Charles Simic really lets it fly with his scathing polemic, “Age of Ignorance” on The New York Review of Books’ blog. Over a lifetime of teaching college level American literature courses and watching aghast as each subsequent crop of students washed ashore dumber than the crew the year before, Simic has seen firsthand what the reichwing’s war on education has wrought and it ain’t pretty.
It’s becoming harder and harder to ignore The Great IQ Stratification—for what else could you call it?—that’s taken place in America over the past 40 years. Idiocy is the American way of life. Stupidity r “us” or more pointedly “U.S”?
No doubt, the Internet and cable television have allowed various political and corporate interests to spread disinformation on a scale that was not possible before, but to have it believed requires a badly educated population unaccustomed to verifying things they are being told. Where else on earth would a president who rescued big banks from bankruptcy with taxpayers’ money and allowed the rest of us to lose $12 trillion in investment, retirement, and home values be called a socialist?
In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth:
Christians are persecuted in this country.
The government is coming to get your guns.
Obama is a Muslim.
Global Warming is a hoax.
The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.
Schools push a left-wing agenda.
Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.
Obama hates white people.
The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.
The safety net contributes to poverty.
The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.
One could easily list many more such commonplace delusions believed by Americans. They are kept in circulation by hundreds of right-wing political and religious media outlets whose function is to fabricate an alternate reality for their viewers and their listeners. “Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect. That’s why they love politicians who rail against teachers indoctrinating children against their parents’ values and resent the ones who show ability to think seriously and independently. Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is why millions are being spent to keep my fellow citizens ignorant.
You’ll note that Simic’s list contains only idiotic rightwing beliefs which are commonly held only in red states where people tend to be the most religious. Coincidence? I think not…
And it will only continue to get worse. Who reading this thinks it will get better in our lifetime?
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank made mincemeat out of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s revived austerity budget proposal in the paper’s editorial section yesterday, calling out Ryan’s plans to slash social services and job training while cutting taxes for the rich. It’s amazing to me, simply amazing, that the GOP thinks there is political gain in being seen as eager to hurt the poor, the unemployed and the elderly during a presidential election cycle—there are 45 million Americans receiving food stamps currently—but God bless these doofy dolts and their draconian debt-cutting doggedness, they’re dead set on dousing themselves in political gasoline and playing with matches.
If the Democrats are smart, they’ll just step back, allow the debate to come to a full boil and wait until this nail bomb goes off:
Ryan would cut $770 billion over 10 years from Medicaid and other health programs for the poor, compared with President Obama’s budget. He takes an additional $205 billion from Medicare, $1.6 trillion from the Obama health-care legislation and $1.9 trillion from a category simply labeled “other mandatory.” Pressed to explain this magic asterisk, Ryan allowed that the bulk of those “other mandatory” cuts come from food stamps, welfare, federal employee pensions and support for farmers.
Taken together, Ryan would cut spending on such programs by $5.3 trillion, much of which currently goes to the have-nots. He would then give that money to America’s haves: some $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, compared with current policies, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
Ryan’s justification was straight out of Dickens. He wants to improve the moral fiber of the poor. There is, he told the audience at the conservative American Enterprise Institute later Tuesday, an “insidious moral tipping point, and I think the president is accelerating this.” Too many Americans, he said, are receiving more from the government than they pay in taxes.
After recalling his family’s immigration from Ireland generations ago, and his belief in the virtue of people who “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” Ryan warned that a generous safety net “lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.”
How very kind: To protect poor Americans from being demeaned, Ryan is cutting their anti-poverty programs and using the proceeds to give the wealthiest Americans a six-figure tax cut.
If some Americans have to fuckin’ starve to death, this is what it takes to preserve our—and their—freedom!
Ryan’s not joking about this stuff. Amazingly, there are actually people within the Republican who consider Paul Ryan something of an “intellectual”!
Keep thinkin’ that, goofballs. If this guy is the best you’ve got, you’ve got nothing at all.
