Church of Hate

The old cliche has rats leaving a sinking ship.  Southern Baptists aren't that smart and it seems they do intend to go down with their foul and foundering wreck of antique bigotry.

Lifelong member President Jimmy Carter left that self-righteous ship of fools about 4 years ago over Church teachings about the subservient role of women and I'm waiting to see who tumbles into the lifeboats over the latest decision to dump the Boy Scouts because they decided on May 24th that they no longer are going to excommunicate gay Scouts.

It's a "Moral" thing you see and it's not really bigotry because they justify

it with some ancient political propaganda they somehow attribute to some god and so they can, in all good and righteous confidence recommend that Southern Baptist Churches all over the South withdraw support from about 100,000 scouts.  I wonder how many of those will, lacking something decent to do after school or in the Summer, lacking the impetus toward self-improvement will wander toward making bad personal decisions and wind up getting into trouble and into jail where predatory Southern Baptists can recruit them for the faith as though youth homes and penitentiaries  were prep schools and seminaries. 

Of course the SBC was a supporter of Slavery and Segregation because it was a moral thing and a Biblical one - not because they're a bunch of bigots and moral cowards. It's what God wants and who can question the absolute truth of anything someone put into God's mouth for his own purposes?

Yes, yes, they decided to stop beating that dead horse and renounced all that back in 1995 -- decades after the horse died but perhaps that's only because they had gays and women to turn to while blathering about God's word.  One wonders what they will choose as the next life raft when the world of decency, respect and morality, in due course rejects once again that rotting prison hulk of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Those little town blues

Small town newspapers.  When I first moved here over 11 years ago, Little Boots was in the white house and although the fear machine was running on afterburner and everyone was in the process of never forgetting and sending money to Taiwan manufacturers of plastic automobile flag holders, you still had headlines declaring that some local fisherman had caught a record Snook or irate letters about litter in the park.  Now it's outrage.  Every day. Even the fish are angry.

Printed opprobrium grew over the Bush years, at least those quasi-literate, misspelled, cliche-ridden  letters to the editor written in impotent rage at Mexican farm workers, people on food stamps, Liberals, immigrants, ethnic minorities, liberals, Muslims, atheists, Jews, Democrats -- did I mention Liberals?  Yes, sure, I and a few others sometimes wrote ( brilliantly, I must admit) alternate opinons, much to the further wrath of the toothless unwashed, but it's a small town as I said, and word gets around and  I really don't want to carry a gun in my bathing suit or they may think I'm happy to see them.   Discretion, valor and all that.

Of course it's hardly new.  I remember, back in the mid 60's, living in long hair and sandals in the tiny, rural, University town of Hamilton New York.  I remember when the school had an open symposium on Communism, and the good, go-to-church and keep-Christ-in-Christmas locals flooded the opinion page with demands to bomb the bastards back to the stone age - now.  Small town newspapers.  I wish I could believe that they didn't represent America, that they weren't just some boil on the ass of an otherwise great nation.

Take the Lincoln Journal, of Lincoln County, West Virginia.  Seems public sentiment supported the termination of a teacher for fear she would "turn her students gay."  Faced with a reader's  voice mail (I used reader loosely here)  asserting that

 “We were really glad to hear that School Board is getting rid of them queers, The next thing is we need to get rid of all the niggers, the spics, the kikes and the wops.”

they decided to print it.  I don't fault them. Such people should be heard so we know what we're dealing with -- and where they are.  Now my local paper would probably not have, and it doesn't have a voice-mail line for illiterates.  Most of us here after all, come from elsewhere where literacy of a certain minimal level is fairly common, but those sentiments aren't exactly rare with the locals either.

“You know even them Catholics, they are wrong as baby eaters. We need to clear them people out and have good, white, God fearing Christians and everybody else needs to be put to death for their abominations. We’ll keep Lincoln County white and right. Thank you. "

You're welcome. White and Right indeed. I hope you do just that and perhaps building a wall will help the local economy for a while.  In fact I hope everyone like you moves to Lincoln County. It would be nice to have all y'all in one place and  I hope there's room. I'd hate to have to use up more than one of our precious nukes, but as for the stone age -- are you sure you're ready for that big an upgrade?

