In my experience in the journalism business, I've learned that nearly all truly great news stories start with a sentence like "something in your house may be killing you right now." Well, America, something in your house may be killing you right now. As a matter of fact, you may be holding it in your arms and cooing at it right now. How can you know this one is real? Because it comes from a very reputable source: not just a Texan but a Republican Texan at that. So we know it's not just some idle threat-mongering attempt to generate attention. You can read the rest of this if you dare, but you may want to start soiling your underpants now just to save time.
Rep. Louis Gohmert took to the airwaves last week to ring the alarm bell about what could be the greatest threat facing America today: terror babies. These are the offspring of illegal immigrants who slip over the border not to find jobs and make a better life for their families but to plop out a terror-bred baby, granted citizenship by the dreaded Fourteenth Amendment, who will carry out some unspeakable act of evil all for the glory of some foreign god.
In a few years, he says, the plague of neo-natal terrorism will be everywhere: children barely old enough to crawl carrying out elaborate plots to destroy America; infants crafting high-powered explosives from their own diaper droppings; toddlers ripping off their pull-ups to expose Dora-themed C-4 belts and shouting "allahu akbar" just before detonating themselves all over the snack table.
As a matter of fact, a number of websites have come out with brazenly unsubstantiated reports that indicate that the problem could extend much farther than just the offspring of illegal immigrants. They claim to have new information showing that terrorists from the future may have traveled back in time (or "will have traveled" depending upon which time-displacement style manual to which you subscribe) to artificially inseminate thousands of American women with babies carrying the insidious "terror gene."
So, the question every parent in America needs to be asking themselves right now is "could my child be a terrorist?" And, of course, the answer is probably yes. No matter what you might think, it's likely that your adorable infant is secretly harboring the hateful beliefs of fundamentalist Islam, rather than the far less objectionable beliefs of hateful fundamentalist Christianity.
That's right. Those tiny strangers in your house are probably enemy agents bent on destroying everything you hold dear, but you don't want to believe that because they're "your children" and you "love them." It's the cuteness that lures you in, Gohmert warns. With their chubby cheeks and snotty little noses, we'd never suspect them of trafficking in international terrorism. If anything, we would probably excuse the early warning signs as typical bratty behavior: "Oh no, Billy is pretending to drive his Cozy Coupe into the Pentagon again! But he's so adorable I just can't bear to call Homeland Security on him."
To help other parents get past this initial hesitation and to help them identify the early stages of Juvenile Jihad Syndrome, Gohmert co-authored a new book with Jeff Foxworthy titled "Your Baby Might Be A Terrorist If (dot dot dot)."
Does your child refer to their crib as a "sleeper cell?" Your baby might be a terrorist.
Does your baby wake you up in the middle of the night just to undermine your homeland security preparedness? Your baby might be a terrorist.
Does your baby have a long grey beard and issue fatwas against the family pets? Your baby might be a terrorist.
When you watch Blue's Clues with your child, do they change the channel to Al Jazeera when you're not looking? Your baby might be a terrorist.
Listen carefully to your baby during nap time. Does the adorable gurgling sound like quotations from the Qur'an? If not, you need to listen harder. Oh, and your baby might be a terrorist.
This isn't true of everyone, of course. Vigilant patriots like Gohmert have suspected for years that children, even his own children, have been trying to kill him for years.
"I'm pretty sure my child is a terror baby," said one woman on the 800 line Gohmert established to gather anonymous terror baby tips. "She won't stop crying and refuses to sleep. Obviously, she's trying to bring down Western Democracy by being a real pain in the ass. What do I need to do to start the process of having her deported or detained in a secret prison in Eastern Europe?
Posted by Klem Johansen, Monday August 16, 2010 (0 votes) | 1 Comments | Permalink
Western Games Take The World By Storm
Over the past decade, the video game industry has seen another huge successful production of games that has come out. However it's very difficult to match the gaming capabilities of Red Dead Redemption. With game physics like the one in this particular game, it's no wonder the game is selling at an incredible rate. The game imitates the western world in a fabulous way , with just about everything western added. From Mexican stand-offs, to having a good old fashioned game of casino style poker to hunting outlaws. The game has scored well with almost all the well known online video game magazines. Developed by Rock star Games, the people who made the Grand Theft Auto series, it's quite possible that the reason they developed a western game was to try something new and not just be known as "people who only made Grand Theft Auto." A full thumbs up to Red Dead Redemption.
