And they all think you’re a dick, Mike…

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments today on gay marriage, it seemed like the perfect time to post this extended trailer from Light Wins, a goofball anti-gay rights documentary produced by Janet Porter, who is a weekly columnist for WorldNetDaily and the author of the demurely titled book, The Criminalization of Christianity (Gee, I wonder what that’s about?). Porter is a believer in “dominion” theology, the idea that Christians are duty bound to wrest complete control from non-believers over every aspect of political life. To bring about the return of Christ, of course!
 

 
I absolutely could spend the next 45 minutes coming up with all manner of insulting epithets and nasty things to say about the fucking idiots—including GOP presidential contenders Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul—who took part in this… thing—and it might even be fun, but it would also be utterly pointless. These people discredit themselves and the American/Republican form of Christianity they practice with every second of their onscreen time. It’s wall-to-wall DUMB. They don’t need me, or anyone else, to point out how ridiculous they are.
 

 
But I will say this: If you could go back in time to the Salem witch trials and do a documentary about what happened, it would be assholes just like David Barton, Louie Gohmert and Phyllis Schlafly who would be clamoring to inflict their stupidity on your audience (luckily they can’t burn anybody at the stake in these more enlightened times.). Clearly these folks do not realize how much they BOOST the cause of gay civil rights EVERY TIME they open their mouths! Not like there’s a snowball’s chance in Hell that level of self-awareness would shut any of ‘em up, I’m just sayin’...
 

Phil Robertson, thinking…
 
Yep. If these people are what America’s version of Christianity sees as its moral leaders… in a sense, all I can say is “Hey… great!” Ten years ago, it used to be that the sight of someone like Tony Perkins on TV made me steaming mad, but the distance from the Bush administration to today seems very, very vast. Today Perkins is scarcely even shown respect on these shows, just last weekend, Bob Schieffer (who’s retiring and hilariously called it exactly like he saw it) took careful pains to make sure that the Face the Nation viewership knew that he just didn’t like this guy very much or have any respect for him. At one point Tony Perkins and his icky ilk held the power, now he and they, just look like yesterday’s bigots.
 

‘memba her?

Light Wins, of course, casts this matter as a fight of good against evil. In doing so, it makes itself the perfect unintentional time capsule of the moment we’re living in. No really, it sums up everything about America at this pivotal moment in our history, not just the gay civil rights and persecuted Christianist angles, but how America truly is turning into two nations. Not a Christian vs. secular nation, or merely conservative vs. liberals either. It’s something greater than that, what I like to think of as “the Great IQ stratification.” Smart people vs. dumb people. What’s really going on is becoming starkly obvious at this point, don’t you think?

The participants in Light Wins will not be seen very kindly by history and no one in it is ever going to become President, either.

Here’s the nine-minute long trailer. (If you can’t get enough, there’s also the half-hour version.)
 

 
In the mid ‘70s a whole slew of World War Two-themed sexploitation films were churned out (most coming from Italy) in the wake of the highly successful Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Most of the films, typical ‘70s softcore porn pieces with swastika-sporting actors, followed the standard “women in prison” film formula—the locale having been transferred to the Nazi death camps and field brothels. In Italy these films are known as part of the “il sadiconazista” cycle, the bulk of which were influenced as much by Ilsa as they were by three controversial Italian art-house films: Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, Tinto Brass’ Salon Kitty and Passolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The entire genre can be traced back to 1969 when Bob Cresse and Lee Frost created the depraved “roughie,” Love Camp 7, which set the standard for all others to follow.
 

 
The SS-ploitation film-makers had discovered that it was far easier to get violently sexual situations past the censors if they were presented within the context of being based on the historical facts of Nazi war atrocities. Of course, none of these films had any interest whatsoever in being historically accurate. The producers were making bank by exploiting 1970s movie audiences’ craving for weirder and wilder psycho-sexual delights and justifying it all as supposed statements against war crimes.  Producer Dave Friedman (under the pseudonym Herman Traeger) put this written notice in the first shot of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS:

“The film you are about to see is based on documented fact. The atrocities shown were conducted as ‘medical experiments’ in special concentration camps throughout Hitler’s Third Reich. Although these crimes against humanity are historically accurate, the characters depicted are composites of notorious Nazi personalities; and the events portrayed, have been condensed into one locality for dramatic purposes. Because of its shocking subject matter, this film is restricted to adult audiences only. We dedicate this film with the hope that these heinous crimes will never happen again.”

