where all the white fish-holding womens?

Posted on January 15, 2014 by greg

Okay, yeah — there was another school shooting earlier this week, but nobody died (yet) so it’s not really news. And okay, yeah — there was that retired police officer who shot and killed a guy for texting his daughter during the previews at a Florida movie theater (well, that’s not entirely accurate; he got his gun out because of the texting, but he only killed the guy for throwing popcorn at him), but that’s Florida and what do you expect? And okay, yeah — Senate Republicans blocked 1.4 million jobless folks from getting aid, but that’s what Republican Senators do and what do you expect too? And okay, yeah — after spending what seems like a decade accusing President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton of failing to personally take up arms and repel the assault on the US compound in Benghazi (Benghazi!) Congress has decided to reduce funding for embassy security, construction and maintenance by $224 million, but jeebus on toast, did you expect anything else?

Yeah, okay — it’s been a big news week and it’s only Wednesday. But ain’t nobody talking about the really important news. You guys! Sarah Palin has a new teevee show! That’s right — she’s back on television

OMG OMG OMFG It’s Sarah!!!

Well, she’s not back on it right now. But according to the countdown clock (yes, there’s a countdown clock!) it’s only 2 months, 19 days, 6 hours and 39 minutes until Amazing America debuts! Starring Sarah Palin, you guys!

What will Sarah be doing (besides amazing America)? I’m glad you asked. She’ll be exploring and experiencing…

… the coolest and most original people, places, businesses, and gadgets that appeal to Red, Wild and Blue America.

Gadgets! There’s going to be gadgets! And original people! Actual original people (Sarah doesn’t like those icky cloned people, and who does because clones totally suck). The show is going to be on The Sporstman Channel, which you may not have ever in your entire life heard of, but which features such engaging quality programming as Addictive Fishing with Captain Blair Wiggins, MeatEater (the new season), Skull Bound, and Pigman: The Series.

If you do not watch her new show, Sarah Palin will Godfather your ass with an elk’s head.

According to the show’s producer, Governor Palin (that’s right — people don’t believe it, but Sarah was an actual real I’m-not-making-this-up no-shit real governor for half a term of the most socialist state in the Union) deserved a larger stage than “just hunting and fishing.”

“We wanted to have a little more fun than that. So we’re doing bull riding. We’ve got the NRA Museum. We have some fire rescue workers. It just runs the gamut of cool things in America.”

The gamut, you guys! Because what could be more fun and more cool than the NRA Museum and riding bulls while rescuing people from fires? Nothing! The audience will also be educated about Sarah’s philosophy and world view, in which she offers insights like this:

“I think this world would be better off having more young women holding a fish in a picture than holding their camera in front of a bathroom mirror, taking a selfie.”

So true! We’ve all noticed how rare it is these days for women to hold fish. It’s been years since I’ve seen a woman holding a fish. Why don’t women hold fish anymore? That’s what’s wrong with America (plus we have a negro president — and isn’t it curious that there are NO PHOTOS OF HIM HOLDING A FISH!!!).

Real governors don’t need no cell phones and bathroom mirrors

So set your alarm clocks, America. Thursday April 3rd at 8 o’clock in the evening on the Sportsman Channel. Watch it, or the terrorists will abort a white Christian baby. During a gay pride parade.

suspicious

Posted on January 14, 2014 by greg

In this post-9/11 world, it’s increasingly important for ordinary citizens like yourselves to be wary and on the alert for suspicious individuals engaged in suspicious activities. The law enforcement community needs your help. It is your civic duty to keep the authorities informed about any suspicious behavior you might observe, especially when undertaken by suspicious characters who are acting suspiciously. How do you determine who is a suspicious individual? I’m glad you asked. Just answer these simple questions:

1) Does the individual have a higher melanin concentration than Mitt Romney?
2) Does the individual have a penis?

If you answered ‘yes’ to the questions above, then the individual can safely be assumed to be suspicious.

