Dan Riehl: Worse Than Anyone Thought
Riehl World View, October 25, 2006, on the topic of gay marriage in New Jersey:
Perfectly liberal. The problem isn’t even the result, it’s how they get there. Apparently now the Courts get to instruct the legislature what laws to write and when to write them.
[U]nfortunately, NJ is such a wasteland of Liberalism, I doubt they’ll even challenge the ruling. As long as the lame ass politicians here get to keep their hand in the till, they’ll run along and do precisely what the court dictates. Why should they care about separation of powers so long as the corrupt cash keeps flowing their way?
Riehl World View, October 18, 2006, on the occasion of the conservative John Cole calling Dan Riehl a homophobe:
Really, though. I don’t know how you can read that and not see the overt homophobia and the sickness that is Riehl’s mindset. I am sure Dobson and Rove love it.
Really?
Robert Leroy Riehl Born: 05 Jan 1948 Died: 21 Jun 2004
That was an older brother of mine, John. He’s dead and, yes, he was Gay. You want to know how he died? He died alone, probably of aids for all I know and probably in a San Francisco flop house living on the government’s dime. I say probably because it was the last address I ever had for him from letters exchanged, not having seen the boy/man since I was about 15.
And you know why he died alone?
Yes, sort of. Yes, I think we do.
Not because he was Gay. He died that way because of small minded assholes who think that being Gay in America is a crime. And who is perpetuating that stereotype and trying to benefit from it, today, Cole? Me? Because I can mock someone whether they are straight or gay, because the orientation has no bearing on how I treat someone, one way or the other?
It may be true that Mr. Riehl would leave any of his relatives to die alone, probably in a flophouse, probably of AIDS for all he knows. We have only his own word to go by.
But next comes a routine that we know to expect from Mr. Riehl, and from Republicans everywhere as well as skunks. When challenged, emit a noxious spray:
Don’t you try and lecture me you superficial, sanctimonious twit. You know absolutely nothing about me. I am not doing a disservice to homosexuals because I make no distinction in how I treat people, Gay or straight. “I” couldn’t care less. I joke about them both, one and the same. And if an individual feels he wants to live out his life in private because the world today has not shifted enough generation-ally so as to relegate their sexual preference to some meaningless and fictitious norm … I have no problem with that. Can you say that for your friends who have no greater ambition but to win some passing political victory, you hypocritical jackass?
That filth like Rogers are allowed, by you and your friends, to dress up their humanity-loathing, faux activism in moral outrage aimed at the Right disgusts me. If I ever meet the scumbag, he’ll be lucky if I don’t bitch slap the clown.
I guess there’s nothing much to add to that — except Sheila, take a bow.
Why does he capitalize gay?
I’m confused. He’s pissed at the NJ courts, why? If he’s not against gay marraige (he seems to be fine with gays living in solitude, okay, sure) then why does the NJ court saying, “It’s against our constitution to outlaw gay marraige” get under his skin?
Incidently, Riehl; yes, the courts DO get to decided what is and is not legal law. Not a new concept, i’m suprised you haven’t heard about it till now.
My dead cousin was black. Just because I lynched him doesn’t make me racist. Dan has a very good point.
I too am confused. Dan Riehl’s not a homophobe because he let his gay brother die alone in a flophouse?
That just means he respects his brother’s privacy.
Wow, what a soulless monster. He’s a better man than all of us because he let his gay teen runaway brother die alone of some incurable disease in some vagrant’s flophouse? And he’s not only proud of this, but he considers it the ultimate trump card he can play to win any argument about homosexuality? Dear God.
You missed the best bit, when he turned “balloon juice” into a gruesome wordplay at the end, complete with body fluids dribbling from lips. Oh yeah, high-brow political discourse right there!
A sick, sad shell of a human being. I really wish you hadn’t shared this. It might make me start feeling sorry for the Repugs. And when you blink, that’s when they get you! Because they want you to be as sick and sad as they are.
I’m praying for the Dan Riehls and the Gary Rupperts and the annieangels of the world. They are the ones who really need it.
Seriously, this entry is giving me that exact same sick feeling in my stomach that I get when my Mom starts making racist statements and getting all upset when I call her on it.
What have the fucking Republicans done to this country?
How like an angel is a Man, a divine creation, full of art and science and cleverness and wit. Oh what we could accomplish, together, if we did not have to fight the same battles against these same assholes and their damned progeny every generation.