RECORD-BREAKING DEAL: Galifianakis To Appear In Every Film Produced In The Next Five Years
Some actors struggle all their lives to land just one role in a major motion picture. Others, like comic actor Zach Galifianakis, star of The Hangover, G-Force, Visioneers, Reno 911, and several as-yet untranslated Bollywood films, seem to have plum roles coming out of their butts (which is slightly ironic since he is slated to appear in a handful of diarrhea-based comedies later this year). It's only natural why producers seem to choose him over and over. Just one look at his jaunty beard and camera-ready belly and you can tell right away that this man is a movie star, a leading man's leading man.
Clearly this is no mere actor pumping out one or two movies a year. Galifianakis is more akin to an elite athlete training and working every day with one goal in mind: complete saturation. Without doubt, he's built an impressively dense filmography for such a brief career, and yet there are still dead spots on the calendar when you can go to your local multiplex and not find a Galifianakis movie playing. Some people say that it's physically impossible for him to be in more movies than he already is, but thankfully Galifianakis is undeterred by such concerns.
Zach Galifianakis, the star of Dinner for Schmucks, Kanye West's "Can't Tell Me Nothing," and Jimmy Loomis' 9th grade English project, just signed a record-setting movie deal that guarantees him a role in every movie made through the year 2015 - every big budget action pic, every World-War II documentary, every navel-gazing indie flick, and every corporate training video. All of it. There's even a rider in the contract that gives him the option of appearing in educational films and select home movies.
In truth, most moviegoers won't notice the difference. Instead of being in 90% of American theatrical releases, Galifianakis will soon appear in 100% of them. The biggest change will probably occur online. In recent years, the actor's busy shooting schedule required so many updates to his IMDB listing that it broke the site's database a couple of times last spring. With all the new work coming his way, the site announced major changes for his page. The new entry will be greatly abbreviated to say "Actor: Everything 2008-2015."
That's great, you might be saying, but those movies won't come out for a couple of years. I need more Galifianakis now! To satisfy growing customer demand, Comcast Cable recently announced that they will be adding the "Plus Galifianakis" feature to its on-demand system later this fall. Soon customers will be able to add this ubiquitous comic hero to anything they like. Anything at all. You say you like stuffy English costume dramas but you want a hint of edgy, fourth-wall irony? just hit the "+Galifianakis" button on your remote and enjoy the digitally-enhanced comic stylings of America's favorite uncombed funnyman. All that on-demand porn getting a little stale? Go ahead and hit that button and see what happens when Galifianakis comes shambling through the background looking confused and slightly homeless. Suddenly, it's not just sexy. It's hobo-erotic!
And it is this unkempt charisma that seems to be at the heart of his unstoppable appeal. With his mumbly delivery and slept-in-these-clothes screen presence, Galifianakis is more than just a lovable slob. He is an avatar for America's homeless problem. With his non-sequiturs and his purposeful bumbling, he gives guilt-ridden middle class folks a chance to laugh off concerns about a very serious social issue. In that sense, Zach Galifianakis could be for homelessness what Foster Brooks was for alcoholism.
With that in mind, all of this makes perfect sense. Of course we need him in every movie. Our collective peace of mind depends upon it.
And yet what's best for us may not be the best thing for the actor himself. Some in the industry, and even his close friends, have expressed deep concerns about the possible negative effects of this non-stop work schedule. Veteran actor Michael Caine, after seeing Galifianakis in a walk-on cameo at his grandson's school play, left him a voicemail saying simply "take it from me, son, you can say 'no' every now and then."
Yet, in spite of these urges to take a break, Galifianakis insists that he won't be getting off this gravy train until it comes to a full and complete stop.
"Just look at me," he said, pointing to the unidentified stain covering most of his painstakingly wrinkled shirt. "This will be over soon, and if I ever want to have sex again, I'm going to need to earn enough money to pay for it. And I'm going to need a lot of money."
