"Life & Liberty," the publication of the UW Oshkosh "Conservatives in Action," includes in the latest issue a back page "Idiot Dartboard" (scroll down to the last page). I'm worth 10 points! More than Michael Moore! Does anyone know who the idiot worth 16 points is? He's the only one I cannot recognize. (In all seriousness, I'm not sure why I'm on the dartboard because I'm not a Democrat--everyone else on there is a Democrat with the possible exception of Louis Farrakhan who I believe does not identify with any party).
By the way, the word on the street is that Wal-Mart is seeking $20,000 from "Life & Liberty" for unauthorized reproduction of a photo taken in their portrait studio. How greedy is Wal-mart that they would even try to extort some cash from a group of not-very-bright-but-harmless wingnuts? They can call me an idiot, but I'll defend them against Wal-Mart any day.
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32 comments:
I say let Wally World Sue 'em for as much as possible. I know some consevative mommy or daddy'll buck up and cover it and that's 20 grand they can't spend on some neo-con's campaign.
And oh, I don't think Moore is a Democrat either, but I've been wrong before so...
Bob
George Soros is 16
Thank you Citizen! #16 is indeed George Soros.
A better title for the dartboard would be "Moonbat Darts".
Americans marginalize the anti-American ideals, of those moonbats pictured on the board, to the lunatic fringe.
One last idea would be to place a value of 0 for all of the dartboard moonbats. As this number represents their value to society.
Moonbats! Zero!
Ah, my dear Anon, what a wide swath you cut.
Starting with the parochial assessment of "anti-American ideals" your post plunges downward into pointless blithering.
Anti-American indeed! Where are your credentials to make such a statement? In what curled worm of a brain are such ideas hatched? If the positions of the twenty pictured are anti-American what, please, do you call George Bush? The snarling Cheney? All the lover-boy politicians and pundits on the right who dodged the draft and hate paying taxes?
I've got your anti-American and I know where to put it. Is that hateful enough for your infantile mind?
Citizen! feeling spanky today are we? My, my, my....
- "curled worm of a brain", and then to follow through on the imagery with the "hatched" action.
- "lover-boy politicians" has charm as well, esp. since the meaning is not immediately clear. Just sort of a smarmy picture of oatmeal-fleshed and paunchily writhing nude Republicans in an Abu Ghraib-esque pile.
You keep this invective goin' and pretty soon people will be acccusing you of trying to be a cut-rate Tony Palmeri and I'll be off the hook.
Okay, so you want to participate with an alter ego, I am down with that bro.
But let's cut the crap.
You are no old woman. (as you have claimed) "I've got your anti-American and I know where to put it" ???!!!
Among the other 85 bilion clues that you are male, that phrase just drips testosterone.
If you don't mind my sayin' so ma'am.
I feel compelled to resist a statement in a previous posting with an invitation to anyone interested to research the MYTH of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war only to be spat upon. Granted we hear of it all the time but the facts do not bear out the any truth in the statement. I offer one rebuttal below. There are others much more detailed. The conclusions are based on contemporaneous reports (and/or the lack of them). It is not uncommon for misconceptions to take root in our culture but we should not encourage them or base our concepts on them. That is dishonest...and who would want to perpetuate that?
RETURNING VIETNAM VETS BEING SPIT UPON AN URBAN MYTH
by JOHN LLEWELLYN
WINSTON-SALEM -- Last week voters went to the polls to select a vision for the future. Now Americans must find a way forward together. This week, as we honor service and sacrifice on Veterans Day, an image from this political season must be put to rest.
The presidential campaign featured the resurgence of a myth from the early 1990s. That myth is that soldiers returning from Vietnam were spit upon by citizens or war protesters. That claim has been used to turn honest differences of opinion about the war into toxic indictments.
As a scholar of urban legends I am usually involved with accounts of vanishing hitchhikers and involuntary kidney donors. These stories are folklore that harmlessly reveals the public imagination. However, accounts of citizens spitting on returning soldiers -- any nation's soldiers -- are not harmless stories. These tales evoke an emotional firestorm.