How hollow and sad it must be, at the end, when these rank-and-file Repugs realize that their mission, to fight for the wealthy of the Republican Party, is a pathetic and sad endeavour.
There is no special Hell for them. Being a Repug is Hell enough.
Dan Riehl’s brother died “probably of aids for all I know”. Could he have given a more gratuitous jab at his brother than that? He doesn’t know what he died from, so he invokes aids to fill out the caricature.
Seems to me that if the court finds some law is inconsisent with the state constitution..something must be done..maybe a new law that is consistent? And who makes laws in the states (as opposed to the Chimperial Presidency at the national level)? The legislature.
Riehl is one deep well of nonsense…as TBogg, and you gentlemen, have documented on numerous occasions. Keep up the good work.
DOES NOT COMPUTE
There is no special Hell for them. Being a Repug is Hell enough.
If only they didn’t keep trying to make the rest of us share it with them, Hoosier X…
I predict his next post: “Okay, so that sounded a lot better in my head…”
Wait–so he’s threatening to make a scumbag watch him bitch-slapping a clown?
The thing I can’t wrap my head around… is that that Dan guy gets daily readers (not just people laughing at him, other clueless people who somehow learned to read) AND he gets linked to by people (not just people laughing at him, other clueless bloggers who somehow learned to blog)…
I know that Instaguy linked to Dan right after he spewed that idiotic post. Really, who wants to read their junk?
Calling that guy a douchebag is an insult to douchebags.
How does he know he’s dead?
Perhaps the brave Dan Riehl should stand smack in the middle of Trenton and repeat all those nice things he just wrote. Some very nice people might invite Dan out for “lobster diving in the Hudson.”
I am not doing a disservice to homosexuals because I make no distinction in how I treat people, Gay or straight. “I� couldn’t care less. I joke about them both, one and the same.
His defense is that he’s not a homophobe, he’s an asshole?
You know what? He may actually be telling the truth.
Ok, well, maybe I’m missing something here. ‘Cause I get his well-supported claim that he’s not homophobic, but that being the case, just what exactly IS he saying?
mikey
How does he know he’s dead?
Maybe he just stopped writing. I know I would have.
Riehl would leave any of his relatives to die alone, probably in a flophouse, probably of AIDS for all he knows
As far as I can tell, Gavin got it exactly right. The above is what Riehl’s trying to say: he’s an equal-opportunity hater (or, to be charitable, maybe just an equal-opportunity neglecter). Well, that and the courts have no business checking laws for constitutionality . . .
I am not doing a disservice to homosexuals because I make no distinction in how I treat people, Gay or straight. “I� couldn’t care less. I joke about them both, one and the same.
Shit, that’s actually a paraphrase of that jokey T-shirt slogan ‘I’m not prejudiced, I hate everyone’. Said in cold blood. Huh.
The funniest part: a wingnut complaining about violations of separation of powers.
I’m sure that there’s something in a signing statement that allows that, though…
Just remember, Danny boy, it could always be worse. He could be ALIVE, and therefore a millstone on your family.
I’m still a little confused. Why the ‘scare quotes’ around ‘I’?
Does he mean some fictionalized version of himself?
So, Riehl hates the playa *and* the game?
Why the ’scare quotes’ around ‘I’?
Scare quotes are the wingnuts’ boldface, used for emphasis. Other examples of their innovative typography include constructing ellipses from sequential commas and dispensing with traditional conventions of capitalization. Since grammar is guarded by scholars and academicians (aka smarty-pantses), it has become “liberal” and something to subvert at every opportunity.
But let’s not be so hard on Riehl, for, as others have noticed, libs like Stossel and even plently of evangelicals I’m sure would support teh Gay man’s inalienable right to die alone in SF from AIDS or other presumable social diseases. And that’s more than they gave the non-gay non-man Terri Schiavo!!1!1! There, see?? special rites rears it ugl yhead,,,,,,agin!!1!!!1!1!!
Why the ’scare quotes’ around ‘I’?
WPS. Wingnut Punctuation Syndrome. As near as we can tell, Kaye Grogan was born with a deficient punctuation gene. What we didn’t know, and never learned until it was far to late, is that it is somehow comunicable among wingnuts. Just as Parkinsons starts with a small tremor, WPS starts with the random application of quotes and apostrophes. In it’s advanced stages they begin to incorporate unnecessary punctuation even in their names – See Marie Jon’…
mikey
I’m waiting for the first wingnut whose name includes an interrobang.
