickwydd, who pretends to be smart by misusing lemma, is using a choice argument that boomerangs back and poops on his triple chins. Yes, people do know best about their own needs which is why, maybe, salting their own food instead of having a restaurant decide to pour a salt cellar on it may be more consistent with his bargain basement libertarianism.
Liberals (or Progressivists, choose your poison) are natural regulators; it’s in the blood! They want to regulate everything and everybody because, at core, they believe everybody else is simply too stupid to live.
But why should they think they’re so much brainer? I hypothesize that they’re convinced of their own superiority because, within the bubble in which they live, it’s literally true… because they only hang around with fellow liberals.
Yes, Mr. ab Dyckwydd went there. After stupidly arguing that letting restaurants take away diner’s choice is, in fact, something that benefits choice, he now calls liberals stupid, which is rather like him calling Jonah Goldberg unkempt and ovverweight. And, you know, I’ll say it again, because you know you’re thinking it again: thinking that Mr. Ab Dickwydd is too stupid to live isn’t really pushing the envelope.
*Hollywoodland is the Alan Smithee of Big Hollywood, the appelation that Breitbart and the other bottom feeders use on their posts when they aren’t quite sure they want their actual name on the post. And this is for a site where people will kill each other for the honor of posting a screed on how Sesame Street is a communist plot or An American Carol is the greatest comedy ever produced. So keep that in mind reading this.
It’s been a tough couple of years out there for conservatives. Driven by hatred for all that’s pure and good, vile liberal politicians and children have been leaping in front of proud conservative bullets who were only trying to run away.
Suddenly people have been asking unfair questions like “Does a single radical group 40 years ago who wasn’t as violent as concurrent conservative or even concurrent peacekeeping efforts really erase all conservative violence and prove that liberals are the violent ones for all time?” and “Isn’t that kind of insane?”. Not to mention “Um, could you stop pointing that loaded firearm in my face while you rant wildly about the socialistic menace come to steal your guns?”
It’s so unfair!
And it doesn’t help when video games, tired of dealing with the wingnuts-in-training making things like Xbox Live the equivalent of a modern horror story, decide to metaphorically throw up their hands and devote an entire genre of the medium (first-person shooters or FPS) to pandering to right-wing paranoid fantasies.
But hey, it’s not really full on Breivik. Sure, the Modern Warfare series gave us Neo-Soviet/Pan-Islamic alliances that invade American streets and prove that every vaguely middle-eastern person is a valid target that will start shooting if you don’t. And Homefront gave us literal Wolverines-style Red Dawn action (written by the same guy) as North Korea full on takes over America and starts committing war crimes all over the place to teach you a lesson about letting those sneaky yellow devils out of sight.
But, it’s not like an FPS title is getting released feeding on more close-to-home wingnut fears, like that of OWS (perpetual victims of police harassment and amateur bongo aficionados) being violent terrorists that you will be asked to gun down by the hundreds (I know bongos can be annoying, but geez man, fucking relax) in the course of a game to save America by saving the 1%.
Right?
Ah…right.
So now as a conservative, you have a difficult task. On one level, your hand has already set off on an epic journey of uncontrollable masturbation. On the other, you retain enough humanity to know that this just might just almost… look bad and leave people with the… unfair impression that conservatives…
Oh fuck the humanity, let’s just let the Big Hollywood editors be themselves!
Commence mangos:
Not every Occupy Wall Street type wants to violently stick it to The Man, although an alarming number embrace such a solution.
Our violent fantasies are totally TOO justified. It’s the liberals faults for being those people everyone knows are the violent ones, thus forcing us into violent masturbatory fantasy about gunning down their violent asses.
And they are the ones who support “2nd amendment solutions” not us, because one poorly worded poll asked OWS protestors if violence would “ever be” “sometimes necessary” against a government (you know, a category so vague it would include actions like the French Resistance) and a number of OWS protestors said yes.
Oh, how many “Tea Party” protestors supported the authority-led calls for “2nd Amendment solutions” or think violence is called for in resisting this administration, not some theoretical future administration? Uh, let me just check my… RUN FOR IT!
An upcoming video game takes that branch of the OWS movement to its most radical conclusions.
Yeah, the video game is just taking OWS to its totally legitimate natural conclusions, not really our fault for wanting to shoot OWS hippies at all. Yeah.
What? That would seem to prove the point that the video game is based in our paranoid fantasies that have nothing to do with reality?
Uh, did you see the link in the last paragraph noting that 42% of the protestors wouldn’t even support violence if they were resisting Hitler… uh, let me rephrase that in a way that makes them look bad.