Suspicious

It must be understood that not ALL high-melanin penile-laden individuals are active criminals; several are not. It’s vitally important to consider the social context of the person’s activity before notifying the police. For example, is the individual serving you food? If so, then he is probably not suspicious. Is the individual looking at a white woman? If so, notify the proper authorities.

Not suspicious

It is imperative for penis-bearing high-melanin individuals to AVOID engaging in any behavior that might be viewed as suspicious. If your skin is any shade darker than Brad Pitt’s AND you have a penis (or look like you might have a penis), then DO NOT:

— drive a nice car (it could be stolen or you could be a drug dealer or a pimp)
— look directly at law enforcement personnel (it could be seen as a challenge)
— avoid looking at law enforcement personnel (it suggests you want to avoid detection)
— wear a hoodie (especially in Florida)
— wear any item of clothing that is red or blue (gang colors) or yellow or pink (pimp colors) or dark blue or black (burglar colors) or white (pimp again) or multi-colored (African nationalist gang terrorist anti-authority racist-against-whites colors) or camouflage (insane mass murderer colors). Green is okay. Or polo shirts.
— speak loudly (aggressive)
— speak softly (sneaky)
— speak
— use your cell phone to text in a movie theater (hell, they even shoot white folks for that)
— be in a suburban neighborhood after sunset
— be in an urban neighborhood after sunset
— leave your home after sunset
— carry a gun, or anything that looks like a gun, or anything the approximate shape or size of a gun, or anything that might suggest you could be carrying something remotely like a gun
— go to Monongalia County, West Virginia
— go to North Korea and sing Happy Birthday
— vote
— get elected President of the United States
— engage in other suspicious activities

Suspicious

Understand that this is NOT racist. No, really. Honest. Seriously, I mean it — nothing racist about it. Some ~~of my best friends~~ people who have cleaned my golf clubs have penises and dark skin. It’s simply exercising reasonable caution. To suggest otherwise is racist against white people. Also racist against men. And guns.

Not suspicious

As crime and terrorism and more crime and more terrorism increase, we all have to come together as a society. We have to overcome our differences. We have to strive to be like Jeebus (only better armed and not…you know…Jewish). We have to pull together and stand up to suspicious people behaving suspiciously. Otherwise the terrorists and criminals win, and those brave Americans in Benghazi will have died in vain. Because of Obamacare. And probably feminists.

ridiculous and marvelous

Posted on January 12, 2014 by greg

There was a freezing mist in the air on Friday. Great weather for sitting inside — for the reading of books and the making of soup. It was wretched weather for driving or for walking, or for being outside at all. But because the freezing mist coated the entire area in a thin, barely perceptible but incredibly lovely casing of ice, outside is where I went.

Driving on primary roads was treacherous, but it was relatively easy to drive on the secondary gravel roads that abound in the American Midwest. Gravel means traction, even in icy conditions. So that’s where I went. And this is what I saw.

A great deal of nothing much. Eighty-five thousand years ago a glacier pushed its way through here. It hung around for about seventy thousand years, then gradually withdrew. It left behind a landscape that alternates between rolling hills and large swathes of flat terrain. Farmland. Good for growing things; not much to hold the eye.

Or so it seemed at first. As I drove down this gravel road I found my eyes drawn to the ditch. At first I gave my attention to the ice-coated weeds, but I quickly found myself more interested by the wind-sculpted snow, and the abstract patterns created by the windblown topsoil.

There’s an East Asian form of ink-and-wash painting that’s generally referred to by the Japanese name sumi-e. Other East Asian cultures practice the art, and they each have different names for the style. The Chinese (who likely invented it) call it shui-mo hua; in Vietnam it’s called tranh thuỷ mặc, and it’s sumukhwa in the Koreas. There are minor differences between the styles, but in general the techniques and the approach are the same.

In essence, sumi-e paintings are created using subtle gradations of black ink diluted by water. The approach attempts to interpret the spirit of the subject rather than to create an accurate representation of it. If, for example, the painting was of a duck, the artist would be more concerned with instilling it with duckness — with a sense of the way a duck moves, with that absurdly duckish dignified waddle — rather than with a detailed illustration of the bird. There are variations of the style in which color is used, but in its purest form it’s just black and white and spirit.