Ryan’s budget outline omits specifics about how much he would take from programs. Instead, it provided a string of Orwellian euphemisms. The budget “repairs the safety net” by allowing the states to award public assistance to fewer people — “those who need it most.” Financial aid for college would be slashed — er, “put on a sustainable funding path.” And the Ryan plan would give workers “the tools to thrive in the 21st century” — by killing off various job-training programs.
Ryan would cut Medicaid by a third and ship the remnants to state governments to handle. Or, as the congressman described it: “We also propose to strengthen Medicaid by empowering our states.”
Because you have to hurt the poor and sick in order to help them?
The beauty of all of this coming now is that Paul Ryan himself is up for reelection this year and this paints a bright red target on his back. Nothing would be more satisfying than seeing him defeated (except something even more humiliating happening to him, of course) as a referendum on this kind of nonsense once and for all.
Look at this, it’s a trailer—a fucking trailer—for the Ryan plan. Astonishing.
Here’s a transcript of the idiotic robocall that the Santorum campaign tried to ding Mitt Romney with in Ohio prior to Super Tuesday:
“Hi, my name is Brian Camenker; I’m a Jew from Massachusetts. And this is Darcy Brandon; I’m a Christian from California. If you believe as we do that marriage and sexuality should only be between a man and a woman, please help us stop Mitt Romney. As Governor, Romney signed “Gay Youth Pride Day” declarations, promoted homosexuality in our elementary schools, and unconstitutionally ordered state officals to make Massachusetts America’s first same-sex marriage state. Romney supports open homosexuality in the military, the appointment of homosexual judges, and the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he’s your kid’s teacher. When you vote tomorrow, please vote for social sanity and Rick Santorum, not for homosexuality and Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum is the only candidate who can be trusted to uphold traditional marriage, a straight military, and the rights of American children to have both a mother and a father. This message paid for by JewsandChristiansTogether.org and not authorized by any candidate. To get the facts before you vote, visit Jews and Christians Together.org.” (You can listen to it at Gawker)
If I got a robo-call like that, I’d be fucking furious—I never will, I live in Los Angeles—but it almost becomes amusing when you look into the background of Brian Camenker, a longtime anti-gay activist in Massachusetts, as Sarah Posner did on Religious Dispatches.
Here’s how the “Jews and Christians Together” press release described Camenker’s views on Mitt Romney:
Brian Camenker, president of Mass Resistance and compiler of much of that Romney research and one of the robo-call voices said, “Mitt Romney would be the most liberal Republican ever nominated for the Presidency. Romney is so far left, he spoke against the right of the Boy Scouts to screen-out homosexuals. Mitt Romney proved during the January 8 Meet the Press debate that he’s still as far left on the gay agenda as always. He proudly announced, ‘a member of my cabinet was gay. I appointed people to the bench regardless of their sexual orientation.’ Asked when he last stood up and spoke out for increasing gay rights, Romney said ‘Right now.’”
Shopped?
Here’s another tidbit about Fox News guest Camenker in 2007, via Know Thy Neighbor:
At yesterday’s hearing of Joint Committee on Education, Brian Camenker of MassResistance in support of Bill S321—Parental Notification—spent his three minutes of allotted time to speak in support of this bill by claiming that homosexuals were not among the 6 million Jews, gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and social outcasts killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Camenker went as far as to say that the whole “pink triangle” was made up in order to arrest Catholic priests.
And it gets worse, one of Camenker’s minions who testified twice agreed with Brian. In her testimony before the Joint Committee on Education, she said that it was the Nazis themselves who were the homosexuals and they gave pink triangles to and arrested only the “most flamboyant of their own people.”
Look, I think Mitt Romney absolutely sucks, but the idea that these appalling weirdos (and Rick Santorum) think they can get any traction with this kind of stuff is bloody preposterous, like Mr. Camenker himself, as seen in this hilarious Daily Show piece from 2008:
If you want to know exactly how fucking deliriously insane the modern Republican party has become—in writing, no less—look no further than the “pledge” candidates must sign in order to represent the Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina.
