Instead Of A Post (By A Man Too Busy To Write One)*
(doing that “W” with my fingers from Clueless)
We’ll see if the American people agree. I’m not sure the general public’s appetite for angry anti-American hate-whitey burn-this-fucker-down rhetoric is as robust as Mssrs. Marshall and KosKid imagine.
Bla-bla, whatever. This is old by now but, the Josh Marshall post he mentions makes a point that I’ve been thinking about for awhile, and for which I’m now fortunately off the hook in terms of having to phrase it myself:
Last week, Obama, who has denounced various of Wright’s statements, told a Jewish audience, Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” Watch it yourself and make your own judgments. For myself, when watching something like this, it is often difficult to distinguish between what I actually find offensive myself and what it is ingrained in me to believe others will find offensive.
What I’ve been suspecting is that most people base their judgments most of the time on what they think other people must be thinking.
For instance, it’s long been a hypothesis of mine that nobody has ever really liked or been interested in Paris Hilton, but millions were convinced — and dozens remain convinced — that everybody else thinks she’s important. (Another example: the alleged charisma of actor David Caruso.) What creates celebrity, in cases like these, is an avalanche of false assumptions of celebrity.
In a different direction, most of the public’s judgments (and to an even greater extent, as Atrios always points out incredulously, the media’s judgments) on public figures and public issues seem, at core, to be nothing more complex than ever-shifting junior-high-school status assessments — irrational and highly manipulable impressions of which group is ‘up’ and which is ‘down,’ who’s ‘popular’ and who should be notionally fled from because they have cooties. Does this seem so? Because like Josh Marshall, I have a hard distinguishing the parts of Wright’s ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric that seem objectively inflammatory, and those that merely touch on things that bourgeois Americans aren’t supposed to say or think for fear of social sanction.
Isn’t that what guys like Ace are trying to exploit — the old, die-hard bourgeois horror of unacceptable speech and ideas, of losing social status through being found out as an undesirable? In other words, might not the screaming about Wright really be, at root, not a racial issue, but one of class? Because after all, one thing the poor and the rich have in common in America is that they’re not expecting to go anywhere, down or up, and don’t especially care what you think of them.
* Cf.
Does this seem so?
Absolutely. There’s a lot of stuff we’re just not supposed to talk about like that – American culpability for our crappy image abroad, human (and especially American) habits driving global warming, overpopulation, the idea that rich people can be bastards, etc. etc.
I’ll have to think about that distinction between things I think are offensive and things I worry other people will think are offensive. I don’t think I confuse the two, but then, if I were doing it, I wouldn’t know, would I?
(Another example: the alleged charisma of actor David Caruso.)
Oh yeah. I am so with you on that.
Clueless?
Hey, Ace, it’s 2008. Even Alicia Silverstone is doing something new.
Anyone remember the movie on Sci-Fi about aliens who came to Earth and needed 1 million people (for food or slaves or whathaveyou) or else they would die out? I got a list going of “volunteers” and Paris Hilton and David Caruso are definitely on it.
A million people? Shit, that’s a bargain.
Get with the program, flag lapel pin-less America haters.
Isn’t that what guys like Ace are trying to exploit — the old, die-hard bourgeois horror of unacceptable speech and ideas?
Well, we can dress it up that way if you like, but it really is about your first comparison. They figure that most people in America haven’t really matured much past the high school stage of social politics and conformity.
They might be right.
It’s not only true in this case; it’s true in innumerable situations. For example – there are certain oxes you just don’t gore on liberal blogs, regardless of how sound your logic or airtight your case, because you already know that someone’s gonna squeal and then a lot of secondary squealrers will join in, and then the whole thread is going to degenerate into an increasingly childish insult and put-down fest.
Of course, this goes double for conservative blogs.
…also it was an “L” in the movie, not a “W”. Shit, he can’t even get that correct.
But we know how much Ace is living in the past, as he demonstrated, when a couple of weeks ago he finally “discovered” that new fangled Innartubez phenomenon known as “LOLcats”.
It’s like he’s been in a coma for the past ten years. I think I’ll start calling him “Rip Van Ace”.
[Sorry; updated a bit to tie up a couple loose ends]
The fact is, liberal hate will never discourage us hear in the heartland from stickinjg up for Bus, our troops and freedom.
this plays out in my business (entertainment) constantly. i’m always hearing that someone is who we MUST cast because he/she is “hot”. not “hot” as in you or anyone else reading this blog has heard of them or seen them in anything, but rather some undefinable i-should-care hotness. generated by his/her manager and agent and pr person often. and then all of the sudden this person is who will make or break your show. and i usually want to interject–“wait, no one in america ever has seen or heard of or gives a shit about actor x, it’s all just self-referential hype” but it doesn’t matter, because people-more-important-than-me have bought into it. and that in turn often gets foisted on to the rest of america.
my all time favorite was gretchen mol getting on the cover of vanity fair as the new “hot” actor despite her having been in fuck-all at the time.
she did of course go on to be the biggest movie star in history. i think. no?
