Amy Schumer is getting bashed for stealing jokes but I dint that topic to be without smoking-guns and far too pedestrian even if there was outright proof paired with a full admission from Schumer herself. I like Amy and she falls in my “can’t help but to root for” category but she is letting me down with her capitulation to political correctness, the opposition to which is what built her foundation of fame.
Gavin McInness dissects the topic exquisitely, here:
Awhile ago a meme began surfacing in different iterations using a completely baseless emotional fallacy that claimed “If you’re cold, they’re cold” regarding cats and dogs in the snow. The premise is of course the lie that “cats and dogs are people too” and thus should be treated exactly the same as what would be humane or kind to a human being, instead of simply what is humane and kind for a cat or a dog.
I blame it for furthering pop-culture ignorance on how fur-laden animals generate and retain body heat in contradistinction to puny fleshy humans.
I’m connecting the dots from that mass distributed ignorance to the fear instilled in animal keepers now who are too afraid to post animals in snow without disclaimers that they are not abusing them by letting them freeze to death or otherwise causing them great suffering.
The Twitter account for the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute wants to make extra super sure you know their animals are safe in snow. So much so that nearly every tweet from January 21st-23rd mentioned some kind of thinly masked disclaimer that the animals are not being horrifically neglected.
We will close at noon & remain closed thru 1/24. Essential staff will be here to care for animals. #blizzard2016 pic.twitter.com/HKxX5VT2yU
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 22, 2016
Giant pandas have thick woolly fur coats, perfect for keeping them warm even when rolling in snow, like Tian Tian. pic.twitter.com/nD8oHhYses
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 22, 2016
#Blizzard2016 doesn't stop the red pandas! Their feet are completely covered in thick fur. pic.twitter.com/5qf3eBZLqP
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 23, 2016
It's too cold & snowy outside for Schmidt's red-tailed monkeys, but keepers brought the snow to them! #Blizzard2016 pic.twitter.com/fvLxcJvRcY
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 23, 2016
Wilma's head is the most insulated part of her body. The hump on her back lets her head plow thru snow #Blizzard2016 pic.twitter.com/PoGjq9NJ66
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 23, 2016
Keepers gave our elephants the choice to romp in the snow for a little bit today, and Kamala took it! #Blizzard2016 pic.twitter.com/WlPh8Mrwuh
— National Zoo (@NationalZoo) January 23, 2016
Mollie Hemingway recaps the chain of events by noting that on November 5, Raheem Kassam of Breitbart London wrote what she accurately describes as “a pretty tongue-in-cheek report on the new ‘This is really not a Christmas cup but sort of vaguely holiday-themed’ to-go cup from Starbucks” and points out its tongue-in-cheekness through the use of lines like “And behold, Starbucks did conceive and bear a red cup, and called his name blasphemy” and “Frankly, the only thing that can redeem them from this whitewashing of Christmas is to print Bible verses on their cups next year. Not that I’d buy their burnt coffee anyway. And certainly not while they keep spelling my name ‘Ragih’ (right) on their cups.”
I thought it was a totally fine piece that poked fun at the cup for being even more bland than normal, but I noticed that some of the more liberal Christians (names hidden to protect those of us who tweet impulsively) I follow were immediately aghast at this Breitbart piece, on the assumption it was meant to launch a serious War on Christmas battle.
And that is exactly what happened. When I first started seeing mention of this non-controversy, it was zero-percent from outraged Christians, who were no where to be found, and 100% from hippies mocking the “war on Christmas trope”.
In response to the people talking about the outrage, some people started trickling in joining the dialog with low-level notation of the removal of Christmas imagery being unfortunate. And that’s it. In fact – I’m one of those people: I didn’t notice and didn’t care and continue to not care, but while other people are talking about it, I’m going to add my 2 cents in that yes, it’s a lame move that the Christmas imagery was deleted from an international chains seasonal cuppery. That was the totality of the buzz on this issue until a Christian shock jock made a laughably stupid video in where he is seen transparently leveraging the semi-trending topic for his own gain while doing what essentially amounted to a commercial for Starbucks and his clownish self.