Swingin' round the circle

Long before we had Steven Colbert with his espousal of conservative views that reveal trenchantly cynical commentary beneath, we had Petroleum V. Nasby writing in the dialect of the South in praise of the "secessionists" and their northern friends the Copperheads. But it works both ways and the infamous Palm Beach man of the people, Rush Limbaugh is borrowing the technique to express his gratitude to God that we have a man in the White House like Barack Obama.

Such a character as Colbert uses takes strength and skill to maintain, but it's a strength that Rush either doesn't have or doesn't want to have. Like a dog who just can't sit still with the smell of bacon in the air, it didn't take long, yesterday night, for Limbaugh to crack under the strain of decency and honesty and reveal what hunger lies beneath.

"I, me, my, three of the most used words in President Obama's media appearance last night, not a single intelligence adviser, not a single national security adviser, military adviser, came up with the idea...not one of them... according to Obama, had the ability to understand the need to get DNA. This was Obama's message last night,"

said Limbaugh. I suppose he simply didn't listen to the same speech I heard and perhaps he wrote the script before it even aired, but at any rate even the faux appearance of pleasure at our success in doing away with mass murderer Osama bin Laden was too much of a strain and the cynical, dishonest and slimy hate just had to come out.

No, Obama just couldn't be honest enough to admit that George W. Bush really was responsible for it. Couldn't resist telling us that it would have been better just to carpet bomb Abottabad and perhaps start another trillion dollar war against Andorra. He couldn't even be a man enough to admit being a Muslim and to stop fooling people with his birth certificate. But then what can we expect of a black man and a Democrat?

Murdering Christmas

Make no mistake about it, what the insurgents are calling the War on Christmas is nothing but an assault on our religious freedom and like a dog with a bone, or a teenager on the telephone, they will not stop of their own accord.

"There are people out there who are rewriting history and people who are buying into it because they never learned history:"

said the fellow next to me at the bar, a former teacher whose wife is a Glenn Beck devotee. We nodded together like bobble head dolls although I knew full well we were envisioning the same people on the opposite side of the game. He wasn't talking about the Fox people, the Fundamentalists, the sinister bastards rearranging the sets and props and actors on the stage of history to further their lust for power. The TV Christianists doing it under the pretext of educating the public that real history is fake history -- and at this time of year, although there are many distractions, their tawdry tableau is arranged to display the fiction of the Christian Fathers who intended that this country, the United States of America, be a "Christian nation" in the same fashion as medieval Europe.

I'm not in a position to say that we ever had an educational system that didn't serve as political indoctrination. I do remember being 'taught' that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, which institution was, as it was related, moribund already -- and of course General Custer was still being presented as a hero in my youth in the segregation era, but a long standing tradition of doing wrong is hardly an argument for continuing it, to anything but a reactionary mind.

"Can you imagine it? Some people are actually offended when I say Merry Christmas!"

said the man on TV. I turned on my new battery operated portable flat screen that I just bought as part of my home hurricane preparedness kit this morning and was reminded of the fact that if one can only get broadcast TV in this area, at least half of what you can receive are Jesus channels. Note that I didn't say Christian. There's a difference. Frankly, I've never encountered offense at these words, although I have seen the Pavlovian reaction: "well you can't say that any more." Yes you can.

"Can you imagine it, some schools are having 'Winter festivals!' What do they say? Merry cold weather? I don't like cold weather, I like CHRISSSSSSSSSTMAS!"

Indeed some people look carefully in your face to gauge any hidden reaction when they say the formula. Merry Christmas, for the next week is a test, a shibboleth, not a wish. "Are you one of us?"