Paris Hilton has cooties? I knew it! That’s what you get when you don’t support comprehensive cootie education in public schools!
Oh, wait. She probably was a voucher kid, if she actually went to school at all.
Anyway, that’s about all I got out of the above. I started to try to wrap my last few brain cells around the logic, but quickly neared cranial combustion territory, so I had to back off. Sorry!
Didn’t someone mention earlier in the week that neocons were like teenagers: they raid the fridge, take your cash and car keys, then sit on their asses all day and whine about “how tough life is”?
I love Bus! I throw grandmothers under it all the time, but it just keeps rolling.
Oh man, I remember that. It sparked a number of stories on the Tyranny of the Hollywood Publicist.
Regarding the actual cover photo, there was also a little nip in the air, so to speak, if I remember correctly.
Just to give an example: the thing I most enjoyed when I was working as a public interest lobbyist was sitting down to testify before a legislative committee and then just out and saying the very thing everyone had been trying to tiptoe around. I remember once when the biggest state power company moaned and whined about how it was just so burdensome to have to credit customers sending power back to the grid the same amount the company charged for power they pulled from the grid. Normally just them saying “we don’t like it” would have shut it down. But I was fucking pissed off, so I sat down and said to the committee, gee, I seem to remember, it seems like only a couple of years ago, these guys came up here and lobbied you to deregulate them, told you about all the “competition” it would create, how customers would get a better deal and so on. But I swear, now it sounds like they think they totally punked you into giving them an unregulated monopoly. Are you gonna let them get away with that?
We won. But that room was damn uncomfortable by the time I got done talking, because I had said the thing everyone knew but thought it too impolitic or even impolite to say aloud. Once I had pointed and said, “HEY! LOOK AT THAT BIG DAMN TURD IN THE PUNCHBOWL, gee I wonder how THAT got there, man, look how fuckin’ GROSS that thing is. Damn, it STINKS, don’t it?”, everyone was too embarassed to do what they normally would have done, which was, to give the power company whatever the fuck they wanted. Because now, to give it to them was a tacit admission that yes, you are their bitch.
I just loved doing shit like that; it was my most favorite part of the job.
[added a bit more]
This is a harder topic than I anticipated, btw.
[…] But Gavin has captured my thoughts on political/social/intellectual/emotional perception and “perception IS reality” just […]
I always thought the media narrative on George Bush was similar. I don’t think there was any real connection felt with the man by most people. But the media thought there had to be so they always talk it up. Compare him to Bill Clinton – people loved that guy – 60% approval while being impeached! Bush never had that kind of love.
OK so sick of this Rev. Wright shit the wingnuts are tossing out. Robertson, Dobson and the others say more offensive stuff 4 time before breakfast- they dont seem to be clutching thier pearls about that.
Bored now.
Lets talk about how McCain jury rigged the tanker selection process to award Airbus the Air Force tanker deal, at the cost of 30k+ US jobs.
gretchen who?
“…it is often difficult to distinguish between what I actually find offensive myself and what it is ingrained in me to believe others will find offensive.”
I think this is exactly the problem many Americans have with pornography, drunkness, and recreational drug use. While we’re personally fine with any of these, we’re conditioned to believe that most people disapprove of them… even though, in reality, they don’t.
We atheists have been aware of this for like, since forever.
SDU – Huzzah.
I said
“…drunkness…”
Er, that should be “drunkenness” .
Since I am, in fact, drunk, this all seems somehow appropriate.
I think one of the best examples is the “petraeus-Betray Us” ad. Everyone was jumping over each other how distasteful and awful it is, but I bet in private most people were giggling over it…
I’m in the galactic dustbin on this one.
I mean in the tank with the dustbin.
At any rate, I agree with the dustbin.
Lets just think about this whole thing critically. Can we do that?
Wright is NOT Obama. He’s Obama’s pastor. If you asked anybody “do you agree wholeheartedly with everything your pastor has ever said” they are likely to say no. Because, pastor, doctor, employer, spouse, whoever, they ARE NOT YOU. You think what YOU think.
Wrights words, taken in context, are not the full throated america hatred the wingnuts are trying to make them out to be. We need to grow up and be able to talk about things that might hit close to home. We do it with most every other topic, why should this topic be different?
Being critical of your country does NOT mean you hate it. It can mean you love it and want it to be everything it has the potential to be.
Patriotism in no way means blind fealty to anything your country does. And for that matter, the governement of america is NOT america. Even if it’s very important to your worldview to believe that america is perfect, you cannot believe that of it’s elected leadership, who are flawed men and women.
For these, and oh so many other reasons, the entire Wright “Contraversy” is ridiculous. It’s just the worst kind of code word gotcha politics, and the sooner we reject it from every side the closer we’ll be to getting past some of the taboo topics that without serious national dialog, this nation will fail.