On November 5, Josh Feuerstein, an Arizona preacher, Facebook vertical video ranter, and Fred Durst-style backwards cap-wearer, basically a Christian version of Howard Stern, posted a 1-minute 18-second video about a red-hued mass-produced beverage receptible. You see, he went to Starbucks to get his morning cup of coffee and was handed a simple red cup. He immediately felt triggered by this holiday-colored but not holiday-decorated design, so he retreated to his safe space of portrait-oriented internet video and expressed this offense to the world.
And horrifically, the world listened. As of this writing Feuerstein’s video has 12,247,900 views, 153,895 likes, 447,838 shares, and 36,094 comments. Normally I don’t recommend reading comments on internet posts, but in this case it’s illuminating.
In the video, Feuerstein claims to have “tricked” Starbucks into putting Christmas on their cups by telling them his name was “Merry Christmas” so that when his beverage was ready, that would be the marker on the cup and then he encourages everyone watching to do the same (and to of course connect using a hashtag that promotes himself in this silly exercise).
This stunt and the attention it got only raised the volume on the previous version of the sentiment on this non-topic: No one caring about the cups, but as long as it’s showing up everywhere as a headlined discussion allegedly going on, most people say that the design change was for the worse. That’s it. No protests or organized boycott sweeping the nation, or even any national commentators jumping on board claiming these coffee cups are an outrage of any kind. Yet there *have* been plenty headlines claiming that is the case, as opportunists have found themselves unable to pass at the prospect of making Christians looking like the perpetually outraged idiots we keep seeing from hippies in service to politically Leftist causes.
But while any real controversy fails to actually manifest, the “War on Christmas” of course re-appears as it does every year. As Mollie Hemingway reminds:
Every year we see battles over Christmas and whether it’s under siege. These battles usually take place in the public square or the market. Should town squares have Christmas trees? What about malls? Should they be renamed holiday trees? Unnamed “holy days” are less offensive than the specific holy day we all know we’re marking, right? Can government school students sing carols and not have their choir instructor sued into financial ruin? Or is it better to stick with such choral classics as “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” or whatever is less offensive than a Bach Christmas cantata?
Stories about the battles are easy to write. When the two sides are politically correct bullies and supposedly pious protesters who have nothing better to complain about, it’s easier still to simply root for casualties. But what if we didn’t just respond to shock jocks trolling for traffic and revenue-generating clicks and instead thought through the tension between commercialization and sacralization of holy days?
Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who was briefly detained by police after bringing the innards from a disassembled nightstand clock to school in a briefcase and plugged it in to be found instead of obeying his teachers instruction to keep it covered since they both acknowledged that it looked like a bomb, is moving to the middle east with his crazy whom I am deducing put him up to all this (I don’t have proof of this – I’m just concluding based on his fathers radical past, anti-american suggestions and 9/11 Conspiracy pushing vs Ahmed himself whom by all accounts seems like a regular and pleasant American kid unfortunate enough to be in such a situation where he’s used as a prop in such a way).
Known as “clock boy”, Ahmed was briefly but high-profile-ly a pop-culture darling as hippie editors across the media scrambled to lionize his bomb prank that received no punishment (just brief inconvenience as he was questioned) as an example of racist America persecuting muslims.
After it was virtually unanimously confirmed that this was a hoax and said media-hippies were duped out of confirmation-bias that desperately hopes someone somewhere will embody their narrative of racist persecution, Ahmed faded from the headlines and now his family is moving to Qatar – a country that aids and abets terrorists – instead of accept his invites to intern at Twitter or go to MIT…
Ahmed responded, “I would love to!! MIT is my dream school.”
Eyman said Qatar is “basically like America,” because American universities like Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon have Qatari-side campuses.
Also in the press release, Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed said: “After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization’s on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity.”
Earlier this month, QF gifted the teen and his family with a trip and tour of the five-mile Education City, founded by Al Jazeera creator Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and opposes what he calls the “Judaization of Jerusalem” in referencing the Jewish Holy City and Israeli capitol, founded it. In late 2012, the New York Times reported Al Thani pledged $400 million to fund Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed said he was hugely impressed by the complex.