I have studied urban legends for nearly 20 years and have been certified as an expert on the subject in the federal courts. Nonetheless, it dawned on me only recently that the spitting story was a rumor that has grown into an urban legend. I never wanted to believe the story but I was afraid to investigate it for fear that it could be true.
Why could I not identify this fiction sooner? The power of the story and the passion of its advocates offer a powerful alchemy of guilt and fear -- emotions not associated with clearheadedness.
Labeling the spitting story an urban legend does not mean that something of this sort did not happen to someone somewhere. You cannot prove the negative -- that something never happened.
However, most accounts of spitting emerged in the mid-1980s only after a newspaper columnist asked his readers who were Vietnam vets if they had been spit upon after the war (an odd and leading question to ask a decade after the war's end). The framing of the question seemed to beg for an affirmative answer.
In 1998 sociologist and Vietnam veteran Jerry Lembcke published "The Spitting Image: Myth, Media and the Legacy of Viet Nam." He recounts a study of 495 news stories on returning veterans published from 1965 to 1971. That study shows only a handful (32) of instances were presented as in any way antagonistic to the soldiers. There were no instances of spitting on soldiers; what spitting was reported was done by citizens expressing displeasure with protesters.
Opinion polls of the time show no animosity between soldiers and opponents of the war. Only 3 percent of returning soldiers recounted any unfriendly experiences upon their return.
So records from that era offer no support for the spitting stories. Lembcke's research does show that similar spitting rumors arose in Germany after World War I and in France after its Indochina war. One of the persistent markers of urban legends is the re-emergence of certain themes across time and space.
There is also a common-sense method for debunking this urban legend. One frequent test is the story's plausibility: how likely is it that the incident could have happened as described? Do we really believe that a "dirty hippie" would spit upon a fit and trained soldier? If such a confrontation had occurred, would that combat-hardened soldier have just ignored the insult? Would there not be pictures, arrest reports, a trial record or a coroner's report after such an event? Years of research have produced no such records.
Lembcke underscores the enduring significance of the spitting story for this Veterans Day. He observes that as a society we are what we remember. The meaning of Vietnam and any other war is not static but is created through the stories we tell one another. To reinforce the principle that policy disagreements are not personal vendettas we must put this story to rest.
Our first step forward is to recognize that we are not a society that disrespects the sacrifices of our servicemembers. We should ignore anyone who tries to tell us otherwise. Whatever our aspirations for America, those hopes must begin with a clear awareness of who we are not.
(John Llewellyn is an associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University.)
In the interest of truth I hope this inspires those who have accepted the "common knowledge" of the spitting stories to engage in further research.
Jody,
Oh yes I am an old woman.
As if to prove it I have just embarrassed myself by posting a comment in the wrong place. That BEFORE I read your witty putdown of my womanhood. I was actually attempting to respond to a comment under the Cindy Sheehan part of this blessed blog.
Actually I am a gray-haired granny, harmless as a tabby cat. I make brownies and pamper my grandsons. Honest.
Layin' it on a little thick, aren't we?
Oh, and my condolences to your womanhood.
Jody:
You know what Auden said of Yeats: "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry..."
Conservatives HURT the two of us into being brusque...masculine if you will.
I believe we are both not just women, but LADIES underneath, gentle and good, yet scorched by the times into extremes of metaphor and expression. We are akin to Scarlet digging with our fingers into the excesses of rhetoric just lookin' for a slender root of Truth.
I can hear the music. Can't you? Only now it is not corny and emotional but John Cage, all tortured and dense. Ravel's waltz spinning out into Gothic themes; shadows on the wall becoming monsters that devour light. We live in the midst of a mad ball, a stage set, nothing REALLY real. Bush and Cheney are but actors in some remote Victorian drawing room comedy. The war in Iraq is only papier-mache.
Other than that I think we both are just simple gals. I know I am.
Gals with weird sleep patterns that fer darn sure. 4:29 a.m. - that's as bad as me.
I've been thinking about what you said about the Conservatives beatin' down us fine southern gals and, well..
As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
(you'll have to picture me silhouetted against the sunset now, brings a tear to the eye, don't it?)
... and like I know what Auden said to Yeats. I wasn't there like you were.
Well Scarlett, I think old Rhett had a quote in "Gone With The Wind" that applies to blog participation: "You go into the arena alone. The lions are hungry for you."
