Welcome to the home of the very worst of the meretricious poetasters!
number 19 for 8-6-05:
Stupidberries
PRELIMINARY NOTE:
Special thanks to Noah for picking up the pace while I was taking a few days off. It was much needed, and it’s nice to know that my friends will step up and cover my ass when I need a break. I need to work on that myself…I owe Felix more than a few reviews (though I have a few done). There never seem to be enough hours in the day. So to those of you who continue to support me and help me deal with this weight of fixing houses, working on columns constantly, and trying to make a difference, thank you.
In moving to a daily column, I’ve had to make a whole buttload of choices, mainly moving from a bunch of differing columns to only one at a time, maybe two if they relate, and an ancillary. To that end, and because I have a huge backlog of stories that just didn’t make it to the main column, I think every once in a while (maybe every few weeks, or at the start of the working week when I’m juiced up to bust my ass on Splenda and too much optimism) I’ll put together a whole shitload of stories that are becoming dated but are too good to pass by.
I’ve also, as you may have noticed, started using the PHP format of the website to put the essay into the framework of nealbailey.com instead of the crappy, horrible HTML word editor that I’ve used for years. This is a conscious choice because A) I want to get better at HTML and PHP, it’s an essential skill, B) It looks better on a dark background with light letters, and strains the eyes less, and finally, most importantly, C) I have been dying to put graphics in this shit, and it’s impossible with said crappy word editor.
Here we go, then!
ROBERT NOVAK, GO FUCK YOURSELF!
It brought tears to the eyes of Jon Stewart, and it brought me a glee that borders on unholy revengeance. I am speaking, of course, of the fall and suspension of Robert Novak.
There are, as I have mentioned recently, to my mind two kinds of politicos on both sides. The person who consciously chooses to do evil to make a power grab, and the bulk majority who have a good heart but are swept up in the attempt to do right and consequently do ignorance through ostrich-like tendencies.
Robert Novak is a conscious douche.
Back in 2000, when the fringes of this column were just a jizz-spurt forming pearly in the back of my head, I started watching political commentary and paying close attention to the things that shape our world. I started out blindly miming my parents as a conservative growing up, then naturally, in high school, progressed to total liberalism as a revolt, and then, when I got my head out of my ass and started thinking for myself politically at about 18, 19 (as opposed to in the literary sense, where I started getting my shit together at 14, I think, priorities.).
In the wake of the Bush election (I couldn’t consciously believe we’d elect that much of a jackass. Clinton was a fink, Bush 1 was a fink, but at least they seemed to be smart men. I was blown apart that the man who was smarter didn’t get elected. I started realizing…America is stupid, and it wants stupid people running it. They feel condescended at when someone intelligent is in charge, even if they’re wrong. So they elect dumbasses. But Bush, WOW. Bush was a fucking dumbass.
So I ran the gamut and threw myself into the political spectrum. I read some fifty-odd political books and gave each political party their chance to influence me. Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Republicans, Democrats, Constitution Party folk, Libertarians...fucking everyone.
And I learned a few things, culminating in the shock and awe of power and corruption that was September 11th and the ensuing use of that terrorism to steal liberties and destroy republics. ALL politicos are asses. Myself and my idols included, when I’m on the subject of parties and solidarity.
But with that knowledge, I know that for all of the assholishness, most of the partisans are not dangerous. Not evil, inherently.
Robert Novak is one of the elite cadre of dangerous and evil men who will stoop to any low in order to get his desires fulfilled. Jon Stewart is not wrong when he wonders if Novak sucks the life out of the room.
I watched, as one watches a trainwreck, the television show Crossfire from about 2001 to its cancellation. I watched every episode of 2004.
The Plame issue, the whole election, I have watched Robert Novak again and again make an ass out of himself and others. Novak, Begala, and Carlson, all low-level carnie barkers who fire offhand comments in an attempt to polarize America. They knew they were doing it, and they justified it by saying they were holding politicians to the fire.
The game is not to snuff the other side. The game is equitable compromise.
So when I see a man like Robert Novak break down on television and start cursing and walking off his show after doing something as assish and stupid as outing a CIA agent in order to support a war that he knew was wrong, I feel glee in my petty revenge.
Good.
He apologized, but he’s off the air indefinitely. I know the news. They’ll wait until people cool off or Plame is gone and he’ll be back (Conservatives stick up for the people who break ranks like asses, look at Rush Limbaugh, still on the air, though probably not talking about stiff terms for drugged out losers any more.). But for now, it’s good to see a fool crack.
Do I want Robert Novak silenced? No. But I do want him prosecuted for what he did with Plame. And I think there are many, many more worthy voices for an outlet as vast and far-reaching (if moronic) as CNN.
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SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Bush has again shown his naïve links to the religious culture by insisting that he thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution.
This shows a remarkable naivety. Oh ho, says the conservative, but Neal, it’s a theory, it should be taught in schools.
I agree. But not in a science class.
I believe that schools should have religion classes. Surprised? Don’t be. If people were more informed about religion, then we wouldn’t have so many ignorant bible thumping bastards insisting that just because I say fuck I’ll rot eternally in hell.