Of course…
Through out their entire time in the media spotlight, the family played the Islamophobia card, blaming the arrest and suspension on Ahmed being a “Muslim boy.” Earlier today, San Jose, California Democrat Rep. Mike Honda organized a press conference with Ahmed and the family to announce his effort in asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Ahmed’s arrest and treatment by police, ABC News reported.
“We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn and all of them being accepted by that country,” said the patriarch earlier today to the Dallas news outlet. However, as Breitbart Texas reported, Ahmed’s clock woes happened based on the state and federal safe school and zero tolerance policies. Even the Associated Press agreed, blaming “rigid disciplinary policies” adopted by schools in the 199os.
But that wasn’t before getting shout outs from tech companies like Facebook and Google, and an invite to meet President Obama, and thousands of dollars in donations, and lots of free swag for some reason.
Ahmed with a ton of tech goodies gifted to him by Microsoft because Reasons.
UPDATE: Suing from Quatar, the family also wants $15 million from the city and school due to the psychological damage Ahmed allegedly suffered by being lawfully detained after committing a crime…
After he was released, he was invited to both Google (where he met Sergey Brin) and Facebook. President Barack Obama called him an inspiration for kids who want to study science and invited him to the White House. Time magazine named him in its list of “30 Most Influential Teens of 2015.”
But that was all then. Now, it’s time for the legal action. After no charges were filed against him and he finally got his clock back, attorneys for Ahmed and his family have written to both the city of Irving and to the Irving Independent School District and made demands.
As the Dallas Morning News reports, the letters ask for $10 million from the city and $5 million from the school district. They say he was “publicly mistreated.” They say he suffered “severe psychological trauma.”
Future first lady Ann Romney (yes this post was written in 2015 before the Romney 2016 announcement has been treated seriously by anyone or been made or hinted at) is a delightful person. Via IJ Review:
It’s not hilarious. but I like it. Partially cuz of my confirmation-bias in how much I like Ann Romney but also because of the personality that leaks through. She’s so obviously not in her element with this brand of Silly but its not stiff or phony the way it is when you see someone like Hillary Clinton try to do comedy. Ann is plenty stiff in it but that’s because she’s a grandma and not a performer – contrary to Hillary Clinton doing skit appearances that come off robotic because just letting any kind of personal looseness happen comes off as wildly uncomfortable for her. In other words: Ann comes off as a grandma doing an impression of a comedian while Hillary’s attempts at levity look like a robot doing an impression of a human being.
I also find it adorable that the Romney’s are so Ned-Flandersian that the original title of “baller grandma” was too raunchy for her and she opted for the 2nd choice of “Freakin Awesome Grandma” instead. Hot Air summarized it well:
Best goof on a famously wholesome mom’s image since Barbara “Leave It To Beaver” Billingsley spoke jive in “Airplane!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=cjMsl18D6Jg
Look at these fkkn bitches taking pictures… OF THEMSELVES! What, did they want to savor a moment in life or something?? What, did they think this was supposed to be a social event of some kind? Something fun that they might want to re-live in some capacity with visual reminders of themselves in that moment? Um. No, bishes – y’all r spose to look straight ahead and that’s it.
Guess we gotta Life-splain to these twits that when you’re in a sports arena you’re supposed to exclusively watch the event area in front of you and partake in nothing else at any time.
A group of selfie-obsessed Arizona sorority girls were shamed at a baseball game by two MLB announcers for snapping photos of themselves for at least two minutes straight.
About a dozen unsuspecting Alpha Chi Omega sorority girls were caught on camera putting on their best duck faces as they posed with hot dogs, churros, and just about anything near them.
“Oh, hold on! Take a selfie with a hot dog. Selfie with a churro. Selfie just of a selfie!” one announcer teases.
As I’ve noted many times before, Selfie-shaming is for Losers. It’s a transparent attempted bludgeon used by weak minds to drag down others they perceive as a threat to their own low self esteem.