Still, several industry insiders insist that the deal will never work because the fickle moviegoing public will grow tired of him long before the contract expires. Galifianakis, they say, is nothing more than a flash in the pan, this year's Jack Black. That's a particularly odd thing to say since everyone knows that Galifianakis will be playing the title role in a Jack Black biopic next summer alongside Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Jack Black.
Posted by Mark Arenz, Thursday August 12, 2010 (2 Votes) | 0 Comments | Permalink
Gibbs Apologizes to "Professional Left" For Calling them Professional
On Tuesday White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs backed away from comments he made recently decrying the continual complaining of what he called the "professional left." In a heartfelt statement made prior to Wednesday's press briefing, Gibbs apologized for referring to the disorganized circus of reporters and liberal activists that constitute the left as "professionals."
"That label was inaccurate and inappropriate," said Gibbs. "And to the doctors and engineers out there, I would also like to apologize for denigrating the term 'professional' by association with this crowd of fickle, spoiled children."
As much as they hated hearing that, Gibbs had a point- illustrated rather well by the fact that he had to pause the briefing on two occasions to change a reporter's diaper. As any dictionary will tell you, professionals can be relied upon to solve problems and are accountable to deliver results. And when was the last time anyone in Washington's chattering class did either of those things? Sure, they call themselves pros but when it comes to cash, the only quantifiable measure of professionalism that matters a tinker's cuss, they just don't measure up. Many of these people work for newspapers that have utterly tanked financially or work for nonprofits, which by their very nature, completely fail to turn a profit. They say that money problems aren't their concern, that the value they add is so special that it cannot be detected in the visible spectrum of light. All of that may be true. It's difficult to say for sure.
Regardless, it seems like quite a long way fall in terms of the President's popularity. A year and a half ago, Obama was riding so high it seemed that he might have to register as a satellite. Now it looks like nobody likes the guy at all. Name any major issue faced in the last year and anyone you talk to will probably say that the White House either he went too far or didn't go far enough. The man who couldn't lose now can't seem to win when it comes to the public consensus.
The PR dip has been so drastic, as a matter of fact, that many people are beginning to wonder if the new, roundly despised, Barack Obama is the same Barack Obama that swept a plurality of the country off its feet in the fall of 2008. There is even a theory circulating that Obama was secretly replaced some months back for reasons we may ever know, just like George Harrison had Paul McCartney bumped off during the recording of Sgt. Pepper to get more than his obligatory two songs on each album (it didn't work, of course; they only allowed him one).
Amazingly, this Barack Obama the same guy as before. Biologists have run comprehensive DNA tests to prove it, too. But that doesn't make any sense at all. If he didn't change and the only other element in the equation is us, that would mean that we changed- and we all know we didn't change. What a laughable idea, millions of people who frothed at the mouth for a candidate just two years ago would so quickly and easily abandon him for the lack of anything more interesting to do. That is patently ridiculous. We would never do that. We are, after all, the American electorate.
So, faced with this logical impossibility I believe I'll do what has become so fashionable recently when confronted with information that contradicts a preconceived notion. I'm going to ignore the inconsistencies and blame the President for my general sense of unease.
NEWS FLASH: Ground Zero Mosque Not Actually Named "The Ground Zero Mosque"
Believe it or not, the Islamic community center about to be built three very long New York City blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center
is not actually named "The Ground Zero Mosque" after all. Apparently, it's going to be called Cordoba House, which those of us living on a steady diet of cable news can only assume is Arabic for "The Ground Zero Mosque."
Living in a bright red state, we hear some variation of the following statement repeated non-stop 24 hours every day. Even in their sleep, folks around here are grunting it out on talk radio or snoring out a rough approximation of it in their sleep. "This country was founded on the idea of freedom for all people who look, worship, and have sex just like I do, and I'm willing to send other people to fight and die to protect that."
Religious freedom. It's a fairly big deal, we all say, but only when it's a matter of one's own religious freedom. On the issue of the Cordoba House, the general reaction is this: Muslims have the right to worship how they please, sure, but why build it there and stir up all this anger? That statement is usually accompanied by another sentiment: Gay people have rights, sure, but why get married and make straight people feel weird? And that, in turn, is just a
stone's throw away from what they really want to say: Black people have the right to vote, sure, but why do they run for elective office and rock the boat? In summary: people have rights up until the point where those rights infringe no mine by making me uncomfortable or becoming fodder for cheap political tricks meant to manipulate my emotions.