This is the main reason I am so hopeful about Obama. He just keeps steering the discussion back from gameplaying to conversation, calmly and without shouting. He just keeps pointing out that it is these very games that represent politics as usual, and that he represents a way past it all…
mikey
Gavin, the phenomenon you describe provide us with John Kerry 4 years ago because everyone thought everyone else thought Dean was crazy. Let’s hope we have moved on. Please. Otherwise, I’m with Brad and we are screwed.
Oh, dear, here’s a guy who really, really needs some Obama X love from you guys:
http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=249#respond
…The question at hand is, does Obama’s Marxist upbringing jibe with Wright’s racialist Marxism in a way that suggests they’re expressing harmonious views? Keep in mind, here, that my main objection to Obama is that a large number of radical Marxist influences in his formation suggest that he’s fundamentally a closet Marxist, himself…
Enjoy.
mikey, I love you.
But only as friends.
That was just right. My fear is that we don’t have enough sane people left.
Wright’s a Marxist now?
I wish Obama was a Marxist.
But you go to vote with the hope you have, not the Marxist leader you want.
g:
Wright is *everything* now.
(doing the “finger to the open mouth gag gesture” from the Bratz movie.
http://www.screenit.com/movies/2007/bratz.html#ba
Yep, Patkin, Wright is whatever you want him to be, now.
Thanks, information-disseminating Media!
I always wonder how quickly I would go insane if the same thing happened to me, publicly.
Ace of Spades is hands down the absolute fugliest conservative blogger.
Just sayin.
when watching something like this, it is often difficult to distinguish between what I actually find offensive myself and what it is ingrained in me to believe others will find offensive.
So what I wonder when I read that is how often he has to force himself to be offended by something, maybe without even realizing the pressures that he’s placing on himself. The pressures could be the status quo, real or imagined career pressures, the inability to just get out of the mindset of hating certain things, just being in a lazy fucking rut.
It is a very telling statement. It seems to offer a glimmer that he sees more than one side of a situation, but is feeling crippled by an inability to break free from his own historic point of view. It’s something that we should all be aware of, because if we’re not struggling with it, we’re probably wankers.
Well it looks like our hour is over. That’ll be $150. Thanks….
What I mean to say is that most of us would get a little irritated by being defined with a single quote, in a lifetime of babbling for a living, and presumably a higher calling.
We haven’t heard anything nice Rev. Wright has said. Wouldn’t that piss you off at all?
John O:
And what I meant is that Wright, thanks to the fantastic quality of the right-wing blowhard-sphere is now everything possible to everybody. Is he a Marxist? If it suits your smear. Is he a black supremacist? If it suits your smear. Is he a Muslim? Why not, they’re sneaky! Is he the Rasputin to Barack’s Nicholas II? WHY NOT!
He isn’t even being defined by his single quote. He’s being defined by whatever the right-wing wants to make out like he said and make out which persona they need to harp on about Obama today.
Indubitably.
Joanna Russ once quoted someone, not Voltaire, to the effect that “Once we have overcome our ingrained terror of our neighbor’s opinion, we can begin to live freely; there is no second inquisition.” (I am looking for a source, but neither my Russ books nor Wikiquote are cooperating.)
Of course the reverse of this happy enlightenment is that once we’ve discovered the hollow clay backsides to our neighbors’ golden idols, we may forget to take the next step and walk around behind our own comfortable shibboleths.
For instance, Pastor Wright’s “inflammatory” comments did not seem particularly unusual to my understanding of a modern pastoral calling, even though Obama’s voice grates on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. This says less about Wright, or Obama, than it does about my own prejudices. Having a worldview skewed at a 90% angle to the Conventional Wisdom of the educated ruling classes in my society is not something I can take much credit for, but it does mean I need to remember at all times that my preferences cannot be taken as general among my peers. The blogoverse is loud with individuals who have taken the first step upon this adventure but not the second.
Actually, after reading so much about it I decided to check his remarks out, so I headed to youtube and watched a few clips of em (edited by Fox News, to be sure they’re the most inflammatory bits)…
…And thats it?
“God damn america” – assuming that “america” is the powerful elite that does all the tramplintg on its people etc, yeah. I’d go with “god help america” (especially those without health insurance), though.
The “AIDS was a genetic weapon”-bit was completely nuts, but it’s not like it’s teh first time a christian leader was confused about AIDS.
US foreign policy is a.) arrogant, b.) pisses people off, and c.) motivated the 9/11 attacks. Shush, they hate us for a OUR FREEDOM!
What part of those sermons are antisemitic, I’m not sure – he criticized ISRAELI POLICY (though tribalistic would, IMHO, be a better description of that situation…)
“Rich, white people” – the feminists probably would want to point out that they’re also all male. Me, I want to point out that the rich part is the problem, and they don’t much respect poor whites either, heh.
So, all in all, a bit nutty, buts that it. And he’s a christian preacher, so thats just part of the job description ;-).
“I just loved doing shit like that; it was my most favorite part of the job.”
Jennifer, I’m glad to hear I’m not alone in that.
And, I’m sorry, but I really didn’t hear anything that shocking in Wright’s statements. Of course, here in Colorado, Ward Churchill has been saying pretty much the same things, so perhaps I’m used to it by now.
