He’s a Renegade Jew and He’s Here to Say…
Ignore the alt-text, there is nothing amazing behind this standard drunk uncle rant to be.
David Lawrence, American Average Americans:
Chatting about Gays at Gleason’s
As their world crumbles before their very eyes and the social changes they have desperately tried to inoculate themselves against finally bulge and bend against their steel reinforced closets, conservatives have become nostalgic of late. Nostalgic for a time when they could rant like a drunken buffoon about the various inherent villainies of the unprotected underclasses and their poor liberal friends just had to cough their way through it so they wouldn’t be seen as “rude”.
Verbatim (And fuck your boat, we’re going far beyond mangoes tonight!):
- I miss the beauty of the world. I miss when things were done well. I miss when every value wasn’t undercut by ideological intent. I miss when people told themselves the truth and knew what was good and what wasn’t. I am sick of the progressive world. I want to celebrate a regressive world without listening to fools cherish every possible change or re-evaluation.
Now, you might say, Cerberus, you sexy potential Plutonian moon to be*, those days of liberals having awkward conversations tiptoeing around their conservative pseudo-friends’ bigotries or Limbaughian rants is hardly a value of the past.
In fact, every last one of us commie pinko rat bastards can easily recall the last unfortunate family reunion, uncomfortable Facebook interaction, or severely awkward chit-chat with coworkers or acquaintances where we’re left to plaintively smile and wince as we try and steer the conversation ship between the heads of nucking futs conspiracy theories and the tentacles of simmering privileged resentment.
And indeed, this totally ordinary and completely without a fascinating personal background example of the trope may indeed be something we’ve encountered a million times before because of the unfortunate reality of bigotry being the status quo we are all pushing against.
Or at least it would be.
It would be if this conversation wasn’t pretty clearly a quaint fiction and overselling of a conversation (in a way not at all analogous to how the perfectly ordinary writer has been overselling his whole life if he wasn’t so Bob damned ordinary) that manages to make himself look worse than if he had just faithfully transcribed the final disillusionment of his remaining friend that is to transpire.
My old friend visits me at Gleason’s Gym. I’ve known Kenny for forty-seven years — longer than I’ve known my wife.
(George Takei voice) Oh my!(/George Takei voice)
And ironically enough, meeting a “friend” at the world-famous Gleason’s Gym in New York (where they trained Hillary Swank for Million Dollar Baby and have trained prize-fighters like human cannibal Mike Tyson) might be one of the few things about this whole tale to not have a high methane quantity.
Back in the sixties we used to go to clubs together and hang out with the Warhol crowd at Max’s Kansas City. W-
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up a minute! The Warhol crowd? At Max’s Kansas City? You supposedly hung out with Andy fucking Warhol and his extremely transgressive and homosexual social clique and the various other proto glam rock icons? As the introductory paragraph of a post called “Chatting about Gays at Gleason’s” posted at the American Thinker?
Either this is the most ironic attempt at a “I know famous people” boast ever conceived of or my George Takei joke from last sentence was more prescient than I thought.
We’ve stayed friends as he became a Hollywood screenwriter and I became a big businessman, later a jailbird and a boxing coach. He’s now an academic. He is liberal, and I am conservative.
When being interviewed for a puff piece by New Yorker magazine, Davey Boy gave the standard bullshit line of how he used to be a liberal, but then argle bargle, now I am suddenly outraged about Chappaquiddick. All other information about him rather firmly paints him as a rich, tax-dodging, privilege-exploiting conservative douchebag who has happily spent his life failing upwards the George Bush way…
I mean, interesting life story, what interesting life story? Isn’t there a bizarre attempt at avoiding personal responsibility for his own life we can be focusing on instead?
We don’t care; Obama hasn’t infected us with his extreme divisiveness. Well, a little, but not much.
Phew, thanks for the save.
Yup, it’s totally Obama’s fault for being so blaaaaaaI mean divisive. Divisively black.
That’s totally the only reason that conservatives are forced! Forced, I say! To bait the various liberal acquaintances in their life, usually using awkward social conventions regarding certain spaces to prevent the liberal really letting into them and letting them have it. To turn those strained friendships into cold abandoned connections and why they are unable to react with any notion of empathy or compassion even when said people in their lives are willing to more or less give them a free pass.
To even bother, after the fact, when rewriting the final exchanges of friendships fully blown, of deliberate self-alienation in order to make it seem like a wise conservative guru being abandoned by one more mind-controlled slave of Obama, making them sound anything less than an unreasonable psychotic begging for a chance to go on a Rush-inspired hobby-horse rant against a filthy liberal just to say he did.
And if you think I’m being unfair, let’s let this mango tree conversation speak for itself.
Ken says, “You’re not really right-wing, are you?
We’ve all been here, haven’t we? Maybe it’s a family member, a long-distance friend, a former mentor or admired celebrity, or just a random person you ran into on the street. You’re trudging along, catching up or reading about their viewpoints and you run into the beginning of “The Line”. Now “The Line” might be anything, but it’s the point where you’re brain starts to trip and you find yourself trying to find the excuse to keep believing that this person isn’t really that psychotic. Hey, maybe you heard that wrong or it’s a momentary privilege fail and isn’t going to be the start of a giant rant about how Obama’s deathtroopers will be scuttling to abort heterosexual whites with UN death lasers.
You believe in gay marriage, right?”
And if you know them in real life, you may ask a small inquiring question, one you remember them not being a douchebag about the last time you saw them just to confirm they haven’t gone completely around the bend. I mean, this was the same dude you saw trying to give a lap dance to one of Andy Warhol’s male groupies, so even though he’s muttering about the nigger president and how boxing’s been going downhill ever since Cassius Clay got a terrorist name, he’s not completely gone around the bend, right?
Oh, poor, truncated strawliberal, Ken. I feel your pain.
Cause we all know what’s coming next.
“No,” I say. “We don’t have to redefine marriage just to please the gays.”
Yup, the bumper sticker slogan and the start of a slow descent into the treetops where the mangoes dwell.
“They have rights.”
“Look, the whole gay thing makes me uncomfortable. My whole life, my sex drive has been a hunger, a pre-eminent interest.
Though admittedly weirder than usual.
How… how do those two lines even connect? Gays = uncomfortable, because he gets really horny? I mean, assuming this isn’t yet another confirmation of the Closet Hypothesis (which let’s be honest, is probably the most accurate), how is this supposed to work? Because he likes to supposedly fuck pussy, gay people can’t have rights? I- Maybe he’s got some more information for me.
Do you think that I should just accept an aberration casually, like trying on different moral parameters or coats?
I… That’s not even connected to… Did I skip a paragraph somewhere…
Do you think that your willingness to abandon your principles makes you morally superior to me, or just plain weak?
Yeah, you can just hear the ellipses between these various sentences, can’t you? One of the many reasons that I’m baffled that Davey boy here bothered to chop up his conversation where he was chewed out as an irrational bigot by his once-long-time friend to make it seem like he had the upper hand, but still left in all the bits that made him look like a drunk asshole who can’t even be bothered to argue anything remotely close to reality.
You think that conservatives should lighten up on social issues, but sexual orientation is more important than hunger or war. When we were young, we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking about sex.”
Yes, sexual orientation is more important than hunger or war. Don’t believe me? Well, you try being on the front lines at the Swinger’s orgy and watching your best mate take a dildo to the right temple. Or walking down the dark bedrooms and seeing a poor thing, little more than a child, her body literally consuming itself with cuddles. It’s…
I don’t think I can continue…
…
And I still don’t fucking know why him being a horny teen once somehow makes gay people worse than shit that actually kills real living breathing people!
“You’re prejudiced. Are you against black rights?”
“Prejudice is the ability to make clear distinctions.
All right. All you aspiring conservative dingbats out there who want to write how you totally flipped the word table on that uppity liberal strawman with your linguistic ninjitsu? Let me sell you some free advice (since we all know giving it away is for commie hippies).
You want to hide the fact that you’re making shit up? Try not writing easy setups that conveniently lead into a pithy “oh snap”, especially if the rest of your writing betrays a complete lack of comic timing or cleverness in any other regard. I mean, there’s a lot that reveals you are completely making up a fictional adversary, but it’s that desire to invent yourself as getting in the last word that rises these works of fiction from a charming fantasy to a complete load of bullhonkey we’d have to be trepanned to take seriously.
Thanks, sincerely, your snark mistresses and masters.
Also, not to play the loathed Captain Dictionary role, but prejudice has pretty much always meant “judging something before getting to know the facts”. Whether by the dictionary definition, the historical definition, or its social usages or contexts. So, don’t know what your “it just means being super clear and decisive” Bushism was pulled out of, but as an “oh snap” moment, it probably would have been better to have gone with the minute-long bat-like screech that was your real response.