As I drove along, stopping periodically to get out of the car and walk the ditch, I realized I was seeing a sort of organic sumi-e. Not in the sense that some Cosmic Artist was at work interpreting the spirit of the wind along a quarter-mile stretch of earthen canvas, but in the sense that the wind itself had revealed something of how it moved, and did it largely in black and white.

The thing I found most intriguing, I think, was that the beauty of the dirty snow wasn’t limited by scale. I found the same delicate shading, the same unexpected lines and shapes, the same beautifully uneven distribution of soil whether I was looked at an area of a few inches or several yards.

I suppose I was out exploring the freezing mist for about ninety minutes. I spent maybe fifteen minutes getting out of town and finding that road, and another fifteen getting back to the warm, dry house. The other hour was spent rambling down a quarter-mile stretch of gravel road, looking at dirty snow in a ditch.

I’ll be meeting my brother for breakfast this morning, and at some point he’ll ask me what I’ve been up to. And when I tell him I’d spent an hour out walking in the freezing mist, getting cold and wet, looking at a ditch, thinking about glaciers and East Asian art and unevenly distributed bits of soil, I know he’ll grin and shake his head — because it sounds ridiculous.

And maybe it is. But we live in a wonderfully ridiculous world, and even in a great deal of nothing there’s a lot to see.

gun control / legal pot — spot the difference

Posted on January 8, 2014 by greg

Sometimes smart people make stupid arguments. That surely happens more often when you’re writing on a deadline. I don’t know if that’s the case with S.E. Cupp’s recent opinion piece in the NY Daily News, but I don’t know how else to explain it.

S.E. Cupp

Cupp describes herself as a ‘mainstream conservative’ but she’s not — not in the modern conservative movement. She’s an atheist who supports the Log Cabin Republicans, which takes her completely out of mainstream conservatism. I rarely agree with her views, but I’m willing to admit she sometimes makes a point worth considering. Not this time. She suggests the legalization of marijuana in Colorado will pose a political problem for progressives. Why?

[T]he legal weed experiment could at least put the politics of progressivism – all the rage in liberal circles now – in a tricky spot. For one, there are glaring inconsistencies between the liberal argument for pot legalization and positions on other issues. An obvious one is gun control. The same argument used against guns is used for pot: that legalizing pot and making it more available will reduce crime.

It’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from a conservative, but it’s pretty close. Of course legalizing pot will reduce crime, if only because possession of pot is no longer criminal. A person who purchased pot last month was a criminal; this month, that same person making that same purchase is an honest citizen supporting the local economy and increasing the State’s tax base. Hey bingo, crime reduction!

Honest citizen supporting the local economy

That’s stupid — but it’s not the stupidest part of her opinion piece. Here’s part of Cupp’s argument:

We’re told pot users will “responsibly” use marijuana in the privacy of their own homes…. [W]hy aren’t lawful gun owners afforded the same level of trust?

Why? Because nobody cleaning their lawfully obtained pot accidentally wounded or killed themselves. Or another person in the same room. Or a neighbor in an adjoining apartment. Because nobody ever pulled out a lawfully obtained dime bag in a moment of road rage and used it to kill another driver. Because nobody ever went into a school and slaughtered teachers and students with lawfully obtained marijuana. Because no unattended infant ever found lawfully obtained pot on a table and used it to accidentally blow his brains out. Because nobody ever tried to put lawfully obtained pot in his pocket and accidentally put a hole in his leg.

Jeebus on toast, this seems pretty fucking obvious, doesn’t it? Gun owners aren’t afforded the same level of trust because marijuana isn’t a lethal weapon. Let’s make this even easier to understand. Last Sunday a 13-year-old Chicago boy killed his 16-year-old cousin by shooting him in the head. This is from the Chicago Sun Times:

The boy gave a statement to police admitting to shooting his cousin, according to court records. Police said a possible argument over video games may have led to the shooting. It is unclear how the 13-year-old obtained the gun, police said.

