ShellBeThere
War Child
I saw a clip of Keith Olberman the other day chatting about the Robertson and O'Reilly ridiculousness and he seemed to be saying something about O'Reilly removing the Coit Tower comments from his website?
Any more on that little story? I'd hope he'd apologize for such crap? OR does he chalk it up to righteous anger?
It's surely easy enough to laugh at these sorts of stories, but what's freaking me out is the degree to which its become accepted, the level of ire in public debate. That O'Reilly would react to voters making decisions about how they want to handle military recruiting in their schools by advocating/hoping for/joking about extraordinary violence...That Pat Robertson would react to voters deciding to maintain the separation of church and state by advocating/hoping for/joking about their deserving God's wrath for such affrontery...that the obnoxious twit Tucker Carlson would joke about how respectable and right it was for the French gov't to blow up Greenpeace vessels because he just doesn't like Greenpeace or thinks they deserve a good whack....
On the one hand, it looks like just over-emoting in the political commentary sphere...like punk rock ethics maybe...the equivalent of a great big 'oh yeah, well fuck you' response. But it seems to me tied to the kind of scary shit where...for instance....church groups from Kansas come to places like Ann Arbor to warn us all about how God's wrath visits us due to gays and the people who don't hate them. I haven't covered how or if it actually went down, but I read about how this anti-gay group from Kansas was planning on leaving their enclave to come and protest the staging of a play here in Ann Arbor about the killing of Matthew Shepard. They believe God, with the tsunami and katrina and even the recent tornados in the midwest (huh? don't those happen rather often? any spate of oh, nascar pileups or some such we can point to as well? are the recent white sox and red sox worldseries wins relevant too?) is showing how pissed he is at us all I guess for not stoning to death the homosexuals among us and they're traveling in caravans to tell us, in places like Ann Arbor where we not only don't shun gay folk but actually have the audacity to stage plays about them.
As my hubby pointed out, its like the opposite of the freedom riders....the oppression riders, as it were.
*that* scares me; and I think it's totally encouraged by the comments made by people like O'Reilly and Robertson and Carlson.
That they speak to a seething little cauldron of intolerance and roil it further, spurring it on to take road trips for example.
I hope that in churchs around the country there are ministers countering the shit that came from Robertson this week...I just kept frankly feeling embarassed to be wearing my One band knowing he's even part of their campaign, ick. I know that he's got his whole network and all, but I get a little disgusted imagining that in some small way maybe his involvement with the campaign has given him more audibility or credibility, yech.
anyway...cheers all...
Any more on that little story? I'd hope he'd apologize for such crap? OR does he chalk it up to righteous anger?
It's surely easy enough to laugh at these sorts of stories, but what's freaking me out is the degree to which its become accepted, the level of ire in public debate. That O'Reilly would react to voters making decisions about how they want to handle military recruiting in their schools by advocating/hoping for/joking about extraordinary violence...That Pat Robertson would react to voters deciding to maintain the separation of church and state by advocating/hoping for/joking about their deserving God's wrath for such affrontery...that the obnoxious twit Tucker Carlson would joke about how respectable and right it was for the French gov't to blow up Greenpeace vessels because he just doesn't like Greenpeace or thinks they deserve a good whack....
On the one hand, it looks like just over-emoting in the political commentary sphere...like punk rock ethics maybe...the equivalent of a great big 'oh yeah, well fuck you' response. But it seems to me tied to the kind of scary shit where...for instance....church groups from Kansas come to places like Ann Arbor to warn us all about how God's wrath visits us due to gays and the people who don't hate them. I haven't covered how or if it actually went down, but I read about how this anti-gay group from Kansas was planning on leaving their enclave to come and protest the staging of a play here in Ann Arbor about the killing of Matthew Shepard. They believe God, with the tsunami and katrina and even the recent tornados in the midwest (huh? don't those happen rather often? any spate of oh, nascar pileups or some such we can point to as well? are the recent white sox and red sox worldseries wins relevant too?) is showing how pissed he is at us all I guess for not stoning to death the homosexuals among us and they're traveling in caravans to tell us, in places like Ann Arbor where we not only don't shun gay folk but actually have the audacity to stage plays about them.
As my hubby pointed out, its like the opposite of the freedom riders....the oppression riders, as it were.
*that* scares me; and I think it's totally encouraged by the comments made by people like O'Reilly and Robertson and Carlson.
That they speak to a seething little cauldron of intolerance and roil it further, spurring it on to take road trips for example.
I hope that in churchs around the country there are ministers countering the shit that came from Robertson this week...I just kept frankly feeling embarassed to be wearing my One band knowing he's even part of their campaign, ick. I know that he's got his whole network and all, but I get a little disgusted imagining that in some small way maybe his involvement with the campaign has given him more audibility or credibility, yech.
anyway...cheers all...
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