The most mind-numbingly stupid post of 2008? December 23, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry, Blogging, wingnuts.2 comments
With time running out in 2008, it’s time to look for the most stupid thing said on Teh Political Internets this year. Via Sadly, No!, I’m nominating this post:
“Do you have proof to back up that racist statement? Any studies? Any statistics??”
Of course not, you dickhead.
Unlike you, I didn’t waste the last good years of my life being brainwashed in academia; I lived with and worked with and talked with actual, normal human beings (professors definitely don’t count) and that’s how I formed my knowledge of how the world really works. Through the evidence of my senses and my own personal experiences.
I do not rely upon junk science or faux history or Marxist theory.
Most of these commenters and bloggers are clearly jealous of the simple fact that I’m smarter and more worldly than they are, that all their “education” and backpacking around the world actually made them dumber than I am — but they can’t admit that.
I thought about a “shorter Kathy Shaidle” along the lines of “Facts make you stupid in that they make you less racist. Too bad you tolerant assholes can’t be a genius like me.” But really, that might be good fun, but it’s not strictly necessary, since the verbatim Shaidle is so much more hilarious.
If, for example, I was to claim that Ms Shaidle learned all she knows about other races and gay people by watching interracial gangbang porn, reading Stormfront, and talking down to the “darkies” that shine her shoes and the Asians (what are they? Korean? Chinese? She’s just not sure) who help her with math while they’re not passing out from half a wine cooler–if I were to make such an assertion, it would be no more stupid, no more illuminating of her idiocy than her own words.
If I were to say “to hell with the evidence, I’m going to be a racist on the basis of my massive brain and complete lack of education,” that too would be less stupid than what Ms Shaidle actually wrote.
So I despair of mockery! Any post so stupid that it defies parody must be a contender for mind-numbingly stupid post of the year.
But feel free to disagree: post nominations below.
Contemporary Bigotry: A One-Act Play December 22, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry, Blogging, wingnuts.2 comments
CONTEMPORARY BIGOTRY
being a short play by Evil Bender
Dramatis Personae:
E. B., an advocate of human rights
REASONABLE PERSON, who values honest debate
TROLL, a troll
The curtain opens on A Progressive Blog. E. B. stands, and speaks.
E. B.: It is a shame that President-Elect Obama chose to display his inclusiveness by inviting Rick Warren, who advocates the exclusion of gay people from basic civil liberties, to participate in Obama’s inauguration. I register my discontent on my modest blog!
We have a sense E. B. always speaks like this, even at romantic dinners and as sporting events go into overtime. Enter REASONABLE PERSON:
REASONABLE PERSON: in my opinion…
Enter the troll, breathing heavily through its mouth.
TROLL: You leftists are always so intolerant!
E. B.: Mr. Troll, please, you’re interrupting.
REASONABLE PERSON: …as I was saying…
TROLL: Why do you hate God? You’re always whining. Why can’t you just be content that gays aren’t entitled to human rights?
REASONABLE PERSON: Society should be judged by how it treats the least powerf–
TROLL: Gay sex isn’t natural! It’s like plugging in an appliance! And why should they be allowed to marry anyway?
REASONABLE PERSON sighs and wanders off.
E. B.: Mr Troll, your comments will no longer be tolerated unless you actually contibute to the dicussion.
TROLL: CENSORSHIP! Your blog is EXACTLY like a soviet gulag!
E. B. throws the troll off-stage, as the troll shouts.
TROLL: Nazis! Hitler! Abortionnnnnnn!
E. B.: Reasonable Person! Please come back, and let us have a reasonable discussion.
Silence. E. B. sighs. The curtain falls.
~Fin~
But I thought that the UAW was responsible for American automobile manufacturers’ failures December 22, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in economics, News and politics, wingnuts.add a comment
We’ve been told for weeks now that the problems at GM and Chrystler (Ford is doing pretty well) are because of the unfair concessions they’ve had to make to the UAW. Of course, one might argue that if providing actual wages and benefits to one’s employees is unfair, a bunch of idiots on Wall Street are the real villains. Or we might note that, if benefits and retirement are such a burden for American companies, we’d benefit everyone by socializing medicine and providing a much stronger retirement safety net.
Or we could just observe that even well-structured, non-union companies are struggling, suggesting that the problems are more about American automakers business decisions and the financial crisis turned global recession. You see. Toyota is bracing for their first annual loss in 71 years.
Japan’s biggest carmaker Toyota has forecast its first annual loss in 71 years due to plummeting sales and a surge in the value of the yen.