Now, let’s apply the Cupp Argument:

The boy gave a statement to police admitting to getting his cousin stoned, according to court records. Police said a possible argument over video games may have led to them getting high. It is unclear how the 13-year-old obtained the marijuana, police said.

And that, Ms. Cupp, is why gun owners aren’t afforded the same level of trust. Ain’t nobody has to worry about an irate 13-year-old with a blunt doing you a hurt.

I suspect the bear would prefer to be stoned

But Cupp also has another concern.

“While there’s obvious support among libertarians, others worry about the moral implications of legalizing risky behavior simply because people are ‘going to do it anyway'”

Yes, she’s right — there are risks associated with marijuana use. One obvious risk is to the user’s health; smoking anything damages the lungs — but research strongly indicates that smoking pot is much less injurious than smoking tobacco. A significantly greater hazard is the risk of injury — to the user and to others. Pot clearly impairs psycho-motor performance. There’s certainly evidence of drivers impaired by marijuana being involved in auto accidents. Again, though, the numbers are much lower than for drivers impaired by alcohol.

I’m going to say this again: S.E. Cupp isn’t stupid. I often disagree with her, but she’s definitely not stupid. I don’t know, maybe she was high when she wrote that opinion piece. You can write opinion pieces when you’re stoned — another advantage of marijuana over guns (just ask the bear). But just to settle the question — no, the legalization of marijuana in Colorado doesn’t pose a political problem for progressives.

Stupidity, on the other hand, does pose a political problem for — well, for everybody.

ADDENDUM: Last night Kentucky State representative Leslie Combs was attempting to unload her handgun in the capitol building annex “when it accidentally fired. The bullet struck the floor and ricocheted into a bookcase.” Nobody was injured. Combs, though, might have been high, given her calm response to the accident: “I am a gun owner. It happens.”

he’s no gandhi

Posted on January 6, 2014 by greg

So there’s this guy in Utah who’s decided to go on a hunger strike. His name is Trestin Meacham. He’s a Mormon, a former candidate for the Utah State Senate (he lost), and a member of the Constitution Party. As you might guess, the Constitution Party is a pretty conservative group. Their goal:

[T]o restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.

They want a moratorium on immigration, English as the official language of Utah and the United States, an end to legal abortion (even in cases of rape and/or incest), a ban on pornography, to criminalize certain sexual behaviors, and marriage to be legal only for a man and a woman.

Trestin Meacham – hunger striker

It’s the last issue that’s sparked Meacham’s hunger strike. The day after District Judge Robert Shelby ruled Utah’s Amendment 3 (which prohibits same-sex couples from marrying) was unconstitutional, Meacham began to fast. He wrote:

“I cannot stand by and do nothing while this evil takes root in my home. Some things in life are worth sacrificing one’s heath and even life if necessary. I am but a man, and do not have the money and power to make any noticeable influence in our corrupt system. Never the less, I can do something that people in power cannot ignore.”

He’s been called crazy, a nut case, an unhinged whack job, and an extremist. He may well be all those things. But even though I disagree with his beliefs and his position on same-sex marriage, I respect his approach.

Suffragette hunger striker being force-fed

The hunger strike belongs to a very long and honorable tradition. Under Brehon Law (the civil law which governed behavior in pre-Christian Ireland), it was called troscadh. A person who believed he’d suffered an injustice would set himself outside the door of the offending party and refuse food. He would remain there, outside the door, until the offending party relented, or until he abandoned the troscadh, or until he died.

The moral weight of the act was staggering for both parties, especially in a culture where hospitality was so highly honored. There was tremendous social pressure on both the person fasting and the person accused of the injustice to reach a settlement. It was rare for the injured party to be sincere enough in his claim to actually starve himself to death, and for the offending party to be sincere enough to allow that to happen. On those rare occasions, it was understood that the person accused of the injustice would pay compensation to the family of the dead man.

When used by an individual against a group or a policy or an entire government, the act was called cealachan. It was more about social justice than individual justice. It was used by the Irish against the British for centuries, but the practice of the hunger strike is pretty universal. Gandhi used it several times, American suffragettes used it, Cuban dissidents used it, and detainees in Guantanamo have used it.