Yes, some people are rewriting history, making up stories about Christmas being made illegal, Christians being persecuted; about big-box home improvement stores ignoring Christmas and acknowledging holidays of nefarious, un-American religions. They're good enough at the game and we're gleefully gullible enough that we can stand in the middle of an acre of Christmas trees in the Home Depot parking lot, arms laden with the Christmas junk just purchased inside, and believe that the undoubtedly MuslimJewishAtheist owners thereof are trying to take away your right to worship trees and reindeer and a jolly fat saint. Merry Christmas -- say it often - say it ugly.

And they're not going to stop. They're not going to go away. They're not going to shut up until enough of us shout them down and make what used to be a happy season into the war they, in their sinister, apocalyptic insanity, so devoutly wish for.

The narcissism of Small Differences

Another day, another triumph for malignant stupidity. I have a filter on my e-mail program that deletes most anything that mentions the President. Odds are it's more crap about finding proof that Obama is a Muslim, whether it's in goat entrails, the arrangement of the stars, some spliced together video or some total fabrication by one of Fox's Friends.

I may add filters for the words Mosque, Muslim and Islam as well because like the voices in the madman's head, mad America sees Muslims everywhere and hates them: in any curved line -- even in NASA mission patches and most of all in buildings with Domes. You know those round arches found at St. Peters, on many Orthodox basilicas and even that cathedral of Democracy, the US Capitol building. If it curves like the new moon, like the orbit of an electron, the path of a rocket: if it has a dome, it's Muslim and it's evil.

Take The Light of the World multidenominational church outside Phoenix, Arizona. All truth, decency and sanity notwithstanding the mad morons of America want you to think it's a mosque and for no other reason that it's domed. Looks to the Demented Idiots of Arizona like a Mosque - must be a center of America-hating Islamic Jihad.

In response, there's a banner now waving at the construction site:

"If you think we are different you are wrong, we are building a Christian house of prayer."

Isn't that part of the problem? Are Muslims "Different?" What about Jews, Mormons, Secular Humanists, Buddhists, Hindus, Unitarians, Freemasons? DIFFERENT! BE AFRAID!

The Angle of reflection

A significant part of the Republican "message" has been that our secular laws derive from a largely mythical "Judeo-Christian" system of values. Yes, the adage about strange bedfellows is true, but politics and religion, being in bed together, tend to spawn strange offspring and to dress them up as reason and decency.

Of course it's true that a great number of our laws do reflect religious prohibitions, biases and attitudes and those laws often criminalize behavior that involves no harm to people or property and interferes with personal liberty, but those taboos seem to be shared by a great number of cultures which adhere to religions from Animism to Confucianism. There's little that's unique about our alleged Christian values and from the start, many of those values were at odds with our independence and our freedom. Yes, it's hard to think of a religion of any kind that has no rules of behavior but we're talking about Americans -- the people at the center of the universe who don't really think much about thinking or the necessity of reason.

So when we pass laws forbidding dancing on Friday, the observation or rejection of Christmas, the reading of certain books: when we make laws concerning who may live together, have sex together and in what way, we have illustrations of religious law intruding into secular life in America. Such things are slowly eroding and always changing, of course, but the prospect of a group that has always composed a small minority in the US: The Muslims, supporting certain religious rules within their own congregations and amongst their adherents, seems to have all the bells in the national belfry ringing in discord.

Islamic religious law, says Sharon Angle, is "taking hold" in some American cities and that's a "militant terrorist situation." No, really. I suppose it's wildly different in a terrorist sort of way for Jews to forbid Pork and Lobster or cheeseburgers or to require prayer at certain times and even to mandate beards or distinctive clothing. I suppose it's not the same thing for Catholics to forbid divorce and require celibacy of certain people and distinctive clothing for the clergy. The special Mormon underwear? Prohibitions against alcohol and coffee? Is the Church of Latter Day Saints "taking over" Utah and the constitution taken to the shredder? No, there's no militant terrorist situation there. Is there really a chance that the constitution will be supplanted by the Amish Ordnung even if an area has a majority of that peaceful faith? So why are we afraid and what are we really afraid of? Why does Sharon Angle say:

"It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States?"

