Life Exceeds Art, in Terms of Racist Absurdity, at CPAC

Posted on March 15, 2013 by wellsdc

I have no idea what conservatives think would have happened without slavery.

I’m having a hard time believing that this guy, who went on a bizarre rant in defense of slavery and only went downhill from there, is for real.

A panel at the Conservative Political Action Committee on Republican minority outreach exploded into controversy on Friday afternoon, after an audience member defended slavery as good for African-Americans.

The exchange occurred after an audience member from North Carolina, 30-year-old Scott Terry, asked whether Republicans could endorse races remaining separate but equal. After the presenter, K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans, answered by referencing a letter by Frederick Douglass forgiving his former master, the audience member said “For what? For feeding him and housing him?” Several people in the audience cheered and applauded Terry’s outburst.

ThinkProgress generally seems to have good reporting, so let’s assume for argument’s sake that its reporting on this story is accurate. Because that’s not all, folks:

When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.

At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”

Look, I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on comedy, satire, or political subterfuge, but I’ve done a reasonable amount of comedy-related writing and performing in my life, such that I know a thing or two about creating a caricature of an opinion or attitude that you want to mock. The trick to creating a character who expresses or embodies a position that you want to lampoon is that you have to make that character over-the-top and believable at the same time. Have the character express opinions that might represent an absurd yet realistic extension of an actual opinion. The character has to be someone who could exist in our world.

At the moment, I am having a hard time believing that Scott Terry exists in our world.

By this, I mean that several possibilities occur to me:

Terry is an earnest, if catastrophically misguided, young man, but the depths of his depraved beliefs make me wonder how he was able to hold these beliefs, wake up and get dressed in the morning, eat food with utensils, and get to the meeting hall, all without somehow hurting himself. You know, by walking directly into a brick wall because he thought it might be a special doorway reserved for white people or something.
Terry is a James O’Keefe-caliber troll sent to make conservatives look like epic doucherockets. For the record, my opinion of James O’Keefe, based on what I have seen and read, rests somewhere around the level of inorganic material intertwined with forest undergrowth—no one really wants to come into contact with either it or the organic undergrowth, and unlike the organic stuff, it doesn’t even help trees grow. My point being, this is not meant to be a compliment for Mr. Terry.

I’m pretty sure this guy was for real, as much as it pains me to think that people younger than me think this way and are able to function in society. CPAC, after all, is the place where two white guys did a rap number last year and dropped an almost-N-bomb for comedic effect. The Republican Party boasts among their 2012 candidates a guy who thinks slavery was good for Africans because it meant that their descendants could live in the U.S. and not, you know, Africa. So yeah, I guess it’s plausible that a CPAC attendee would actually believe all the things that guy said.

Anyway, if an actual liberal wanted to smear conservatives by infiltrating and posing as a racist idiot, it would have been far more clever than this.

Photo credit: See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

When Conservatism Meets Empathy (UPDATED)

Posted on March 15, 2013 by wellsdc

1146008_19639910 Modern-day conservatism cannot survive a head-on collision with empathy, at least when the empathy is for a close loved one. That is really the only way to explain Senator Rob Portman’s (R-OH) about-face on same-sex marriage.

To be clear, I’m very glad that he has seen the light, so to speak. I also have no doubt that he will face severe backlash from his party’s “base,” who don’t seem to like any policy that expresses any sort of kindness towards people they dislike. So he went out on a limb here, and his specific reasons are perhaps not as important as the fact that he did it. I am less interested in why someone comes to the right conclusion as I am in supporting the fact that they got there. The reasons become important, however, when you consider how a change in tune will affect their positions on related issues. In this case, Senator Portman pretty much flat-out said that his mind was changed gradually after his son came out as gay in 2011. I assume he will continue to be a Republican darling on issues that do not affect his loved ones.