It is an asset, not a liability. And as for blacks, I’ve been closer to blacks than you.
By which he means being knocked out by rapper Kurtis Blow in the tragically hilarious Rapper Boxing League… I mean…
I’ve boxed with blacks for years and been in rap groups with them.
Yeah, no, you had a self-financed solo album you “released” with the money you weren’t paying on taxes or not defrauding your clients and… er…
I’ve been in jail, which they say is a black place…even though it isn’t.
You went to a minimum security white guy prison for other white collar criminals to serve their criminally injust sentences for millions of dollars for out-right theft in relative comfort while poor blacks serve decades-long sentences simply for getting high off the wrong substances…
Ah, shit. Sigh. Okay, okay, I have to admit it. David Lawrence’s life story is kinda amazing.
David Lawrence was a middle aged investment banker who fell into that gig by being a rich privileged asshole at CUNY majoring in English literature and muddling through that major in a way to give bad reputations to all humanities majors. At that point he decided to start an investment firm stealing its clients’ money because he couldn’t make it as a professor with any community college with a shred of dignity.
David Lawrence then used this money, that he “earned” by failing to pay taxes, committing gross malfeasance, and otherwise living like the various other yuppie tools that infested New York at this time in the early 1990s to release and promote a “rap album”.
Said “rap album” is… our final tiger of this evening, so I’ll say little else other than The White Rapper Ecyclopedia has a hilarious entry on him and his “relevance” to the music scene at the time. He apparently is defensively protective of this “rap legacy” that he built entirely by dumping $300,000 of his company’s money into releasing it and then putting big strange ads in some of the big rap papers at the time.
At the same time he trained for a “professional boxing career”. Said career involved him paying a shit-ton of money to Gleason’s Gym as part of their “White Collar boxing” program designed to fund the rest of the gym by letting the rich douchebags who want to feel like “a real man” have a go from time to time. As part of this, he became a last minute substitution in Chuck D’s worst brain fart, the Rapper’s Boxing League for LL Cool J, when the rapper suddenly discovered dignity. He then proceeded to get knocked the fuck down and out, but because rules were pretty much thrown out, he followed it up by breaking all of Kurtis Blow’s ribs because David Lawrence is a sore loser.
Despite this (because of the aforementioned money), Lawrence was hand-picked to box a few “professional” matches which he has gone on to pimp as a “successful boxing career”. He is currently serving as a trainer at Gleason’s Gym after releasing a few terrible poetry books (they’re like Vogon quality) through self-publishing.
His profile reads:
“I’ve been an amateur, professional and White Collar fighter and trainer at Gleason’s Gym for over 20 years. I fought in the first WHite Collar show, which was organized by Gleason’s Gym. I have a Ph. D. and was a former rapper, actor and Wall St. mogul. I am incredibly smart.” Great with kids & White collar boxers.
Yeah… Though I have to admit the brilliance of figuring out a way to give the rich douchebag investment bankers who fund the gym their “high quality training” with a proper white conservative tribesman without wasting any of the legitimate talent they have on their staff like Belinda Laracuente or Carlos Ortiz.
Note that these failing upwards, constantly protected, underindicted assholes are always the one bitching at the rest of us about personal responsibility and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps…
Sigh, so let’s go back to his rant on why the gays make his dick too hard to let him give them the right to marry anyone else.
Who are you to speak up for blacks? You sound like pasty-faced Joe Biden or white Quentin Tarantino trying to hitch a ride on the black experience.
Yes, Mr. Real Liberal. You sure are exploiting real black history and are not a convenient strawman to bitch about various “bad names” I reflexively hate now as a tribesman in good standing.
At least allow them their suffering. Don’t try and steal it from them.”
Um, how was this strawman “stealing black suffering”? The strawman in this tale only asked a question about how many groups you hate. You’re the one who jumped immediately to discounting black narratives and claiming your offensive attempt to steal and appropriate their culture somehow made you Spike fucking Lee, hero to the downtrodden n(ever) ig(norant)s bouncing to old 2Pac albums.
“Gays suffer like blacks.”
“Blacks were slaves. Gays haven’t been put in chains. They may have been disliked because of their behavior, but they were not jailed and whipped. Except for Oscar Wilde, who did a measly two years like me. Also, blacks were segregated when they deserved their rights. If I were black, I would hate the comparison of gays with the black race. Blacks are hated for different skin color. It’s irrelevant. Gays are perverts.”
Apparently his jail time no longer counts as his instant blackface street cred when its used to minimize the oppression that gay people feel. Apparently the fact that queers (or even just those who are suspected of being so) in prison are regularly murdered by inmates or sexually/violently abused by guards doesn’t count towards the oppression index. Cause they haven’t been put into non-kinky chains and besides, gays aren’t visibly gay, so them being treated like untouchables whose very existence corrupts society is totally different from oppression.
“How can you say that? You sound like an idiot.”
Ha! Well played, liberal strawman! Well played!
“In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ‘perversion’ is defined as an aberrant sexual practice or interest especially when habitual.
Fuck the dictionary.
No seriously, fuck the goddamned dictionary and every penny ante wannabe intellectual who seems to think that the dictionary is anything other than a tool for figuring out which word you intended to use or check your spelling.
Every ducking time, these idiots turn to a “definition” like this as if they just beat Deep Blue in a chess match when what they actually did was embarrass themselves by essentially going:
“The Nuclear Envelope is supposed to be radioactive stationary, therefore you’re wrong, scientists who actually know what that word means”
Two men having anal sex is certainly perversion.
It always comes back to the buttsex for homophobes, doesn’t it?
Also, seeing as how anywhere from a quarter to half of heterosexuals regularly engage in teh butt secks, I think we can safely discount it as a “perversion” by your Calvinball rules, unless you’d like to discount PIV sex from the set of “normal” sexual behaviors as well. Which… based on your odd hang-ups and defenses, I’m not entirely sure you wouldn’t agree to that.
You can’t redefine language to fit your predilections.
Yeah, you can’t just change language. I mean, sure, language is constantly changing as the cultural contexts, popular idioms, word usages, and vocabularies of our world grow, shift, and change, but it’s like language, man! Ever since we homophobes ran out of sensible reasons for supporting bigotry against gay people, it became super important for reasons.
If you lose your language, how are you going to denigrate me and all conservative views that differ from yours? You need language to disparage me.”
Yeah, I mean, how could you possibly denigrate me without that fancy language you want to eliminate! Obviously Obama is the only one creating this animosity between two groups, you filthy liberal language-hating bastard! What do you have to say about this? Yeah, I thought so, without your precious lang-
Okay, you’re giving me the world’s biggest eye roll and wank-off motion in history…
Well played, former friend. Well played.
“What about men loving each other?” Kenny asks. “Shouldn’t they get married?”
“Men haven’t been married to each other ever in history.
…
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
No, his little brain probably couldn’t handle it.
You can’t change tradition because you have developed some untested ideas which have spread amongst your light-thinking buddies — no offense — like the flu.”
Kenny sneezes. I hope he doesn’t have the flu. I smile to myself — Oh, well; if it’s a liberal’s flu, it’s probably weak. The silly things I think when I am trapped in a naïve argument with an ideologue speaking through a liberal mouthpiece.
…
He really thinks this is witty…
I’m overwhelmed with pity and I can’t stop!
And talk about density of right-wing fantasies and IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION. If it was any more packed in there, we’d be in danger of creating a black hole.
“Also,” I say, “marriage was developed for men to protect women in a family unit.” Marriage was not created for love. Why do you think there were prearranged marriages?
…
You know what, I have to hand it to him. Most homophobes I encounter usually dance around the whole “traditional marriage” question and what they really support, but not Awesome David Lawrence, Wall Street Rapper Extraordinaire.
Nope, he’s proud to stand behind his belief that marriage is not about love, but punitive patriarchal purchases of female property.
…
Why do I suddenly think that his unquenchable hunger of a sex-drive is as unfed now as it was in his teenage years?
Let men love each other
Well, that’s nice of you to suddenly have this turn of heart. Perhaps you and your liberal strawman can find some common ground and help free you from the self-hatred that has you trapped in a toxic front of performed hyper-heteronormativity-
— but not marry each other or display their awkward sexual proclivities in public. We do not want to institutionalize aberrant behavior.”
Or not. Yes, gay people can love each other as long as no one is ever aware of their existence in any way. Otherwise… dooooooooooooom.
“But gay marriage is the wave of the future,” Ken says.