These films pushed the boundaries of bad taste to their lowest limit.

It’s difficult to pin down the continued appeal of these films. Any first year psychology student could interpret these films’ appeal in relation to dominance and submission, bondage fetish, rape fantasy, or basic misogyny. The likely fundamental appeal for many viewers is simply the fact that a whole slew of beautiful women get naked frequently. For others, the appeal of a film like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS stems from the audacity of the images and the bad taste campiness of the acting and direction.

One thing is certain, these blatant exercises in cinematic depravity make no apologies and force their contents upon the viewer on their own moral terms. Unquestionably, the majority of these films are in the poorest of possible taste, yet they present material in a manner which pulls no punches—a spectacle which would never fly in today’s age of obsessive outrage. These films blur the lines between good and evil when they present Nazi atrocities in a manner that may not only repulse, but also spark the prurient interest of the viewer. To most, the thought of this is an absolutely unacceptable identification with the films’ antagonists, yet there can be a very fine psychological line between repulsion and titillation—and as such, for some, these films hold a certain power, if not vulgar charm. There are those out there who simply worship outrageous schlock, and some that just want to see a pair of boobs jiggle across the screen, and still others who are truly sick, deranged perverts. For better or worse (probably worse), there’s an audience for this shit.
 
A top ten list of Nazi sexploitation depravity after the jump…

 
Just so it’s clear, there really was a Chipmunk Punk, a 1980 project of Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., the namesake son of the Chipmunks’ creator. It was not particularly “punk”—it contained Alvin and the Chipmunks’ cover versions of songs by opposite-of-punk artists like Billy Joel, Tom Petty, Linda Ronstadt, Queen, and for some reason THREE SONGS by the Knack. The entirety of the LP’s New Wave representation was supplied by Blondie’s “Call Me”  and the Cars’ “Let’s Go.” It was stupid as hell, but I liked it. Because I was 10 years old. Bagdasarian followed the successful cash-in with Urban Chipmunk, a collection of squeaky-voiced pop country covers, and Chipmunk Rock, which at least had a version of “Whip It” going for it, but by then, I was like 12, and much too sophisticated for such juvenilia.

And again, so it’s clear, what follows was NOT actually on Chipmunk Punk, so if you go buying that album expecting to hear it, well, something’s possibly wrong with you anyway. California’s smartassy theatrical comedy band Radioactive Chicken Heads recorded an amusing-as-far-as-this-sort-of-thing-goes Chipmunkified version of Suicidal Tendencies’ definitive song, 1983’s “Institutionalized.” I’d hope it should go without saying that the possibility of this actually being a product of anyone officially connected with the evidently deathless Chipmunks franchise is a few leagues beneath unlikely. Whether it’s better or worse than Ice-T’s recent effort at updating the song is a debate I’ll leave to others.
 

 
The original, after the jump…

 
Many moons ago, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (unless you bother scrolling to the very bottom of this post), had a brief stretch of working in a relatively upscale Mexican restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Although she was super broke at the time and desperately needed the job, there was the matter of the uniform… an oversized poncho.

It greatly offended her sense of style, not to mention her dignity, but at least, I told her, they’re not making you wear a sombrero and a droopy moustache like the Frito Bandito...

The concept of the “droopy” became a one-word catalyst that sees the two of us completely crack up whenever the other mentions it. One of those things, I suppose you had to be there, but I was reminded of this anecdote by finding out recently about the existence of the curious Jewish “theme” restaurant Pid Zolotoyu Rozoyu (“Under the Golden Rose”) restaurant in L’viv, Ukraine for reasons which are about to become quite obvious…
 

 
The restaurant itself is located next to the ruins of what had been the 350-year-old Golden Rose synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis with several Jews inside of it (150,000 Jews died in the L’viv ghetto during World War II). While you nosh on gefilte fish, pickled herring and matzoh ball soup, they will give you wool hats to wear with payot (curly side-locks worn by Hassidim) attached. Perhaps you’d like to enjoy the house drink, “The Funny Jew.” There are no prices on the menu, guests are expected to haggle with the waitstaff over the prices, and one might presume “jew them down.”

