A&E downs the ducks

By Capt. Fogg 

I didn't know who Phil Robertson was until just the other day when I stumbled upon A&E's Duck Dynasty and watched a bit before moving on. I had never watched the show, despite it's immense popularity, despite my fondness for shows about people who live in swamps, tiny towns and remote places -- People who hunt alligators, catch crawfish and run bait shops in towns like Pierre Part (the end of the world as the sign says) or Bayou Pigeon -- their cuisine, their music and culture, so quickly fading in an urbanizing country that still, as it always has, is forcing people into a cash economy, into paying jobs with regular hours while their environment - our country- is cut down, paved over and polluted.

In general I'm comfortable with people who love the 'outdoors,' that odd term we call the actual environment of planet Earth -- people who own fishing gear, snake boots, snowshoes, canoes and all that and still prize the ability to use them in unspoiled country. That's partially because such people are environmentalists although most will carefully explain that "they ain't no treehuggers or hippies."

That love of nature often sets them against entities like Florida's sugar cartel which has done more damage to our formerly vast wilderness than any terrorist could dream of, so you'd think that the rapacious right would despise anyone who didn't support fracking, strip mining, clear-cutting, toxic waste dumping, smoke belching and generally destructive industry, and perhaps you'd expect to hear the voice of the Right raised against such folks, but no. The American Family Association is calling him a New American Hero. now that the network has suspended the release of next season's show.

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Those little town blues

By Capt. Fogg

Small town newspapers. When I first moved to Florida over 11 years ago, Little Boots was in the white house and although the fear machine was running on afterburner and everyone was in the process of never forgetting and sending money to Taiwan manufacturers of plastic automobile flag holders, you still had headlines declaring that some local fisherman had caught a record Snook or irate letters about litter in the park. Now it's outrage. Every day. Even the fish are angry.

Printed opprobrium grew over the Bush years, at least those quasi-literate, misspelled, cliche-ridden letters to the editor written in impotent rage at Mexican farm workers, people on food stamps, Liberals, immigrants, ethnic minorities, liberals, Muslims, atheists, Jews, Democrats -- did I mention Liberals? Yes, sure, I and a few others sometimes wrote ( brilliantly, I must admit) alternate opinons, much to the further wrath of the toothless unwashed, but it's a small town as I said, and word gets around and I really don't want to carry a gun in my bathing suit or they may think I'm happy to see them. Discretion, valor and all that.

Of course it's hardly new. I remember, back in the mid 60's, living in long hair and sandals in the tiny, rural, University town of Hamilton New York. I remember when the school had an open symposium on Communism, and the good, go-to-church and keep-Christ-in-Christmas locals flooded the opinion page with demands to bomb the bastards back to the stone age - now. Small town newspapers. I wish I could believe that they didn't represent America, that they weren't just some boil on the ass of an otherwise great nation. 

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I'd almost forgotten Ann Coulter existed -- lucky me

By Richard K. Barry

I stumbled upon an interview on television the other night with conservative author, commentator, loudmouth, and all-around vile creature Ann Coulter.

I had not seen her around in a while and surely would not have gone looking for her unless compelled by some reason I could not imagine. But there she was being interviewed, and I had to stop and watch, if only for a moment.

I have no interest in dredging up the compendium of obnoxious things she has said over the years, though it would be easy to do. Do it yourself, if you have the stomach for it. And I am not the least bit interested in having a discussion about the value of her arguments, because they have none.

I only know that Ann Coulter and a handful of other right-wingers who crop up now and again to spew undisguised hatred depress the hell out of me. And, make no mistake, this mode of presentation is a speciality of the right.

There is nothing clever in what she has to say. There is no nuance or argument worth parsing. It's bile plain and simple, it is hate speech, and she exists simply because a certain subset of the population will always be receptive to arguments based on hatred. She has figured that out and is, apparently, making a good living from it.

I don't know if it's an act or if she really is, deep down, this horrid. Either way, she deserves no attention and I would suggest that any media outlet, any organization, that continues to provide a way for her to be heard ought to be ashamed.

Coulter should remind us that there are limits to the opinions that deserve to be entertained.

Lines of that sort can and should be drawn.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

No more excuses

By Edward Copeland

It's been quite awhile since I've written anything here. My movie blog and my health has kept me busy and I haven't felt particularly inspired on the political front because I find it all too depressing. However, after reading a Salon blog post shared on Twitter by Roger Ebert yesterday, posting it on Facebook, where a friend of mine shared it and another friend shared it from him and I read some of the absolutely ridiculous comments, I felt I had to write about this.

I'm not going to mention candidates by name or parties in this post. For its purposes, they really are irrelevant. I'm just tired of people trying to make excuses for people's hate. The blog post in question dealt with one African-American woman's reaction to seeing a bumper sticker on a car while she was in a drive-thru lane that read THIS COUNTRY WAS BUILT BY WHITE MEN WITH GUNS. She goes on, with illustrations to recount all of the ugly, racism that has surfaced since 2008. Whenever she mentioned to friends her concerns for where this country was heading, she often was told to stop being so sensitive, as if she could forget that she lived through the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and that Emmett Till's mother was her fifth-grade teacher.