Here are 8 or so reasons why this is entirely the wrong angle for this story:
TURNING PHOTOGRAPHY INTO PATHOLOGY
The girls are described as “selfie-obsessed” for snapping pictures of themselves at the game. This is stupid. Doing something more than once does not create an obsession. That label is only being applied here to create a mocking narrative that is illegitimate – which you can easily verify by trying to apply it to any other strive for excellence. What if there was open-seating at the stadium and the group was observed to take several minutes surveying the available options of areas to sit? Would they be “perfect view obsessed” girls? or just normal people trying to achieve something. What about people who stop watching the field and leave the stands to go to the snack bar and purchase food and drinks? They can’t go an hour without munching and slurping something instead of just watching the game in front of them? Is anyone called “food obsessed” for doing this? They very well could have been when this was new territory for game-watchers in 1905 or whatever* when there was a peanut & popcorn stand behind the bleachers and not much else (*precise moment in history when concessions became a mainstay in sporting arenas was not researched for this article). Some people, who were used to not leaving the stands to go eat, could easily view that unnecessary action to be eye-roll worthy. “Just watch the friggin game. You don’t need a cup of salty snack right now. geez” is no different than the attempted shaming of these girls taking photographs and no more stupid than it either.
THE ACCUSERS ARE THE DRAMA QUEENS
The commentary on social media and critical reporting of the instance frames the girls as dramatic clowns but in reality it’s the commentary that is being unduly hysterical. As noted above, in an attempt to paint the act as excessive, the description above from Melissa Chan in the NY Daily News calls the girls “selfie obsessed” for taking pictures of themselves for “two minutes straight”. I assure you all: 2 minutes is the shortest photoshoot in history. Definitely not an “obsession”. They also didn’t pose with “just about anything near them” – they took pictures of themselves and their friends and included the food they were eating… For Christ sake, they didn’t pick up debris off the floor and pose with it or go overboard in any way whatsoever. They commemorated an event in their lives with photographs. Could we stop pretending that that’s a big deal?
THEY WERE LITERALLY ASKED TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING…
Taking photos of yourself is not a shameful thing to do, but there is a wrinkle in this story that makes the attempted shaming of these girls 10 times as horrible: they were invited to do exactly what they were doing…
The commentary from the announcers making fun of the girls taking the pictures comes literally directly after those same announcers read a promo asking attendees of the game to tweet their fan photos… What in the actual fkk kind of scam is this? “Hey everyone! Please join in the fun and do this thing! [wait 1.5 seconds] – Hey everyone! Look at these friggin ridiculous monkeys doing that thing we asked them to do! LOL! What a buncha maroons!”. This is like when a magician invites an audience member up on stage to “be a part of a trick” but really just ends up making an ass out of the participant because they’re not a talented enough performer to actually make them a part of the act so instead have to rely on them being the butt of their joke. Not cool. Step up your game, fools.
HEY LOSERS: THIS ISN’T 1865. PICTURES ARE FUN AND FREE.
“Loogit the one on the right” and the other guy adds “do you have to make faces when you take selfies?”. Well no, bro – you don’t HAVE to do anything while engaging in self photography. I get that you guys are old as balls but are you really dating yourself to bygone era’s where you have to pose for a photo stonefaced because it takes several minutes for the exposure of the picture to imprint on the film? Are all your family albums recreations of American Gothic, you boring hack? Then they mock the volume of pictures being taken with a bit voicing the girls alleged internal monologues with comments like “uhp – better angle”, “check it” when one of them verifies the quality of the photo just taken, and “that’s the best one of the 300 pictures I’ve taken myself today!”. Maybe y’all haven’t heard the news but: digital photographs are free, bro. If they were $10 a shot, there might be validity to some astonishment in the opulent waste of a crowd frittering this limited commodity away, but nope – it’s just tapping a pane of glass and capturing a moment in your life. What you’re mocking is attention to detail and strives for excellence, not any kind of spoiled entitlement or abuse of excess. There is no virtue in limiting the moments you capture of yourself at no expense to anyone. You’re a friggin idiot if you don’t take a half dozen snaps of the same photo with minor nuances, not a hero.