What I think the problem is, is that Mr Wright said his piece in an angry way, and black people in America aren’t allowed to be angry. Martin Luther King made pretty much the same points but used uplifting language, so he wasn’t (and isn’t) as controversial. He even said, if I remember right, when JFK was assasinated, that we all shared the blame because we had fostered such a violent society.
In other words, you can go on a long tear about this country’s sins, but if you utter the 3 words “god damn America” the tiny-minds will light their torches and sharpen their pitchforks.
SamFromUtah: You forgot the biggest taboo in America, the suggestion that Israel has done bad things to Palestinians and that Palestinians might have some legitimate grievances.
You get “We must prevent Global Warming” editorials fairly often, but it’s extremely rare for people to criticize Israel’s policies towards its neighboors. It’s not unheard of, but the least suggestion that Israel isn’t a spotless lamb will be met with howls of anger from, well, everybody.
The fundamental weakness of Obama’s response to Wright is that Obama excepts and reinforces the idiotic political taboos that got Wright in trouble. Check it:
Obama doesn’t make a case against, say, the idea that white racism is endemic, he just arbitrarily declares it to be completely unacceptable.
If you ignore the fact that angry black men are scary, it’s actually very hard to argue with Wright. For example, black men are more likely to be sentenced to death then white men, so white racism is, in fact, killing black men with the full blessing of the US Government. Seems pretty bad to me.
I hope I don’t even need to explain why the idea that Palestinians only hate Israel because of Islam is mindbogglingly stupid.
After that earbleedingly false note, the rest of the speech is excellent. Maybe even brilliant. But it’s still part of the genre of “I’m sorry somebody I know doesn’t love America”, an inherently stupid genre.
And Obama just reinforces and accepts the political taboos that help destroy any chance of a meaningful public discourse in America.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me.
Oh, I’m with you, Patkin.
Obama may not see anything but caricatures of Wright for 7 months. Not good, as per Gavin.
All I’m saying is that if was standing in the Rev’s shoes, I’d dump about 6 hours worth of tape with me saying nice, Christian, Jesusesque things. I’m pretty sure after 20+ years there should be some nice stuff lying around.
“Joshua Michah Ezekiah Boutros-Boutros Marshall”…
…the fuck?
I think one of the best examples is the “petraeus-Betray Us” ad. Everyone was jumping over each other how distasteful and awful it is, but I bet in private most people were giggling over it…
“Most people” were out shopping for useless shit at the local mall, after which they stopped for a carcinogenic McBurger and returned home to watch more mindless television. “Most people” aren’t reading newspapers never mind blogs like this one or blogs like Ace’s (though there’s no doubt that readers of Ace and his kind are mindless mall shopping burger eaters).
Oh, according to Plumb Bob, Wright’s a Racialist Marxist. So, I guess we need to refer to our commissar as Obama Mar-X.
Martin Luther King made pretty much the same points but used uplifting language, so he wasn’t (and isn’t) as controversial.
Yeah, non-controversial figures always have the cross-dressing fascist director of the FBI making recordings of them having sex and demanding they commit suicide or they’ll release the tapes.
Any black man in America saying anything but “yassuh” is a fucking controversial threat to these peons.
So, I guess we need to refer to our commissar as Obama Mar-X.
Supreme Hussein Obama Mar-X. I’m down.
…Any black man in America saying anything but “yassuh” is a fucking controversial threat to these peons…
That’s kind of a raw way to put it but it’s pretty close to the truth. Check out Plumb Bob’s Obama rage. He can’t stop calling him names, putting words in his mouth, and so on. He’s all “if you’ve sold your soul to Obama” and on and on.
Did someone say Caruso?
The fact is you liberals don’t know what it’s really like in the Heartland and never will. Today, a great Heartland university (Drake) put a whitewash on the floor during the last few minutes of the first half against Western Kentucky. Let’s see Obama and his church spin that!
NCAA zen: Obama=Curry.
Yup. Racism and sexism are important issues, but generally speaking, class and power are even more important — with race and gender often playing into them.
The Beltway media especially is frighteningly groupthink, herd mentality, led by their most vapid minds.
““Most people” were out shopping for useless shit at the local mall, after which they stopped for a carcinogenic McBurger and returned home to watch more mindless television. “Most people” aren’t reading newspapers never mind blogs like this one or blogs like Ace’s (though there’s no doubt that readers of Ace and his kind are mindless mall shopping burger eaters).”
Word. Now, where’s that corkscrew ? It’s Marxist time !
Gavin, I think you nailed it there.
You LIE-bruls always go into a tizzy about race issues because you’re always playing “catch-up” with Conservatives on it. The nation’s first Conservative, Honest Abe Lincoln, loved the coloreds so much that he gave them their freedom (even if it meant killing about a million white Patriots of the Southland to do it). Then Wyoming became the first state to outlaw slavery in 1929…..your precious LIE-brul Massachusetts didn’t free them until 1962, in a bid to make Teddy Kennedy the President of the USA of America. Too bad Hussein Osama Barack didn’t go to the same church as our Secretary of State, the multi-talented Miss Condi Rice, goes to. Then again, maybe he’s too much of a pansy to worship on the high seas! The chaplin on her boat (the mighty U.S.S. Condolezzeia Rice, home of the “Fightin’ 45” ) has never been on the news for saying we should destroy our beloved nation in a nuclear holocast!