Well, of course we wouldn't pay any attention to such a person as she if she weren't outrageous, but if we were a nation that could notice that these religious rules are in no respect taking hold of municipal governments and in fact are optional personal choices in a nation that allows us to make such choices freely, perhaps Sharon Angle would be all alone in some little room raving at the walls and not on national TV farting out her fallacies, misrepresentations and hysterical lies -- and God help us, running for the US Senate. Sure there would be something fundamentally wrong, but more certainly: it isn't happening here. Religion, say the courts, gives no license to break the law whether that faith demands we strangle a wayward daughter or drag a gay man behind a pickup truck or poison our congregation with cyanide.

The key word here is "Foreign." Although virtually all our religions are imported and many religious groups immigrated simply so that they could have communities with their own religious rules, Angle wants to reinforce the chauvinism of a certain kind of self-styled Christian who would be quite happy with a massively powerful government intent on substituting their own 'Christian' restrictions for our secular constitution. She is, most ironically, the best example of what she wants us to fear. Muslims and certain other people will always be "foreign" and most of us will never pause to reflect upon the horrible consequences that xenophobic, nationalistic bit of European bigotry had in the last century.

But we're not a nation of critical thinkers; at least not enough of us to give reason or even common decency a fighting chance. Bigotry, our real national religion, forbids it after all and we make demons out of people who don't want to participate or worst of all, don't want any religion forced on them.

Angle would like to pass on her contagious nightmare and indeed I know too many people who share it and who will refuse to be persuaded that even if we someday have an Ayatollah of Texas, he's not going to be able to use force to punish reprobates and infidels or have any more secular authority than an Archbishop or TV evangelist. They refuse to remember when Roman Catholics were a "foreign" religion to be feared for inquisitions and foreign rule over Americans. Somehow that "hopey-changey" thing did work our fairly well for them and for the many others who have had to contend with the Know-Nothing nativists and the Sharon Angles of their day.

German Tea

"All Jews share a particular gene, Basques share a certain gene that sets them apart,"

said Thilo Sarrazin, a board member at The Bundesbank, Germany's central bank and a former finance minister of the city state of Berlin. It's not the first time he's put his shiny black Stiefel in his mouth or gave geneticists cause to groan. His book, Deutschland schafft sich ab, (Germany destroys itself) which just came out, contains many gems like:

"In every European country, due to their low participation in the labour market and high claim on state welfare benefits, Muslim migrants cost the state more than they generate in added economic value. In terms of culture and civilisation, their notions of society and values are a step backwards."

Sounds familiar to me, but perhaps that's only my special Jew gene talking. You know, the gene for remembering. Is he only stating the truth despite "political correctness" or is he just another one the Inglorious Basterds missed? Depends on how much tea you drink, I guess. Of course he doesn't exist in a vacuum and there are Germans who applaud his audacity, if you can call it that. There are even Thilo T-shirts available on line.

"I don't want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in a mostly Muslim country where Turkish and Arabic are widely spoken, women wear headscarves and the day's rhythm is determined by the call of the muezzin."

I guess he won't be resettling in Detroit or the Borough of Queens, but even there, it's a long way from where we are to sullying the ethnic/religious purity of the Vaterland or good old USA either.

Germany of course was once a place where Jews once made great strides toward blending in socially, professionally and even religiously and we see where that got them. Its conceivable that Muslims might make the same effort to become echt Deutsch, but will they see it as being worth it with Schmutz Taschen ( if you'll pardon my calque) like Sarrazin roaming about the beer halls and board rooms? Perhaps certain Muslims of my acquaintance will re-examine their strongly held assertion that Germany wouldn't have done what they did when they did it, when the thought arises that they might be next. I doubt it though.

Of course it's not going to come to that. Germany learned a lesson we're still refusing even to do the homework for and Sarrazin will have to find other employment: politics, possibly. I wonder how good his English is.

