Dangerous Words

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good ... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism" [Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, 8/16/93].

-this quote, culled from the invaluable mediamatters.org is from none other than Randal Terry, a man whose colleagues have bombed abortion clinics, who has said basically that the estate of the judiciary is useless, and who apparently everyone thinks is insane except for the pundits on the network satellites.

After 9/11 Jerry Falwell blamed the attacks on gays and feminists. Here I just thought the towers were built on ancient Indian burial grounds. Falwell's claim was repeated by some other nutcase on one of the cable shows the other night. This cannot be the tenor the vast majority of Christians in ths country, right? But it is precisely these types of people who have the ear of the president, apparently, the types who believe that on the 7th day, God created creationism. Sure, he has secular madmen in his corner too, like Paul "the occupation will cost less than the war" Wolfowitz and Dick "Weekend at Bernie's" Cheney. But these religious people are more nuts; how big a difference is it, really between suicide bombing a Jewish cafe and firebombing an abortion clinic? Whether you are for or anti-abortion, you must agree that the intent in this latter case is the same as the former: the promulgation of terror. These people in Florida are trying to terrorize us with their Jeremiads, as well and luckily, hardly anyone is gullible enough to believe them... I hope. Certainly, there must be more responsible Christians in this country. But then, these Evangelical types have always seen the Catholics, or "moderates," as backwards, the same as any other group that disagrees with them.

Hoping to pick up Picaresque by the Decemberists.

Signs

Why do they identify people by their signs on this blog engine? Have I stumbled ass-backwards into a nefarious internet hook-up dating scheme?

Some Tracks

Meantime by The Futureheads
The Angel's Share by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Quay Cur by The Fiery Furnaces
Fear of Drowning by British Sea Power
The Infanta by The Decemberists
Black History Month by Death From Above 1979
All Night by Sam Phillips
Tiny Apocalypse by David Byrne

SI

In the latest Sports Illustrated, there's an article by a guy who writes in the typical SI omnipotent quasi-1st person view, only this one has the additional good sense to scold everyone else while implicitly patting himself on the back for his moral outrage. Over baseball. The sport that gave us death threats to Jackie Robinson, the life of Ty Cobb, Pete Rose, the Black Sox, and Little Big League. Please. Let's all shed tears over our loss of innocence as a nation. It's not over the mass slaughter of Indians, or slavery, or the Civil War. It's not over Japanese internment camps or the presidency of Richard Nixon. It's over baseball. An English sport, to be sure. The thrust of the article is essentially this guy calling people and gauging their outrage. His tone is unmitigated self-righteousness, stemming, no doubt, from the editors wanting to see this issue from the perspective of the fan. Unfortunately, our nation of baseball fans is as full of bloviating panty-waists as it is political "personalities," the latter of which, of course have gauged the outrage typified by our not-as-smart-as-their-chaucer-reading-liteary-colleagues-but-god-bless-'em-they-try newspaper columnists and have decided (the political folks) to take action in the form of.... talking about it. For eleven hours. And then they go back to harboring fantasies of sending Navy SEALS to Florida to plunge a feeding tube back into a vegetable.
To me, this is an indication of just how dumb, self-interested, and opportunistic the American public is.... just like the media, eh?

This is not to say that Americans are intrinsically dumb - look at the hooliganism in Europe and these assholes issuing fatwahs in the Middle East. This world, to quote Mozzer, is full of crashing bores. To get most individuals by themselves, they'll turn out to be quite insightful and reasonable. It's just when people get their baser self-righteous tendencies validated by others with a blog (such as this) or some other mode (such as a radio show), they froth at the mouth and demand recourse for whatever perceived slight that has been visited upon them. So, to close, I have a rhetorical question - what came first - Mitch Albom, or the moral outrage?

First Post

I vow not to quote or paraphrase Bill Simmons, Bob Novak, the editorial page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lucianne Goldberg or her bastard child Jonah, the editors of Rolling Stone, Rob Mitchum and anyone else on pitchforkmedia.com, and anyone else who thinks they have something to say. That said, my postings will likely be mediocre, light on substance, and cribbed from some altogether different web entity with shrieking liberals or debased conservatives. Amen.