A snippet of the upcoming game “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: The Patriots,” which won’t hit stores until 2013, was played over the weekend during the Spike TV Video Game Awards. The game casts the players as anti-terrorism agents squaring off against a group which believes the government and corporations are corrupt and must be taken down.
And if that means hurling an evil banker out the window, so be it.
Fiction?
Bullshit. I saw OWS throw a banker through a window to explode in a crowded American street. Game over libs, who’s the violent deluded ones now?!?
Now, excuse me while I watch the documentaries Red Dawn and 24.
Here’s a quick rundown on the video game’s plot:
Terrorism has evolved and America is under attack. Capitalizing on the sense of frustration in a nation seemingly corrupted by greedy politicians and corporate special interests, a group of US citizens-turned-radicals, the “True Patriots,” will stop at nothing to overthrow the government and financial institutions. As a leader of the elite Rainbow counter-terrorism unit, players will be the last line of defense tasked with saving the nation no matter the cost.
Ah, classy.
Remember if it’s depicted as fiction, that’s as good as real world evidence, because… wishful thinking makes it so!
Uh oh, we’ve had an actual quote of the game’s real content, a headline that acknowledges that the eliminationism will run in a right over left direction, and very little effort to prove that liberals are the real violent ones.
There’s so much actual reality acknowledged, will the mouth breathers of the site remember to know that liberals are the real violent ones even if it requires thinking that paranoid pandering fiction is real life news?
Well, naturally. Conservatives aren’t quitters!
Bonus comment mango:
Wonder if they’ll ask all the people who wrung their collective hands over the violent media images they claimed contributed to Gabby Giffords’ shooting what they think about this piece of video game political commentary…
This one’s a long one, so let’s just jump straight into the mangos.
President Obama gave an excellent speech last week in Kansas about inequality in America.
Oh dear, oh dear.
He’s right. The spread between rich and poor has gotten wider over the decades. And the opportunities for the 99% have become harder to realize.
The President’s speech got me thinking. My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. My kids have it much easier than their counterparts from West Philadelphia. The world is not fair to those kids mainly because they had the misfortune of being born two miles away into a more difficult part of the world and with a skin color that makes realizing the opportunities that the President spoke about that much harder. This is a fact. In 2011.
Huh.
Wow, is this a rich overpromoted windbag who understands how the system has failed and been abused. That his own children’s success on the backs of the connections he can give them doesn’t mean that they are better than some black kid simply because of their skin color or where they were raised. I must admit I’m-
I am not a poor black kid. I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background. So life was easier for me. But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them.
Well, it doesn’t mean no opportunities true, but…
Oh god, this is going right where I think isn’t it?
Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.
Why doesn’t he believe this? Is it because some demonstration of evidence that shows a wealth of opportunities that liberals are just ignoring?
No, of course not, it’s simply because he doesn’t want to live in a world where the young, the poor, and especially the young and poor who are also black, female or queer have been fucked over by those who’ve gone before.
Because acknowledging that would make him feel guilty because he lucked into wealth back when anyone not actively on coke could stumble into a middle class or up job and he doesn’t want to face up to the fact that the people who pay his salary to right meaningless fluff for Forbes Magazine have fucked up the system so that practically no kid can get into the system on their merits, and especially not if they’re black and from “the bad part of town”.
Some people when confronted with their privilege change and become better people and others flee under the bed covers until they can wish it away like the Boogeyman. Gene’s been in his bed since at least 2008.
It takes brains. It takes hard work. It takes a little luck. And a little help from others.
Yeah, mostly the last one. You can have all the brains, talent, and passion for hard work in the world, but if you don’t have connections in high places, you ain’t going anywhere.
It takes the ability and the know-how to use the resources that are available. Like technology. As a person who sells and has worked with technology all my life I also know this.
Yes, poor black kids could use “technology”. What types of technology? Why the technology shaped ones, of course! He made his living on technology despite never bothering to gain minimal understanding of what he was selling, so why should that stop anyone else doing the same?
Oh, because no one’s fucking hiring, even if the candidate is good at “technology”? And yeah, completely erasing the impact of poverty and racism on poor black kids is bad enough, but did you have to demonstrate you know less about your “saving grace” (a saving grace you’ve made millions of dollars off of) than the average poor black kid?
And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities. Getting good grades is the key to having more options. With good grades you can choose different, better paths.