The problem is the subtext. What is desired. Bush doesn’t want a theory taught. He wants kids to convert to Christianity. And so do most people. The problem is, the will of the many can’t be foisted on the few. So if we TAUGHT religious theories in public school, it would lean heavily on Christianity and encourage kids to convert, even on a subconscious level, which is why we don’t. And which is why, in my ideal world where religious theory is taught in public schools, it would be taught by an avowed atheist who swears not to preach atheism (and before you poo-poo it, how many of you have tried to tell me to be a Christian, and how many of you out there have I told that your life would be better if you abandoned the faulty concept of God and lived like I do? Not many, because it’s not my fucking business, and that’s how a lot of atheists are. I say it’s because of a preponderance of common sense, but then, I’m biased.) At any rate, the class should be taught by someone who will not promote a certain religion.
But that won’t happen, so back to the point. Even the above, which attempts to be fair, preaches conversion. Putting creationism as a scientific theory into a biology class is lunacy without either then promoting every other potential creationism story (and there are, literally, HUNDREDS that are just as likely as Christianity, including mine, God Shat Out the World After Eating Stupidberries).
It’s like aligning against faggotry and saying that he will elect judges that reflect conservative values and pointing out that some Muslims are terrorists so that people think all Muslims are terrorists. It’s just an opinion, but it’s horrible, irresponsible jackassery as well.
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In many states, the police can search through your trash and get away with it. It’s an unlawful search and seizure, but they justify it by saying that your trash is not your property.
So then, I guess you can’t throw away anything you don’t want the police seeing, from evidence for kiddie porn to drug paraphenelia.
You can argue that if people have those things they deserve to be caught anyway. I would agree. They do deserve to be caught. But there is a REASON we have the right to privacy. It protects us from corrupt police, the government, and censorship. For instance, in a world where being a “red” could get you thrown in jail (and believe me, a person against the Iraq War is about a hair’s breadth away from being called a terrorist these days, the new “red”), a policeman searching your trash for essays like this could certainly lead to new levels of already present injustice.
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DEAD JAPS
Sixty years ago, we dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland and killed anywhere from 150-200 thousand Japanese civilians. The claim was that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, that the Japanese would have to be invaded, and that dropping only one bomb would not have been sufficient.
History bears that out.
Unfortunately, history is written largely by old white male Americans, who are biased.
The reality, if you dig a bit, is that Japan was crippled, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets any more than Detroit is for having factories, civilian tolls were higher than necessary, we didn’t do a test run, and we wouldn’t have had to invade Japan. The leaders were already calling for surrender, we had already killed more than Hiroshima or Nagasaki by firebombing the shit out of Tokyo a la Dresden, and the president lied like all shit to test his new little toy.
Still, most people think it was a good idea. Because most people don’t know shit from shinola about their history. Ask them what the Lusitania was. Ask what sparked the Spanish-American war. Ask who won the Civil War, or what year it was fought in. Ask who was involved in the Revolutionary War.
We are a nation of imbeciles, and we write the history, so no wonder Hiroshima and Nagasaki are lauded as great military victories and used as a justification to show how we are the ultimate authority on how to safely use atom bombs when in fact we are the only nation to use atomic weaponry in anger and as an authority we are about as trustworthy as a rapist looking after a woman in handcuffs just because we have experience with the situation.
Happy anniversary.
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IN LIGHT OF THE PREVIOUS
It’s good to see we’ve learned from our previous mistakes. We’re building anti-personnel mines, though our mines still kill children all over the world and were discontinued in 1997 because the idea of a real, land-based war in our future is ridiculous. Doesn’t stop them from wasting taxpayer money on it.
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On the nuclear front, we’re flat-out OFFERING nuclear technology to Iran for the PROMISE not to make nuclear weapons. Yeah. Let’s trust Iran. Good idea, Britain!
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In further news of how the British are deciding to drop all pretense of nobility and join us in our quest to squelch the freedom of expressions that we don’t like or that remind us of things that we generally hate, the Prime Minister is now outlawing certain Muslim groups and assigning police to watch groups, some that have no relation to terror but are instead related in an ancillary way to things that scare the bejesus out of Londoners. Sound familiar?
A list of people whose “activities of VIEWS” (caps mine) pose a threat to Britain’s security.
My fucking views pose a threat to Britain’s security because I am saying things that may make English people critical of their government, and some whackjob might use my column as an excuse to blow up an embassy.
Will I be banned? Nah. Because I’m white and not Muslim. Profiling, squelching expression...England and the United States were the only two places on Earth that didn’t DO that shit. Now we do. And it will only get worse the more we get scared.
Chronicling the fall.
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The funny thing is, with all of this nonsense, we start to blame Bush. And back when there were people, a small percent, pointing out how stupid this all was, no one read them. They were called un-American. NOW, our petty little blogosphere is growing, and people call assholes like me revolutionaries because we harp on what others (myself included) were harping on years ago when no one gave a shit.
Bush will be crucified when he should have been stopped. That’s a fact.
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AFFORDABILITY
The median house price is 400,000 dollars. Middle class ends at about 200,000 dollars. There is a net ZERO median savings amount for the average household in America.
In other words, the rich are really fucking rich and don’t trickle down the wealth, and good people who work hard will NEVER be able to afford a decent home no matter how hard they work in the future, and they will have no savings for retirement.
Which means the working poor, who pay taxes, will have to care for the homeless and the medical bills the baby boomers boom up as they have no savings to speak of and fewer and fewer houses.
The government does nothing about this. But it did manage to get GTA off the shelf. Thank God.
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ANCILLARY
A little note of hope. A man, wrongly convicted of rape, is free after 19 years.
There should be some kind of recompense for a situation like that. If you’re wrongly convicted, the person who fingers you should get double your sentence. There would be fewer black men in jail and more bitchy white women.
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