Gandhi during one of his hunger strikes

And now Trestin Meacham is using it. I confess, I don’t understand his reasoning. I can’t think of how allowing same-sex couple the legitimacy of marriage could be considered an injustice. This is what he says on his blog:

On Friday the 20th of December, a federal judge overturned the State Constitution of Utah and ruled against and its restriction against same sex marriage. In so doing, Article 1 Section 8 and the 10th Amendment of the U.S Constitution were violated. Even worse a law voted on by a strong majority of the people of Utah was rescinded, thus robbing the people of their voice in government. And if this law remains, the natural rights of free speech and religious freedom, vouched safe by the first Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, will be violated.

But how is free speech violated? He has a blog that can be read by anybody, in which he openly expresses his religious and political views. That IS free speech. Nor can I see any barrier on his ability to openly practice his religion. Nobody is preventing him from attending services, nobody is interfering with his right to live his life according to his religious beliefs. Nor is anybody interfering with his hunger strike, which is in itself an expression of his civil rights.

This has nothing to do with hatred of a group of people. I have friends and relatives who practice a homosexual lifestyle and I treat them with the same respect and kindness that I would anyone. This is about religious freedom, and an out of control federal government.

Well, no — it’s not about religious freedom. It’s a ludicrous claim. Nor is it about ‘an out of control federal government.’ It’s about the simple fact that Meacham’s religious and political beliefs are in conflict with the law. He may not hate gay folks — I can’t see into his heart, so I don’t know. But I do know he wants the right to discriminate against them.

Suffragettes engaged in hunger strikes to secure the right of women to vote. Gandhi went on hunger strike to support Indian independence from Britain and to stop violence between Muslims and Hindus. IRA hunger strikers were fasting to assert their right to be recognized as political prisoners, not common criminals. The Gitmo hunger strikers are protesting their continued incarceration without having been tried or convicted of a crime.

Trestin Meacham, on the other hand, is fasting to prevent people who love each other from marrying.

I support Meacham’s right to protest the law. I support his right to speak out against same-sex marriage in Utah. I support his right to go on hunger strike, and starve himself to death for a cause he believes in — despite the fact that I think his cause is absurd and hateful. I even support his right to claim he’s doing this a noble cause.

But there’s nothing at all noble about denying other folks the rights you enjoy yourself.

Addendum: Today Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor put a halt to Utah’s same-sex marriages pending an appeal of Judge Shelby’s ruling. More than 900 same-sex couples were married during the interval between Shelby’s decision and Sotomayor’s order. None of this had anything to do with Meacham, his fast, or his civil liberties.

otherwise responsible

Posted on December 26, 2013 by greg

So this guy, Steve Pfeister, runs a fitness center in Vero Beach, Florida. He’s just sitting there in his office a couple weeks ago, right? Minding his own business and all, when guess what happens next. Never mind, don’t bother guessing, on account of I’m about to tell you what happens next.

A .40 caliber bullet rips through the wall, is what happens next. Rips right through the damned wall and hits Stevo in the right leg. But this is a .40 cal round, and it has less respect for the structural integrity of the human leg than it does for the wall. So it goes completely through Steve’s right leg and grazes his left leg. Guy’s sitting in his office and he gets shot in both legs with one round fired by somebody who’s not even in the same damned room.

Was this a poorly implemented drive-by shooting? No sir, it was not. An assassination attempt by a disgruntled fitness client? No ma’am, it was not. Was this the Amazing Fucking Kreskin with a grudge, shooting through walls with ESP? No, no, no, it was not. Shall I tell you what it was? I believe I will.

.40 caliber Glock 23 — superior penetrating power, bitches

It was an otherwise responsible gun owner sitting in the fitness center’s locker room, showing his .40 caliber Glock to another guy who was thinking about buying one. I don’t know which model it was. Maybe the Glock 22, maybe the 23, maybe the — you know what? It doesn’t matter. All three .40 caliber models of the Glock will punch a damned hole through a wall and a leg. That’s why you buy the .40 cal.