“You sound like under-educated Sean Penn, the Chávez-loving high school graduate. Did he ever take a college course? The wave of the future depends on what we respect in the past. Public displays of gay affection are sickening, no matter what liberals try to sell you. I’ve seen gays kissing on the corner and liberal heterosexual friends of mine trying to pretend they’re not offended. Why? It’s time gays got out of our faces. We have other things to do rather than to ratify perversion.”
Hey, homophobes, a quick word, over here.
You ever get tired of us mean snarky liberals suggesting you are closeted? You know what could help? Not providing reasons for antipathy to certain groups that sound as if you are in the midst of hiding the world’s strongest one-inch boner.
Also, it loses a little bit of the force of impact when the places where such things were “shoved in your face” are clubs off Greenwich Village famed for their connections to famous queer culture.
“I like gays,” Ken says.
“Fine. Like them. I like most of them, too. They’re mostly nice.
Of course he does. I mean, he just wants them to have zero rights or protections, be viewed and treated exactly as a corrupting virus or subhuman monster would be, have their very lives treated as an aberration to everything right with society, and be blocked from ever existing in public less they ever cause a passing conservative to have untoward lustful thoughts, but it’s not like he actually dislikes them.
I mean, when he gets to know them, as actual people, he sees that they are humans just like him. Funny, charming, fucked up, bitchy. Possible date material if (cough cough cough). Anyways, when the bigotries and the trained responses given by conservative ideology melt away in the reality of what is, of who gay people are, he likes them fine. But he just can’t be a conservative asshole unless he is perfectly willing to discount experience for ideology, so, sorry faggots, but no rights for you.
…
Again, I’m amazed that this is his “edited to make me look like the reasonable intellectual one” version of events. The one he chose to publicize to make himself look good.
But don’t change our institutions to meet their desires. I am sick of their rushing out of the closet and putting us on the hangers of their philosophies.
So cruel! Coming out in daily society. Forcing us to have to reconcile the horseshit we have been sold in our religious institutions and jock cultures with the daily reality. And thus “putting us in the closet” because we just happen to have vivid fantasies and loathe people who are out for reminding us of the secret longing we can never fulfill. Truly no crime on our part is unjustified because of this assault by the queer menace.
Why do we have to love them? Why can’t we just accept them as people and quit having to embrace their aberrances?”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem in our college days when we hung out at Max’s.”
Yeah… I was wondering when that would be brought up by the strawman.
“That’s because I felt bad for them back them. Now they’ve become bullies.
No, no, he’s got us dead to rights.
We may think we’re just trying to lead our little lives, be ourselves, and simply coexist in the same big giant world that people like him do as if we were just other humans. But we’re not, we’re the worst sort of bullies.
I’m the worst sort of bully.
I know, you might think, Cerberus, you supernova of asexual lust, how could you possibly be a bully?
Well, it’s not a proud story, but one I’ve been struggling with lately.
See, it started at my job. Now I’ve been out with them as one of those evil transsexuals since I first started work there (first bullying on my part), but I never really shoved it down their throats until around November/December when a shift in dress code forced me into having to wear skirts and be visibly out to avoid painful gender dysphoria (a development that intensely freaked out my upper management level boss and came as a great shock to her at the time and completely changed how she has interacted with me since, though she continues to refuse to call me by the female name I have used at work my entire employment or use anything other than male pronouns in referencing me to other people).
And well, at that point, I truly committed the worst sins I could possibly commit. I was a fantastic teacher, but no longer one my bosses could pretend was a poster-child cis-white-man. All the museum, its visiting teachers, various parents, and even kids were stuck singing the praises of a filthy tranny. Even learning to view me as… human, positive, influential.
You can see the cruelty I was so casually inflicting due to my selfish and bullying demand to be true to myself in a state where I was legally in my right to do so. Helpless against my assault, they tried in vain to protect themselves… by carefully constructing a list of “failures to comply with protocols” that were “intensely disappointing” even though my coworkers were failing these particular protocols much more severely with zero issue or complaint by the bosses. They are forced to try and push me out, working through the various stages of justifying firing me, so it all looks clean and legit to anyone who might perhaps take issue with it, heh heh. And they are forced to demonstrate less than half the subtlety they think they are in eliminating me from their presence, because my wanton cruelty and intense bullying has trapped them in a corner of reflexive bigotry. If only I was empathic enough to avoid coming out of the closet and thus making it impossible to remain in denial about my actual sex (even though they specifically told me it was okay to do so (actually, now that I think about it, they just stressed that I had that legal protection and the institution would be “forced” to stand behind me, sigh, another one for the bully column)).
I can’t make up for that cruelty, but I can apologize by fleeing to a new job hopefully before they finish firing me, or possibly by flopping around like a fish trying desperately to avoid doing anything that can be twisted and used as an excuse to continue eliminating me “legally”, or by simply giving into the culture of alienation, failure, impotence, and internalized hatred they are trying to instill to reduce my will to fight back and thus take the “most convenient path”**.
So, here, being oppressed by a transphobic institution that wants to fire me, despite legal protections, simply because it’s run by a bunch of conservative assholes and thus my incredible job performance and regard by our customers might as well be horseshit, I can sympathize with poor David Lawrence and how he’s been bullied into… something, I’m sure they made him defraud his customers and release a terrible rap album or whatever.
Because that, and not the shitty way queer individuals are STILL treated today***, is the real oppression and besides gay people were never put in chains or something.
If we don’t give them our wholesale approval, they pretend we are prejudiced. But prejudice is not discernment. Distinction is the right to be horrified by perversion. In fact, we have the necessity to reject what we reject if we are true to our own sexual proclivities. Why are gays always looking for acceptance? I don’t care if they are sickened by heterosexual love. Why should they be so interested in our opinions of them?”
“I give up,” Ken says.
Yeah, Ken, we’ve all been there. At the moment where trying to bring your asshole conservative acquaintance back to reality is just not worth the frustration and increased blood pressure of having to put up with their bullshit rationalizations and assholery.
“Thank God. I’m bored with the subject. They wanted to come out of the closet, and they brought the moths with them. They have succeeded in turning some of us against them while the other dolts follow them to feel good about themselves. Let’s go out and watch some boxing. There’s something honest about hitting each other.”
Even in their self-created fantasies, these assholes feel they need to have the last word.
We go out and watch two beginners sparring. It’s ugly. They keep ducking their heads and getting hit.
Yeah, I see your attempt at SYMBOLISM, but if you really thought that was some beginner trying to throw their “best punches” at you, then you’ve become so used to your charmed life of privileged lowered expectations that you’ve completely lost all possibility of perspective.
I miss the beauty of the world. I miss when things were done well. I miss when every value wasn’t undercut by ideological intent. I miss when people told themselves the truth and knew what was good and what wasn’t. I am sick of the progressive world. I want to celebrate a regressive world without listening to fools cherish every possible change or re-evaluation.
Yes, back in ye olden times, when even this impotent half push-back from a liberal friend who doesn’t care enough to really fight back would be absent and a bigot would be safe to casually oppress those he didn’t know or bother to care about without even bothering to look back at the damage he was causing.
Those regressive, backwards days are gone mein fruend. And hopefully soon, even that mild pushback will be gone and the only response to your antiquated old-fashioned hatreds will be the simmering contempt and disbelief we give to people who still hate the Irish.
And maybe even we’ll have a world, where a bumbling inebriated inept career producing shit like this:
and then paying a bunch of hacks to claim you’re a goddamned Renaissance Man are treated much like the pathetic self-congratulations the French Aristocrats gave themselves shortly before the peasants started sharpening guillotines.
Also, you rap for shit.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. It turns out that real oppression, unlike the shit wingnuts go on about, actually, legitimately sucks. Who knew? We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
* All I can say is aww, guys, gals, genderqueers, and fluberts. Just aww. You really know how to flatter a pup.
** Don’t worry, I’m not and I’m not going to. But frankly, I’m furious that under the context of unforgivable numbers of trans* individuals taking their lives, they would even go there in trying to undercut my self-esteem and my connection to reality just because they’re scared that their illegal activities might be in any way inconvenienced.
*** During my run as teacher for Institution to Be Named Once They Complete the Deed, I think of the various kids I’ve connected with. Kids who got their first positive experiences with science, who were made to care about a subject, who had people caring about them for the first time in their lives. And I think more about what they will soon be deprived of, a positive trans* role model in their lives to prevent them from growing up into David Lawrences. And I think most of those few trans* kids I specifically connected with. Especially one student whose mom asked me to mentor her as one transwoman to another on the frightening precipice of entering middle school. I told that young kid an “It Gets Better” story about how the next few years may be rough, but they’ll be entering an adult world where she can be anything she wants, where I personally was proof that she could work as an awesome teacher and be recognized for her own awesomeness without prejudice or bigotry. By the time that kid reaches adulthood, I want to shape a society where that statement is true and no one will ever think about treating her the way they did me. And I want to shape society in the meantime into one where she can safely reach adulthood without the David Lawrences of the world making her disheartened and afraid.