If you want a spot on the primary ballot, the GOP bürgermeisters there want assurances from you that you’ve not had pre-marital sex (and won’t)— and that you will never, ever look at online porn again. They unanimously (UNANIMOUSLY!!!) approved a resolution with such 28 principles that a potential Republican candidate must adhere to.
Why so strict you ask? Because the party “does not want to associate with candidates who do not act and speak in a manner that is consistent with the SC Republican Party Platform.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, assholes, but I really don’t think you’ll be needing to worry too much about associating with anyone you don’t want to associate with…. They wouldn’t want to sit next to you knobs on a bus, either.
You must favor, and live up to, abstinence before marriage.
You must be faithful to your spouse. Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender, and you are not allowed to favor any government action that would allow for civil unions of people of the same sex.
You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.
How will they regulate that last part, anyway?
The Clinton Chronicle reported that candidates will be interviewed by a three-person “Candidate Qualification Committee,” who will then in turn make a recommendation to the full executive party committee about whether or not to allow the candidate on the ballot.
Hysterical! It’s always the reichwingers claiming Socialism is inherently totalitarian!!!
It’s astonishing, of course, but more power to ‘em! If 99.999% of the potential Republican candidates are disqualified, this means the GOP will be running a slate of all church ladies in Laurens County. SC. Good luck with that, dipshits!
With Rush Limbaugh hopefully about to go the Glenn Beck “bye-bye” route, with more and more of his advertisers seeking to disassociate their goods and services with such a tainted, hateful brand as his, I have to wonder if any of them have EVER listened to his daily three-hour puke fest for the past several decades? Better late, than never, but really? This shit came as a fucking surprise???
More advertisers are expected to drop out today and you can bet Limbaugh is sweating…. like a pig. Don’t forget that such a massive salary as Limbaugh recieves—he signed a $400 million dollar contract in 2008—has got to be paid back before profit can occur for his corporate masters. Recall that in Beck’s case, in the UK he nearly had ZERO companies willing to advertise on his show for the final year and in the US, aside from Goldline, a crooked gold dealer who wanted access to Beck’s gullible, gullible viewers (I wonder why?) and the odd Depend® adult diaper ad, they were losing money on the guy here, too.
At Fox News, Glenn Beck made but a fraction of what Clear Channel pays Limbaugh. Limbaugh’s problem, you might say (in business terms) is that he is too “top heavy” on the bottom line.
As long as more money comes in than goes out, Rush and his salary is safe, but let’s say that a sizable percentage of his advertisers fuck off. Easy enough to imagine.
Now picture a Clear Channel lawyer calling up Limbaugh’s attorney and telling him that ol’ Rush needs to take a bit a of haircut. Does anyone reading this think that Limbaugh’s ego would allow him to take a pay cut, in public? He’d quit before that would ever happen. It could well be the accountants who lance this oozing, festering boil on the American body politic.
Boycotts DO work and there are a relatively small number of national companies who advertise on Limbaugh’s program. Target enough of these companies successfully and their boards and CEOs will push Limbaugh off the gangplank without hesitiation. What would their loyalty be to this fat creep, anyways? It could happen.
How many of this country’s finest legal minds would love to take on such a high profile—not to mention potentially highly lucrative—case??? It’s delicious, isn’t it?
Obviously, it’s not just attorneys who are sharpening their knives to carve up this ham, either. The media, too, seem to be collectively saying “Squeal like a pig, Rush. You got a pretty mouth!”
Hell, even the Republicans are staying clear of this beached whale!
The best thing is seeing this play out in public: Rush Limbaugh has put the conservative worldview in Chinese fingercuffs. The more he tries to defend himself, the worse he’ll look to the general population; the more that worldview will become discredited. Far from being the leader of the Republican party, Limbaugh may prove to be its worst enemy!
John K. Wilson is offering his password to the Rush Limbaugh website to anyone who wants to compile an audio version. You can email him at collegefreedom@yahoo.com if you are up for the challenge and have a strong enough stomach…
Feb. 29, 2012:
1) “she’s having so much sex she can’t afford her own birth control pills”
2) “they’re having so much sex they can’t afford the birth control pills!”