Jody, I can see you now. The light is not sunset but the campfires of the Resistance burning on the horizon.
Speed the day when these days are past. It is an age of idiots and idiocy. Let there be light again.
And Auden, I could have been there, a mouse under the chair, as he wrote of Yeats. But I wasn't. I was fourteen before I first read those unforgettable lines. Auden haunts me.
"I and the public know
What school children learn:
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return..."
"In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark..."
"The heart of every normal
Man and Woman craves
What it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone."
Read Herod's soliloquy from "For The Time Being" if you get the chance. Old Auden could be deadly funny as well as profound.
Mr. Streydawg:
Just who would be your heroes? Who would be pictured on a Conservative Wonders Dartboard? I would be interested to know.
I read your story of discovering the "inner conservative" in the poor sap who was drinking with you. Your success may well have had more to do with the octane of your blood than with the dynamics of your arguments.
Personally I saw nothing compelling in your opinions. I suspect a REAL liberal would have made mincemeat of you in rather short order.
I hope your fascination with junior-high humor does not blind you to some of the real history of this country.
You are a very young person. I can remember a time when NO ONE apart from the very wealthy enjoyed a college education. I can recall a time when outrageous restraints were placed on people because of race, gender and socioeconomic class. And I can promise you NONE of the REMEDIES for those conditions were proposed OR supported by conservatives.
You seems to be an intelligent young man. Use that intellect to search for some semblance of Truth rather than in fruitless pursuits such as constructing a dartboard that is funny only to those who also enjoy the timeless wit of flatulence jokes.
Herod's soliloquy is not to be found on the internet in it's entirety - only a small portion of it about Consumptive Whores.
I'll take the high road and assume you mean no affrontery, that there was some other part I was to resonate with...
Jody:
Please NEVER take offense from anything I say. Apart from Conservatives I hardly ever heap scorn on anyone. Certainly not you.
I did not even know that bit of Auden existed on the internet. I have a hard copy from ancient times. Certainly I would think it an affront to extract from it since it is such a seamless whole.
Sometimes words are more intoxicating to me than any wine could be. But, excepting the already mentioned, I never mean them to sting. (Okay, I admit country club types and yuppies and the new rich get my goat.) But words, for the most part, are bright balls which I sometimes ATTEMPT to juggle in the air. Nothing more.
I was kidding. Like I'd say "affrontery" if I wasn't. Holy Moly.
Most everything is on the internet, except that poem. Even my 6th grade class picture (yuck)
I went back looking through the old comments and you know I think my reference to the "golf club set" was misunderstood by you as it referred to the C.C. types and yuppies you just mentioned.
But my daughter assures me my overly confrontational approach was responsible for the impression I gave. I was mad at the people calling each other "stupid" in various cruel ways rather than being hot about the issue. Fine while gossipping with friends when certain it goes no further - people need to blow off tensions like that, but not fine in public.
I beleive that was the first time on the blog you felt compelled to use your IQ as a bludgeoning device. Interesting response.
Remember to give some attention to the novel/essay/whatever-it-will-be.
You know you want to do it. Denial is futile.
Jody:
My impression of your intent was fueled by my own hard-nosed response to "the country club set".
Actually I regretted that post almost as soon as I pressed the button.
And no, I have not been rejected by the golfing crowd. And it is not even personal toward individuals but I HATE what that group represents in our society. It is anti everything I care about.
I think you were right in your comments. I know I was wrong in my response.
Not a problem. My kid says it was an understandable reaction and she also maintains that she is always correct, so I guess we're good then. The Jan hath spoken.
Oh, Strey person, I just noticed your attack on the Citizen-ry.
I understand your point about Anonymouses. But taking an identity so that you can self-express without being cast from job/church/neighborhood/family bosom is acceptable.
But honestly, the important thing about Citizen and why s/he can pretty much do whatever they want here is that while tons of people here find me annoying, Citizen finds me cool.
The fact that the first mentioned group is unable to find their asses with both hands figures in there somehow too, but I'll leave that for the T2T Staff Psychologist to wrestle with.
Anyway, I don't see how you can take issue with calmly reasoned logic like that. In a Democracy like this one, Citizen rules.