I don’t much feel like quoting from the senator’s self-serving justification for his flip-flop in the Columbus Dispatch, so I’ll quote Sylvia Nightshade, writing about it in Daily Kos:

[H]e never considered how the issue of gay marriage affects people until it affected him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s come over to our side (we have cookies!), but this reveals exactly why Republican politicians suck. They don’t think about things from other people’s perspective. They don’t have to struggle to eat, so they don’t think about what happens when they cut food stamps and people who already have too little to eat have even less. They have retirement savings and won’t have to depend on Social Security, so they don’t think about how gutting SS effects people who depend on it to survive. They can afford their own healthcare without any problem, so this big scary Obamacare mandate is all bad news, it can’t possibly help people who have no insurance now and just pray they don’t get sick or injured, because it doesn’t help them. They just end up paying extra taxes for people who are lazy, right? Because how else would you end up in a situation like that, unless you were lazy? Because Republican politicians aren’t lazy, and they’re all well-off, so the opposite must be true–if you’re lazy you fail at life. Thus if you’ve failed, it’s your own fault, so why should anybody else help you? Help yourself, damnit!

Leaving aside the misuse of the word “effect,” she raises many excellent points. Much of the ideology of the modern-day Republican party derives from a near-total failure (dare I say refusal?) to understand the actual lived experiences of the people affected by their policies. Perhaps the most obvious example from the past year would be Rush Limbaugh’s treatment of Sandra Fluke, who offered expressly non-sexual reasons for women to use contraception. Limbaugh, either because he is cognitively incapable of understanding that she was not talking about sex, or because he knows that his fan base won’t care that he was wrong, ignored all of the actual words that came out of her mouth and called her a slut. Repeatedly.

Same-sex couples want to get married? Well, they are sexual deviants, conservatives know, despite the fact that they want to get married and raise families.

Meanwhile, individual Republicans declare their support for policies deemed anathema to conservatism once it affects them or a family member directly. See Dick Cheney on same-sex marriage, Nancy Reagan on stem-cell research. Compare Nancy Reagan’s position on that issue to that of Rush Limbaugh.

It is tiresome to argue these points, because the only surefire way to make the point clear, apparently, is to put the effects of their policies directly in front of their faces, where it affects someone who actually matters to them.

UPDATE (04/18/2013): Peter Miller at Vice has a good piece on this phenomenon, “Republicans Don’t Have a Ton of Empathy for Strangers.” The whole thing is worth a read, but this jumped out at me:

I’m not saying that Republicans are monsters. I’m not even saying they don’t care about other people’s kids. They probably don’t, but that’s beside the point. The point is, right-wingers of all stripes, from the feisty libertarian to the noble Santorumite, are incapable of learning from the experiences of others. They just can’t help it.

He goes on to list examples, but this really captures the phenomenon for me.

Photo credit: twitchtoo on stock.xchng.

Hello, I’m the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I Don’t Believe We’ve Met.

Posted on September 21, 2012 by wellsdc

As we all know by now, presidential candidate Mitt Romney thinks that just under half of the country does not take full responsibility for their own lives, blah blah blah. No need to rehash all of that here. The meme has, rather interestingly, coincided with another Republican cause célèbre, voter ID laws. (Note to right-wingers: I will understand if you are uncomfortable using the French phrase “cause célèbre.” If you prefer, you may use the alternate phrase, “freedom fame.”)

Specifically, a Pennsylvania Republican is not concerned about possible disenfranchisement from the law he is sponsoring, apparently because people without photo ID just aren’t taking enough responsibility for their lives:

As Pennsylvania’s strict voter ID law returns to the lower court for reconsideration, its original sponsor, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-PA), told KDKA Radio Wednesday morning that his law will only disenfranchise “lazy” people, like the ones Mitt Romney was talking about in the leaked video of a private fundraiser.

When pressed on the issue, Rep. Metcalfe had this to say:

“I don’t believe any legitimate voter that actually wants to exercise that right and takes on the according responsiblity that goes with that right to secure their photo ID will be disenfranchised. As Mitt Romney said, 47% of the people that are living off the public dole, living off their neighbors’ hard work, and we have a lot of people out there that are too lazy to get up and get out there and get the ID they need. If individuals are too lazy, the state can’t fix that.” [Emphasis added]

He is both right and wrong, but let me first say this: Republicans, you have a problem with the word “legitimate.” Seriously, you should consider not using that word for a long while.