Well, that sent me scurrying to Wikipedia. What’s the ascii code for an interrobang?
And upon further review…
Instead of Wingnut Punctuation Syndrome, it should be Wingnut Unnecessary Punctuation Syndrome, WUPS and pronounced Whoops….
mikey
I’m not sure, but I think my dad invented the interrobang. He always tells vague stories about how he invented some crazy thing or another, and you’ll be like, “Huh‽ Yeah, right — that’s a hot one.” Then years later you’ll find some reference somewhere and it’ll be like, “Wow, it was actually true‽”
“If Gays want to live out their lives in the closet because the world isn’t ready for the Gay, that’s OK with me, but if the New Jersey Supreme Court rules the state constitution doesn’t allow the state to treat Gays like second class citizens, that pisses me off. And my Gay man/boy welfare Queen brother died, so I have a permanent “get out of being called a homophobe” card.”
I hope his brother died with friends near, far better than being near such a brother, a hypocritical, superficial, sanctimonious twit who sneers about his brother’s death for a passing political victory, while pretending moral outrage. Yes, his own words apply to him so well even Freud would be impressed.
I am also very confused. i agree with Pinko Punko. (I have always wanted to type that sentence.)
Is he saying that he is one of those small minded assholes who consider his brother should die alone because being gay is a crime?
If not, how is he different from them and why did his brother die alone in the first place?
It just does not make any sense. No, I am not trying to sound like Johnnie Cochran. I want someone to explain this to me! I want the argument to have internal logic! I also want a solution to the Arab Israeli Conflict and peace in Iraq.
I think it’s clear what he’s saying, if you wade through all the psychosexual weirdness. He’s against “activist judges”, but not gay marriage.
Everyone, I have a very important question. Is the prize being offered for Stupidest Man Alive really good? Because Riehl and these other guys are really trying hard to win. I just want to make sure their efforts are rewarded.
Dan Riehl’s brother died “probably of aids for all I know�. Could he have given a more gratuitous jab at his brother than that? He doesn’t know what he died from, so he invokes aids to fill out the caricature.
Don’t forget he was “probably” in a flophouse in San Francisco on the government’s dime!!!
to paraphrase, Dan Riehl would win Biggest Douche in the Universe, over the actual biggest bottle of douche in the universe.
I’m as fresh as a summer’s eve!
You know what I hate?
The way conservatives say, “All you liberals have is hatred for Bush!”
(To which I say, “Even if that was true, could you include your point?”)
But it’s bullshit.
Liberals hate conservatism. And conservatives.
And we have PLENTY of exhibits to explain why. For example, the logic processes of every conservative.
I feel a complete lack of sympathy for Mr. Riehl. What a cobag.
Actually, Hoosier, I don’t hate conservatives. In fact, I miss them deeply. Oh, sure, I usually didn’t agree with much of their program, but they were logical and reasonable and you could work with them on compromises and agreements. But what the Right calls conservatives today not only aren’t, they are immensely extreme. There’s just no way “the mainstream” would support the kind of anti-constitution, anti-working person, militaristic, interventionist elitest policies supported by this government. Those ass clowns ain’t conservative, and we ought to give them a name and make it stick, much as the coopted the term “liberal”, and they shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves conservative. It’s like false advertising or something…
mikey
You’re right, mikey, we should help them out by giving them a more accurate name. It’s not just that they aren’t conservative — they’re the exact opposite of conservative. They don’t conserve anything — not money, not natural resources, not principles, not ethics, not tradition or the rule of law, and certainly not lives. So what word would best describe their philosophy?
Profligate.
I know, I know, it doesn’t roll trippingly off the tongue, but at least the Greedy Old Profligates wouldn’t have to re-monogram all the towels.
How about “Bushite” (near-rhyme with Shiite and Woolite…)?
The word itself bears vague resemblances to the things I want the word to inherently and vaguely associate with these ass-clowns. Bush, fundies and bullshit, for three.
Or “Bushist,” if you just want to peg them to Dubya with added overtones of fanatical political underhandedness with totalitarian outcomes…
Words (and marketing/propaganda) are SO powerful, we rarely realize how much so on a conscious level. It affects people, even jaded tune-it-out types like myself who like to think it doesn’t.* So whatever we come up with, it’s gotta be good and repeated often!
