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Every time somebody gets fired for something they said or wrote, such as recently when blogger Paul Shirley was fired by ESPN for making retarded comments about Haiti, there’s usually an interminable supply of Constitutionally confounded news commentators yammering about the First Amendment—such as CNN’s Joy Behar, who said, “I don’t think he should be fired for [exercising] free speech. I’m strict about the First Amendment.” (more…)
By now, you’ve probably heard about the 14-year-old South Pasadena boy who recently lobbied to have profanity banned in his hometown. Apparently, the City Council liked the idea so much that they officially proclaimed the first week in March as No Cussing Week and The State of California is considering adopting No Cussing Week as well.
Now keep in mind, No Cussing Week is not law. It’s an official proclamation, which means–it don’t mean squat. It is unenforceable, un-punishable, not in violation of the First Amendment and, therefore, not deserving of our contempt.
It is, however, deserving of our ridicule.
Forget the obvious reason, which is that swearing is a valuable element of human communication. Anyone who doesn’t know that has never had their plane stuck on the tarmac for three hours, their shampoo bottles leak into their suitcase or their hotel reservation misplaced–all during the same trip. You just try to tell me that having access to a couple of choice obscenities at that moment wouldn’t save at least a couple of lives.
But the main reason No Cussing Week deserves our ridicule is because it’s fucking retarded.
I’ve always hated euphemisms. A euphemism replaces an unpleasant word or phrase with one that is more palatable, such as the term “pre-owned” to replace “used” or “landfill” to replace “garbage dump.” It’s a symptom of the fact that mankind would rather obfuscate certain truths about itself than confront them.
Even worse are political euphemisms used to influence the public mindset, such as Dick Cheney’s “enhanced interrogation” to replace “torture,” which is offensive and an insult to our intelligence.
And let us not forget The Dark Lord of euphemisms, former Bush administration consultant Frank Luntz, who gave the president such doozies as “climate change,” “opportunity scholarships” and “responsible energy exploration,” which works well as a euphemism for “drill” but really isn’t all that bumper-sticker-friendly.
“Explore responsibly, baby, explore!” (more…)
I’m sitting on my recliner watching The View, as I do every morning, and, as usual, getting quite irritated in the bowels by Sherri Shepherd, the heavy-set, African-American co-host whose big fat face I cannot stand in the least.
The ladies are bantering about how it’s become politically incorrect to say or write the words “Merry Christmas” and how that complicates the process of sending holiday cards.
“All my cards say ‘Merry Christmas,’” Shepherd barks defiantly, “because people know I’m a Christian, and if they are offended, they don’t have to get my card.”
Joy Behar, one of the co-hosts on The View who can actually see and shit, explains to Shepherd that the point of a greeting card is to commemorate the holiday that the recipient is celebrating. “I’m a Christian, too,” Behar says, “but I send my Jewish friends ‘Happy Hanukkah’ cards.”
“No,” spurts Shepherd, “this is my holiday!”
And there you have it, folks. It’s Sherri Shepherd’s holiday; we’re just decorating it for her.
There are few people in this whole wide world whom I despise more than that woman. Her unwavering conviction to fatuous, infantile concepts is astounding. This is a person who believes Christianity predates all religions, wasn’t sure if the world is flat or round and thought that taking Andy Dick to a Pentecostal church service would get him to change his ways.
So, no, I am not surprised that Ms. Shepherd would make such a remark, but when Elisabeth Hasselbeck agreed, well, that was a bit much. Hasselbeck—the blonde, right-wing, bumper-sticker spewing co-host of The View—ain’t no Copernicus, either, but she’s nowhere near as vacuous as Shepherd. Or so I thought. (more…)
Recently, I drifted into a cigar and beer and wine bar to treat myself to a stogie and a brew. This particular establishment is known for its extensive draft microbrew selection and a palatial walk-in humidor that would make most cigar aficionados drool.
As usual, I was looking for something under 20 bucks. Aside from the fact that $20 is all I care to invest in something I’m going to set on fire and reduce to a small pile of ash, the truth is, I really can’t tell the difference between a $20 and a $100 cigar. I just don’t have the palate for it, so I don’t spend more than $20, which, I guess, makes me a cigar aficio-nada. (more…)
“I believe universal healthcare is a right, not a privilege.”
—Hillary Clinton
I really don’t understand this point of view. The notion that we have a right to healthcare ignores two universal truths of the human condition—we all must fend for ourselves and nobody owes anybody a damn thing. This is not to say I’m against universal healthcare, per se. Like everything else in the world, the concept has its pros and cons. But they have nothing to do with whether healthcare is a right or a privilege.
I have long been curious about this concept and have pondered what, exactly, is the difference between right and privilege, and who, exactly, gets to decide who gets which? (more…)
A couple of weeks ago, after yet another nasty column I’d written about Catholicism, I received a disturbing missive.