The implication is unmistakable. An out-group wants to exercise its rights and the rest of us wonder why they can't just appreciate our collective magnanimity (after all, they're different and haven't been killed yet by a mob of angry WASPs) and consume massive quantities of pork products like the rest of us. They should know their place, we seem to be saying, because this is a "Christian nation" and they are, well, not.
In this instance, of course, the Christian part isn't really about faith at all. If you applied that statement to the earliest precepts of the Christian church, it would be like saying that the United States should help the poor and forgive people. That's just crazy. No, the word "Christian" in the phrase "Christian nation" is proxy meant to represent the dwindling sub-set of the population to which the people who use that phrase belong.
"America was founded as a nation of us," they're saying. "It belongs to us. Democracy be damned if we don't get our way. We'll burn the whole thing down if we have to."
Of course, this penchant for deliberately misquoting the founding fathers is a terrible disservice to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the like. By erroneously ascribing these ideas to long-dead historical figures, the right is putting words in their mouths, which is fairly ironic since the concept of dudes putting things in other dudes' mouths is something they say they're very much against.
In another surprising development, legal scholars investigating the claims of several Constitution-quoting conservative groups have discovered that the document doesn't actually say what we think it says. For example, the First Amendment begins with the statement "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It does not, as many seem to believe, continue on to say "unless it would be politically expedient to do so."
On the bright side, though, Republican leaders have promised to draft an amendment to that end as soon as they take over both houses of Congress next January.
Big Victory for Gay Marriage A Defeat for "Confirmed Bachelor" and "Comfortable Shoes"
From the moment the federal judge's ruling (at least temporarily) overturned California's Proposition 8, we've been hearing the same mantra from social conservatives. Gay marriage, they say, is at the center of an insidious gay agenda bent on promoting commitment, family, and faithfulness, ideals that are completely antithetical to modern Christianity. And since America is a hardcore Christian nation (at least in the minds of hardcore Christians) the concept is an attack on America. Hardcore. But while holding the culture at large responsible for your own superstitions is fun and all, it's important to bear in mind that even liberal-minded straight people have objections to same-sex marriage that have yet to be discussed at length.
If marriage equality becomes the law of the land, it will mean big changes for straight people. For instance, a big problem with gay marriage is that we won't be able to use "confirmed bachelor" anymore as a euphemism to describe a gay man. That's a real shame because, as far as subtly coded out-group identifiers go, it's just about perfect. It has that perfect balance of "hey, you're different" without being an outright slur. Besides, "confirmed bachelor" just sounds so much cooler than saying "gay dude" or worse, having to refer to someone by their name. Ew. Also, "confirmed bachelor" phrase has the whole poet-in-a-sweater-vest-and-interesting-glasses appeal going for it. Meanwhile, saying "gay" just sounds like a value judgement one way or the other. It feels like picking a side, which for a middle-aged white guy trying to be polite, is quite unnerving. Maybe that has something to do with spending most of junior high using the term to describe anything or anyone we didn't like. It's hard to say.
That is, I think, the real beauty of "confirmed bachelor." You're not saying the guy is gay, and you're certainly not opining on how you feel about that. You're just saying that the guy or gal is not the marrying kind. It's a statement of fact. It's utterly objective. Now that gays and lesbians can get married, though, everything is ruined. Thanks a lot, Equal Protection Clause. You're such a buzzkill.
Come to think of it, the phrase "woman in comfortable shoes" to describe lesbians just doesn't work at all anymore, either. Look around. Everyone's wearing comfortable shoes these days. Crocs, Mocs, Keds, and clunky clogs with more padding than most mattresses. How many women do you see walking around in heels when they're not aren't on a date or acting in an adult film pretending to be a lesbian? If anything, "comfortable shoes" now has the exact opposite connotation that it once had. It's all very confusing, which when you think about it, defeats the whole purpose of having euphemisms for gay people in the first place.