The price of freedom

It's something to give lip service to when you're proposing or conducting a war of aggression, preferably a hopeless, poorly organized one. When it comes to tolerating the views of others, the freedom of others: speech, religion and the rest of what the bill of rights guarantees, our hypocrisy comes shining through. Our cowardice, our irrational fear, our bigotry.

My thanks to Libby at The Impolitic for disgusting me with yet another view of America that will be broadcast around the world and justify more hatred of us and more acts against us and more revulsion at our pose of being a moral example. We're not and as Jefferson said " I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." If I were a believer, I'd be headed away faster than Lot could run out of Sodom.




It's infuriating that one of the bravest men I've had the privilege to observe was called a coward by a mob too cowardly to allow religious freedom in New York, cowardly enough to make disgusting religious taunts they'd never tolerate against themselves even if they were accurate -- which they would probably be. I tremble for my country. I tremble with rage at the bigots, the cowards, the enraged hordes of ignorant savages and I tremble at he dawning conclusion that perhaps we have no reason to be proud of America and that we've rarely been any better than this.

There is a price to be paid for freedom, but it can't be paid for in this kind of currency. It's not paid for by attacking Iraq or by supporting corrupt governments or toppling democracies abroad. It's certainly not paid for rioting against freedom and the allegedly sacred rights of man. If this is the voice of America, everything our enemies say about us is true and we have no right to pretend to be a moral example to anyone.

Das Unbehagen in der Kultur

I've had enough of American TEA to be able to say with confidence that it has noting to do with any tax burden, real or imagined. What it seems to be is a collection of people searching for some rationalization for angers they don't full understand: anger about the demands of civilization, anger about the need for tolerance, being forced to live in a heterogeneous culture, a changing culture, a culture demanding more understanding and more education and more responsibility than they feel capable of. Not all of them are stupid or ignorant, but without the stupid and ignorant, they'd hardly make enough noise to be heard, even with the complicity and amplification provided by Fox News. They're much like the discontents Freud discussed, like the bomb bearing discontents abroad we tell ourselves hate us for "our freedoms."

Tom Tancredo has latched on to the Tea Party movement after being ousted from office by his constituents, in part because he needs to believe he wasn't rejected by his real constituents, but by an undesirable element who shouldn't be allowed to vote. That this disjointed movement contains many people who believe this is a Protestant white man's country and that others should feel grateful just to be allowed here and should not vote or be otherwise uppity is obvious. Hence when Tancredo told the Tea Party Thursday that President Obama was elected only because

"we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country,"

it fell on grateful ears.

Mr. Obama's educational and intellectual capabilities and achievements are an obvious irritation to the sort of people Tancredo hopes to ingratiate himself with and when Tancredo allows them to feel warmly supported in their belief that the Harvard Scholar is stupid (he's black after all) and his success due to the stupidity of voters, their inhibitions melt away. They can tell themselves that they've been right all along for opposing civil rights for anyone but true (WASP) Americans and that the success of the civil rights movement has meant disaster for America. Not of course, the disaster of insidious economic policy, corruption, contrived and unnecessary wars and upside down tax structure, but the disaster of having a black president.

Ironically, so far only the darkness of Mr. Obama's complexion and the ability to speak clearly make him stand out among the presidents of the last century, but it's progress -- the idea of progress itself that motivates the snarling in the street. The golden era of laissez faire, white man's paradise they long for exists only in that nebulous Disneyland of the Conservative mind, where we didn't have wild, whipsaw boom-bust cycles, 40% poverty levels, massive social injustice, violence and all the rest of the real world long since buried under snowdrifts of revisionist rhetoric. In that world, black men don't vote, black people can't be trusted to vote, because they're stupider than the crackers and red-necks and bigots and reactionaries who carry signs and dream about a world that is friendly to their sociopathology and acknowledges their privilege and entitlement.