Such fun! Such biddy biddy bum!
 

 
The spot is one of fifteen so-called “emotional restaurants” owned by a company called !Fest who operate theme restaurants pertaining to such things as sadomasochism (Café Masoch‘s namesake, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, was born in L’viv) with kinky outfits on the wait staff, plus whips and chains; Kryjivka—which claims to be the single most visited restaurant in all of Europe, with one million annual covers—built in the bunker of the last hiding place of the ultranationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the password for entrance is “Glory to Ukraine” although “ethnic cleansing” probably would have sufficed); as well as an execution-themed charcuterie, replete with fine meats and a guillotine for just that right cut of meat… There is even an !Fest restaurant with a Freemasonry theme that has a special “throne” in the men’s room.
 

 
The crazy thing is, if you look at the !Fest enterprise as a whole, it doesn’t really appear that anti-Semitism per se is on the menu at Pid Zolotoyu Rozoyu. They obviously like to court controversy, and of course, it’s easy to argue that this is incredibly tacky, but the attitude of the owners—three guys in their late 20s/early 30s who have probably never even met a real Jew—seem to be that it’s “educational” and “historical” and that they’re simply running a cheeky tourist attraction. Few of L’viv’s remaining Jews tend to see it that way.

Oy vey…
 

 
Thank you kindly Oberon Sinclair and Andrew Deutsch!

 
It’s been a bad time for law enforcement, as scandals involving abuse of authority (oftentimes with lethal results) have been a mainstay of news coverage since last summer, after the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY; and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio at the hands of police officers. The three killings, which seemed to point to serious structural race issues not only in the police but in society at large, sparked large-scale protests about police brutality and racial equity. In addition to that the stop and frisk controversies in New York and the recent attention paid to subjects like the militarization of police forces around the country and civil forfeiture have given ordinary citizen cause to be suspicious of the motives and methods of law enforcement personnel.

Yesterday the San Francisco Chronicle published a remarkable story that threatens to add to the list of at best questionable and almost certainly felonious practices among law enforcement personnel—San Francisco deputy sheriffs purportedly forcing inmates to “fight each other, gladiator-style, for the entertainment of the deputies.”
 

Since the beginning of March, at least four deputies at County Jail No. 4 at 850 Bryant St. threatened inmates with violence or withheld food if they did not fight each other, gladiator-style, for the entertainment of the deputies, Public Defender Jeff Adachi said.

Adachi said the ringleader in these fights was Deputy Scott Neu, who was accused in 2006 of forcing inmates to perform sexual acts on him.

-snip-

“I don’t know why he does it, but I just feel like he gets a kick out of it because I just see the look on his face,” said Ricardo Palikiko Garcia, one of the inmates who said he was forced to fight. “It looks like it brings him joy by doing this, while we’re suffering by what he’s doing.”

-snip-

Neu told Garcia and Harris that if they required medical attention, they were to lie and say they fell off a bunk, Garcia said.

“And he told me anything goes,” he said. “Just don’t punch the face, so no one can basically see the marks. But anything goes, other than the face.”

Garcia said that at 5 feet 9 and 150 pounds, he was the smallest man in the pod while Harris, at 6 feet and 350 pounds, was the biggest.

During the first fight, which took place in a part of a hallway that was blocked from view, Neu appeared to have been betting on Harris, Garcia said, who tapped out after the smaller man got him in a headlock.

 
These accusations come from public defender Jeff Adachi, who called the nightmarish bouts “outrageously sadistic scenarios, that sound like its out of Game of Thrones.” In one of those denials that don’t sound all that convincing, an attorney for the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff’s Association, the union representing the deputies, said that the allegations were “exaggerated,” and characterized the fighting as “little more than horseplay.”

Harris said Neu had a tattoo on his right arm and lower leg reading, “850 Mob,” possibly in connection to the jail’s location at 850 Bryant St.

Here’s a report from KNTV, the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area:
 

 
via SFist
 

Varg in his younger days.

Unless you’re a big Burzum or Mayhem fan, probably the only context you have for Varg Vikernes is that he’s that one Norwegian black metal dude who murdered that other Norwegian black metal dude and then became a white supremacist—and you’d be right! But with all the murders and church burnings and virulent racism (and possible attempted terrorism) that surround such a polymath of a man, it’s easy to forget that Varg is first and foremost a romantic at heart… but like, a really, really racist one.