With that in mind, we sat down a dozen straight people to brainstorm new euphemisms for gay people. The results, however, were less than impressive. Most of their suggestions revolved around a person's lack of interest in sports. That fell flat once we realized that most of the straight men in our focus groups didn't care much about sports, either, but only pretended to in order to prevent coworkers and friends from questioning their sexuality.
Thank God "friend of Dorothy" still works. Gay people still have an obsession with Judy Garland, right? Right?
Posted by Klem Johansen, Friday August 06, 2010 (0 votes) | 0 Comments | Permalink
GOP Election Victory: As Easy As Taking Citizenship From A Baby
With all the trouble Democrats have been having in the last few years, Republicans are under a lot of pressure to capitalize on that in this fall's elections. But they've been floundering for months trying to find an election theme that will resonate with voters. Enthusiasm for heir original slogan, "we're not the party with the scary black man," dissipated once they suddenly remembered that RNC chairman Michael Steele is also black and is, objectively speaking, far creepier than the person they were attempting to smear. And their attempt to portray themselves as the hands-down champions of of deficit hawkdom similarly fell apart after a month of preaching the virtues of tax cuts for their biggest donors- cuts that, without any specific suggestions for cuts elsewhere, would balloon that very same federal deficit.
Republicans have fared even worse when they tried to generate excitement by saying what they'll do once they take over one or more houses of Congress: promising to repeal the health reform act that is just beginning to benefit working families and those with pre-existing conditions; promising to undo the recent Wall Street reform act to enrich their own friends in the financial industry and leave American investors more exposed than ever; and promising to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as long as the military contractors say we ought to remain there.
Then in late July the GOP's high-powered messaging gurus got together and reached back into our nation's history, all the way back to Reconstruction, to find the one idea that could reshape the 2010 mid-term elections and perhaps the future of the Republican party as a whole. They had struck gold, brown gold. Republicans now had a way to tap into the growing tide of anti-immigrant sentiment without getting their hands dirty. Rather than the ugly politics of personal racism, they opted for sanitary institutional racism. Their target: birthright citizenship.
As we all know, citizenship is a privilege not a right. In that sense it's almost exactly like having a driver's license: both carry a set of responsibilities (for other people, not for me- don't be silly) and both can be taken away during a "random" traffic stop if you were born a non-Republican color. As such, citizenship ought to be inherited like ill-gotten wealth and terminal diseases. It can't just be given to you like some kind of gift from a magnanimous government of, by, and for the people. That would be nuts. Sure, the French gave us some giant statue a while ago for being nice to immigrants, but what the hell do the French know? They thought the Iraq war was a bad idea. I know. I know. What morons.
The problem is that we're dealing with tiny, adorable people. It's hard to say no to them, even when they're asking for something really unreasonable such as life-long membership in a club that not too long ago was limited to land-owning white males. Babies are cute and everything, with their wiggling and their pooping, but come on. They've had it way too easy for way too long. If they can't pass their citizenship test in the delivery room, do they really deserve Freedom(tm) and Democracy(tm)? Probably not if their parents "aren't from around here."
To do this, Republicans are talking about drafting a special amendment to the Constitution. And this happens to be the best kind of amendment, the kind that nullifies a legal idea that has, for more a century and a half, been one of our nation's fundamental principles. Neocon high fives! Graham and others on the right assert that changing the nation's guiding document is actually not a big deal and that the framers intended us to cross out clauses we don't like in response to public opinion- unlike the other bits of the Constitution (guns, guns, guns) that are absolutely inviolable.
"That's right. We're going to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution," boasted Sen. Lindsay Graham. "How do you like them apples? Well, you'll have to pick them yourself because the workers who used to pick them are now fleeing the country. And as a result the apples are now $10 a pop. But I'm sure you'll still like them all the same."
Unfortunately, it turns out that changing the Constitution is a monstrous pain in the ass. Getting rid of birthright citizenship would require an enormous legislative battle and a state-by-state ratification effort. Something of that order of magnitude will take time and patience, and if you're really only doing this in a cynical attempt to gather votes, you don't have much of either. So, it seems that Republicans can't directly prevent American-born children of immigrants from becoming citizens. So, Sen. Lindsay Graham has a new plan: prevent brown people from being born here in the first place.