Ah, Mister Dawg,
I, too, enjoy "ignorant armies (of expression) clashing by night" and so will attempt to further engage you.
The people on your dartboard are of various intellects and persuasions. I accept that they function in this world true to their own beliefs as do many others. Only a few of them have my admiration, but then, I do not embrace hordes of public citizens based on changing standards by which they often are classified or mis-classified. I also do not accept labels imposed by those who would call Hillary Clinton a liberal. Just so you may know, she barely makes it to centrist in my book.
I cannot speak for anyone but myself in countering your arguments. Denying affirmative action is the hallmark of racism in my opinion. First, I am WASP to the core but I can accept that in the founding of this country grievous harm was done to great chunks of humanity by people just like me. For any Caucasian person to whine about minorities getting a break is, frankly, sickening. We stood on the necks of a people for three and a half acts of the play then while a scene changes twenty minutes before the final curtain we say "Okay. From here we all go on as equals. Line up, you folks with broken legs and backs. Here's your chance. It is a level playing field from now on! Let's RACE!!!!"
What kind of obscenity is that? That Bakke dude out in California in the seventies had the matchless gall to bring a "Reverse Discrimination" suit because he was being cheated by black people.
That is shameful! What MAN would allow such a case to be brought in his name? What MAN could tolerate looking himself in the mirror after such a spineless and wimp-like filing? What sort of self centered-blindness would it take to be such a person?
Yes. I am acquainted with the writing of Thomas Sowell. He buys the "affirmative action as racism" blather. Can't you see how much of a suck up he is to "the man"?. I read one of his efforts in which he lamented the fact that black composers had no standing
because they would not write on a European model!
My God. Black people ORIGINATED the ONLY truly American music! And still Mr. Sowell sits at his keyboard pandering! In fact many 19th century European composers were so taken by the jazz idiom that those themes were used in their works.
I am willing to abide by Row v. Wade until those who so love children are prepared to invest part of their portfolio in caring for them. It is not a big issue with me. Years ago I read a paragraph that proposed those against abortion did not adopt that position out of love for children but out of hatred for sex. If a woman "did it" they wanted her to suffer. I believe that is more than likely true.
You have no point in referring to welfare. It is a model that cannot be tested. We cannot know what the society would be had there been no welfare. There are theories which propose that welfare is vital to an advanced capitalist state because there are always to be those at the bottom. Welfare is hush money. "Here, take it and be quiet so we can get on with making our bucks." Capitalism depends on surplus labor. Welfare is where people crash and burn. They become the afterthoughts...the refuse of our grand society. I am open to reform, but not based on some yuppie's idea of "justice" or out of hatred of people because they are poor.
I do not hate guns although I have no personal use for them. The behavior of many of the gun advocates convinces me they need to become acquainted with certain Freudian theories. If honest, I think they might catch glimpses of themselves.
I love judicial activism. If the Constitution is NOT a living document then what is it? Do not tell me slaveholders in the eighteenth century looked into our age and wrote perfect laws. That mighty effort cries out for informed change to confront the ages. Laws based purely on the "people's will" would be a joke. The constitution nowhere bends itself to the will of the majority. The grandeur of it is that it exists to forge onward PROTECTING the individual and the least powerful in our nation. Wise judges have known that for decades. Sadly it is possible we are on the cusp of a woeful change with the new Bush court.
Now, before you beat my ears down, please refer to my original statements once more. I DID NOT SAY CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION was the sole child of DEMOCRATS. I said no CONSERVATIVE SUPPORTED IT. That is a salient difference. It must be said that Republicans of the early 20th Century were not the disreputable lot representing the breed now. Likewise many Democrats were "lower down than a snake's belly in a wagon track" so to speak. The southern contingency of Democrats were as far right as anyone you could scrape up today. I believe you will find that it WAS the conservatives who stood against all the progressive legislation proposed anywhere.
Perhaps you have noticed I have not given my heart to any party although I do believe most of the public good does, somehow, come out of the vast swamp of the Democratic Party. Especially so, now that the Republicans have given themselves over to faith healers, if not snake handlers, and those who peruse bumps on skulls looking for direction.