THE [FAKE] TECHNOLOGICAL MENACE STEALING OUR YOUTHS!
In a delightfully goofy case of the old trope that dictates “technology I grew up with is okay but technology kids are growing up with is SCARY”, the commentary on the girls takes an unintentionally hypocritical turn. Referring to the girls looking at the screens of their picture taking devices, the announcer says “welcome to parenting in 2015. they’re just completely transfixed by the technology” – ignoring that he is broadcasting those comments onto a screen in which millions of viewers are “completely transfixed” themselves… We are all watching screens, bro. You’re spying on teenage girls through screens, they’re taking photos through screens, people at home are watching you watch them through screens – on screens. Shaming someone for being transfixed by technology while you are doing the exact same transfixation of technology – just with a different subject through the lens – is an insane level of lack of self awareness.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE MESSAGE HERE, AGAIN?
While using a camera to record a bunch of girls, the commentary we are supposed to accept is that girls using cameras to record themselves is a ridiculous mock-worthy event. There’s just nothing that makes sense about what they’re saying – which reveals that they’re not saying the things they’re saying for the reasons alleged, and rather are just using those alleged reasons as excuses to take down a target due to ulterior internal issues.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO WATCH THE GAME!” is a stupid comment all over a large percentage of the social media reposts of people justifying the shaming. First of all: you’re supposed to pay attention to whatever is interesting. You have no obligation to watch a sporting match that is boring – but there is zero evidence that a game was even going on. As far as I can tell, this is all taking place during a break or downtime of some kind, having just come back from a commercial break apparently. That’s the whole reason the video even exists, you dummies – the announcers had nothing on the field to announce on, so the cameras trolled the stands for commentary fodder. Anyone criticizing these girls for not being fully engrossed in the sport allegedly happening in front of them should be quintuply criticizing the announcers for ignoring the same game at the same moment in time. It’s the announcers job to talk about the game, and it is sorority girls’ job to take pictures of themselves in everything they do before they aren’t cute in pictures anymore. The girls did their jobs here – the chauvinist announcers did not.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER” is the other criticism of these silly chicks who thought they were attending this event to enjoy in ways that came natural them instead of following the Code of Baseball or something. NOPE – baseball is for conversations, apparently as one of the announcers says that “the beauty of baseball is you can sit next to your neighbor and have a conversation. OR you could completely ignore them”. Because evidently taking pictures with people, laughing with them, and talking to them, is “completely ignoring” them. The brief moments any of the girls are not engaging with each other by doing something on their personal screens are frequently broken up by the group activities of laughing and chatting during photographing of themselves. And remember that this is not a 2 minute montage of time lapse video from the entire game showing these girls doing nothing but taking pictures of themselves and not saying a word to each other – this is only a 2 minute span of linear time during a nothing-of-note-happening-on-field segment of the stupid baseball game. If you can’t take 2 minutes to disengage from the non-action on the field or the lulls in conversation with your neighbor, then attending a game isn’t fun – it’s punishment. What crime are these young women accused of that they would deserve such a sentence?
CONFISCATE THE PHONES!
The last comment the announcers make is to jokingly advocate banning phones from the stadium to prevent people from taking pictures of themselves. Wtf is that about? Why should the stadium have a monopoly on recording media of fans that – don’t forget – it solicits to record media themselves? What is the joke here? There isn’t one. It feels like there’s one because of the underlying feeling but when the surface of that feeling is breached even to the slightest degree, the facade fails. The real reason for scorn is not “I don’t want people to take breaks from watching baseball” – it’s – “I don’t want people doing things that make me uncomfortable about the fact that no one wants to look at pictures of me and/or that I don’t have the confidence that would make me want to save images of myself having fun.”
~
The truth is that all this is just misdirected jealousy. Selfie shaming is a retaliation to specious feelings of inadequacy brought on by the public display of people having enough self worth to think pictures of themselves have some kind of value and thus should be taken. People who have no such value in their image feel shamed by those who do and seek to tear them down publicly so that the public learns to devalue self-image in general, thereby protecting those who don’t have it.