FUST !!!!
You can’t be fust unless you read the whole post, fust.
~
As you remarked, marriage was created to protect property rights , with the eomen and kids as the property.
And I just want to add that people who say things like
generally aren’t.
Gays haven’t been put in chains. They may have been disliked because of their behavior, but they were not jailed and whipped
[Gene Wilder Willy Wonka meme]Do tell.[/]
I would also like to add
Christ, what an asshole.
I am incredibly smart. By doG, you’re right!
Now they’ve become bullies.
Gasp! WE’RE THE REAL BULLIES!
I miss when every value wasn’t undercut by ideological intent.
You wouldn’t fit in. I mean for fuck’s sake, RENEGADE JEW RAP ALBUM.
In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ‘perversion’ is defined as an aberrant sexual practice or interest especially when habitual.
So the application requires you to have prejudged gay sex as aberrant. Nice circular logic.
OT already, but Gorramn it, I know “some plugins used by this page are out of date”! Warn me once, but you don’t have to warn me every time I refresh the fucker!
Better yet, don’t warn me at all. I’m at the end of the line for Flash updates on this machine—WTF do you expect me to do?
Bullies sounds too macho—shouldn’t they be “cowies”?
Man, that’s a load of stupid with a sidecar of hate gravy.
.
Let’s do some math here, shall we?
David Lawrence was born in 1948.
That means he reached military age in 1966. Now, my memory is a little fuzzy, but there was something sort of military going on around that time.
I don’t recall seeing any mention of it in his biography. Odd that.
Not at all, Major. He got a stu
dentpid deferment.Teh Ho has outdone hisself in the craptacular FletNix movies. 10.5. Sooooo much wrong with it but HE INSISTED ON WATCHING TEH WHOLE TING.
Wait a tic here….
—
“You’re prejudiced. Are you against black rights?”
“Prejudice is the ability to make clear distinctions.
—
This is an obvious rewrite.
These sentences must have originally read:
—
“That’s discrimination . Are you against black rights?”
“Discrimination is the ability to make clear distinctions.
—
Then the ‘definition’ he uses makes a form of sense. But why did he change the text of this imaginary talk?
Damned odd…
-K
Why do I suspect the conversation was made up?
Major: Agreed, the conversation almost certainly didn’t happen as described.
Still, he keeps going back to the dictionary well so often….
…and then he appears to do a ‘find-replace’ on a word without correcting the corresponding ‘the dictionary says’ part.
Just sloppy on his part.
-K
Oh my god……………..I met this nut like 20 years ago in NY. He gave me this crappy CD. Knowing me, I still have it somewhere. I even listened to it once:
I’m the Renegade Jew
I’m comin’ after you
I’m the Renegade Jew
Now whatcha gonna do
That’s all I remember. Fuck if I’m gonna listen to it again now.
What a terminal wankstain. That is all.
Wait, no it isn’t: congrats Cerb on your soon-to-be elevation to the heavens, and many heathenish curses on your ebil bosses for being nasty old farts.
I met this nut like 20 years ago in NY. He gave me this crappy CD.
So YOU’RE “Ken”?
The song is wonderfully terrible and a credit to The American Thinker’s inability to identify nuts.
My boner cries over the homos,
My boner cries at what I see,
My boner lies limply inactive,
O bring back my boner to me.
And good luck Cerb.
CERBS,
That is f*cked up and bullsh*t. Hang in there.
I think their ability to identify nuts is working just fine. Their problem is they obviously think nuts are A Good Thing.
And they are, in other contexts.
This fuckstick spins 2000 words to just say ICK HOMOS! The danger is that as they realize their growing irrelevance they will lash out in unpredictable ways.
So YOU’RE “Ken”?
I dunno……………….mebbe……………….it’s hard to think when your head’s all stuffed with straw, y’know………
BTW Cerb, have you spoken to a lawyer? One who specializes in workplace type issues, mebbe?
Fuck this asshole.
I wish I could say something eloquent and witty, but nothing else captures so precisely how I feel.
Fuck this asshole.
I can see why you wouldn’t want to continue working long-term with people who have proved they can’t be trusted, but it might be worth pursuing.
First sentence of the first post in the comments section:
I am tired of the deviations being shoved down my throat.
Also, tofu and soy milk turn babies into homos.
John Revolta-
Not yet.
Unfortunately, my company has been very good at showing me their homework on the screwjob and has been very deliberate about letting me know how “fair” they are and how unconnected to my trans* issues their “issues with my performance” are. They’ve left me very little that’s actionable to take to any lawyers and have even let loose a few Freudian slips along those lines (odd insistences on showing all the various stages of warning and failure and all the various ways they’ve covered their backs that I doubt I would have been shown if it really was about me just sucking at my job). I’ve been thinking about contacting the Transgender Law Center, but I doubt they could help me much. Worse yet, I’ve heard from a number of other trans* friends who were thrown out of their jobs in very similar fashion, so this might be an unofficial industry practice for how to get rid of protected class members for discriminatory reasons without falling afoul of the law.
They’ve got me by the short hairs pretty good on that front. That being said, on the day I can no longer delay the inevitable, you can count on seeing a post by me naming names and detailing the exact process of discrimination. The industry currently thinks of this as a nice quiet way to eliminate “undesirables” and I want that attitude to cease for those trans* individuals who come after me. I want my institution’s name on that day to be linked to their chosen actions and the PR consequences of that to remind them to be better the next time a trans* individual happens to end up working for them.
Overall, the whole affair has made me rather appreciative of transphobic wingnut bigots, because at least they wear their visceral hatred on their sleeve rather than making a big show about how “supportive” and “we understand your legal rights” they are while cutting me behind my back.
Also, I really should have been on-the-ball enough to notice that “it is your legal right to do that” is HR for “please God don’t or we’ll break out the big guns”.
They’ve also got me in one big other way. I’m at will hourly, which means if I play hardball back, they can just stop scheduling hours for me because of “surplus to demand”.
They’ve left me very little that’s actionable to take to any lawyers
Well, it certainly sounds that way. But who knows?
I’m not a guy who goes running to lawyers a lot, hell, I didn’t even hire one when I got divorced. And I understand you probably don’t especially want to stay where they really don’t want you. But it couldn’t hurt to check with someone who’s been around this block before. You might at least be able to squeeze a little something out of ’em.
*Sigh* I guess what I’m trying to say is that this shit makes me really really angry and I want somebody to be Rosa Parks and take all these fuckers out to the woodshed. However, it’s also not a gig I would necessarily wish on anyone I like.
Imma go peel some garlic.
I miss the beauty of the world.
I’ve never considered bullying minorities to be beautiful.
On the wall of David Lawrence’s office at Gleason’s Gym is a copy of a Top 40 hip-hop chart from 1992. “This was a midwestern market,” says Lawrence, pointing. “I’m in the No. 2 slot. My rap name was Awesome D, a.k.a. the Renegade Jew. Second place. I beat Cypress Hill!”
2827 Youtube hits
11,230,703 Youtube hits
He’s got the wingnut math down pat.
Apparently the Jews, though primarily an urban lot in modern times, have not lost touch with their agrarian roots.
Didja ever see anybody pick cherries like that before?
That’s because I felt bad for them back them. Now they’ve become bullies.
I wonder how many d00ds he’s “pity fucked”.
From Yelp:
Cons: The atmosphere isn’t very friendly to newcomers. It’s probably a bit more welcoming to men than it is to women. The guy’s bathroom is awful. I mean, really awful. I’ve been boxing for five years, so I don’t expect a lot
I guess Dave is stinking up more than the internet.
Funny, he doesn’t seem to be named in positive reviews, I bet his cousin wrote the NY Mag profile.
A moon ! Of your very own! Like, wow!
I proudly voted for you a buncha times, Cerb. And, as long as you keep up your efforts to get the bigots to recognise you as a person, I’ll stay a proud
Cerberus supporter.
A moon ! Of your very own! Like, wow!
Speaking of moons, there’s a glorious full moon tonight, which makes working the graveyard shift more than bearable.
I proudly voted for you a buncha times, Cerb. And, as long as you keep up your efforts to get the bigots to recognise you as a person, I’ll stay a proud Cerberus supporter.
Count me in, too! Fight the a-holes, Cerb.