Lastly, the flatulence reference was to a generic TYPE of humor sure to get seventh graders chuckling. It was not the physical presence of such a joke in your work that struck me but rather the aroma of the genre which wafted even from the edition on-line which I had a chance to experience.
(Sorry, Mr. Palmeri, for the length of this. I will take tucks in my diatribes if you would wish me too. I did feel "called out" on this one and may have abused your space.)
Citizen,
Go on as long as you please. I and many others appreciate your insights. --Tony
No shit!
What I wouldn't give to have a Personal Pocket Citizen to keep in my purse and spray at people when I felt the need. I'd be pretty darn indescriminate too.
walk walk walk walk, la dee dah...such a lovely day...
oh, I don't like THAT lady over there
psssst!
hmm hmm mmmm, stroll along...
Oh no, not HIM again! Pssssssssssssssssssssst! pssst!
pssssssssssssssssssssssssst!
*thud*
Got 'em!
sorry to interrupt:
anyone hear about the proposed walmart in green bay????
like they need another one!!!
Jody,
I will hang the mental image of a "Personal Pocket Citizen" up with my tap dancing medal to contemplate as I grow gently older.
It is a concept I would never have entertained. "...a small aerosol flask touched with silver and a disarming scent of Joy ready to decimate with lady-like restraint at the press of a valve..."
Thank you for the compliment!
Angel,
Welcome back!! We've missed you here at T2T. Maybe YOU are Citizen? :-)
Yeah well, Do not go gentle into that Goodnight, and all that. Keep on burnin' and ravin'. It seems to be working for you.
And...at some point we're all going to have to move this forward, aren't we? Even if it's "off-topic" (I doubt Tony will guve us a detention) or if it qualifies as being a discussion not meant for the whole class but a few (as CH seems to be putting forth completely oblivious to her own 99,876 violations of that idea over the months) Like that matters anyway.
Hmmm, a medal huh? I had to take Tap AND Ballet as a wee Jody. Age 3 for God's sake. As I recall we did not find it fun. Perhaps the experience strengthened you for battle.
Angel is NOT Citizen. A very nice citizen but not THE Citizen.
s.b. -
Can you talk more about this violence thing or is everyone too edgy already? I suppose they'd deny etc. etc. and threaten you with a lawsuit? :)
Anyway, anyone who comes to a professor's blog to talk about how clever he is to call the professor (and others) "lunatic", "moron" and "idiot" and claims it's "all in good fun", and then says "I'm not trying to start a Goddamn battle here" and wails because the friends of the professor are "hostile", doesn't really come across as someone with a lot of common sense.
If calling a professor on your campus an idiot publicly, or perhaps "full of shit" is NOT starting a battle, I don't know what is. That's usually how it works.
Years back, in an era that conservatives enjoy viewing as "Better Times", he would have faced disciplinary action for that.
He doesn't come across as a Real Man or a Leader, or anything but a frat boy with a bad temper who really really enjoys calling people names.
So, no surprise about the threats then I guess.
People should always document threats and harrassment of any sort, I can't see anything in your comments that justifies his outburst to you - some issue about a photoshopped picture? hmm.
I feel I am kicking a stray puppy rather than maintaining a "conversation" with a junkyard dog so I will speak softly and carry no stick at all.
There is no pessimism in my opinions or positions. I believe in last minute miracles and in the saving grace of good sense. I believe "this too will pass" and take with it the "value" now invested in ignorance and political ham handedness.
Already the ideas of those who came to power in 1994 have worn threadbare. Patience thins when the rabble can be heard milling in the streets. For a while it may seem quaint, their fussing and fuming, but in time it is merely boring. Ann Coulter's invective grows stale when heard over and over and smug souls such as yourself, time and time again, have been sifted out in one spring cleaning or another.
I take no medicine...but I smell your end in the fresh air of spring. It is reassuring. Many imposters have come and gone in my years. You and yours are but one more wave, now endangered, soon to be gone.
This shifting of the tides is neither liberal nor conservative but rooted deep in human nature. We are a restless people and things we "have" are subject to losing whatever it was that once seemed attractive. You have had "your hour upon the stage". Perhaps, in time, I will have mine again.
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