Not really. Sure, you might have “more” options than the poor black kid with less good grades, unless they became a rapper or a sports star, but colleges tend to penalize coming from a “bad school” on applications even if you’re a star student. And that’s if you can afford to go to college. If you can’t get a full-ride scholarship (which pretty much don’t exist anymore) or aren’t willing to go massively under in student loans (and most of those require someone co-signing on them, which poorer kids will have a harder time finding), you’re not going to college. And even then, most of those don’t cover much of living expenses while you are going to college.
And if you get in, the lack of nepotism will still make that degree next to useless in getting a job that can pay down the debt.
You know, part of the 1% “reforming college entitlements and fighting affirmative action” to make sure no one can climb the ladder after them.
I’d become expert at Google Scholar. I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy.
Can you tell I’m in sales? Please let me upsell the kids to hide that I don’t know how to do anything else than sell “technology” to other out of touch rich 50 year olds who trust me because “I’m one of their kind”.
The links mixed with various advertisements for places to buy cheap goods continue for at least 3 paragraphs. I’ve seen many things turned into rabbit’s feet and golden cows in this economy but I’ll admit: “Technology” as an amorphous god being is a new one on me.
The tools are there. The technology is there. And the opportunities there.
Yeah, that’s not how most people are using “opportunities”. We’re more talking about “real” opportunities, a means by which poor black kids can grow up expecting that they’ll be allowed to participate in the economy on a real level, that through hard work, they can climb to the middle class or upper class. We’re not talking about “you can learn more unmarketable skills” that won’t matter because you don’t have “3-5 years of experience” or Daddy calling the HR department and saying “he’s with me”.
Or even a private school. Most private schools I know are filled to the brim with the 1%.
Really? You don’t say? In our bought and sold system of nepotism where being from the “right” (i.e. white) school, knowing the “right” (also white, but now also rich) people, and where the conservatives have been gutting the public school system like a fish, it’s turning out that private school is a good way to get to college.
Yeah, almost like that’s part of the criticism, that the children of the rich are buying their way to opportunity whereas the children of the poor have politicians openly wondering if they should force them to do janitor work now to remind them that that’s all they have to look forward to.
But that would be silly. You know about “technology”!
If I was a poor black kid I would make it my goal to get into one of these schools.
Become a 9 year old hedge fund manager, because your parents damn well won’t be able to afford to send you on their salaries.
Trust me, they want to show diversity. They want to show smiling, smart kids of many different colors and races on their fundraising brochures.
Get a job posing for the stock photos they use for said institutions, because they damn well won’t let you into their schools. Also make defeating our racist system your full-time job as a 9 year old, tricking yourself into white and rich programs and ignoring every cultural message to give up now. Your hope must be at full glow before we crush your dreams. Only then will the Dream Wine we make from them taste sweat enough to sell to our white children.
And once admitted to one of these schools the first person I’d introduce myself to would be the school’s guidance counselor.
This is the point where Gene has given up on the article. He’s already basically used, “have you tried being rich and white or sneaking into rich, white areas” and he’s used his one knowledge base (that there is such a thing as “technology”), but he’s got half a page to go.
Talk to a guidance counselor, they’ll magically make jobs appear and will totally be worth a shit, rather than the shockingly high number of guidance counselors who are more in the business of crushing dreams and getting people to undersell themselves, especially if they are poor or come from poor backgrounds. My partner grew up poor and her guidance counselor told her to give up on college and start part-time applications for retail work, even though she was a 4.0+ student.
If I was a poor black kid I would get technical. I would learn software. I would learn how to write code.
It won’t help you. Most youngsters entering the market know how to code (also “software”, “code” in your “get technical” section? How the hell did you shmooze your way through a technology job for 10+ years? By being a manager? Oh, you did, well that explains it then). And most jobs are looking for that all important “industry experience” in their coders.
Because a poor black kid who gets good grades, has a part time job and becomes proficient with a technical skill will go to college. There is financial aid available. There are programs available. And no matter what he or she majors in that person will have opportunities. They will find jobs in a country of business owners like me who are starved for smart, skilled people. They will succeed.
What is the color of the sky on your planet, cause here on Earth and in America, it’s a dull gray ash from all the air pollution. And there are no fucking jobs for “poor black kids with college educations and skills who get good grades”. I can’t find anything as a graduate school graduate in a “good” major with skin so white it can be used to signal low-flying aircraft, I’ve seen that poor black kid and he’s fucking lucky to have that part time job at McDonalds as a well-educated college graduate.
President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance.
Poor black kids are lazy for not taking advantage of the few remaining options that we are busy eliminating and magically conjuring jobs out of them. Thus it’s not our fault for hoarding the wealth and blocking new “competitors”, it’s the poor’s fault for not being as ignorant as us and knowing that the remaining “options” are a smoke-screen at best.
Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.