My whole life, my sex drive has been a hunger, a pre-eminent interest.
Could be worse. My sex drive is an eminent domain, and is due to be demolished to create space for an indoor sports stadium
Gays haven’t been put in chains. They may have been disliked because of their behavior, but they were not jailed and whipped
This guy does not suffer from excess concern for historical facts, does he?
Overall, the whole affair has made me rather appreciative of transphobic wingnut bigots, because at least they wear their visceral hatred on their sleeve rather than making a big show about how “supportive” and “we understand your legal rights” they are while cutting me behind my back.
Ugh, that’s the worst sort of concern trollery. I’m sure they all go home and tell everyone how fair and enlightened they are.
Also, I really should have been on-the-ball enough to notice that “it is your legal right to do that” is HR for “please God don’t or we’ll break out the big guns”.
You come to realize that HR is not on the side of workers at all, they exist solely to forestall or minimize litigation hazards.
As a cis- hetero- white guy, I know I’ll never come close to experiencing something like this. It’s eye-opening, and it makes me want to smack those straight white guys who think they’re being oppressed by anyone other than straight white guys who have more money.
Best of fortune, Cerb.
Gays haven’t been put in chains. They may have been disliked because of their behavior, but they were not jailed and whipped
This guy does not suffer from excess concern for historical facts, does he?
Not at all.
Dictionary fans will know that the word “renegade” means:
(courtesy of http://www.merriam-webster.com)
Thus, following from the principle that the dictionary definition is an irrefutable winning argument always, we must assume Dr. Lawrence has deserted Judaism and has rejected Hebrew law and customary behavior. On the one hand, this makes me wonder why there isn’t a red circle with diagonal stripe over the Star of David on the album cover. On the other hand, it means Dr. Lawrence gets to enjoy delicious cheeseburgers, b-b-q pork, shrimp and lobster. Yum!
The first comment over here defines the wingnut feeling about ttheir relationship with teh gheys perfectly:
I am with you, I am tired of the deviations being shoved down my throat.
Are they…BIG deviations? Do you have a DEEP throat?
More tangy sweet mangoes from commenter “velenda760”:
I find all of these sexual deviations to be a form of birth defects and In a few years when the “gay gene” gets detected, you can bet, parents and society will weed out the gene that makes them deviate from the norm….
Goddamn, and here I thought I all had to rely on was my gaydar to spot those pesky homo deviations…there’s a fucking GAY GENE?
Then there’s this absolutely tasty mango:
…or are all of the straight people supposed to teach ourselves to be “gay” so we fit in?
Well, yes, and let me “teach” you first. Here’s some Astroglide. I promise it won’t hurt after the first time, love.
Verbatim (And fuck your boat, we’re going far beyond mangoes tonight!):
I read the box part (blockquote attached to this brilliance), and will get to the rest after fortifying myself with breakfast at McDonalds (one: they are across the street, [/shakes fist at Scotch Clounfoolery] two: I am hungry and three: they have that two for three mcmuffin dealio).
Anyhooo wanted to drop in and say hey to the peeps I love ( I hope you know who you are) and to state the usually unstated.
Cerb, you rock my world! Thank you.
I have something to look forward to after navigating a sea of rolly polly pasty rednecks, and coffee clatching midwestern oldsters (mostly former rednecks that managed to maintain a level of fitness during there lives) at the clownhouse across the way…
It seems that it has stopped raining, and as it is 36 degrees outside, that is a good thing.
brb.
xoxox
…
All Hail Cerberus. The new moon of Pluto. {fingers crossed}
@mat: you can’t swing a stick in a RW cesspool without hitting somebody who thinks the Nazis had the right idea – velenda760 is doubtless dreaming of the day all the wingnuts rise up to clean up the “mongrel races”.
In fact, every last one of us commie pinko rat bastards can easily recall the last unfortunate family reunion, uncomfortable Facebook interaction, or severely awkward chit-chat with coworkers or acquaintances where we’re left to plaintively smile and wince as we try and steer the conversation ship between the heads of nucking futs conspiracy theories and the tentacles of simmering privileged resentment.
I have a collection of nametags from parties so properly described.
…
To paraphrase a bit, every word that silly person Lawrence wrote was baloney, including “a” and “the”.
That was quite an exercise in therapeutic Oozo-the-clown bashing, Cerberus, and I hope it helped somewhat, but it could easily and accurately have been summarized as “What an unbelievable asshole!” after every line. In the Great Pantheon of Assholes, this bozo has managed to push his way forward to the second rank, and as soon as he can shank someone important, he’s going for the front row. He’s got darned near every “Asshole’s Complaint”* in there somewhere, but I particularly enjoyed “We don’t have to redefine marriage just to please the [Nihs, oops, I mean] gays.” I don’t know whether he’s just taking his readers for forgetful fools or whether he’s as stupid as he writes. Maybe both. All I know is I couldn’t have married my wife in big parts of the country just a generation before, because of assholes like Lawrence. What an amazing asshole.
* Soon to be a new novel by Philip Roth’s younger brother.
Our Mr. Lawrence reminded me of this classic from The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucking-my-cock,10861/
Titled, “Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?”
This is way off topic, but two questions for Cerb:
1. Are you the same person who wrote “God Has a Plan for Chloe” for Right Behind?
2. If so, when can we expect more of the story about Verna?
I’m not sure I am worthy of reading this firm and and tightly packed post because the title alone is worth a solid hour of kowtowing.
However:
Wow. Perhaps I have been unusually fortunate. Or perhaps I’ve missed some life-enriching experience. But my encounters with conservatives break down as follows:
90% no conservatives in the vicinity (unless it that was person sitting very quietly in the corner), just varying degrees of liberalism.
5% conservatives insisting “Wait, I’m an old school New England conservative! Stop laughing at me. Cut it out guys, I’m openly gay!.
3% Victims of often vicious and unpleasant practical jokes.
1% Co-workers who learned they could think what they like, but airing certain thoughts in my vicinity would trigger a counter-airing with sarcasm cluster-bombing.
1% People who are quite likely uber-conservative but are so old-fashioned they don’t discuss politics or religion. So not really uber-conservatives by today’s standards.
Huh. You know all of those conservatives who whinge about being the victims of liberal oppression? They’ve probably run up against someone like me. And if they haven’t, they don’t know from liberal oppression.
Unfortunately most of the people I work with are just by sheer demographics: older, white, ex-military, southern, upper-middle class. This demographic trends pretty conservative.
When I meet up with a Captain to start a trip, it may very well the first time I’ve ever met this person in my life.
If I’m going to be paired with this person for an entire month (which happens frequently) I usually try to tip-toe around politics.
Captain “!$#%&^!!! Obama!”
Me: “So, did you watch the game last night?”
Sometimes I’ll get someone that just won’t take the hint.
At that point I’ll usually say something like “What made you think I agreed with you or that I even wanted to have this conversation with someone I’ve know for exactly 10 minutes?”
If there’s any justice in the world, the dork’s liberal friend will recognize how the dork rewrote their conversation and treat him to a few broken ribs of his own.
Also, Cerb, I’m entirely in favor of dropping company names and supervisor names into threads like this. Let these thugs in suits be googleable.
so this might be an unofficial industry practice for how to get rid of protected class members for discriminatory reasons without
falling afoul of the lawculpability.Because it’s an important distinction.
Waaaah!
In such instances I always translate “liberal friends” in the same why I translate “black friends” or “gay friends.” I.e. Ranging from non-existent to not aware the person exists.
rolly polly pasty rednecks
Wasn’t that the title of a Who album?
Re: the subject of “bullies.”
Years ago, the local far right haterag – a l’il pseudo neonazi piece of tabloid shit called the Toronto Sun – got into it with a local gay theatre company, Buddies In Bad Times. I’ve forgotten the exact details; it was quite a while back (some time during the 80’s), and my memory wasn’t the greatest even before the stroke I suffered late in 2011. But from what I recall: One of the Sun’s reactionary columnists attacked Buddies, and there was some pushback. If I’m remembering correctly, the complaint had something to do with public money being spent on perversion, but, unsurprisingly, the writer in question hadn’t been entirely accurate (or honest) in her reporting. The funding she was basing her attack on wasn’t cash from the government, but was privately raised by the theatre itself. When the intended target had the bad taste to actually fight back, the next column title from this bitch was (what else?): “BULLIES IN BAD TIMES!” Hell, it might even have been a headline on the front page itself. I honestly don’t remember, but that’s the sort of thing you could expect from the Sun. It wouldn’t even have had to be a slow news day for them to pull such a stunt.