Now then, Rep. Metcalfe is right that the state cannot compel a “lazy” person to take an interest in politics or society. I would think that would be obvious. Here’s the rub, though: the state cannot compel a person to jump through arbitrary hoops to participate in society. Rep. Metcalfe is placing the blame on people who have lived their lives, by all accounts perfectly well, without the documents that he now says they need in order to vote. I call bullshit.

The people affected by Rep. Metcalfe’s proposed law would need to obtain documentation, typically at a cost, in order to participate in their own democracy. Study after study has shown that voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem. The only reason certain people would need to obtain a driver’s license or other photo ID, therefore, would be to vote. It would be an expense solely associated with the act of voting, and there is a name for that: a poll tax.

Meet the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1964:

SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Efforts to make people incur expense as a condition of voting has quite the dirty history in this country. Let’s not tiptoe back into our utterly-backwards past whilst trying to blame it on a mythical “lazy” class of people, okay?

For the next two months, you are picking a side, whether you like it or not

Posted on September 6, 2012 by wellsdc

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
–Rush (the band, not the asshole)

265713_4012 This is where the rubber meets the road, people. Like it or not, this country has a two-party system. You may not like Obama or Romney, but come November, one of these two is going be elected president.

If you are going to sit the election out because you just don’t care, you are of no use to anyone. If you are going to sit the election out as some sort of protest against the two-party system, no one can tell the difference between you and the person who can’t be bothered to vote. Protest is only effective if someone other than you knows you are protesting. If you live in a predominately red state but support the Democrat, or if you live in a blue state and support the Republican, shut up and vote anyway.

If you feel like you don’t know enough about the candidates to make an informed decision, and yet you are reading this sentence, get someone to teach you how to use Google and educate yourself.

If you seriously think a third party is the answer, I will make an exception for you. Please crawl back into whatever cave you live in and wait until November 7. Then, come back out, learn to type without using caps lock, and try the third party again when you might actually be able to make a difference. Also, where the hell were you in, say, December 2008 or some other time when there wasn’t an election staring us in the face? (Oh yeah, you were on message boards telling the sheeple to WAKE UP and OPEN YOUR EYES. How’s that rhetorical technique working for you?)

From now until November 6, you are on one side or the other. Deal with it. If you are going to criticize one candidate, you had better have some plausible explanation for why the other guy would be better. If you are unhappy with something Obama has done, explain what Mitt Romney will do better. If you can come up with a broad, coherent vision of how a Romney presidency would benefit most Americans, demand that the RNC hire you.

If you just want to rip on one candidate or the other, go away, because you’re not helping anything but your own sense of self-importance.

Photo credit: ‘Confusion’ by mvanrens on stock.xchng.

No, he means the other founding documents… (UPDATED)

Posted on September 5, 2012 by wellsdc

Paul Ryan is unhappy with the Democratic Party. In other news, water is wet and I like donuts.

Specifically, Paul Ryan is unhappy that the Democratic party’s platform doesn’t mention the capital-G man even once. (Because if Democrats should be taking pointers on their platform from anyone, it should be the other party’s Vice Presidential nominee.)

The Democratic Party’s platform makes no reference to God, drawing criticism from Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Ryan tells Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” the change is not in keeping with the country’s founding documents and principles and suggests the Obama administration is behind the decision. The Republican platform mentions God 12 times.

The 2008 Democratic Party platform made a single reference to God, referring to the “God-given potential” of working people.

“Founding documents and principles,” he says. Does he mean the Declaration of Independence? I’ll throw him a bone there, since it does mention “God” one time.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Well, it says “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Is that different from Paul Ryan’s God? Probably. Thomas Jefferson is credited with writing the Declaration of Independence, and he generally does not seem like a man who wasted words. Historians can argue over the precise meaning of “Nature’s God,” but the important thing to note is that, between this and the U.S. Constitution, i.e. the two “founding documents” that matter, this is the only time anyone uses the word “God.” He uses the word “Creator” elsewhere in the Declaration of Independence, but that’s even more ambiguous than “Nature’s God.” Continue reading →

My reasoned, erudite, and entirely objective take on the 2012 Republican National Convention

Posted on August 31, 2012 by wellsdc

Even self-styled Nordic gods have a hard time keeping hold of their hammer now and then.