In reality, there’s obviously nothing wrong with photographing yourself and it doesn’t inherently speak to any poor character traits, which means that it deserves no scorn or ridicule on its own.
~~
UPDATE: In response for being unjustly mocked on tv for no good reason, the girls were offered free tickets to a game. Their response is so boss that it made this entire post worth it just for that alone. Basically they said “thank you but we would like to donate those tickets to a charity instead”. Boom. Here’s the full statement:
Alpha Chi Omega at Arizona State University would like to thank the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fox Sports for reaching out to the chapter after last night’s game and subsequent media frenzy. We appreciate their generous offer of tickets to tonight’s game. However, instead of chapter members attending the game, we have asked the Diamondbacks and Fox Sports to provide tickets to a future game for families at A New Leaf, a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.
Today, October 1, marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If everyone who viewed this statement took the time to make a donation in recognition of domestic violence awareness, which is Alpha Chi Omega’s national philanthropy, we would be so grateful! We are happy to have the opportunity to shed some positive light on such a sensitive subject. All proceeds will go directly to A New Leaf to help struggling Arizona families get back on their feet by providing housing, food, childcare and more. You can donate using the link below. We appreciate your support!
http://donate.billhighway.com/DVAwareness
After going viral on both Youtube and Facebook Video, the following piece of media has generated outrage and accusations against its author and the sentiments she expresses. But are they merited? *In my best Tootsie-Pop Owl voice* ~ Lehtz, Fiihnd Out…
Here are some things you may have failed to see…
The first 3 seconds of the video makes fun of herself.
The video starts with a cold open in where Arbour refers to the streak of pinkish purple in her blonde locks as her “Ke$ha hair” and lifts a strand further down that appears stiff, saying “you don’t know if this is hair spray or semen”.
This entire post could end with that. Every Social Justice Warrior who thinks that in attacking this video they are crusading against an oppressive bully-culture is revealed to be a self-important fraud after just 3.5 seconds of the damn thing. You lost before you started. You are rallying your troops around a woman comedically making light about her sense of style and after-sex hygiene who also says it is unhealthy to be unhealthy. You are constructing a strawman bully to take down for your own agenda and not because this is an actually pervasive figure guilty of unfair demonization. When you claim villainy in people making jokes about themselves while also making jokes about certain unhealthy choices, you are mocking your own cause.
Within 6 seconds she called out her overly sensitive future critics
With just the words “Dear Fat People” she notes that “people are already mad about this video”. That would be a lame pre-emptive defense about taking heat for being controversial over something non-controversial if it didn’t pan out exactly that way and more, far beyond what anyone could have expected. Congratulations, whiners! Your predictable overreactions have become such a cliche trope that you are living self-fulfilling prophecies of Outrage Culture.
Her “Fat People running” comedy bit is legit
When I heard the outcry over this video I naturally assumed it was another fitness lifestyle person evangelizing the virtues and benefits of not remaining unhealthy. In reality, as if the previously mentioned tipoffs weren’t enough, it is shown within 20 seconds of the video that this is a comedy routine. That doesn’t mean you have to think it’s funny – it just means you have to know that it’s comedy. When you treat jokes from an entertainer like they’re serious hateful attacks from a position of authority then you’re being a douche. Jokes with a message behind them should have that message rebutted in a manner of levity equal to the offense. In the first 20 seconds of the video, Arbour goes on a tangent about how Frankenstein is slow and thus non-menacing to someone who can run “at a reasonable pace” and segways into how the zombies from The Walking Dead are allegedly also easy to avoid if not for writer and producer plot devices. You have no excuse for treating this monologue like its a Presidential Address to the nation.