Vikernes regularly communicates with his fans via video and blog, but black metal neo-Nazis have more on their minds just than heavy tones and the Zionist conspiracy—namely, they want some o’ dat fine white Aryan tail! In what appears to be a car with his kids in the back, Vikernes reveals the key to winning your very own alabaster bride—be a hero! Chicks love that shit! And remember, the fitness of the race is on the line here!
 

Present day Varg, with the little woman…

So let’s not forget ol’ Varg’s partner in whiteness, Marie Cachet. She has also written on the subject. From her blog post/polemic, “The Role of Women”:

It is terrible to see some “pro-white” defending the fact that the white woman is first and foremost a free woman, and that she has the right to go around half-naked in the street if she wants. This is not why we fight, this is not freedom. We are not fighting for what they call “progress” we are fighting to save the heart of our forebears.

Continues after the jump…

 
A posting on Dallas Craigslist is purportedly selling a selection of guitars and amplifiers from the infamous Great White disaster at The Station nightclub. On February 20, 2003, a pyrotechnic display at a Great White concert at the Station in West Warwick, Rhode Island, set fire to the club and killed 100 people. Another 230 were injured.

The question that instantly comes to mind is: is this for real?

The solid money is on “probably not.” Judging by the text of the Craigslist ad, there appears to be an attempt at “sick” humor playing out.

“These instruments are not in the best condition,” can’t be serious, right?
 

 

“They could be worth a fortune someday when Great White gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” definitely can’t be serious.

If the items in this ad could be shown proper provenance, then one could suppose there’s some (hopefully very) niche audience for such morbid curiosities.

If, as it’s safe to assume, this ad is someone’s idea of macabre humor, then fair enough, I suppose it’s not the worst thing the Internet has ever stooped to. Today.

The “seller” may want to remind himself, however, that real people died for his Craigslist jollies.

Warning: this is one of the worst things you will ever watch:
 

 
H/T: Aaron White

 
Like a modern day Lazarus, disgraced evangelist and ex-con Jim Bakker has risen from the dead. The Howdy Doody from hell has a new base of operations in the Ozarks. It’s called Morningside and is a smaller version of his gaudy, ill-fated, Christian theme park Heritage USA. Morningside’s not far from Branson, where the rotten egg smell of meth labs mingles with the Old Spice and lavender scent of sexagenarians lining up for “Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Dinner & Show.” The oleaginous huckster’s proximity to hillbilly Vegas is perfect - kind of like finding crab lice in a commune.

Morningside has a TV studio that airs a handful of programs, most of which feature Bakker and his new wife Lori. Now Lori ain’t no Tammy Faye by a long shot but they both share the same startled expression in their eyes - a wide-eyed, caught in the headlights look, that comes from years of staring at a husband who looks like a demented sock puppet.

The Jim Bakker Show has its own hard hitting investigative journalist named Zach Drew. As you can see in the video below, Zach is a pretty excitable guy. When he lands a major scoop, like cows with mystical hairdos, he practically wets himself. You got to admire his enthusiasm even as you wonder what’s crawled up the reporter’s bunghole to make him so damned giddy.

Anyway, here’s some “Breaking News!” from The Jim Bakker Show that somehow managed to fly under the radar of all of the major news outlets. It’s the mystery of the red-haired heifer - what Jim Bakker calls “a supernatural event.” I’m a bit bewildered as to why the heifer’s markings (it looks like the number 7) qualify as supernatural. Maybe it’s because I’m a non-believer when it comes to follicle-related miracles involving cattle. A red-haired cow with a massive rockabilly quiff or Afro might grab my attention. But the markings on this little lady doesn’t really do much for me. And I’m currently tripping on 400 mics of pure LSD.

If after viewing the video, you’re at all curious about the Biblical significance of the number seven click here. Otherwise, do what I did - drop another tab of acid.

In the book of Revelation there are seven churches, seven angels to the seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpet plagues, seven thunders and the seven last plagues. The first resurrection of the dead takes place at the 7th trumpet, completing salvation for the Church.

The heifer harbinger of the end times doesn’t appear until around the ten-minute point in the video but the lead-up is worth viewing just to witness Zach Drew’s delusional notion that this is the scoop of the century.
 