But isn’t that typical? A far right “news” source attacks what appears to be a politically safe/unpopular target, isn’t particularly accurate or honest in its facts, and when the target doesn’t just obligingly curl up and die, the immediate impulse is to start shrieking that the target is the bully, while the wingnuts who picked the fight to begin with are just helpless, defenseless, helpless little waifs who were simply minding their own business.
It’s always projection with these bastards. Always.
At that point I’ll usually say something like “What made you think I agreed with you or that I even wanted to have this conversation with someone I’ve know for exactly 10 minutes?”
I had a former co-worker (he was the supervisor I exchanged places with) who is a basically decent guy, but he listened to waaaaay too much “late night Sasquatch radio”, which often has a somewhat stealthy right-wing bias. Maybe once a month, he’d bring up some current event, and I invariably had to “walk him down”, assuring him that said event was blown out of proportion.
That’s the thing that really pisses me off about the right-wing noise machine… the stoking of fear in less sophisticated media consumers, which all too often leads to hate.
But isn’t that typical? A far right “news” source attacks what appears to be a politically safe/unpopular target, isn’t particularly accurate or honest in its facts, and when the target doesn’t just obligingly curl up and die, the immediate impulse is to start shrieking that the target is the bully, while the wingnuts who picked the fight to begin with are just helpless, defenseless, helpless little waifs who were simply minding their own business.
Why are you defending yourselves? YOU MONSTERS!!!
It’s always projection with these bastards. Always.
Don’t forget, they consider their ‘inner dialogue’ a conversation with God.
On behalf of white men, cis-sexuals, and carbon-based lifeforms everywhere, I want to say David Lawrence does not speak for us. He is an unmitigated douchebag. I call on all white men, cis-sexuals, etc. to publicly declare that David Lawrence’s hateful and poorly written essay does not represented our…(what, white guys have the privilege of speaking for themselves only and not have to be answerable to every dipshit with whom they share some arbitrary social commonality. Wow. What a deal. Why doesn’t anyone else get that? Hmmmph)
Seriously this conversation could have been picked up from 1985 (probably earlier but I can’t speak to that) with only the mention of marriage equality being changed for timing. I sincerely hope that this essay was written mainly to explain why he was crying over in the corner after Ken non-erotically spanked him.
DataSnake-
1) Yes
2) It was going to be soon (I had organized my notes and was even finding my place in catching up on Slacktivist) , but the drama unfolding at work ended up pushing that back a bit. But it is definitely my intention to finish that story.
I miss when people told themselves the truth and knew what was good and what wasn’t.
My god…he’s a Cubs fan.
Wasn’t that the title of a Who album?
It really should have been.
…
Scott S-
They will be named, but thanks to our broken ass capitalist system and its complete lack of safety nets, I need to make sure I have somewhere to parachute to before I set that particular flame alight. But don’t worry, set it I will.
I am seconding what Pinko said, except I fixxorated the self-censorship.
This used to happen in my home. Dear spouse would contract a case of Paultarditis or worse from some blog that covers financial issues. Usually it was someone showing off the fact they read a court ruling and misunderstood the hell out of it. There, I could help. A couple of times he followed links to Storm Frontish sites and things would get interesting for a while.
A lot of that is confirmation bias and lack of empathy in action, alas. Your co-worker can be talked down, so can my husband because they don’t want to believe those things. The ones who can’t be talked down, they would be jackasses anyway. The shouty neocon suet puddings just help them articulate things they believed all along.
My mother recently got mail from “The Senior Citizens League” that attempted to frighten her into sending them money to stop the evil US-Mexico social security totalization treaty. So I looked into it for her. It turns out to be a pretty sraight forward agreement which we already have with 24 other countries. It has nothing to do with illegal aliens but that did not stop the SCL from saying the agreement would give billions of our SS money to illegal aliens.
that did not stop the SCL from saying the agreement would give billions of our SS money to illegal aliens
On the contrary, undocumented workers pay billions into Social Security they will never collect. $72 billion in 2009 alone.
Mmmmm! Mail fraudilicious!
Lasted almost two minutes into the dulcet tones of “A To Tha D” … most hip-hoppy stuff gets a MEH* from me at best anyway, but this? Worst case of Trying Too Hard I’ve seen in a while.
the whole affair has made me rather appreciative of transphobic wingnut bigots, because at least they wear their visceral hatred on their sleeve rather than making a big show about how “supportive” and “we understand your legal rights” they are while cutting me behind my back
As someone who wears a uni on the job & thus gets gratuitous doses of stinkeye from NORPs for no real reason on a regular basis, I KNOW THIS FEEL. Little do said NORPs know that I despise the Clown Suit O’ Authoritah much more than they do, & probably for more & better reasons – or that it isn’t the glarers that harsh my mellow, it’s the warm gregarious Dunning-Kruger Fan Club motherfuckers.
With a rogue, watch your wallet.
With a fool, watch your neck.
Always fear a fool more than a rogue.
_____________________________________________________________
* With some exceptions. (warning: lousy audio)
Substance McGravitas said,
February 26, 2013 at 6:14
The song is wonderfully terrible
Cripes. Now it’s going to show up in goatse animations.
Cerb,
Is the headline meant to refer to the 1992 breakfast cereal commercial where Barney raps:
“My name is Bareny Rubble and I’m here to say, I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way”?
“Also,” I say, “marriage was developed for men to protect women in a family unit.” Marriage was not created for love. Why do you think there were prearranged marriages?
I feel a certain grudging respect for someone who is willing to argue that marriage has been repeatedly redefined to serve different societal functions, that’s why it is wrong to suggest redefining it.
In the same way one feels a grudging respect for someone willing to bite the heads off rats for a living.
My respect for the carnival geek’s willingness to do whatever it takes for a buck is tempered by the questions raised by this behavior which are “where exactly does this person draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable food” and “where does he stand on cannibalism”?
Let’s see what the Merriam-Webster dictionary has to say about “marriage”.
Huh. How ’bout that.
“Vulcan” won the contest. Sorry Cerebus. We tried.
Why do we have to love them?
I’m going to take a wild leap here and guess that most of them would settle for you not writing about them.
This guy is real? I love that. The cliche “you can’t make this shit up” applies here. You just really can’t make this up. And this is all real? You swear? American Thinker isn’t a satirical “Conservative” site like “John Swift was?”
I just…seriously?
In fact, every last one of us commie pinko rat bastards can easily recall the last unfortunate family reunion, uncomfortable Facebook interaction, or severely awkward chit-chat with coworkers or acquaintances where we’re left to plaintively smile and wince as we try and steer the conversation ship between the heads of nucking futs conspiracy theories and the tentacles of simmering privileged resentment.
It’s…it’s like you’ve been reading my email / facebook / phone calls over my shoulder.
Two old friends gone in the last two months, one over healthcare (I dared to tell him he was pulling his assertions out of his ass), one over gun control (I dared to tell him his AR-15 wouldn’t protect him from a drone strike). Sigh. Both contacted me to pick a fight. Sigh again.
Also, too and furthermore, tentacles have never been less sexxxay than right now.
Cerb, on a serious note, very sorry to know of your troubles. Sincerely hope you land on your feet (high heels?).
What? Was it the high heels comment?
Was it the high heels comment?
No, you smell bad.
Somebody else giving their thoughts on “A to the D”:
I saw some fucked up shit during my time in radio (seeing Question Mark’s tighty whities bunched over the waistband of his gold lamé pants), but I heard even more fucked up shit.
In addition to the major label stuff we received at the station, we’d also get a lot of independent stuff too. And I’m not talking SST or Touch & Go indie; I’m talking shit like Timmy T and worse, stuff on the verge of obscene in terms of its limited budget artwork and barely out of the basement production values.
While I understand that this sort of homespun thing is the stuff of screenplays (Coal Miner’s Daughter immediately comes to mind), the reality is much different. 99.9% of the shit is exactly that: feces. I mean the worst music that you could ever imagine at times.
And then there were those songs that were so bad that they were awesome.
There was one song that came to mind recently, to the point where I’m not even sure what parts of my memory were fabricated over time and which ones were legitimate.
One such trainwreck of a song ran across my desk in the early 90’s. The artwork seemed to promote the notion that the music was from the country’s first hardcore Jewish rapper. The music seemed to promote the notion that this was anything but the first hardcore Jewish rapper. The song, “The Renegade Jew” was the world’s first Jewish comedy album that was un-intentially conceived as a rap album
The artist, known as A To The D, later proved to be much too old to be dabbling in rap music and judging from the lyrical content of “The Renegade Jew” he wasn’t much of a wordsmith either.
With lines that try to balance between violent bravado and sexual superiority, the lyrics “When I was born they cut an inch off my dick/That’s sick!/Still it’s really thick” have haunted me for over a decade now.