Does it say anything important about Tancredo's argument that the election was swayed by a host of illiterates if in the real world, Obama was heavily favored by educated people? Does it say anything about the real agenda of the Tancredo conservatives if he isn't hooted off the stage for wanting to bring back a shameful era? Sure it does, and that's why one should be forced to flunk a civics and literacy examination if not an IQ test in order to join the party.

Behind the veil

Legend has it that when the Nazis occupied Denmark, they ordered all the Jews there to wear yellow stars and that the King himself put one on his own clothing in order to show support. Of course it never happened there or anywhere else to my knowledge. Certainly not in France. I'm wondering though, if the draconian ban on wearing any Islamic garb that covers the face will elicit some French resistance to protest what seems to American eyes to be a violation of civil rights. No, I won't bet on it happening.

Although only some 400 women in France wear a Burqa, according to French intelligence services, the fear that Islamic extremists are a growing threat to peace and security in France and the rest of Europe is ever present. France has already passed a law banning the hijab and all other "conspicuous" religious symbols in state schools and the ruling party are proposing to deny citizenship to couples in which the woman wears a burqa.

"There are principles at stake: Extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country,"

says Jean-Francois Cope, the UMP party leader. So is he, I'd have to add, if that old Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité thing still stands taller in French eyes than ethnic purity.


I wouldn't be hard to find sympathy for banning yarmulkes, turbans, or any other religiously unique clothing in the US of A, but as yet, we're still more liberal in that respect than our Gallic brethren. Long may it be so. I make no secret about my distaste for religion and my fear of what happens when religion and government become too close. Yes, I am all too aware that a large number of Muslims hate our country so much that the random slaughter of innocents seems justified in their eyes, but meddling in anyone's right to express themselves by choosing clothing representing an affiliation or a belief is just such a dangerously close relationship and is anathema to me. No, I don't expect to see that happen here any time soon, but if it does, you'll be seeing me wearing anything they're throwing stones at be it monk's robes or djellaba -- and waving the flag.

Kick a Jew Day

I hesitate to make more of this than it really is. Middle School students aren't deep thinkers, if they're thinkers at all and if some idiot kid in a Naples, Florida school thought "Kick a Jew Day" would be a blast, it doesn't necessarily mean that they've even heard of anti-Semitism or that their parents are Aryan Nation followers. The misbegotten event wherein Jewish kids were subject to being kicked last week was a "funny" take-off on "Kick a Ginger Day," which in turn derived from the supremely idiotic "South Park," the show that features a talking turd as part of the cast.

I think it may be a bit much at this point, to tie it to some sinister neo-Nazi or other anti-Semitic group. Still, some boys and girls were kicked and at that age, when peer approval is everything, the humiliation can be expected to matter a lot in their lives.

Although Fox News did comment on the kicking of red heads, I haven't seen any mention of the Naples story so far and so it's not fair and balanced to comment on what they might use the story for. I'm sure that there are people who will haul out the old PC straw man and grumble about Jews looking for pity and I'm more sure that some Jewish parents will overreact and call for more than the one-day suspension handed out to 10pre -teens. For my part, I think the Jewish kids have learned a valuable lesson about living in a self-styled Christian Nation: Kick Back!

I had some idle thoughts about printing up some T-shirts and sending them over to Naples, but it's been done.

WE RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED FREE-FOR-ALL

On Sunday evening, when I first posted this article , I asked for a moratorium on new posts to keep the healthcare debate in the forefront. The response has been informative, surprising in some instances, and engaging overall. I am breaking my own moratorium because the subject has run its course, other voices need to be heard, and another subject has reared an ugly head. Our esteemed colleague, Bloggingdino, brought this to our attention:



We can laugh at the refreshing candor of Barney Frank, but this is no longer funny:



We read about Ernest Hancock, an online radio host who interviewed an assault rifle-wielding associate at a recent Obama rally. Hancock, armed with a 9 millimeter pistol that he himself brought to the rally, is a vocal supporter of a right-wing anti-government militia group convicted of conspiracy and weapons charges in the 90s … plotting to blow up federal buildings.