“Fat shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up”
Finally at around 35 seconds, we have at least something that could potentially be disputed regarding overweight humans. Arbour says “fat shaming is not a thing”. This is essentially the thesis of the video and yet the vast majority of its critics refer to it as a “fat shaming video” when the video purports to be a video dispelling the myth of fat shaming. Arbour explains her position but the critics think they don’t need to explain theirs for some reason. So lets just examine her argument… Arbour says Fat shaming is a made-up construct invented by fat people in contradistinction to legitimate Victim Cards in a deck she says includes Race, Disability, & Gay. These “Cards” are legitimate plays according to Arbour because each of the 3 groups face hurdles in life they didn’t choose and cannot change, unlike fat people whom overwhelmingly either chose their state of health, can change their state of health, or both. Unless…
Who she’s NOT talking about is explicitly stated in the first minute
In 1 minute of the 6 minute video, Arbour states that people with a little more “cushion for the pushin” or with specific health conditions need not apply to her criticism. So why have so many applied? The fact that so many people crave victimhood status is a servicing illustration to Arbours point, not a debunking of it. There is no excuse for being chubby or suffering from a medical issue that causes fat accumulation and thinking you are being in any way derided. The woman slows her speech like she’s talking to a kindergarden Special Needs class and makes an O with her hand to illustrate that she is only pinpointing the 35% of North Americans who are O-bese – i.e. – people making life decisions regarding food intake and movement/exercise that are negatively affecting their health by adding large amounts of calories that they are not burning.
“Big boned” isn’t a thing
Arbour quips that “there are no fkking skeletons that look like the Michelin Man”. Amusing line. Problem? If so, then Science is your enemy, not this comedy delivering blonde girl.
“Fat shaming” is really just “shaming bad habits until they fkking stop”
Fitting into her earlier point about how “fat shaming” at large is not a thing, Arbour explains that what people wrongfully call fat shaming (a phrase with connotations of personal condemning) is actually the shaming of bad behaviors that result in life threatening actions (something every reasonable human is called by logical society to do).
Shop-aholics vs Over-eaters who don’t exercise
Still less than 2 minutes into the 6 minute video, Arbour delivers some jokes about Shopaholics (people with a compulsion to buy things in unhealthy quantities) are more sympathetic victims than Food&sloth-aholics (people who take poor care of their bodies via a compulsion to eat large quantities of junk food paired with sedentary activity). Recalling her setup about legitimate handicapping, she jokes that obese parking should be further, not closer to the store to encourage the calorie burning that obese people need to save their lives. So so far, Arbours alleged “shaming” and “bullying” has been to advocate better behavior with the intention of saving peoples lives (also known as “neither shaming nor bullying”).
People destroying their bodies are doing something horrible
2:20m – Arbour says if you have a pack of Smarties candies and you mash one up and make it “not good” then it’s no big D cuz you have a whole pack left, while the case with your body is that you have only 1 and if you eff it up then you’re screwed. It’s an odd analogy fitting with the light hearted comedic delivery of the rest of the video and it’s 0% inaccurate. Regardless of candy analogies, there is no disputing the fact that at the time of this writing and the time of Arbours recording, human beings have only one body as an option. In the future, depending on how this head transplant thing goes and how thoroughly we are able to download our brains to plug into new mechanical, organic, or cyborg/mixed vessels – Arbours claim is 100% true.
So more than a quarter of the way through the video and we have yet to experience anything inaccurate, nasty/mean, or “shaming”.
Being “body positive” means “being positive to your body”
Lampooning the phrase “body positive” as it’s used in regards to glorifying unhealthy bodies, Arbour suggests the alternative of labeling positive things positive. By illustrating absurdity by being absurd, Arbour takes the action to its logical extension by pointing out that #MethLove and #TeamSmoker campaigns are not positive. Putting a hashtag next to something does not change the objective reality that it is physically bad – it just makes something that is physically bad, culturally good. And this is the real heart of the body positive issue… it operates under the hippie philosophy that if anyones choices are not celebrated then they are a victim and hippies love fighting against societal majorities by using victim martyrs. So the victims get conned by feeling better about killing themselves and ruining their lives while the hippie feels like a hero for fighting against the boogie men of logical critical analysis of health by falsely labeling it with hate smears and fiction of oppression.