(*that’s why I’d LOVE for someone to rename the Fed’s newest department to something more like “Department of Internal Security” –or fold it into Interior. None of this Homeland-Motherland-Vaterland Uber Alles shit, thanks.)
Don’t you try and lecture me you superficial, sanctimonious twit. You know absolutely nothing about me.
There’s a number of key phrases used in debates that I’ve come to see as shorthand for “quit wasting your precious time with this jackass”, and this is one of them. For one, it’s a bit embarrasing to see a grown human being use such a junior high-esque dodge. Secondly, it cuts me as a bit silly to get all aghast that someone would have the audacity to judge someone’s character by the very words he or she writes. If one were inclined to see things in such a way, the whole “how dare you judge me, you don’t know me, maaaan” squawk generally denotes a rhetorical battleship being sunken somewhere, especially with the venom and nastiness expressed above.
Apart from that, I really don’t understand the wingnuts’ outrage over the recent NJ decision. The courts did their job. They looked at the laws as written, looked at the Rule Book (they call it a “state constitution”) and said, “Nope, doesn’t add up”. If I recall correctly, the decision said the legislature had to go back and re-write the law in question to either specifically outlaw gay marriage or specifically include it. That’s how the system works, that’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s called checks and balances.
Man, didn’t any of these assholes take 8th grade civics class? We were taught this shit in Mississippi, for cryin’ out loud.
But “you don’t know me” is the ultimate rhetorical weapon on Jerry Springer.
so…it doesn’t bother him that the world is a place that made his own brother die alone?
i don’t understand. pinko punko is right. also, INTRUDER ALERT. don’t know why.
in re: capitalization. i’m against it. the [.] does the job of denoting the end of the sentence quite well. the capital just gilds the lily. plus, in those infrequent cases where a word’s meaning changes based on the capitalization (or lack thereof) of the first letter, one can still use it. as an example, a reader can infer that a person who mostly doesn’t capitalize but chooses to do so with the word Gay is, in fact, crazy. or gay.
My favorite part is that he capitalizes gay, but not AIDS.
So- I’ve got this morbid curiosity to find out just what did happen to Dan Riehl’s probably AIDS-ridden welfare queen gay brother (according to Dan Riehl). If there was a pay-pal button to donate towards that, I would.
You’re right, mikey, we should help them out by giving them a more accurate name. It’s not just that they aren’t conservative — they’re the exact opposite of conservative. They don’t conserve anything — not money, not natural resources, not principles, not ethics, not tradition or the rule of law, and certainly not lives. So what word would best describe their philosophy?
You could come up with a new name, but why reinvent the wheel?
Yeah, I know, Jillian. But fascism has unfortunately become one of those words, like awesome or radical, that has lost its meaning in current usage. The rape-n-pillage crowd has co-opted it to use at random to mean anybody we don’t like, so we’d have to work pretty hard to get people to understand that it actually has, like, a definition and everything.
“It just does not make any sense. No, I am not trying to sound like Johnnie Cochran.”
The Chewbacca Defense is hard to fight. I mean, would he really want to live on Endor?
What I want to know is, how does the legalization of equal treatment for gay couples in New Jersey keep the corrupt cash flowing?
Based on a quick google search (Rootsweb.com, Social Security Death Index), his brother’s last known address was in Napa, known for its’ warren of flophouses.
Dan really had a brother? I assumed, since he’s a conservative, that he just made up all that shit so he could prove his point. You know, like all conservatives do for all of their points.
(I mean, don’t you love it that Exhibit A in the case against Al Gore is something he never said? What the Hell else do you need to know about these people?)
I like “generation-ally”, myself. Who is this person or entity who is allied with a generation?
Why should they care about separation of powers so long as the corrupt cash keeps flowing their way?
Funny how he doesn’t seem to mind the utter nuking of separation of powers when it’s The Most Holy George W. Christ doing the nuking…
[…] Mike Stark is going to be on Reliable Sources today from 10:30-11 am to debate our old pal Dan Riehl. I expect a smackdown of epic proportions. […]
I can’t watch it. But who wants to bet that Mike does in fact wipe the floor with him, and the result will be that Riehl gets a special honorarium form the Heritage Foundation, a blog-writing job at WaPo, and a gig at CNN?
[…] is an odious thug who celebrated that his brother “died alone, probably of aids for all I know and probably in a San Francisco flop house […]