This Week in WTF, August 24, 2012

Posted on August 24, 2012 by wellsdc

Definitely not baby food. I now profusely apologize for any mockery and ask that you please not lacerate me.

– A recent recall announcement from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reads: “Gerber Recalls Machetes Due to Laceration Hazard.” As it turns out, this is not Gerber, the well-known manufacturer of baby food. It is Gerber Legendary Blades, of Portland, Oregon, the company that makes machetes that might cut you. I’m just glad they caught that in time. (To be fair, it sounds like a pretty serious potential hazard: “A weakness in the area where the handle meets the blade can cause the handle or the blade to break during use, posing a laceration hazard.”)

– A strip club owner in Tampa, Florida does not expect the upcoming Republican National Convention, less than six miles from his club, to bring him much business. Time will tell.

– Speaking of Tampa, Rush Limbaugh thinks that President Obama instructed the National Hurricane Center to announce the risk of Tropical Storm Isaac possibly hitting Tampa around the time of the convention. He also said something about turning the convention into a FEMA camp, and then I think an Alien larva burst out of his chest and offered a more sensible take on the news. (NOTE: I might have imagined that last part. The comments about the tropical storm actually happened.)

– A reporter, formerly of the Houston Chronicle, is complaining to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of sex discrimination. The newspaper fired her in March, allegedly because she neglected to tell them of her other job as a stripper. In what I am certain is a total coincidence, Gloria Allred represents her.

– A casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey neglected to check a shipment of playing cards to confirm that they had been shuffled. They had not been shuffled. Gamblers caught on and won $1.5 million, give or take. The casino is suing the card company, but they’re also suing the winning gamblers for violating the “house always wins” clause.

– A so-bad-he’s-really-bad comedian launches into an absurdly racist routine in front of a young Asian couple and gets (justifiably) knocked out:

Photo credit: ‘Gerber Machete’ by Dana60Cummins (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

My Response to Iowa Republican Representative Steve King on Dog Fighting

Posted on August 2, 2012 by wellsdc

You may have heard about Representative Steve King’s (R-IA) opposition to amendments to the current Farm Bill that would expand federal criminal laws regarding dog fighting. The Dog Files has a good summary of the proposed amendment and Rep. King’s objections:

During a tele-townhall event last week, King complained about an amendment to the farm bill that prohibits attendance at organized animal fights and imposes additional penalties for bringing a child to these bloody and horrific displays. Staging fights, possessing and/or training animals or moving animals for fighting purposes is already a federal crime. This amendment to the US Farm Bill would extend that to anyone spectating and wagering on animal fighting.

Congressman King went as far to say in his live town hall video broadcast that “it’s a federal crime to watch animals fight or to induce someone else to watch an animal fight but it’s not a federal crime to induce somebody to watch people fighting, there’s something wrong with the priorities of people that think like that.”

When I first read this yesterday, my initial impulse was to post a link to the Dog Files story on my Facebook page with a snarky note asking Republicans to please pick up their trash, but two things made me pause before shooting off at the mouth (or keyboard.) First, I’m trying to respond to ideas and arguments that shock my conscience with slightly more restraint, out of a “catch more flies with honey sentiment,” although I admit it is difficult. I will still call stupid “stupid” to its face. And that was the second thing that gave me pause: while I believe Rep. King is 100% wrong, something about the rhetoric he employed prevents me from outright calling it any of my usual deserved slurs. The false equivalence that Rep. King uses here calls for a nuanced response, followed up by an analogy that is both more apt and more inflammatory. In short, Rep. King compares dog fighting to boxing, when I posit that he should be comparing it to child pornography. The following is my open letter to Rep. King. Continue reading →

Dear Michigan and Florida Republicans: Vagina. Uterus. Vagina. Uterus. Vagina. Uterus. Vagina. Uterus. Vagina. Uterus. Repeat…..

Posted on June 17, 2012 by wellsdc

Who remembers something that happened in the world of American politics fifteen months ago? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most voters can’t remember what politicians said or did back when they started reading this sentence. This forgetfulness accounts for about one hundred and twelve percent of Republicans’ electoral successes since at least 1996. It’s almost enough to–SQUIRREL!!!