Now, you may be wondering why this guy felt he needed such a powerful handgun while he was at the fitness center. I’ll tell you why. Shut up, that’s why. It’s our god-given right as American citizens to tote powerful handguns any fucking place we want. That’s why Paul Revere rode his horse to that one place to warn the common people that the British had landed. Or were arriving. Whatever. Also? You take your .40 cal to the fitness center because you never know when you might be called upon to demonstrate its penetrating capacity by shooting through a wall and a leg. That’s why we have a Second Amendment to the Constitution of These United States.

And think about it logically. If you’re considering buying a weapon for your own personal protection, you want to know for certain and in advance if you can shoot some sumbitch in the next room. If you wait until he’s in the room with you, well hell — then you might just as well buy yourself a fucking sword, right?

You may be wondering if the guy who shot Stevo through the wall and one leg — did that guy get in trouble? No sir or ma’am, he did not. The Indian River County Sheriff’s Office responded to the shooting, as did the Indian River County Fire Rescue squad (all at taxpayer expense, mind you). But the victim, our poor bleeding Steverino, declined to press charges. He declined on account of the gun’s owner was a friend. And (this is my favorite part) he declined to press charges because (and I swear I’m not making this up) he considered his friend to be “an otherwise responsible gun owner.”

Seriously. The guy is totally responsible. You know…when he’s not accidentally shooting folks through the wall.

Some shit you simply cannot make up.

two related but separate things

Posted on December 23, 2013 by greg

First thing: I’ve gotten several comments over the past few days suggesting that the only way to stop school shootings is to put armed guards in every school (and/or arm the teachers and school administrators and support staff). This is not entirely stupid. It’s pretty damned stupid — especially the notion of arming teachers and janitors and other school employees — but it’s not entirely stupid.

The sad fact, however, is that there have been armed guards present in many of the mass murders in recent years — not just in schools but in other public venues. They just don’t prevent these events from happening. That’s true for several reasons.

First, for the most part the shooters in these events don’t expect to survive. These shootings are often elaborate suicides, intended to make as many people as possible as miserable as the shooter is. Knowing there’s an armed guard present doesn’t dissuade a shooter who doesn’t intend to come out alive. Second, the firearms most often used in these shootings are semi-automatic weapons. Combine the ability for rapid fire with large capacity magazines, and you have a situation in which a shooter can kill a lot of people in an alarmingly short time.

Robert Steinhauser — 13 teachers, 2 students, 1 police officer– 10 minutes

Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults in less than 10 minutes. Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and an adult in about 4 minutes. Robert Steinhauser killed 13 teachers, 2 students, and a police officer in 10 minutes. Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 Virginia Tech students in around 11 minutes. They weren’t able to kill that many people in that short a time because they were superior marksmen; they were able to do it by firing a LOT of rounds.

We’re no longer talking about the ‘classic’ Charles Whitman-style mass murderer. Whitman climbed the clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin and methodically, almost leisurely, picked off his victims. He killed 17 and wounded 32 others over the course of an hour and a half. In today’s mass murderers, the emphasis is on mass.

Thomas Hamilton – 16 children, 1 adult – 4 minutes

Guards with weapons won’t prevent these mass shootings, but they will almost certainly reduce the body count — and that’s a good thing. But why not take other steps that can help reduce the body count? Why not limit the capacity of ammunition magazines? Every time a shooter has to pause to reload, there’s a chance for victims to escape and for courageous bystanders to act (Jared Loughner — 6 dead and 13 wounded in around two minutes — was tackled by a wounded bystander when he was forced to reload his pistol).

Adam Lanza – 20 children, 6 adults – 10 minutes (plus 1 earlier)

Why not require stricter background checks before letting a person purchase a firearm? Why not require background checks at gun shows? The weapons bought at gun shows are just as lethal as those bought through a licensed gun dealer.Why not require states to report and share mental health records with the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System? Currently only 27 states have laws that allow (or require) them to report mental health records — and many of those states fail to do so because of state budgetary reasons.