One of the other things, I’d note that is completely unacceptable to discuss in this country, *IS* class. Better to talk about racism or sexism without any context about the economic struggle that has to be covered up by that sort of distraction.
Because if you talk about class seriously, you’re a leftist whackjob, a communist, a socialist, someone trying to destroy this country. Because what the people in power, the ones in those higher classes understand better than anyone is that if we demanded a serious examination of class in this country, they”d be well-fucked.
So, obviously Rugged, the question is, what does that chaplain have to hide?!
There’s a nice OldTestamenty sermon from Wright on Sullivan’s site — hardly anti-semitic at all.
But as for the anti-Zionist elements of Wright’s more famous sermon, it’s best to keep in mind the basic asymmetry of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the Israelis, it’s a religious matter; for the Palestinians, it’s a matter of property rights.
I had never seen David Caruso actually act in anything until I caught one episode of that Miami thing last night. The whole time I was thinking… are you kidding me? This chump quit a regular acting gig because he thought he was going to make it big in movies? He SUCKS. He is laughable.
So, obviously Rugged, the question is, what does that chaplain have to hide?!
He may be objectively pro-oil (and this could well be the subject of most of his sermons), but this is still a capitalist country, no thanks to commies like you.
Actually, I think Patkin is right. I just don’t think he explores his own hypothesis to it’s logical conclusion.
Forces have been set in motion that are going to destroy the middle class. Lou Dobbs is a racist cracker asshole, but he’s not actually entirely wrong. When the divide grows to the point that children are dying and families cannot see a path upward, despite all the propaganda put forth by the increasingly desperate plutocracy, violence is the inevitable result. Will the plutocracy suffer? Rarely, and only in those cases where they made insufficient plans for survival in a real meltdown.
But the nature and texture of this nation will change. Wealth, meaning wealth that can be distributed, will be concentrated on the coasts. Food production will be concentrated in the interior. The negotiations that ensue after the paroxism of violence will determine what our future looks like. But bear in mind, with oil in the realm of 225 euros a barrel, which is where it is likely to settle for a time, transport will be a luxury, and materials not produced nearby will carry a heavy premium.
Civilization is looking at a significant setback while it realigns itself around the current producers of wealth, the mideast, russia and china…
mikey
If you ignore the fact that angry black men are scary,
Nah, not unless you’re asking them to accept $20 for sucking their cocks in a men’s room.
Yeah, at the time MLK might have been less controversial then, I dunno, the Black Panthers, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t scare the shit out of the white establishment.
Republican operatives have commandeered Martin Luther King Jr.’s image and whitewashed it, which is part of the reason Wright is an issue today.
Republican media tools have made MLK into “one of the good ones”, an utterly non-threatening teddy bear who brought change about the right way, unlike all those scary angry black men who were mean to us, which is the wrong way to bring about change.
It’s tragic, but the guy’s image is now used to quash rebellion on the part of the downtrodden.
One thing that annoys me is that left-wingers never use this whitewashing to our advantage. The good Reverend is, at this point, completely untouchable. Left wingers could take advantage of this by using the man’s own words and the events in his life to help make sense of modern events.
For example, that FBI wiretapping thing would seem, to me, to be extremely germane to the current discussions about warrantless wiretaps.
You could say “In the past, when given unlimited power, the government has always abused it. The FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide, using evidence of his infidelities they’d gathered through constant surveillance. This clearly shows that it’s not just Terrorists who have to fear unlimited government surveillance, but anybody who makes the slightest challenge to the status quo.”
But nobody seems to ever bring that up.
Anne L. – I thought my google-fu was strong but I’m having a hard time with that one myself.
One could. But it would be a waste of time, just like the “educating saul” waste of time in the last thread.
Yeah, non-controversial figures always have the cross-dressing fascist director of the FBI making recordings of them
I said “less controversial” not “non-controversial”. That is, you could go to just about any school and get them to hang up a picture of MLK; a picture of Malcolm X, not so much. This despite the fact that they were about equally radical in their policy proprosals.
One thing that annoys me is that left-wingers never use this whitewashing to our advantage. The good Reverend is, at this point, completely untouchable. Left wingers could take advantage of this by using the man’s own words and the events in his life to help make sense of modern events.
I don’t think many liberals in America even know the full scope of his activism and beliefs. I sure didn’t for a long time.
P.A.T.: Yeah, it’s often like between him making his “I have a dream” speech and him getting shot, people remain willfully ignorant that he was saying a load of other stuff that fucking well needed to be said, but was a lot more fiery in rhetoric.
His stuff on the Vietnam War in particular was excellent, and I wouldn’t be totally surprised if that was really what they finally got him for.