3) “essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”
4) “Sandra Fluke. So much sex going on, they can’t afford birth control pills.”
March 1, 2012:
5) “You’d call ‘em a slut, a prostitute”
6) “she’s having so much sex”
7) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
8) “they want to have sex any time, as many times and as often as they want, with as many partners as they want”
9) “the sexual habits of female law students at Georgetown”
10) “are having so much sex that they’re going broke”
11) “having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet”
12) “four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet”
13) “Now, what does that make her? She wants us to buy her sex.”
14) “to pay for these co-eds to have sex”
15) “she and her co-ed classmates are having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight, apparently these deadbeat boyfriends or random hookups that these babes are encountering here, having sex with nearly three times a day”
16) “Therefore we are paying her to have sex. Therefore we are paying her for having sex.”
17) “Have you ever heard of not having sex so often?”
18) “Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
19) “we want something in return, Ms. Fluke: And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we are getting for our money.”
20) “‘If we’re paying for this, it makes these women sluts, prostitutes.’ And what else could it be?”
21) “essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right?”
22) “I’m having sex so damn much, I’m going broke.”
23) “She’s having so much sex that she’s going broke! There’s no question about her virtue.”
24) “having so much sex she’s going broke at Georgetown Law.”
25) “Here’s a woman exercising no self-control. The fact that she wants to have repeated, never-ending, as often as she wants it sex—given.”
26) “She’s having so much sex it’s amazing she can still walk, but she made it up there.”
27) “Maybe they’re sex addicts.”
28) “to pay for her to have sex all the time.”
29) “she wants the rest of us to pay for her sex.”
30) “She wants all the sex that she wants all the time paid for by the rest of us.”
31) “Here this babe goes before Congress and wants thousands of dollars to pay for her sex.”
32) “a woman who is happily presenting herself as an immoral, baseless, no-purpose-to-her-life woman.”
33) “She wants all the sex in the world, whenever she wants it, all the time.”
34) “If this woman wants to have sex ten times a day for three years, fine and dandy.”
35) “to provide women from Georgetown Law unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
36) “so she can have unlimited, no-consequences sex.”
37) “You want to have all the sex you want all day long, no consequences, no responsibility for your behavior”
38) “The woman wants unlimited, no-responsibility, no-consequences sex, and she wants it with contraceptives paid for by us.”
March 2, 2012:
39) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t afford her birth control pills anymore.”
40) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it—and we should.”
41) “She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford it.”
42) “this, frankly hilarious claim that she’s having so much sex (and her buddies with her) that she can’t afford it.”
43) “And not one person says, ‘Well, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex that you have?’”
44) “Does she have more boyfriends? Ha! They’re lined up around the block.”
45) “It was Sandra Fluke who said that she was having so much sex, she can’t afford it.”
46) “By her own admission, in her own words, Sandra Fluke is having so much sex that she can’t afford it.”
47) “they’re having a lot of sex for which they need a lot of contraception.”
48) “Her sex life is active and she’s having sex so frequently that she can’t afford all the birth control pills that she needs.”
49) “who admits to having so much sex that she can’t afford it anymore.”
50) “she’s having so much sex, she can’t pay for it.”
51) “As frequently as she has sex and to not be pregnant, she’s obviously succeeding in contraception.”
52) “Ms. Fluke, asserts her right to free contraceptive, to handle her sex life—and it’s, by her own admission, quite active.”
53) “Ms. Fluke, who bought your condoms in junior high? Who bought your condoms in the sixth grade, or your contraception?”
Republican loud-mouth, attention-seeking buffoon and draft dodging he-man man’s man, rocker Ted Nugent, has given his manly men men men seal o’ fuckin’ approval to Mitt Romney. The Motor City Madman gave the son of popular Michigan governor, George Romney, his blessing via Twitter:
“after a long heart&soul conversation with MittRomney today I concluded this goodman will properly represent we the people & I endorsed him”
That a serious presidential candidate can be reduced to kissing the ring of a twat like Ted Nugent in order to garner the votes of morons says much about the decline of the Grand Old Party. Imagine the indignity of having to buddy up to the likes of Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Sheriff Joe Arpaio! And when all is said and done, Romney’s still gonna lose.