To that end, Graham and fellow Republican Mitch McConnell have hired a guerilla marketing firm to scare pregnant immigrants into slipping back across the border. The group spent most of Tuesday driving around an Arizona bario in a decommissioned police cruiser with a giant public address speaker strapped to the top. At some point it became apparent that Graham had made a mistake in choosing a group that also does pro-immigration advocacy work. Either that or they completely misunderstood Graham's intentions.
"The United States is not a good place to raise children," said the looping voice recording. "Case in point: Lindsay Graham grew up in America. That's right. If you come to the US and have your baby, there is a strong likelihood that he or she will grow up to become sleazy opportunist just like Lindsay Graham."
Either by scaring young immigrant families away or through a full-on Constitutional amendment, Graham and his crew are determined to prevent children of foreign parents from gaining access to the rich cornucopia of shared debt and international derision that compromises US citizenship. Regardless of the methods, Republicans are working to ensure that a GOP victory in November will be as easy as taking citizenship from a baby.
Posted by Mark Arenz, Wednesday August 04, 2010 (2 Votes) | 0 Comments | Permalink
Resigning Might Get Charlie Rangel His Voice Back
For New York's affable Charlie Rangel, things are not looking so good. As a matter of fact, the list of ethics charges against him is long enough to make some people wonder if the committee was just running up the score when they drew it up. And last week we learned that he's going to have to endure a humiliating on-air hearing to decide his fate just weeks before the poop-your-pants important November elections. So, now some people (and we're not talking about some random coffee klatch; this particular grouping of people includes the President) are saying that it would probably be better to just resign and get it over with. But at 80, Rangel feels he is still too young to retire and fears that an early departure would force him to get a legitimate job. No thank you, Mr. President.
But would resignation really be so bad? Think about it. Leaving he House might be the best thing for him right now. He could avoid all the mishigas of an ethics trial and if he plays his cards right, he might be able to salvage his reputation.
Rangel has been avoiding even discussing the possibility of leaving the House, either voluntarily or otherwise, but that just shows that he's looking at this all wrong. For him, this is about his legacy and a palpable fear that years from now people will see this resignation or conviction as wholly representative of his time in office- rather than the decades of alleged misdeeds that brought him to this point. It's time to let go. And what's so bad about losing your seat, anyway? Millions of people spend years of dieting and exercise trying to lose their expansive seats, and he could do it with a letter and a press conference. Actually, I'm jealous of the guy.
But that's not the real reason he should take the blue pill. If he takes some time off from the never-ending schedule of floor speeches and talk show appearances, doctors say Charlie Rangel might just get his voice back. Most of us are so used to the way he sounds that we easily forget that the man has had low-grade laryngitis for nearly 40 years.
With enough rest for his vocal cords, copious amounts of honey-laden tea, and a light yoga routine, it's possible that Rangel's voice could return to something approaching normal within a year or two. It would certainly be a thrill to finally hear his clear, un-frogged voice after all this time. No one, not even those closest to him, can remember what he really sounded like, and no recordings of Rangel's natural voice exist today.
A group of scientists at NYU have worked up a computer-based simulation with the aid software recently used to reproduce the sounds dinosaurs may have made based on the shapes of their skulls. It was hoped that they would be able to play out the text of a famous Charlie Rangel speech, but all they've been able to do so far is produce a handful of vowel sounds, primarily of the shwa variety. All in all, the whole exercise has been a real boner-killer.
For now, though, Rangel is going ahead with his plan to employ the "other people committed similar fundraising offenses ipso facto I'm innocent- tada!" defense even though experts warn that this strategy may not work out so well. On the other hand, maybe he really is innocent like he says. After all, the President doesn't have such a great track record recently of telling the right people they should resign.
If he leaves now, by this time next year Rangel may be able to issue a proclamation decrying his persecution by a media-conscious White House- and do so in the clear dulcet tones of a repaired larynx.