It sounded so similar to what I would always hear growing up when I would complain about relatives who were being racist or saying racist things. "Oh, they grew up in a different time." It was a sorry excuse then and if it ever were valid, the expiration date has long since passed. It reminded me of the the third season of The Sopranos when Tony went nuts because Meadow was dating an African American and Carmela trotted out that excuse about a different time and place to which Meadow responded quite rightly, "New Jersey? Third millennium?"

The very first comment on the Facebook thread accused it of being "extreme wackadoodleness from the halfwit left" and that the column and photos were all concocted lies made to make people think there was rampant racism as some sort of electoral gambit. She paid such close attention to the post she referred to the "inane author" as a he when the writer was a she. Another commenter compared it to high school cliques and by even bringing up the growing hate "in order to rally your own troops is simply widening the chasm a little further." Don't talk about it and it won't exist, I guess is his point. This isn't about rallying troops. This is about decency.

Right now, we have a U.S. House candidate who dresses as a Nazi for re-enactments, excusing it because he says it was impressive that a country as relatively small as Germany could conquer as much as it did. A candidate for governor of New York said that homosexuality is not an equally valid lifestyle and children should be taught that families should be a husband and wife raising children, despite the fact that while married to one woman, he had a daughter with another at the same time. What values does that teach?

There is no rational excuse for racism or anti-Semitism or gay bashing or any other form of hate based on race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. Those who place those categories only into political context instead of basic human decency are the ones with the problem. Ignorance is ignorance. No more excuses for it shall be allowed. Everyone with a brain knows better and everyone who sees or hears an example of it and doesn't confront it and call the perpetrator on their ignorance and stupidity may as well be as guilty as the moron themselves. It's time to bring back good old-fashioned shame and ostracism.

The Chosen People

By Distributorcap

from her blog....

Karen Hanretty is a political and communications strategist who specializes in strategic communications, issue advocacy and political campaigns. Over the past decade, Hanretty has developed a strong reputation for taking complex issues and creating news coverage that explains the underlying political motivations that drive public policy.

On The Ed Show - Monday, June 7, 2010, Karen Hanretty and Laura Flanders were "discussing" (someone like Hanretty does not discuss - she talks over, yells and simply lies) Helen Thomas' remarks about Israel and her resignation. Hanretty, who nastiness just oozes from each pore, only had to say one line to demonstrate her strong reputation for taking complex issues and creating news coverage.

Hanretty (to Flanders): "Only a liberal would defend anti-semitism." 

Let's take a look at some of those "liberal" anti-semites and/or people who have said some incredibly horrendous things about Jews.

Richard Nixon, disgraced President
Prescott Bush, grandfather of a President
Father Coughlin, radio announcer
Charles Lindbergh, hero pilot
Henry Ford, car manker
H L Mencken, writer
Theodore Dreiser, writer
Elizabeth Dilling, writer
Bamberg County, SC GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin
Orangeburg County, SC GOP Chairman James Ulmer
Tennessee Republican Chairman Robin Smith
Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson
Fred Malek, Richard Nixon's "Jew Counter" (who was just hired by Gov. McDonnell of VA)
Ann "Jews should be perfected" Coulter

(please add some more)

so a little editing...

Karen Hanretty is a political and communications hack who specializes in strategic idiocy, anger advocacy, and political lies. Over the past decade, Hanretty has developed a strong reputation for taking complex issues and creating over-simplified sound bites that explains the underlying psychological motivations that drive Republicans, greed and selfishness.

There are certain words to describe someone like Hanretty... I leave it one's imagination.

Stuff to Read (3/24/10): North Korean cuisine and Canadian hate-speech laws

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Check these out:

-- Slate: "Kingdom Kim's Culinary Outposts," by Sebastian Strangio.

A fascinating look at North Korea's Pyongyang restaurant chain in Asia, open to the public but ruled over by Kim's state-run surveillance apparatus. The restaurants are apparently quite popular with South Koreans, with entertainment provided by "group[s] of pretty North Korean-born waitresses, who perform music and dance routines complete with tightly synchronized choreography reminiscent of North Korea's annual Mass Games." And what exactly do they serve? "Unlike North Korea proper, which is wracked by economic sanctions and constant famines, the food here is fresh and abundant. The menu features specialties such as Pyongyang 'cold noodle' (served encrusted with ice), barbecued cuttlefish, stringy dangogi (dog meat) soup, and countless variations on the kimchi theme, all served with glutinous white rice. Also available for sale are a series of North Korean products, including ginseng wine and some nameless bear 'product' promised to increase sexual virility." How do you say "Yum-O!" in Korean?

-- Salon: "The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws," by Glenn Greenwald.

Glenn rightly objects to Canada's objectionable (and wholly subjective) hate-speech laws, as I do (it's one thing about my country I really don't like), focusing on Ann Coulter's invitation to speak at the University of Ottawa, which essentially threatened her with legal action if she crossed the subjective line. "I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite 'hateful.' So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently 'civilized discussion' to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it... The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth." Be careful what you wish for, in other words, as the situation could reverse, the hunter become the hunted, the prosecutor become the prosecuted. (For more on Coulter's appearance in Ottawa yesterday, see Capt. Fogg.)