God Bless America

Gah, my retinas!

A small sampling of stories that caught my eye this week.

In the battle to show the world just how little class the US has left, a couple in - looks like Michigan - decided to target a little girl who is dying with a taunting parody. I especially like the ugly young blonde bitch on her porch front standing next to her fatass forklift drivin' man giving her articulate spin on the issue. Luckily for the sake of what the hell we must look like to other people in the world (which IS important whether you think so or not), the reaction against the taunts has been nothing short of fantastic, proving that there's still people with class around. So though this is unbelievable to start with, the good guys prevail. But, how does anybody figure they can do that? I don't understand. That's the real question.

And giving further proof that we've completely lost all sense of perspective and rational thought, a Republican candidate for something or other somewhere or other is being criticized for wearing a Nazi uniform. Problem is he wore it as part of a re-enactment scheme similar to hundreds and hundreds of historical displays run all over this country covering just about everything. But you can be sure that the appropriate outcry has been attempted to cast him as a "closet Nazi" and blah blah blah. Folks who have never been to or never done a re-enactment need to realize how it works. The re-enactor dresses up in the uniform of what he is re-enacting. They stand behind a "timeline" and are instructed to prepare an alter-ego, complete with name, birth date, and personal story. So that any time a visitor to the re-enactment comes up to the timeline rope and says to the person on the other side "who are you and what's your story?" - The re-enactor gives that information. It's called RE-ENFREAKIN'ACTMENT, numbnuts. If you ever go to one, walk up to one of the players beyond the "timeline" and ask them exactly that. To anyone there. You'll be pleasantly surprised. I suppose the guys who dress up as Confederate soldiers for their encampments and reenactments and fly the Confederate flag are next. Then we'll also have a problem with the guys who dress up as the British for the Revolutionary War reenactments, or the Spanish in the Spanish-American War ones. Honestly... have we completely lost what little sense we were born with? There was a problem with one of the British princes wearing a Nazi outfit for a Halloween party a few years back. People didn't like the swastika. But Jesus, it seemed to fit in with the monsters, ghouls and images of evil that usually go on in parties like that to me. But he was forced to apologize. What the bloody hell?

Because, I mean, if you're looking for real incidents of stupidity you don't have to manufacture them out of nothing like the Nazi uniform thing. You don't have to go any farther than South Carolina, where some defenders of justice and liberty just can't get enough of fighting for equality and civil rights. I suppose bacon is covered by the First Amendment. I do know that stupidity is already protected.

This one is a little more touchy because the folks with the complaint here are coming from an understandable place. You're talking about their slain mother/relative and that's not something you just walk over callously. However what strikes me as a little stilted is the idea that the film-makers in question here "had an obligation" to interview the survivors, and that the survivors are being "forced" to relive their bad experience. Well, if the story was about their mother/relative it probably would have been a good idea to talk to them. but the story is about a person once removed from the actual murder investigation who was on a different trajectory and actually doing something to overturn a wrongful prosecution. And, secondly, I hate to say it but nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, especially to "relive" the past, since the incident they're concerned with isn't even depicted outside of a mention as part of the set-up. But there's Gloria Allred, so that might be a tip off about what this is really about... a cut of the receipts.

Ladies and Gents, Laugh-In looks at the News. Have a nice weekend getting in each other's faces out there, America. God I love this country.