My question is “Why did the lesbian Sailor Scout need to be Sailor Uranus?”
alright, it’s friday night around here.
ZCab from Fleury estates, 50/50 cab/zinfandel mix from a boutique bottler in the middle of napa. fruit, tannin, BIG (16% alcohol) and fuckin’ tasty.
just the one glass. just the one.
and way upthread–quintuple word score to satan’s dirty underwear.
The fact is that Martin Luther King Jr was an agent of communism and someone who would be on the fringe today if he were alive.
MLK’s biggest step towards communism was when his Soviet backers told him to undermine the war effort in Vietnam.
The only thing that Obama and MLK have in common is that they both plagiarized
Ray Charles’s Hyena Burger
Ingredients:
5 bunches creamy hyena, confidingly scrambled
5 jiggers delectable buffalo milk mozzarella
1 Manouri cheese, intolerantly pickled
7 tablespoons salamander tongue
1 tablespoon baking powder
5 tablespoons unsweeted chocolate
Pick over the ingredients indignantly and discard excess tin. Separate hyena throat from tail. Mock tail. Stir the buffalo milk mozzarella with the Manouri cheese over medium heat in a wok. Slather resulting goo over the hyena. Rinse – very stylishly – the salamander tongue, baking powder, and the unsweeted chocolate. Heap the latter combination on to the former. Abandon for 34 hours. Serves 7 rotten individuals with agile stomachs.
Wingnuts, come clean.
and I think it’s a ridiculous bit of pandering to make MLK’s birthday a holiday while not making Lincoln’s birthday a holiday.
One of the good things McCain did was vote against making MLK’s birthday a holiday.
Thank you. But up here in the PacNW it’s all Pinot Noir, all the time.
And sammiches!
And Pie!
I like Pie!
Oh, I said that stuff about republicans as teenagers, although I don’t remember where.
Nobody’s going to go out of their way to vote for a boring old guy like McCain. Honestly, his head looks like a sack of steamed pudding.
An important message for Ken Pollack and Michael E. O’Hanlon.
Americans just watch too much fucking television and they take it too seriously. It has created this pop propaganda, magnifying the importance of utterly insignificant events, because that is much easier than looking for something genuine.
Turn off your TV’s!
What is this thing ‘TV’?
It’s very important that you discard the excess tin…
‘Cause that would suck….
mikey
what steve EVFuture said, minus the whole “turn off your tv’s” thing.
a guy’s gotta eat Steve, and i’m seriously underqualified for any other job.
and i’ve moved on to the legal grade “organic” outdoor pre-roll, IYKWIM.
It’s an obsolete piece of technology… perhaps you remember it? It was sort of like the Internet, but not very interactive at all. I think mine has been buried underneath a bunch of junk in the closet for at least 4-5 years.
My TV’s what? (I don’t watch much TV anyway, but mostly because I don’t have the chance)
I think one of the problems is people are told not to care. They’re told they’re too stupid to bother with such things. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I don’t think our nation is filled with idiots, just people who feel they can do no better than to zone out and consume crap.
“This Old House” is pretty spiffy.
…yeah, that’s all I got tonight.
We need our campfire stories, even when the glowing light is electric.
I didn’t watch tv in the 80s and 90s and now I download all the decent tv shows i missed (like Seinfeld) and the decent stuff that’s being produced today sans the annoying advertising.
Battlestar Gallactica’s final season is coming in April.
“…i’ve moved on to the legal grade “organic” outdoor pre-roll, IYKWIM”
You just keep telling yourself that, Robert…
How are the dems going to compete against this?
foreigner said,
March 22, 2008 at 7:04
How are the dems going to compete against this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaP9eiWuX3s
IMFGTISGDAICSI!
Thanks foreigner, I feel a lot more positive about my own life after watching that video.
sums it up.
that video’s a riot. I like how the middle aged lady seems to forget the lyrics every now and then. or maybe they’re just out of sync.
This chump quit a regular acting gig because he thought he was going to make it big in movies? He SUCKS. He is laughable
I think Caruso is the most hilarious person on the planet. I’ve never been sure whether or not he’s aware of it. That kind of adds to his “appeal”, so to speak.
Shit, I’d be so much happier voting for Wright than Obama. What did the man say? That the US supports state terror, that the CIA sold drugs, and that Hillary was white. Also: The sky is blue, the pope shits in the woods, and anything approaching truth during a presidential election is going cause a giant freak out.
Also, since you brought it up, David Caruso’s “charisma” boils down to taking his sunglasses off and putting them on. His Raybans have more talent in their stupid dark tinting than he has in in his entire family. And Paris Hilton is nothing more than a walking argument for an 85% estate tax. These things are self evident.
For example – there are certain oxes you just don’t gore on liberal blogs, regardless of how sound your logic or airtight your case, because you already know that someone’s gonna squeal and then a lot of secondary squealrers will join in, and then the whole thread is going to degenerate into an increasingly childish insult and put-down fest.