Where was I?

Oh yeah…

VAGINA

Republicans in Michigan don’t like the word VAGINA. They dislike it so much that they barred the woman who uttered it, a Democratic state representative, from speaking on the House floor for as long as they feel like it. Presumably until she’s learned her lesson.

House Republicans prohibited state Rep. Lisa Brown from speaking on the floor Thursday after she ended a speech Wednesday against a bill restricting abortions by referencing her female anatomy.

Brown, a West Bloomfield Democrat and mother of three, said a package of abortion regulation bills would violate her Jewish religious beliefs and that abortions be be allowed in cases where it is required to save the life of the mother.

“Finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no,'” Brown said Wednesday.

Brown’s comment prompted a rebuke Thursday by House Republicans, who wouldn’t allow her to voice her opinion on a school employee retirement bill.

“What she said was offensive,” said Rep. Mike Callton, R-Nashville. “It was so offensive, I don’t even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company.”

Ahem, VAGINA.

The pearl-clutching got better:

House Republicans also wouldn’t let state Rep. Barb Byrum speak on the House floor today.

Byrum, D-Onondaga, caused a disturbance on the House floor Wednesday when she wasn’t allowed to introduce an amendment to the abortion regulations bill banning men from getting a vasectomy unless the sterilization procedure was necessary to save a man’s life.

“If we truly want to make sure children are born, we would regulate vasectomies,” Byrum told reporters Thursday.

Now, to be fair, a Republican spokesperson later said the impetus for banning Rep. Brown was that she made a rape reference (“no means no”) that Republicans though breached the decorum of the House. They really should have checked with Rep. Callton before dragging that one out.

The internet, being the predictably unpredictably beast that it is, responded to Michigan Republicans’ unease over accurate medical terminology and whatnot with a barrage of VAGINA-related comments and post, to the point that the Michigan Republican Party’s Facebook page administrator had to ask for calm.

Does any of this sound familiar?

It should. Continue reading →

Stan Lee Wept

Posted on June 4, 2012 by wellsdc

So, apparently this really exists:

ACC Studios has published the most politically divisive comic book ever written, Liberality For All #1 (in a series of eight issues) releases nationwide November 2, 2005 . It is an all-new take on the Orwellian future, this time with a captive society oppressed by doves, not hawks. It is the first comic book directly marketed to the “vast right-wing” audience.

While this action-packed, patriotic knee-in-the-groin to the embodiment of the ultra-left is a blatant satire of liberalism, it still asks significant questions about the end result of liberal political policies.

‘It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. America is under oppression by ultra-liberal extremists who have surrendered governing authority to the United Nations. Hate speech legislation called the “Coulter Laws” have forced vocal conservatives underground. A group of bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and a young man born on September 11, 2001, set out to thwart Ambassador Usama bin Laden’s plans to nuke New York City.’

When first announced in late July, Liberality For All immediately touched off a controversy that is still raging. The resulting enthusiasm from conservatives, and simultaneous denunciation as neo-con indoctrination propaganda by those on the Left, continues to feed a firestorm on this provocative, full-color, eight-issue, comic book mini-series.

This press release is from November 1, 2005, but I had never heard of this epic controversy until just now. I had also forgotten just how stupid things got around the middle of the last decade. Lest anyone think we have presently entered an unprecedented era of self-styled conservatives completely losing their shit, I present Liberality for All. Things have been stupid for quite a while. (Incidentally, the ACC Studios webpage appears to have received its most recent update in June 2006. Perhaps its editors rage-quit after the Democratic victory in the 2006 mid-term elections.)

The “alternate cover” is pictured here. The fantasy-fulfillment element is quite remarkable. This appears to depict a one-eyed Sean Hannity, for some reason holding an Apple laptop and dressed sort of like an X-Man. The real kicker though, is G. Gordon Liddy, who would be 90 to 91 years old in 2021, riding a hog. The other cover also depicts a by-then 78 year-old Oliver North, but at least it shows him with a cane. Maybe he didn’t receive any “bio-mechanical enhancements.” It is impossible to look at this and not make a joke about how these three probably can’t look at these comic book covers without getting erections. Continue reading →

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