In honor of this historic and important political endorsement, I dredged up the text of an October 1977 High Times interview with Nugent that I remembered from when I was a kid (I’d have not even turned twelve yet when this issue—which had Johnny Rotten on the cover—came out. Why did I have a copy of High Times when I was eleven??? What sort of degenerate sold it to me? It shows what kind of child I was, already visiting the local head shop when I was in the 6th grade):
High Times:How did you get out of the draft?
Ted Nugent: Ted was a young boy, appearing to be a hippie but quite opposite in fact, working hard and playing hard, playing rock and roll like a deviant. People would question my sanity, I played so much. So I got my notice to be in the draft. Do you think I was gonna lay down my guitar and go play army? Give me a break! I was busy doin’ it to it. I had a career Jack. If I was walkin’ around, hippying down, getting’ loaded and pickin’ my ass like your common curs, I’d say “Hey yeah, go in the army. Beats the poop out of scuffin’ around in the gutters.” But I wasn’t a gutter dog. I was a hard workin’, motherfuckin’ rock and roll musician.
I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.
See, I approached the whole thing like, Ted Nugent, cool hard-workin’ dude, is gonna wreak havoc on these imbeciles in the armed forces. I’m gonna play their own game, and I’m gonna destroy ‘em. Now my whole body is crusted in poop and piss. I was ill. And three or four days before, I started stayin’ awake. I was close to death, but I was in control. I was extremely antidrug as I’ve always been, but I snorted some crystal methedrine. Talk about one wounded motherfucker. A guy put up four lines, and it was for all four of us, but I didn’t know and I’m vacuuming that poop right up. I was a walking, talking hunk of human poop. I was six-foot-three of sin. So the guys took me down to the physical, and my nerves, my emotions were distraught. I was not a good person. I was wounded. But as painful and nauseous as it was – ‘cause I was really into bein’ clean and on the ball – I made gutter swine hippies look like football players. I was deviano.
So I went in, and those guys in uniform couldn’t believe the smell. They were ridiculin’ me and pushin’ me around and I was cryin’, but all the time I was laughin’ to myself. When they stuck the needle in my arm for the blood test I passed out, and when I came to they were kicking me into the wall. Then they made everybody take off their pants, and I did, and this sergeant says, “Oh my God, put those back on! You fucking swine you!” Then they had a urine test and I couldn’t piss, But my poop was just like ooze, man, so I poop in the cup and put it on the counter. I had poop on my hand and my arm. The guy almost puked. I was so proud. I knew I had these chumps beat. The last thing I remember was wakin’ up in the ear test booth and they were sweepin’ up. So I went home and cleaned up.
They took a putty knife to me. I got the street rats out of my hair, ate some good steaks, beans, potatoes, cottage cheese, milk. A couple of days and I was ready to kick ass. And in the mail I got this big juicy 4-F. They’d call dead people before they’d call my ass. But you know the funny thing about it? I’d make an incredible army man. I’d be a colonel before you knew what hit you, and I’d have the baddest bunch of motherfuckin’ killers you’d ever seen in my platoon. But I just wasn’t into it. I was too busy doin’ my own thing, you know?
Yeah, man, lay off, the Nuge was just doing his own thing!
(Full disclosure: When I was eleven, I thought this was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.)
Below, a preposterous fucking idiot in an Indian headdress plays “The Star Spangled Banner” on his gee-tar for an audience of Neanderthals:
It had to happen: After the dumbest member of Congress, Louie Gohmert (R, TX) hinted at it yesterday on the House floor, this morning, in his nationally syndicated radio show for idiots, Michael Savage mused aloud that the cause of Andrew Breitbart’s unexpected death raised questions if the conservative firebrand—who claimed he had videotapes of Obama in college that could politically damage him—was in fact, murdered at the Presidnet’s behest. From WND:
“Maybe my overly active imagination kicked into overdrive,” Savage told his listeners of his decision to raise the question. “But you heard what Breitbart said – he has videos … we’re going to vet the president.”