It was in e-mail form. It was anonymous. It contained only one word but the word was huge, about a 72-point font if memory serves. The word in the e-mail was “bigot” and it was so big, it damn near filled up the entire computer screen.
Now I’ve had this word used against me before, but never so large, and never by itself, which always made it easy to dismiss. After all, how could I be a bigot? I’m the bigot hater. I detest bigotry with all the marrow in my bones.
But this e-mail was different. There’s just something about seeing a 72-point-font insult, hovering before you like an alien spacecraft in the middle of the night, that makes you start to wonder about things. So against the better judgment of my lizard brain, which had spent a lifetime building up a wall of denial between it and my conscious brain, I looked up the word “bigot” (multiple times) and, according to just about every definition I read, my neo-cortex is screwed.
Who would’ve thought that Nordstrom would be the kind of company that would have a rational approach toward holiday commercialism? It’s true. Five days before Thanksgiving, I saw a sign inside the main entrance of the UTC store that said the following: “At Nordstrom we won’t be decking our halls until Friday, November 23. Why? Well we just like the idea of a celebrating one holiday at a time…. Happy Thanksgiving.”
Well, amen! So nice to see somebody over there in super-ultra-mega-corporation-land is finally addressing the issue of the Ever Creeping Christmas. I’m talking about the problem of how, every year, they–and by “they” I mean the Overlords of Christmas Spirit–start introducing Christmas just a little bit sooner than the year before.
Have you heard about Conservapedia? It’s a relatively new online encyclopedia that boasts a conservative bias. Aside from its Christian conservative leanings, Conservapedia looks and operates similar to Wikipedia, with the entries posted and edited by anyone who wants to.
Conservapedia was created by a high-school teacher, Andy Schlafly, in order to offset what he believed was a liberal slant on Wikipedia. And offset he did. From the minute you load it, you can see the conservolasses dripping all over the thing.
Have you heard about the latest bullshit gouge attempt by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)? Now that the organization has successfully devastated the Internet radio community, it’s targeting terrestrial radio for an ever bigger chunk of a pie that the RIAA doesn’t deserve.
The RIAA is doing this, of course, because the recording industry as we know it is dying. The digital age has been brutal to it, and what we are now witnessing are the death throes of the great beast as it flaps its tendrils wildly trying to grab on to anything it can to keep from going under.
In other words, it’s not dying with dignity.
I suppose you have heard about the speech Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave at the United Nations last week. How could you not? It infuriated just about everybody in the country.
Mr. Chavez called President Bush, “The Devil.”
He was addressing the U.N. assembly the day after Bush had spoken and said, “Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States came here. . . Right here. The Devil came here. And it smells of sulfur today.”
My first thought when I heard that was that George Bush had planted one of his notorious, time-released, sulfurized fart bombs for Chavez’s benefit – an inelegant act of terrorism ever there was one.
My second thought was, uh-oh. Republicans aren’t going to like that. And they certainly howled with contempt. What surprised me however was the number of Democrats who proclaimed offense as well – some who have said equal or worse things about President Bush.
By now many of you have heard about Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. For those of you who don’t know Ann Coulter, she is the conservative journalist/author/and cable news commentator who loves to espouse her wildly extreme opinion about liberals in much the same way that wrecking balls like to espouse their opinions about inferior structures.
For instance, in Godless, she ruthlessly attacks The Jersey Girls – a collective of 4 wives whose husbands were killed in the World Trade Center and who have since become anti-Bush political activists. In her book, Coulter says The Jersey Girls are, “self-obsessed,” and that they are “celebrity-seeking broads,” and even went so far as to call them harpies.
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”
Pretty gnarly.
As usual when an Ann Coulter book comes out, liberals get all whipped up about her coarse invective. And all the lefty talking heads start bemoaning what an abomination is she, and how wrong it is for her to write and that she says these sorts of things.
This is what I hate about liberals. Ok well not all liberals. Just the ones who drone about all the mean, insensitive things said by conservatives. I call them labials – as in pussy-ass liberals. They fear and loathe bad ideas and bad words and demand that you fear and loathe them also. Another argument levied against Ann Coulter is that the only reason she can get away with writing with such vituperation is because she’s an attractive blonde.
I stopped in Oceanside for the weekend to wind down. Upon my arrival to the pier, I learned that Oceanside was hosting a national cheerleader competition. It was called Bring it Back to the Beach presented by the California Allstars (www.californiaallstars.com) and was conducted in the area surrounding the Oceanside Pier.
The place was crawling with cheerleaders. There were cheerleaders on their way to compete. There were cheerleaders just returning from competing. There were cheerleaders stretching on grass. There were cheerleaders tumbling on mats. There were cheerleaders chatting and cheerleaders joking. There were even little baby cheerleaders — in their little baby cheerleader skirts smiling little baby cheerleader smiles — and I’m thinking, “Aw, look at the little cheer-chicks in training, aren’t they just the cutest little . . . spawns of Satan that ever walked a planet of evil ever??