 
Because so much ink and so many pixels have been committed to the ongoing and breathtakingly stupid culture war over childhood immunizations, I’ll keep my comments brief: anti-vaxers? You are destructive fucking morons and if you die of something easily preventable I will laugh about it.

But though the numbers of anti-vax jackasses have grown dangerously out of control in the recent years since the likes of Jack Wolfson, Jenny McCarthy, and Andrew Wakefield started spewing the criminally irresponsible shit they should all be in goddamn jail for, there have always been people ignorant of the necessity for childhood vaccinations. In the late ‘70s, when Star Wars mania was at its height, the CDC obtained permission to use C-3PO and R2-D2 for an immunization education campaign. From the Nov/Dec 1979 issue of Public Health Reports:

In a continuing effort to focus public awareness on childhood immunization, the Center for Disease control has distributed to State and local health departments copies of a poster featuring the “droids” R2D2 and C3PO from the movie “Star Wars.” Special permission to print the posters was granted to CDC by Twentieth Century Fox as a public service.

The poster has proved to be so popular that it has entered its second printing. The posters have been used as a reward to individual children who complete the basic immunization series, as reminders to parents in doctors’ offices, hospitals, and pharmacies, and as attention grabbers in announcing mass immunization clinics at schools and shopping centers. The poster is also drawing increased attention to child health in conjunction with projects sponsored as part of the International Year of the Child celebration.

 

 
This television commercial from the campaign has an unusual role reversal—R2 is freaking out over bullshit and 3PO serves as the voice of reason. It seems to actually be voiced by actor Anthony Daniels, who played the droid in all six Star Wars movies, and indeed, the typically reliable Wookieepedia claims that both Daniels and R2-D2 actor Kenny Baker did in fact appear in this PSA.
 

 
UPDATE, Thu Feb 5, 2015, 8:17 A.M. EST: This post as originally published contained a significant error, which I deeply regret and have corrected in the text. I misspelled ‘Wookieepedia.’ My sincerest apologies to anyone who was misled by my negligent inaccuracy. See how that’s done, science-deniers? It’s not so difficult.

Barbie and Ken talk terrorism…

When Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck recently interviewed Nolan Peterson, a former US Air Force pilot, on the Islamization of French society, the obviously extremely intelligent Mr. Peterson (not to be confused with Steven Emerson, the Fox News terrorism “expert” British Prime Minister charitably called a “complete idiot”) claimed that there were “741 no-go zones throughout France” under de facto Islamist control.

Not “700 plus” or “around 750” “no-go” zones, but exactly 741 “no-go” zones. Surely a dude this specific came armed with the knowledge to drop on the Fox New viewers. Peterson described Paris as “pretty scary,” comparing the City of Light to Afghanistan, Iraq and Kashmir and adding that he’s seen “young men wearing Osama Bin Laden t-shirts in a hookah shop.”

Sounds like something some old fart watching Fox News who has never been that far beyond the confines of his hometown would think is true, so… hey, why not? It’s not like it’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s job to know what he’s talking about, is it? She’s just supposed to nod with a furrowed brow, try to look serious and read from a teleprompter. She barely understands what she’s saying half the time, let alone the “experts” she interviews, so cut her some slack.

This is the face of a man who definitely knows what he’s talking about. You can tell by his smirk.
 
The segment is the quintessence of Fox News: False (i.e intellectually useless) information propagated by two people, one who has no idea what he’s talking about and a second who has no idea what he’s talking about either, producing together an incoherent news segment for an audience who has no idea if what they’re hearing is even true or not, but who accept it as true because it sounds like something they already believe.

When Yann Barthès, host of the French show Le Petit Journal saw the Fox News segment he sent his courageous producers, dressed in full combat gear to some of the 741 “no-go” zones to survey the situation with some pretty nonplussed man-on-the-street interviews.

Snopes investigated the claim of these supposed Islamist “no-go” zones only to find that the brain trust at Fox News mistranslated “zones urbaines sensibles” (ZUS), which is basically the equivalent French term for “urban renewal zones” and turned it into something it wasn’t…

Fox News vs. reality. Amusing yes, but ultimately it’s reality itself that ends up diminished…

Peterson apologized to the entire country of France for his smirky Fox News appearance in an open letter.
 

 
Via Daily Kos