Chants of “Heil Hitler" and the appearance of guns at meetings and rallies are meant to intimidate and silence people. It also exposes a disturbing fact: Freedom to dissemble appeals to the lowest scum ... anti-Semites, bigots, racists, white supremacists, and violence-prone militias. The GOP exploits the emotional fervor of malcontents and misfits for political leverage. In doing so, they have alienated Blacks, Hispanics, the LGBT community, academicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, Muslims ... and now ... Jews.

As the saying goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Our so-called conservative friends might agree. They seem to prefer the company of bigots for allies. In bashing "Libtards," they act more like a lynch mob massing at the jailhouse door intent on stringing up scapegoats. In failing to condemn this rabble, they approve of them with their silence; and such so-called 'friends' are no longer deserving of our trust.

Democracy is not well served when hooligans take over. There are times when a Godwin Fallacy is no longer a fallacy ... and these are such times.

Guys like us

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played!
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days!

We should worry. There are doubts. We don't know enough about her. She's "ethnic" and therefore might have "empathy" for other ethnics and therefore she might be prejudiced against us - and lets face it she's dangerous because we can't know how people like that think. Do we want someone with a special social or gender or ethnic perspective instead of a regular American anyway? It's not that we're prejudiced, it's that she probably is because, well you know. . . aren't they all?

And you knew where you were then.
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Change the "she" to a "he" and you have the same whiny, timorous Archie Bunker mentality that assured us their fear and loathing of Obama had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Ni -- I mean African American.

Turn on C-Span this morning and you have the same white collar bigotry from the same, expensively dressed, white Anglo-Saxon senators from the same tradition and the same party that fought school segregation, supported restricted real estate markets and hotels and caressed their bibles while telling us it was and should be a felony to marry outside your race. The same people whose family values trump yours, who want you to affirm their religion regardless of what you believe, who would never, however be so rude as to use a racial epithet whenblackballing you from the club. The same tailored suits who pretend to solemn deliberation to hide their knee-jerk prejudice. She's just not suitable, not one of us, don't you know old chap. It's nothing personal.

A wise Latina woman? Not at my country club, not on my court.

Didn't need know welfare state.
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days!

Home from the sea

After days of overcast skies, it was refreshing to be awoken by sunlight streaming through a porthole on a bright Sunday morning. It was hardly refreshing to watch the usual Sunday TV Godblathering over breakfast. The Something Or Other ministries was appealing for last minute funds to fight the coming national disaster: the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, who would, because she is ethnic and her record notwithstanding, bias the court in favor of Hispanics in direct contradiction to God's will. It's nice to live in a country where such bigots get special tax status because they wave Bibles now and then, even if it's only to bludgeon people with.

We cast off and pulled out into the Intra-Coastal waterway just in time to wait 15 minutes for the Atlantic Avenue bridge to open and looking around the cloudless sky, I spotted something I haven't seen for a while - a skywriter. U + GOD was soon spread against the sky like an idiot screaming from a window.

An hour later. with an extra hundred gallons in the tanks and some $330 poorer; we were booming out of the Lake Worth inlet at 22 knots into the open and turquoise sea. It felt almost like an escape into a fresh, clean and fragrant world -- and not an easy one with all the small fishing boats who seem to think the middle of a shipping channel is a perfect place to spend the morning fishing. Switch on the radar, check the proper waypoints on the chart plotter and push the red button on the auto-pilot. Heading due North, the blue hull cuts through the swells and we're free of the land and its barbarism for a while.

If only it were as easy to escape the smell of religion, the reek of stupidity and the stench of bigotry.

Absolute statements and American Values

I'm sorry I haven't posted here of late... I think I'm just more of a debater than a writer of original material. This piece did come out pretty well though, if I do say so myself... It's adapted from a comment I wrote in reply to an observation someone made about me, and I think it's good enough to share, here... Sorry if it comes off preachy, but sometimes I am just that kinda person...
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It's probably the liberal in me, but I don't go in much for the whole black/white, good/evil, with us/with the terrorists kinda thinkin'. I don't believe there are all that many absolutes, and I reject statements that speak in absolute terms. Just about all saints have sinned, and most sinners have performed good acts, too. All Americans (or Muslims) are not good. All Muslims (or Americans) are not evil. Not everyone who claims to be a faithful _______ (place religion/denomination of choice there) acts like one.