You've Hate A Long Way, Baby: Tea Party Ladies Break The Glass Ceiling of Xenophobia
This morning my wife and I were having one of those conversations married people often have when they haven't had much of a chance to talk for a while. All the stuff each of you have been saving up for days about politics, TV and that weird picture you saw on the web, everything comes rushing out all at once. Somewhere near the end of this marital info-dump we started talking about the silliness related to the Tea Party. We were both coming around to the idea that much of this stuff has been bubbling up for years due to the loss of manufacturing jobs and the country's dramatic demographic shifts. In that sense, the headwaters of the Tea Party's river of crazy lie in the fear of marginalization among a group of people who had been at the center of the country's economy and culture for most of the period we commonly refer to as "forever." In the process, she casually offered up the notion that this fear and vitriol was coming from a specific group of people: not just white folks but white males in particular. I took umbrage to this, not only because she said it in a way that suggested that it was a settled, established fact but also because as a guy I feel the need to disagree with her on matters of gender.
Hours later, I realized that I may have been accidentally right after all.
Currently, many of the extreme right's biggest stars are women: Michele Bachmann, Sharron Angle, Sarah Palin, and Jan Brewer. And those are just the ones actively involved in electoral politics. The most powerful ones spit their firebrand bull-pucky from the safety of the sidelines on talk radio and Fox News: Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingram, and Ann Coulter. Certainly, hate-speech-as-entertainment is a field traditionally dominated by men such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, but if you judge influence based on screen time on cable news the women are making dramatic strides. That's right. Women may still be underrepresented on corporate boards and demonstrably underpaid for equal work but when it comes to the art and science of politically motivated race baiting they've smashed the glass ceiling like a German jewelry shop window in 1938.
No doubt about it. Women have arrived. If 2009 was The Year of The Sign-Carrying Unmedicated Nutjob Enabling An Obstructionist GOP To Shit In The Nation's Hand And Call It Hamburger then 2010 must be the Year of The Amiably Racist Woman.
There isn't any hard science to support this (and even if there were it would be a combination of sociology and psychology which are soft sciences, anyway) but it looks like women might be better at this because they take a slightly softer approach. Whatever the reason, women seem to get away with this sort of thing much better than guys can. When a male politician asserts that the President is a foreign-born secret Muslim with ties to terrorist groups, reporters begin asking tough questions like "how do you know this?" and "do you realize your fly is undone?" Meanwhile, ladies like Palin and Bachmann say this stuff all the time and sail by with no significant push-back from the press. Why? How? First of all, laying out your crazy ideas plainly for all to see will only invite unwelcome scrutiny. These ladies don't say things outright, they imply them strongly. And they do so with that delicate balance of smugness and urgency that gives people the impression that these incendiary accusations are not only hard facts but facts that have been established long ago. Besides, they're girls. Reporters, even female ones, don't take them all that seriously.
So, it turns out that the same sort of dismissive sexism that has held honest women back for centuries now allows the less-than-honest ones to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. I'd call that ironic, but these days using a word like that is dangerous because it reminds folks of that awful Alanis Morissette song. Too late. Sorry.
You've hate a long way, baby!
Though, it might be more accurate to say "you've hate a long time." The key to this phenomenon appears to lie in biology. Men are born with a Y chromosome, commonly known as the "bro chromosome", which allows them to expel stored anger through physical activity or willful forgetfulness. We've all seen it. Two guys can get into a fist fight, run each other over with their cars and brutally abuse each other with flatware but the next day all is forgiven as if it never happened. That's the bro gene at work. Meanwhile, two women can grow up together like sisters then one day one of them makes a snide comment about the other woman's hair and they never speak again.
Sadly, women lack this bro chromosome and thus have no means of dispelling these feelings. So, year after year tension and resentment build up in the bloodstream in much the same way salmon gather mercury from polluted seawater. And just like mercury in salmon, this contamination does not kill them but rather it renders them poisonous to others. Sometimes the hatred leaks out in strange ways: drowning your children in the bath or promoting laws that force brown people to carry papers proving their citizenship. If you can see a difference between those two, it's probably because you want to see one.
Regardless, there can be no doubt that women are making their mark in the field of hate, America's last remaining growth industry. There may come a day when women's studies classes teach a unit on Sarah Palin portraying her as the pioneer she seems to think she already is. With any luck that day will come a week after I'm very, very dead.
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