Use the technology!
It has magic space power that give you Super Ultra Mega Job Times Ten. Transforms into Super Happy Mega Blowjob.
Actually yes, use the technology, get a boob job and join the only industry that’s still hiring these days.
Marsha West at RuhnooMuhrka has discovered that there is sex on television and she is not in the least bit happy about it:
Liberal Hollywood is intentionally corrupting children’s morals via the movies and TV programs they produce for public consumption. Dictionary.com defines the word intentional in this way: done with intention or on purpose.
One of the things that distinguishes RuhnooMuhrka is how its writers can clarify difficult concepts, like the meaning of “intentionally,” and do so by consulting authoritative sources that aren’t generally available to the average reader like you and me. I was, just last night, struggling with uncovering the meaning of “intentional” when, after my fifth cocktail, I had to refute charges that I had intentionally gotten drunk, and, if only I had read Marsha first, I could have authoritatively replied that I didn’t do it “with intention or on purpose.” It also would have come in handy that time there was a fuss about whether I intentionally did, er, you-know-what (rhymes with Mame) in someone’s mouth or not. I simply could have said “not on purpose” and been done with it, right?
Marsha’s outrage is all focused on a Fox Network show about singing high school students which she believes is simply a pretext for that liberal Rupert Murdoch guy to show two boys fucking which, of course, will mean that everyone who watches the show, particularly children, will turn gay on the spot, engage in non-stop sodomitical orgies with their same-sex classmates until they catch AIDS and die. (It is going to be somewhat hard for the girls to get HIV from lesbian sex but let’s not obsess over the minor details, m-kay?)
Now that Glee has turned the nation’s third graders into crazed gay-sex automatons, schools have replaced spelling tests with anal sex tips and pointers. Seriously, she says that:
Instead of children learning reading, writing and arithmetic in our tax funded public schools, teachers all across America are mandated to teach children that sodomy is “normal and natural.” Many Students graduate from high school unable to spell simple words or write a basic sentence, yet valuable class time is taken up to teach them the ends and outs of oral and anal sex?
Awesome. In a paragraph lamenting how kids can’t spell any more, Marsha misspells “ins.” And she probably never learned about anal sex in school either, bless her heart.
But the Glee-based Murdoch conspiracy is not just to turn your kids gay — its even more insidious goal is to turn all adult viewers into pedophiles by including a story line where a teacher has sex with an adult student.
Getting back to ‘Glee’ the executives and sponsors of the show need to tune into the news once in a while. The program that spotlighted a teenage student having sex with his adult teacher was aired about the time that the story of former football coach Jerry Sandusky’s arrest for alleged child rape was making headlines. Which begs the question: Why is ‘Glee’ playing with fire by showing teacher-student sex? Okay, the student was 18. But a senior in high school nonetheless.
My guess is you’re not familiar with the obscure part of the law against sex with minors which defines anyone in school as a minor, no matter how old they are. Where would we be if it weren’t for the careful legal scholarship of RuhnooMuhrka columnists like Marsha?
Hollywood…pushing the envelope…breaking taboos… desensitizing the public…tearing down the moral construct this country was built on…mocking the traditional family…rewriting history…disrespecting Judeo-Christian values…even blaspheming God. Where do they plan to go next?
Oh I don’t know Marsha. Could it be pedophilia? Necrophilia? Cannibalism? Electrified tit clamps?
Could it be the normalization of pedophilia? No, they wouldn’t go that far, would they? [Ed. note: I think this is what is called a rhetorical question.] Former child star Cory Feldman told CBS that pedophilia is Hollywood’s biggest problem.
In fact, next season’s biggest hit is likely to be “Three and A Half Priests,” the funny but touching story of a Southern California rectory and the antics of its residents: three hunky priests and a precocious altar boy who doubles as their sex slave.
There’s not enough space to cover what perverts are doing behind the scenes to normalize pedophilia.
Come on, Marsha, we’ve got all the time in the world and I know that the RuhnooMuhrka website can give you a few more inches, feet even, of column space to reveal these dastardly shenanigans. Unless, of course, you don’t, oh well, nevermind.
You know one of the hard things about reading crazy people like Marsha for your entertainment is this constant coitus interruptus stunt they pull. They get you all worked up about something, say, a Muslim plot to poison all our salad bars, and then just as you get all excited they pull out with something like “but I really don’t have the time or space to explain to you how they are going to do that or what particular salad bars they have targeted or what poisons they are going to use because Sean Hannity is coming on in five minutes and I have to go watch the teevee.” And so I wind up standing there with my wiener in my hand and afraid to go into Applebee’s.