I don’t know if I agree with this, actually. I think what you describe does happen – hell, mention religion in a less-than-complimentary way – but I don’t think it’s because people are afraid to make hamburger of certain sacred cows. I think it’s more a combination of most people not using sound logic or airtight cases on potential delicate subjects, and then getting all shitty when that’s pointed out. Furthermore, a lot of folks seem to believe that if you make a comment about actions made by a certain group they belong to, you are talking directly about them.
Sample: “A lot of white people have little or no contact with either black churches or, frankly, black people, so they don’t fully understand the experience and, thus, sometimes make comments that are racist, even if inadvertantly.” “Hey, I’m a white person and you just called me a racist. Why, this one annecdote will totally destroy your idea of me being a racist, even though you didn’t mention my name.” And the thread dies screaming.
I don’t know if that’s sloppy writing on the original writer’s part or just an indication of how myopic and self-absorbed most of us are. Plus, if you’re bitching out someone else and making them explain why they didn’t call you racist, you don’t actually have to think about something you do that, hey, might just be fucking racist. Ya see this in convorsations about how much respect atheists should show Christianity (’cause, let’s face it, they don’t give a fuck about what atheists think about Janism). This is America: It’s all about me, motherfucker.
The one exception might be the whole Israeli-Palestinian thing. I’ve seen two liberal, secular, NPR-listenin’ upper-middle class WASP’s cul-de-sac honkies get into a screaming match about Israel. I don’t understand why they can’t just fucking stop blowing each other up, just cut it the fuck out, and I do not wish to get into a screaming match about who really deserves the right to blow up the other side’s kids. I don’t know where all that rage comes from, people can’t debate that without it getting ugly. I don’t know why.
But, hey…fuck Ace and fuck the rest of the racist assholes like him. If all they can get on Obama is that he knows a scary black man really well, then feh. Dig it, man, I spent the evening with the distaff members of an upper-middle-class black Catholic family (one of the daughters is a co-worker), all Obama voters and all know why folks like Ace are making such a stink about this Wright non-happening. Folks like Ace have been living in fear of this day for a long, long time. The best part of it is no matter what, Hillary or Obama, Ace and his ilk will be facing their worst fear of all:
Change.
I feel the same way about American Idol, but people are dumb, and prefer things that are familiar and that they can comprehend. Caruso taking his sunglasses off dramatically in every single scene he’s ever been in actually seems cool to a depressingly large number of people, precisely because they’ve seen it so many times and it’s an empty gesture. If it had meaning it might be threatening, because the mouth breathers would have to wonder if they “got it”.
This, I think, is a con job. I don’t disagree, but the idea that the press, and what they collectively push, is irrational, or that they reach their oddly unified underlying narrative via the random collection of immature impulses, is, to use good ole paranoid speak, what they want you to think. Pundits and the rest of the press are hacks, they believe what they’re paid to believe, by and large. Crimes committed against photogenic young white women become national stories because it’s time for a distraction. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy, just that I think there’s less of a pack mentality at play than is commonly assumed. It’s, ultimately, the same question as historians will be asking about the Bush Admin for centuries; what part incompetence and what part malicious corruption?
Paris Hilton is a national treasure!
Not like that skank Dr. Laura!
Yuck!
http://www.thestar.com/Canada/Columnist/article/349621
Yep.
Kinda ironic to see someone who’s so keen on accusing his enemies of anti-Semitism referring to one of them, who happens to be Jewish, as “Ezekieh Boutros-Boutros”…
(Not that Boutros Boutros-Ghali was, but then, who am I to probe the mysteries of his mind?)
The fact is, liberals just suck. They have no connection to reality. You are gonna loose loose loose the election and we in the heartland will take our country back. Amen.
First of all, I think the movie was “Jerry Maguire,” not “Clueless.” So he didn’t even get the movie right, let alone the letter of the alphabet. The dipshit.
Second of all, a contest to see who’s the fugliest wacko-wingnut blogger would be hotly contested, and while BaconBits would definitely be a finalist, I would like to believe we’re above judging people based on their physical appearances. For example, the person upthread who suggested John McCain’s head looks like a sack of steamed pudding should be admonished that the man has had skin cancer, so cut him some slack. Besides, the fact that his face looks like a huge dollop of shaving cream shouldn’t overshadow the many many legitimate reasons to oppose his candidacy for president.
Thirdly, has anyone pointed out yet that the things Rev. Wright said have a certain element of, what is it, oh yeah, VALIDITY to them? The cowed crowd tolerates an emperor with no clothes but fears the audacity of anyone who points it out.
I have loose loose bowels.
P.S. Amen.
Hey! I didn’t say he looks like spotted dick, did I? That showed a tremendous amount of restraint.
And look at that head! It has nothing to do with his skin and everything to do with the sack-shaped lumpy thing with eyes and a mouth.
But I apologize to McCain for calling him a suet pudding. That’s insulting to puddings.
Well said Gavin M.