Seung-Hui Cho — 30 students – 9 minutes (plus 2 earlier)

None of those things — armed guards, universal background checks, limits on large capacity magazines, mental health information — will stop mass murders and mass shootings from taking place, but each of them will have some effect on the body count. By combining several (or better yet, all) of those measures, we can reduce the body count even further.

Second Thought: Claire Davis died. She was the young woman Karl Pierson shot in the head ten days ago. I took a moderate amount of crap for suggesting that “nobody other than her friends and family will remember her in a couple of weeks.” That’s a horrible thing to say. It’s all the more horrible because it’s true. It won’t be very long before there’s another school shooting — or some other mass casualty event — with a new set of innocent victims. And for a few days, the names of the victims will be in the public eye, and then they’ll be forgotten in turn.

There have been 22 school shootings so far this year, resulting in 19 fatalities and 34 wounded. Do we remember any of their names? There have been 351 mass shootings so far this year — 351 incidents in which at least four people were wounded or killed. Most of them don’t result in multiple deaths, but they easily could. Do we remember any of their names?

Claire Davis — not a statistic

Their friends and family members remember them. For the rest of us, they’re numbers. It doesn’t lessen the pain felt by the family and friends of the victims. Nothing can. That pain can only be exacerbated by the ugly fact that their loved ones are reduced to mere statistics.

We can reduce those numbers. Maybe not by much, but we can reduce them. We can reduce them without damaging the Sacred Second Amendment. We really can reduce the body count.

But we don’t.

Update: I incorrectly located the Seung-Hui Cho mass murder at the University of Virginia; in fact, it was at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (more commonly called Virginia Tech).

in which i defend that duck dynasty guy, sorta

Posted on December 19, 2013 by greg

I’ve never watched Duck Dynasty, but I see the faces of those guys everywhere. As I understand it (and I admit my understanding is awfully shaky here), it’s a ‘reality’ show about an eccentric Louisiana family who made a fortune by manufacturing duck calls. Now a member of that family, Phil Robertson, has said something moderately stupid and offensive about gay folks. As a result, the network that produces and broadcasts the show has removed him from the show, at least temporarily.

This, to absolutely no surprise, has pissed off a lot of conservative folks. They see the network’s action as an assault on free speech, an attack on Christian values, an insult to conservatives everywhere, and part of the gay agenda war against common decency. And probably some other stuff too.

It’s not any of those things. It’s not an assault on free speech; it was his right to free speech that caused this fuss. He freely gave an interview to a magazine, which freely published it, and which anybody who wants to read it can freely buy. It’s not an attack on Christian values; it’s a corporate decision involving Robertson’s contract, which gives the network the right to remove employees if their conduct is seen as harmful to the product (the show and the network, in this case). It’s not an insult to conservatives; it accurately depicts the opinions of a lot of conservatives about homosexuality.And it’s not a part of some mythical gay agenda; gay folks are just as diverse as straight folks, and there’s no more a gay agenda than there is a Christian agenda or an Asian agenda or a football fan agenda.

That said, Robertson has the absolute right to say whatever he wants, and good on him for being honest and open about it. And the network has the absolute right to enforce the contract they have with Robertson. And conservatives have the right to protest his termination, and gay folks have the right to boycott the network if they don’t push back against Robertson.

What this entire incident shows is the system working. Working in a way that’s sloppy, hypocritical, greed-driven, and entirely cynical, but it’s working. That’s capitalism, folks. Conservatives usually champion capitalism, and corporatism, and the right of a business to hire or fire workers as they see fit.

And by the way, I don’t recall conservatives being so upset when Alec Baldwin was fired for making anti-gay comments. I don’t recall them being so enraged when Isaiah Washington was fired from Grey’s Anatomy for making anti-gay comments. But Baldwin is something of a liberal, and Washington is black, whereas Robertson is a white conservative hunter with a really magnificent beard.

Personally, I think it’s pretty damned idiotic for a network to produce a ‘reality’ show then object to the reality.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job