So I scoured the internet for some evidence about this forgotten radio promo jem and learned that my memory was fairly on: there was a “Renegade Jew” and he was known as A To The D. I also learned that the dude was much too old to be doing that shit.
I also learned that the motherfucker ended up in the joint, which may actually add a little to the thug factor.
From “The Black Table”
He’d developed the handle of “A-to-the-D,” a kind of alternative to the nickname “Awesome Dave” he’d earned while knocking out opponents in Gleason’s Gym. Rude Boy Records, a small label that was negotiating with Wu-Tang Clan in their early days, opted to release “The Renegade Jew” since Lawrence had the ability to pay for his own press and publicity. Lawrence wrote countless personal checks in order to bring his new hobby to the masses.
“I spent roughly $300,000 of my own money trying to do it; my wife thinks I spent more,” Lawrence said.
He promoted the crap out of his EP. He appeared on Crazy Sam’s video music show with Naughty By Nature, Doug E. Fresh, Fat Joe, Biz Markee, Method Man and Redman. He also appeared on New York’s Hot 97 radio with Snoop Doggy Dogg. He had advertisements in The Source and struck a deal with SPIN magazine to send off a copy of “The Renegade Jew” to all their subscribing households on Long Island. There was no commercial success, but Lawrence said he did receive plenty of letters from kids inviting him to perform at their bar mitzvah parties.
Written by Todd Totale
Can anyone tell me what a “fulbert” is? Google isn’t being very helpful.
Damn typos, I meant can anyone tell me what a “flubert” is?
In fact, every last one of us commie pinko rat bastards can easily recall the last unfortunate family reunion, uncomfortable Facebook interaction, or severely awkward chit-chat with coworkers or acquaintances…
I have been mercifully free of that except for one boss. What made it bad is that I genuinely liked and respected this guy, and the feeling was mutual. We got along great. But he was a Chicago ethnic type and one of those guys who “makes a distinction” between blacks and n-words, which is why I flinched when I heard Chris Rock do a riff on that line.
Both contacted me to pick a fight.
Ha ha, then huffed off in a snit when you didn’t roll over. Probably still complaining about how intolerant liberals are but how they TOTALLY DEMOLISHED your arguments. *sniffle*
Wiley, never fear. Little Pluto has TWO moons to be named, so Cerberus, even though she is only First Princess gets one.
Damn typos, I meant can anyone tell me what a “flubert” is?
Wasn’t that an arcade game back in the 1980s?
I meant can anyone tell me what a “flubert” is?
It’s like a female male shlink but with extra intersex tinsly and a third extended glort.
flubert is a placeholder, just a nickname for the next thing the conservatives will freak out over.
recall the last unfortunate family reunion
Gee. It was my own mother, who after watching too much Lou Dobbs, complained about being scared when she walked into her bank and it was full of “smelly wetbacks” and having to stand in line with them.
This from a woman who took me to civil rights demonstrations when I was only as tall as her knees, and picking me up to RUN from the water cannons. From a woman who used to TEACH racial sensitivity classes in the early seventies to new hires at a disadvantaged adult education school in Columbia SC.
Needless to say, I let her know in no uncertain terms she was wrong, and exactly how she was wrong, and to stop listening to that motherfucker on TV, and every time she finds herself afraid of a brown person to remember her turn in that racial sensitivity class and how she had to put on a blindfold, and touch and smell and lick a black person’s skin and what that taught her… what she subsequently taught to others. And that the only reason they’re “illegals” is because the racists who set our immigration policy refuse to offer them a piece of paper when they cross the border… they’re only “illegal” because they’d be arrested at a “papers please” stop.
And this was on her birthday. The day after Christmas… and we see each other about one week every two years.
Fortunately my step dad (she remarried a black man, even!) watches Democracy Now! religiously every day. I think I reinforced what he’d been telling her, albeit he probably wasn’t as pissed off as I was.
It’s been a couple years now… she hasn’t brought the topic up again, and now that Dobbs moved to his proper spiritual home at Faux Nooz I think she’s realized that he’s full of shit.
But it doesn’t help that he looks EXACTLY like her father.
flubert is a placeholder
Yea, but I hear those fluberts are into gatso play.
Or is that the shlinks?
No, you smell bad.
That can’t be it. I always smell bad.
What consenting adults do with speed trap cameras is no business of anyone else’s.
What consenting adults do with speed trap cameras is no business of anyone else’s.
It’s the robotic badgers that disturb me.
I would really love to think us Sadlies put Cerberus over the top against Styx.
fluberts
As the original American colonists supplied smallpox blankets to the indigenous population, so too did PBS sell flu-carrying cloth puppets.
The flubert is just PBS trying to get your attention. The anthraxernie is when they mean business.
This particular atrocity is credited to a British officer rather than the colonists.
Gays haven’t been put in chains. They may have been disliked because of their behavior, but they were not jailed and whipped
He’s never heard of Alan Turing, I see.
Good luck, Cerb. Nil Illegitimati Carborundum.
We have so much experience with The Line. My wife (The Wife of Marsupial) & I will go through the post-game show of whatever social event we have been to (12 step meeting, sports book gathering, etc.) and remind each other of who said what. Then, every once in a while on of us will stop and catch the other’s eye. That’s usually the beginning of The Line. After all these years, our reaction has pretty much gone from “Oh I’m sure s/he didn’t mean it like that!” to “Oh shit, there goes another one.”
We just had a 14+ person e-mail + FB blowout fight two weeks ago that probably wiped out half of our social life in a few e-mails — skunks that they are.
The thing (not fact) is that I have LOTS of right-wingers around who always seem to have a great RW conspiracy theory. They all gang up, pass theories, and rail away. Does anyone here do that? I think I have done it exactly once (with LW theories), at a party, with ONE other person that I didn’t even know. Very liberal. That is a rare conversation to have in public – like we’re afraid that someone is going to come over and beat us up, or fire us from our two-bit jobs.
Whatever.
(Sorry – Ambisting (Ambien Posting) makes me a little wordy…
M
They all gang up, pass theories, and rail away.
This happens between 1pm and 2pm in the break room at my office, Every. Fucking. Day.
The three wingers who work in my office all eat lunch together and crackpot wingnut is on the menu, Every. Fucking. Day.
I have made it a game, when I need to use the microwave during that hour, to go in and drop topics of conversation -oh like immigration, or fiscal policy- and then leave to eat at my desk. I’ll then go in half an hour later just to toss my food trash — and to hear how far off the rails they’ve gone.
The last time I did this, I dropped “Did you hear that Obamacare is going to cost a family of four $20k per year?” Oh, fuck yea… they’d all heard that, and it was like putting a match to a pile of charcoal briquettes soaked in naptha. Half an hour later, I coulda grilled a mess of steaks in there.
The real irony is, all three of them are smart, talented engineers. Why they let themselves be so easily manipulated is a real clue that there’s little correlation between intelligence and wisdom.
(High INT and Low WIS for us D&D geeks…)
bughunter skrev:
Or high IQ with a low self-control number on Gullibility for us GURPS 4e geeks. Or Intelligence 3 and Wits 1 for Storytell{er,ing} System geeks. Or…
Hmm. Every single rioter at stonewall would like a word with him.
After they are done talking to them, every single gay person in Uganda has something to discuss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Bill
goatse animations.
Goats get very animated when they think there’s food nearby.
What?
Those fuckwits at American Shithouse Thinking do seem prone to writing about implausible conversations. One wonders if they fancy themselves as a Socrates in a dialogue by Plato. Or perhaps they think they’re all Plato-ey wise and shit. That thought just made me laugh out loud.
Those fuckwits at American Shithouse Thinking do seem prone to writing about implausible conversations.
You don’t expect them to discuss these matters with actual human beings, do you? They could be argued with, punched out, or worse…laughed at.
The echo in the chamber has gotten so loud it is not well understood outside the echo chamber in the mainstream press and in the public
The wisdom of Earache son of Earache, at his site where they immediately ban anyone who doesn’t toe the line. Airwick Airwickson is not overly endowed with self-awareness.
What, did I scare everyone away? I know I didn’t fart.
“..tentacles have never been less sexxxay than right now.”
What you _said_!
You heathen!
Also, too:” Or high IQ with a low self-control number on Gullibility for us GURPS 4e geeks. Or Intelligence 3 and Wits 1 for Storytell{er,ing} System geeks. Or…”
What about Bunnies and Burrows? Tunnels and Trolls? Chivalry and Sorcery? Empire of the Petal Throne? And that’s the just the ones I remember from my younger days… Come on now; let’s get serious! We deserve a complete list of all the possible variations; don’t leave us hanging!