Breitbart reportedly was walking near his home in Brentwood, Calif., just after midnight this morning when he collapsed. A neighbor saw him fall and called 911. Emergency crews tried to revive him and rushed him to the emergency room at the UCLA Medical Center.
It’s entirely plausible, Savage acknowledged, that Breitbart simply collapsed of a heart attack because of overwork and a reported history of health problems.
“I’m asking a crazy question,” Savage said, “but so what? We the people want an answer. This was not an ordinary man. If I don’t ask this question, I would be remiss.”
You’d also be remiss not to mention that Breitbart was a barely-holding it together rageaholic shambles of a human being who was in terrible shape physically and in the months prior to his death appeared more and more unhinged and crazed in every single public outing the guy made! His own friends and colleagues know what killed him, and so does Michael Savage, but STILL he wants to try to turn Breitbart into a martyr in death. It’s fucking hilarious.
Savage must have a truly cynical contempt for his radio listeners. Certainly this is not one of Savage’s more offensive “conspiracy theories”—it’s not even close—but it does rank as one of the stupider ones. (If Paula Deen keeled over tomorrow, what would Savage attribute her death to? Anthony Bourdain, in the drawing room with the candlestick? Who had the motive? Bourdain!)
“I’ve got videos – this election we’re going to vet him,” Breitbart said at CPAC, promising they would show how “racial division and class warfare are central” to the “hope and change” that Obama”sold in 2008. He threatened the president at CPAC with video that could derail the president’s campaign,” Savage said. “I pray it was natural causes, but we’ll never know the truth.”
Here’s an educated guess, Michael: A diet consisting mainly of the pastrami sandwich at Jerry’s Deli and being an overweight, very, very angry, mean and tightly-wound man. Sound in any way plausible to you?
“I told him two years ago to get a body guard. Never be alone in the street,” Savage said.
Savage, the author of the bestselling [???] novel “Abuse of Power,” put on his novelist hat and speculated about ways a murderer could remain undetected by inducing a heart attack that didn’t leave any traces.
Don’t forget that one of the big conspiracy theories the rightwing used to propagate during the whole “Vince Foster was murdered” business about why they never found the “Ron Brown murder weapon” was because he was stabbed with an icicle! Who needs medical autopsies when you’ve got conspiracy theories?
A caller from Savage’s native New York City said there’s a simple way to find out what happened.
“If the tapes come out, he died of a heart attack,” the caller said. “If the tapes don’t come out, they whacked him.”
Can’t argue with that, now, can we? Aristotle wouldn’t know what to say!
Wondering where Alex Jones will take this today… SOMEONE on Fox News is going to blurt this out, too, unless Roger AIles wisely sent out a memo instructing “Ixnay on the Breitbart conspiracy theories.”
Read more: Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche (Rolling Stone)
This informative and mouth-watering video is from the Italian mondo movie America Exposed (aka This Is America 3), which has never been released on video or DVD in the United States. Directed with rare insight and sensitivity by Romano Vanderbes, the movie takes an unvarnished look at the weird habits of Americans and our exotic culture.
Among the many strange rites that exist on our mysterious continent is the age-old tradition among our Black inhabitants of eating dirt. Along with more common place dishes like ham, chicken and potatoes, apparently Black people consider dirt a delicacy that rivals the highly sought after epicurean delight the truffle. But unlike the truffle, dirt is dirt cheap.
This particular clip is from a Japanese bootleg of America Exposed. Imagine the shock among our Asian friends when encountering American’s dirt eating proclivities. Is it no wonder they approach us with awe and suspicion? But are we really so different? After all, both dirt and sushi are eaten raw.