The firm said it expected a loss of 150bn yen (£1.1bn) in yearly operating profits – from its core operations.
[...]
Toyota said in a statement it was cutting its profits forecast because of the soaring yen “as well as a review of sales plans following a faster than expected contraction of the auto market”.
Japanese carmakers have all been hurt by plummeting car sales in their key overseas markets, including the US.
Nobody tell Confederate Yankee: it may break his brain.
I’ve enabled comment moderation December 21, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry.1 comment so far
Due to an influx of trolls, I’ve enabled comment moderation on this blog for the first time. If you want to post a comment, please follow these rules and your comment will be approved:
- Have something substantive to say. I’m happy to field comments that take issue with me, but don’t change the subject, dodge the question, or behave like a troll, or you won’t be getting comments approved.*
- Don’t be abusive, don’t engage in ad hominem attacks, and don’t go out of your way to act like a jackass.
That’s pretty simple, really. If you don’t like it, you’re free to find somewhere else to comment, or start your own blog (it’s free, you know).
For my regular commenters, I apologize for the delay you’ll experience in getting comments posted, but this new system should result in less time wasted by trolls, and in more time for actual serious discussion.
*This rule doesn’t apply to silly topics or open threads, obviously. Silliness is welcome for silly subjects!
Dear anti-human rights bigots: December 21, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry, Blogging, wingnuts.17 comments
If you’re going to insist on complaining about how unfair it is that I’ve called Rick Warren a bigot for promoting laws that strip human rights from gays and lesbians, make an actual argument.
Furthermore, if you’re going to take time to come by my blog and complain about how I’m whining by disagreeing with Obama’s decision to offer Warran a platform, and by pointing out that Warren’s policies are bigoted, in that they discriminate against people based on which sex they’re attracted to, get a fucking life. If you’ve gone out of your way to comment on my blog saying that I should shut up, you can kiss my free-speech loving, bigotry-hating, poor-argument mocking ass.
Make a real argument, or find somewhere else to slink around. They like such comments at the Free Republic.
Obama’s inauguration: Newsmax slams Elizabeth Alexander December 21, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in Poetry, wingnuts.7 comments
This is just hilarious. The far-right website Newsmax isn’t happy about Obama’s choice of poet Elizabeth Alexander to participate in his inauguration. Now, they like to pretend they’re a legitimate news source, so they don’t come out and say they’re unhappy. They just write an incredibly ignorant and mind-numbing article with all the intellectual merit or spray painting “shut up” on the door of a teacher one doesn’t like.
Take, for example, the enlightening title:
Obama’s Poet: “Mustard-Colored Poop”
The article then proceeds to deliver Teh Stupid immediately:
Obama has been touted as among the most literary presidents in modern history, but his choice for an inaugural poet has some scratching their heads.
It’s important to note that, in true dishonest journalism standard, they never mention who these “some” are. It’s easier just to make broad claims with no support, after all.
Acting more like a man of politics than a man of letters, Obama picked former Chicago neighbor and family chum Elizabeth Alexander to deliver an original inaugural poem next month.
Now Newsmax staffers want to lecture a constitutional scholar and a Pulitzer-Prize nominated poet on what it means to be “a man of letters.” This is roughly equivalent to Ken Hamm lecturing Steven Hawking on what it means to be a scientist.
But Alexander is no Robert Frost, critics are quick to point out.
“Alexander writes with a fine, angry irony, in vividly concrete images, but her poems have the qualities of most contemporary American poetry — a specificity that’s personal and unsuggestive, with moves toward the general that are self-consciously academic. They are not poems that would read well before an audience of millions,” writes George Packer in the New Yorker.
This may mark the first time ever that Newsmax has used a New Yorker writer’s views on poetry to defend its position.* And they’re also displaying ignorance of Robert Frost, who loved “fine, angry irony” and concrete images, and whose public persona was popular in spite of the content of his poetry, not because of it. (The Road Not Taken is a perfect example of irony and of meaning generally missed by “an audience of millions,” for example.)
Newsmax then proceeds to take two passages from one of Alexander’s poems out of context in order to try to make her look bad. Unfortunately for the idiots at Newsmax, they know less about poetry than politics, and generally just come off as idiots clutching their pearls at graphic language.
Alexander, who has published four collections of poetry, including 2005’s Pulitzer-nominated “American Sublime,” will take the stage along with a host of other celebs, including Aretha Franklin, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Apparently no one on Newsmax staff realized you can’t spend the a whole article mocking a poet and contemporary poetry as being irrelevant, and then call that same contemporary poet a “celeb.”