Traveller: High EDU and low INT.
Rolemaster: Low Empathy and Intuition, high Reasoning and Memory
and of course,
Call of Cthulhu: High Intellect, Low SANITY!
Fishin’ with Grampaw: Lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Hoping fortunes improve Cerb.
High Intellect, Low SANITY!
Not Call of Cthulhu’s best album but eminently listenable.
Charles Kesler misses the wit of William F. Buckley:
Who could forget Bill Buckley’s dazzling wit when he threatened to punch Gore Vidal in the face on national television? Or the sparkling turns of a phrase he could use when arguing that African Americans should be oppressed and their voting rights curtailed?
Conservatives retain a sense of humor, [citation needed]
What I like is that it’s in The Corner: who attempts wit there?
Get out your popcorn and prepare to watch Rep. Keith Ellison give Sham Hammity a smackdown!
FFWD to 3:10 if you don’t care to listen to the spin and charade… it’s typical Faux Nooze dreck, but it clearly pissed Ellison off.
Conservatives retain a sense of humor, [citation needed]
inb4 O’Rourke
Who I never thought was all that funny anyway
Bill’s wit was tasteful, versatile, and at its best concerned with truth rather than mere pleasantness.
This was particularly evident in his humorous assertion that whites were the superior race, and should rule even if in the minority, democracy be damned. Or his waggish suggestion that the church in Birmingham might have been bombed by a “crazed Negro.” Or his clever joke that atheism should be a firing offense at secular universities. Ha ha! Taste the truth!
What I like is that it’s in The Corner: who attempts wit there?
Well, they half-try. YES IT’S AN OLD JOKE, BITE ME.
O’Rourke
Who I never thought was all that funny anyway
He was pretty good in the Lampoon days. Adopting “conservatism” killed that off.
Conservatives retain a sense of humor, which is different from wittiness
Credit James Blish!
He was pretty good in the Lampoon days. Adopting “conservatism” killed that off.
He used to be funny, at least intermittently, as a conservative. I think what killed that off was horror at how the cretin contingent overwhelmed the Old Money wing of the GOP. (O’Rourke is nothing if not worshipful of Old Money.)
What, we all out POOPing in the woods?
.
He’s never heard of Alan Turing, I see.
Nor pink triangles.
(Sympathy, Cerberus. I wish there were something we could do for you.)
commie pinko rat bastards
*sniff* Nobody’s called me that in a long time. *sniff*
Thanks, Cerbs.
(I still revel in my high-school appelation, ‘the anti-social socialist’)
Diving in only briefly ’cause fuck you sequester, I’ll still get my project done even if the feds proceed to throw it in the shitter:
If you’re vaguely geekish and like table games, do a search for “Machine of Death” on Kickstarter. They’re making the book (that kept Glen Beck’s last book off the #1 spot @ amazon!) into a very fun looking board game…
Fuck the sequester is right. I work under an EPA grant so the bastards better get this shit fixed. Fucking teabaggers.
Late to the thread as always, but please allow me to extend my sympathies and righteous indignation, Cerberus, and let us know if any boycott threats or whatever would help.
But congratulations on being transferred into the heavens, anyway—Khufu had to build a giant pyramid to do it….
I’m sorry it’s been such a rough patch for you, Cerb. But go get ’em, when the time is right. They deserve it!
And where’s young Sparrowhawk? Did the last Wendy’s commercial give him a heart attack?
regarding board games : Power Grid, RoboRally, Settlers, Illuminati get my votes.
There’s a game called Card Against Humanity that absolutely destroys Beck.
we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking about sex
Piker.
we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking about sex
It’s going to take some work to catch up. I’ll be in my bunk.
we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking about sex
That’s generally the way it is, when you ain’t gettin’ any.
Speaking of thoughts of sex, another fine quote from Lawrence’s comments section:
As a teenager and into my early adulthood I looked at pornography…Even now I can remember the smutty feeling after having looked at it.
Even now I can remember the smutty feeling after having looked at it.
…and the tingle is still just as thrilling, isn’t it?
Just now getting around to the beet salad. Tasty.
“When we were young, we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking about sex”
“we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking about sex”
“we spent twenty-three and half hours a day thinking”
“we spent [time] thinking”
I find that hard to believe. Also, that means they slept less than half an hour a day, which is physiologically impossible, which Davey Boy would know if he ever ACTUALLY did any thinking.
Even now I can remember the smutty feeling after having looked at it.
That feeling can be tenacious. But it does come off with a little petrolatum and some rubbing…
beet salad
That will remove it, too. Also.
Beet salad,yummy yummy
Beet salad,yummy yummy
Beet salad,yummy yummy
Yummy yummy
Yummy yummy
Beet salad!
Let’s make some beet salad today (uh huh uh)
It’s fun to do it the healthy way (uh huh uh)
Take all the beet that you want to eat
it’s gonna be a beet salad treat!
Overall, the whole affair has made me rather appreciative of transphobic wingnut bigots, because at least they wear their visceral hatred on their sleeve rather than making a big show about how “supportive” and “we understand your legal rights” they are while cutting me behind my back.
This.
Saw a high school acquaintance on Facebook the other week commenting that “faggots’ families won’t be the ones that make our country great.” Okay, one more for the unfriending pile, but it’s quite a breath of fresh air compared to the pricks who’re all “duuude, we just love the sinner and hate the sin, don’t b mad now!”
In other news. Racism. Dead as a doornail in the U.S.
“Not Call of Cthulhu’s best album but eminently listenable.”
Endless screaming, and power chords. Is that a new genre – Old God-Metal?
It’s against union rules to use slave labour for the endless screaming.
In other news. Racism. Dead as a doornail in the U.S.
Holy Jesus. The arrival of the death robots will be a mercy, frankly.
Yes, and here’s what “Cards Against Humanity” tweeted about the new “Machine of Death” game:
Seriously, check it out. I’m looking forward to having this game, and getting in on the kickstarter (already fully funded) gets you some cool bonuses.
Also, too: noo thred.
Endless screaming, and power chords. Is that a new genre – Old God-Metal?
Metal is generally about guitars, not the shrill piping of monotonous flutes in an endless void, that’s more New Age.
Illuminati
Ah, that’s a great game. I miss the time before Bush, back when conspiracy theories were still fun, back before we had proof that the world actually IS run by a small cabal of evil old ugly rich white men…
and they’re all COMPLETE IDIOTS.
As I understand it, the equation “horniness + gays existing = discomfort” can be described in long form like this: horniness means that his only acceptable sex partners, women, aren’t people of course, so dudes can sexually harass them to beat the band (and damn those feminists trying to level the playing fields.) Gay men existing is a problem, because they’re guys, too, who like men, and since all men harass and disrespect those they sexually pursue… Then discomfort = don’t let those gay dudes make me their bitch (since I’m so obviously pursuable)! IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION!
Oh, and that bit about gays not facing oppression? I thought I read once that gays were called faggots (original definition – a bundle of wood) because they used to be thrown on the fires used to burn witches. Today the English call cigarettes ‘fags’ for much the same reason… Because they burn.
Cerberus,
I will be the first to admit that I’ve never managed to be completely comfortable with the trans* folks… I know, it’s a personal failing, and, GODDAMMIT, I’m working on it.
That said, to me the core of liberalism is the idea that we’re only here on this world but once, and we have the right to live our lives as we see fit and be happy. Period. Full stop.
I don’t know that I have a real point here – IPA and rye whiskey is a dangerous combo – but I think you rock, and I hope you kick the bastards fucking asses.
You have not just a fight worth fighting, but a fight worth winning, and I wish you all the luck in the world.
Wow, you’re an angry fellow. I suggest a pill. And you accuse me of ranting and raving. I could only read a few sentences because they were so sophmoric, typical, immature and prosaic. Good luck with your hatred.
Shame you only bothered to read a few sentences. Still, I guess that saved you having to learn anything about yourself.
You really are a lot less “smart” than you think you are, as your misuse of language (“typical”???) and feeble standard of argumentation proves.
And your rapping is so wack it makes the Fresh Prince look like fucking Rakim.
Is there any way we can find out who this “Kenny” is and get him to tell us how this conversation actually happened?
Does David Lawrence Google himself weekly? This is hilar-lar.
I didn’t read the whole article because it was redundant, sophmoric and simplistic. Plus it showed such an obsession with me that I am worried about your use of your time. A bit of a stalker there, I’m afraid. Silly, hostile and self-obsessed under the guise of attacking me.
Does David Lawrence Google himself weekly?
Looks like monthly, but he also fails to note he already responded.