That very well could be. The show TMZ says it all. At some point you have to wonder does anyone care that Paris is in jail, or whoever is doing whatever. I like to ask if this is going to effect me and my life? If not I really don’t care.
Matt T – I’ll tell you of what I speak: one time I was involved in a discussion on a liberal blog about anti-war protests. I pointed out that, in protests here in my city, organizers pretty quickly managed to winnow the crowd down to the far fringe left, by refusing to limit the scope to, you know, anti-war. Instead, it became about vegetarianism, Wicca, cooperative living arrangements, global warming, saving the whales, etc etc etc etc all heaped on top of “anti-war”. Predictably, after being subjected to a number of shitty poets and bands, the middle-aged and older portions of the crowd, along with large chunks of the younger people, just gave up and left. My criticism was that all too often, this type of event seems to be dominated by a group of people who cannot or will not focus, who see it as an opportunity to take a captive audience and lecture them about every pet issue they have, or force them to listen to their shitty poetry, and that ultimately it alienates people who would otherwise be with you on the issue at hand. No sooner did my post appear than one of those people with a whole lot of pet issues just completely lost her shit and went in to martyr mode, with a lot of the other participants of the discussion getting on board more because they “liked” that particular commenter than because she was making any sense. My point of course was not that there’s anything wrong with being vegetarian, Wiccan, a commune lover or an environmentalist – the problem is with being such a living stereotype that you are unable to focus on a single issue with like-minded people and end up alienating them instead because you’ve failed to appreciate that they may not be interested in every one of your pet liberal causes. The martyr and her supporters pretty quickly took the argument from the level of the abstract to “prove” that those of us who could see how counter-productive their tactics were are obviously neo-cons or Nazis, which was why we just couldn’t see how much sense it made to throw the whole fucking leftist enchilada at anyone and everyone who might happen to agree with us on one particular issue.
Ultimately, it got ugly and very, very stupid.
Anne Laurie, PeeJ:
From Mark Williams, “The Talk of the Town: You; Rethinking privacy in an immodest age,” MIT Technology Review, November/December 2007
Anybody see this? Chris Wallace (!) ripping Fox & Friends for spending two hours on Obama’s use of the phrase “typical white person” instead of, you know, discussing something of substance.
I think my favorite part is at the end when Wallace says he still loves the show and the F&Fers whine at Wallace about how it’s “an odd way of showing it.” Petulance, thy name is wingnut pundit!
I saw that, Dan Someone. I couldn’t watch the whole thing because, nasty as I am sometimes, I just can’t watch people get their asses kicked like that. But I did enjoy the look on the face of the brown haired guy. He couldn’t believe what was happening and looked like a kid who had been caught in Dad’s pron stash. By his mom.
Susan: His face is lumpy and misshapen because of treatment for skin cancer on his face. You seem unfamiliar with the toll cancer treatments can take on one’s physical appearance. May it ever remain so for you and yours.
As I said, there are many many more valid reasons to oppose McCain. His misshapen and lumpy face is the least of them.
Sorry, MizNicky. I didn’t intend to be callous about cancer.
Well, all righty then. I didn’t mean to get all snooty patooty either.
At any rate, any way you wanna look at it, McCainiac is scary.
re David Caruso:
A summary of CSI Miami for people who, like me, don’t watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceHnUrUAbho
The Weebl & Bob version for people who, like me, prefer it:
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/CSI/
Seeing as McCain has no problem at all with letting people die of cancer if they happen to get it while uninsured, fuck him and his burlap face.
Hey, I can say that, I had cancer too. That’s how it works, right? Lucky for me, I did have insurance, but had that lump been detected after my planned cross-country move, I would not have been insured. Now I’m stuck here in podunk working a job I hate for horrible pay because I can’t give that insurance up, and I’m lucky to be here. Had I moved, I’d just be dying right now. McCain thinks this is a dandy situation. So like I said, fuck Lumpy-jowls, fuck his free, gold-plated treatment, and fuck anyone who dares say the US has the best health care in the world.
The way I see it, McShame could use a few more lumps on his face, courtesy of this shovel. What the hell would he care, he’d have half a dozen doctors on hand to fix him right up. Meanwhile, a poor working mother has to decide whether she wants to take her sick child to the doctor or pay the utilities. A poor working man has to ignore that pain in his side, because his $8 an hour non-union construction gig doesn’t give insurance, and he has to save up some money for the jobless winter to come. A poor family has to live like paupers, despite working two full-time jobs, because the cheapest insurance they could find was $2000 a month with a $10k deductible. I could go on, but you all get the point.
Fuck Republicans, fuck pseudocrats, fuck anyone opposed to universal health care, and doublefuck Potatohead McCain.
Dan Someone, thank you for finding the quote I wanted!
And Jrod, I agree with your statements re Old John, and I hope that your personal situation continues to improve.
Thank you, Anne. I hope we live to see a day in America when medical care is not a matter of wealth or a matter of luck, but rather a matter of course.
Ace of Spades is hands down the
absolute fugliestconservative blogger believed by the greatest number of other people to be absolutely fugly</b/.Fixed.