The good news is, this piece came out in December. If it had been in January, it would have crushed all contenders for the stupidest thing written by a wingnut about poetry in 2009. Now it just takes the 2008 award.
[*Packer's New Yorker post is also interesting, in that it's basically a critique of contemporary poetry as irrelevant, written by one who's employer has published Elizabeth Alexander more than once. It seems to me that Packer should have considered what it says about the New Yorker's relevance, if contemporary poets shouldn't read at public venues.]
In which I respectfully disagree with Melissa McEwan December 17, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry, constiutional issues, Morality.2 comments
If you’ve been paying attention to teh inter-nets recently, you’ve no doubt seen the story about the idiotic and bigoted parents who named their kid “Adolf Hitler.”
Melissa McEvan, over at Shakesville (one of my favorite bloggers), had this to say:
I suppose it’s too much for which to hope that Child Protective Services sees the story (along with the accompanying photo galleryof the Campbell’s Nazified home) and removes those poor kids now while they only need a decade of intensive therapy.
This is really hard for me to say, because I’m about to disagree with Melissa and (partially) defend the rights of these bigoted asshole parents, but I think it needs to be said: I don’t think CPS should take away these kids just on the basis of their parents being racist pieces of shit. While I absolutely loathe the kind of person who would raise their kids to be bigots, the kind of people who would name their child after perhaps the greatest villain in history, I’m not at all certain that bigotry really rises to the level of child abuse.
There’s two reasons for my position here. The first is that the CPS and the courts need to be very cautious in actually removing children from their homes. That is because, in general, it is best for children to stay with their families. We (rightly) tend only remove them in cases of abuse or neglect, because we know that the foster care system is horribly sub-optimal, and that breaking up families is a decision that should only be made with great care. Removing children from their parents comes at a high emotional cost to the family, and further strains an already hard-pressed foster care system.
But even with that said, it’s clearly okay to remove children from their parents or guardians care when abuse is present, so why not just name bigotry as a form of abuse? Because it sets a bad precedent, and one that’s not sustainable. What if us progressive types honestly tell our children that, in our opinion, religions that teach hatred for GLBT people are disgusting, bigoted institutions? What if we call out Fred Phelps? Could we be charged with bigotry and have our children taken away?
For that matter, should evangelical Christians lose their children for telling them that gay people are horrible sinners who are going to hell? As odious as I find that position, I don’t think so: the government must be very careful about telling parents what they can and cannot teach their children. Obviously there are limits to this thinking: it’s clearly not okay for parents to teach their children to commit crimes or to force their children to engage in dangerous behaviors, or to deny their children necessary medical care for religious reasons. But do we really want the government deciding which tenants of our belief are acceptable?
If, like me, you believe in freedom of thought and expression, then I’d argue that you have to conclude that so long as these racist parents are not abusing their children, the children should stay with them. Not because they’re good parents, but because once the government is in the business of telling us which ideas are acceptable and which are not, no one’s ideas are safe. Defending freedom means even defending the freedom of disgusting bigots.
Or so I’ll argue. I’d love to hear my readers thoughts on this matter.
And the most overwhelmingly ironic statement goes to… December 17, 2008
Posted by Evil Bender in News and politics, wingnuts.add a comment
Bragdon Bowling, anti-Abraham Lincoln crank:
What’s their beef? They view Lincoln as a cynical, self-serving politician with no particular aversion to slavery, who precipitated the Civil War, sorry – the War Against Southern Independence – to keep his Republican party in the White House. “It was all about power,” Bowling observed at an anti-Lincoln rally in Richmond in 2003. “All so Lincoln and his friends could consolidate their power to tell other people how to live their lives.”
Digby’s all over the supreme irony of this:
I always find it fascinating that the people who want to reach into your bedrooms, hospital rooms and wombs, are always upset about some phantom liberal who supposedly wants to tell them how to live. But it seems to be based upon this odd idea that goes all the way back to the civil war that if a fellow American is not in 100% agreement that they are trying to inflict their “values” on others.
Gay marriage is a good example. Nobody says that people must be gay and must marry others of the same sex. But these people simply can’t live and let live. The mere fact that others don’t believe as they do is seen as a threat and they seek to stop it. And they always do it while excoriating the other side for “seeking power.”
And of course, the overwhelming irony of a pro “states rights” hack chastising Lincoln for wanting to “tell other people how to live their lives” is a bit breathtaking. On the irony scale, it ranks even above Karl Rove lecturing President-Elect Obama on being more forthcoming.
But we already knew that for the far right, morality only applies to other people.