So I was gonna sit here and write a long, rambling post about Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine and the amount of bullshit that’s been spewing out his tiny little mouth of late. You know, something about a guy with a shoulder length frizzy perm being anti-gay, something about a 100% no-homo-heterosexual dude feeling threatened by the sex lives of African women and other consenting adults. Maybe throw in a little reference to still smarting about Metallica here, or “small man syndrome” there, perhaps go off on a diatribe about the über-pseudo-macho world of heavy metal being just as “authentic” as that of drag queens, about how the biggest shit-talkers always reveal themselves to be the most immature, petulant little nerds desperate to live up to a false sense of masculine superiority in the end.
But I’m not going to waste my effort.
I mean, why should I bother? Mustaine is doing all that hard graft for me! Seriously. Here are a selection of quotes from recent interviews displaying the wisdom of Dave Mustaine:
Mustaine explained a biblical prophecy to LA Weekly. “Even if you don’t believe in God and you don’t believe in faith, you’ve got to understand, when Israel became a country again, that was a prophecy in the Bible that came true, and the Bible was written so many hundreds of years ago,” says Mustaine. Also, any of the stuff that it says in there about the end times — that stuff’s really happening right now. Look what’s happening over in the Middle East. It’s crazy.”
Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn’t gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney’s done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney… You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum.
There’s so many houses without a dad that it’s just terrible. I mean, you know how they used to say there should be a license to have a baby? Well, as far-fetched as that sounds, I really think that, if the parents aren’t going to stick together, they shouldn’t make that kind of commitment to life. I watch some of these shows from over in Africa, and you’ve got starving women with six kids. Well, how about, you know, put a plug in it? It’s like, you shouldn’t be having children if you can’t feed them.
Do you support gay marriage, or is that something you oppose?
Well, since I’m not gay, the answer to that would be no.
OK. What about for people who are gay?
Since I’m not gay, the answer to that would be no.
Would you support legislation to make marriage between a man and another man legal?
I’m Christian. The answer to that would be no.
All this is a real shame, because Megadeth were a fucking great band. It’s just too bad that if Dave Mustaine’s reputation ever recovers from being a “very conservative” über-douche who lets the TV make up his mind for him, he’s going down in the annals of history as the guy who wept for Metallica:
Don Von Taylor’s powerful 1992 documentary Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest explores the infamous case of two teenage heavy metal fans who were allegedly driven to commit suicide by subliminal messages embedded in the songs of Judas Priest. One kid succeeded in blowing himself away with a shotgun, the other, Vance, did not. He managed only to horribly disfigure himself when the shotgun slipped from his grip as he pulled the trigger.
Fueled by religious extremism, self-deception and grief-induced ignorance, Vance and his parents found in rock and roll the perfect scapegoat for the dysfunction in their own troubled lives.
The film follows the efforts of the parents of the surviving teen to take the English heavy metal band Judas Priest to court based on their belief that the suicide was triggered by the two boys obsession with heavy metal and in particular a track by Judas Priest called “Better By You Better Than Me” from their 1978 album Stained Class which the prosecution alleged contained “satanic” backwards masking which drove the boys to suicide.
This was at a time when the right-wing Christian fundamentalists of America were focusing on the “evil” influence of music on the young and as a response in 1985 the Parents Music Resource Center was set up by politicians wives Tipper Gore (wife of Al Gore) and Susan Baker (wife of James Baker) and led to those infamous “Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics” stickers which basically told the kids which albums to buy if you wanted to annoy your parents!
Out of this milieu of rabid censorship came the Christian fundamentalists who believed Satanic influences were at work in the music industry and one of their key propaganda weapons was the belief that certain records contained subliminal messages that were played backwards and masked beneath the song (Stairway To Heaven is probably the most famous example of this deranged belief system).
The film is essentially the story of the court case where Judas Priest and their defense team challenged the prosecution who alleged their music “caused” the surviving teen James Vance and his deceased friend to engage in a suicide pact.
Twenty years on the court case itself may seem absurd and yet the Christian fundamentalists are as powerful as ever and a new “moral panic” is just as likely now as it was twenty-odd years ago.
In this sad and disturbing film, it is the progenitors of the Devil’s music, Judas Priest, who come off as paragons of sanity and clarity.
Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest has inexplicably never been released on video or DVD. It’s an unsettling experience but well-worth watching.