Just about anytime a person speaks of a whole group of people, whether chosen & denoted by their religion, their ethnicity, their country of origin, or any other factor, and speaks of them as though they are all one kinda person (whether all good, or all evil), one is almost certainly going to end up being factually incorrect in what one is saying about them. To group people together based on ethnicity, religion or country of origin, and then treat them all as one monolithic entity is the very definition of bigotry.

The same is true of me & politics. As a Green, I seldom agree with Conservative or Republican thought. (And contrary to what some have said about me, I'm generally not a big fan of Democratic thought, either.) Still, it's mighty rare to find me saying "Conservatives are evil" (or anything else, either), because I just don't think that way... Whatever issues and disagreements I have with individual conservatives or Republicans, wherever I may find them, they do not prove anything about ALL Conservatives, or Republicans, (or about any other groups to which such Conservatives or Republicans may belong, like "college professors," or "guys with hats," for instance...) Good or bad, whatever I'm saying about you, I'm saying it about you, alone.

I try to treat the people I meet as individuals, not as representatives of the groups they were either born into or chose to affiliate themselves with... Call me naive or crazy if you must, but I believe the more folks treat others as individuals, the better our personal & global relations with each other will be...

If you want (or want me) to condemn or praise individual people and / or individual acts, that's one thing... But chances are slim you'll ever get me to say all ________ are ____________, and I encourage everyone reading these words to give it a lot of thought before doing so yourselves. To my way of thinkin', it's neither intellectually or morally right to do so.

Yes, there is evil in the world, but it isn't "the Muslims," or "the conservatives," or "the non-believing nihilists" that are the cause of it. It's individual men & women murdering others, raping others, and treating others with disrespect and derision in a myriad of other ways large and small, that is at the heart of evil.

That's what I think, anyway...

The original version of this piece, and the comment to which I was replying, appear here, in case anyone's interested. I also posted this version to my blog, Wingnuts & Moonbats (link in the list to the right, somewhere), 'cause I haven't been doing enough posting there of late, either, and saw no reason not to kill lots of birds with the same single stone... 8>)

Truth in comics?

The truth is that "controversial" cartoonist Sean Delonas is a provocateur who really doesn't care about the limits of decency, or about appearing to be joking about murdering the President, or comparing a man of exceptional intelligence, education and achievement to a dead ape.

Humor is a wonderful tool for saying what is difficult to say, but when the difficulty stems from offending the dignity of people of African Descent and indeed of the United States of America, the tool is no longer wonderful. I've been vilified for criticizing George Bush as has everyone who disagreed with him. Bush's mildest critics have been called vicious, unpatriotic and "deranged" but although he's often been depicted as a monkey, I can't recall a single cartoon in the mainstream press showing him being shot by the police. Double standard? We need a better word than understatement to describe it.

"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, it broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy"

Said Post editor-in-chief Col Allan. No it isn't. I'm the last one to go hunting for racist innuendo, but this isn't innuendo, it's a classic piece of bigotry right out of the Jim Crow era and it can't be whitewashed by slurs against Al Sharpton, whether you like him or not. Everyone on the planet who believes we are a violent nation of racists will nod his head at this. It will be reproduced in papers all over the world just at the time when Obama's election was beginning to change people's minds and that's just what the rabid right wants: failure for America, Resurrection for the policies that have torpedoed the world.

Delonas has left us a long slime trail of disgusting cartoons pandering to the demented, deranged, stupid, bigoted, homophobic and social misfits who read Murdoch publications looking for justification and stories of alien abduction.

It's time the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post found someone else to write the next cartoon. It's time America found better places to look for information.