What about the family?
Around the 3 minute halfway mark of the video, Arbour notes that the health conditions and early deaths caused by obesity take an unfair toll on the family and loved ones of the obese. She calls out the selfish behavior of someone allowing their addiction to unhealthy food rob them from their loved ones. People who seek pleasure for themselves regardless of the pain it causes others are typically known as jerks. Most jerks are jerks because of problems, yes, no one fails to grasp that. But as an evolved society we are compassionate to peoples problems when they seek help – not when they embrace their problems and make them other peoples problem. That action should be condemned, not celebrated as a personal choice. If you are a hermit with only enemies then it is a personal choice how you destroy your life with food and inaction. If you have anyone – even one person in your life who loves you – then you are being a jerk by destroying your life whether it’s with food, alcohol, drugs, or whatever. That’s *my* point, not Arbours, but Arbours point that killing yourself with food is a dick-move to your loved ones is objectively true. I could think of a bunch of ways that and every other objective truth could be used to bully, ridicule, shame, or otherwise gratuitously attack an individual or group of people, but so far this video has done no such thing.
Fat Privilege
3:10 – Telling a story of obese people getting to cut a long security line at the airport because their knees were hurting from standing too long, Arbour again illustrates the absurdity of the situation sarcastically responding “oh, I showed up an hour early like I was supposed to, but you overeat, so let me help you”. Sorry, but Arbour isn’t the jerk in that situation. She could be if she was the TSA agent in charge of the line and refused to expedite the obese persons time they spent in pain or discomfort (assuming the suffering was legitimate) but the person in this story wasn’t given pain or discomfort by any 3rd party – they alleviated their pain and discomfort at the expense of others. This is known as “being a jerk”. Arbour sarcastically pointing out that she and others miss out on preferential treatment due to not destroying their bodies, is just logic.
Description of gross fat people
In a world where obesity exists and unpalatable things exist, there is going to be some cross-over. Arbour describes a distinct smell and type of “standing sweat” fat (presumably, people with a weight problem so strong that merely being upright without assistance has the equivalent effect of lifting and carrying around various numbers of 20lb lifting-weights)
Privilege ridicule
“So what?” to the fact that the fat family got to skip in line and be carted to their destination while Arbour sweats “like a pig” under a time crunch – she notes that while suffering that imbalance, if she were to “play an ugly chick in a movie” then she’s more likely than them to win an Oscar.
Obesity as a disability to the obese and an inconvenience to the healthy
4:15 – Arbour says that in her recent travel story she was seated on the plane next to one of the kids from the fat family whom was referred to as being disabled and his fat was spilling out of the airline seat and onto Arbour.
“Genetics plays a part, to a degree” in obesity
Accurate and necessary observation.
4:50 and I’m still waiting to hear something offensive, bullying, or false…
“I’m really fkking selfish: I want you around”
5 minutes in and this supposed shaming bully is admitting to caring about all the obese people watching her that even though she doesn’t know them, she cares enough to want them to be alive. The people calling this video shaming and bullying are taking a giant dump over those words and cheapening actual harassment, personal ridicule, and culture affecting acts of punching down.
“Actually, I will love you no matter what…”
5:33 – After expressing light hearted self deprecation concern in teasing both herself and her appearance along with those who overheat to unhealthy degrees and then saying she is only lampooning the unhealthy behavior because she cares about the unhealthy who may only be getting feedback from enablers, this “bully” then says “actually, I’ll love you no matter what [size or weight you are]” and this hippie Victim Culture drenched elitist nunnery still goes around painting this woman as an intolerant bully.
The video ends without a single slice of fat-shaming…
Dear hippie friends lauding this story on Facebook: You are being played and you should have known better…
14 years after the terrorist mass murders of 9/11 by radical Muslim extremists and the hippie American Left has been desperately searching for anti-Muslim retaliation or violence or bigotry and come up with failure and empty hands.
Despite Islamists using bombs and other weapons to murder civilian targets across the world, the tolerance and objectivism inherent in American traditionalism just kept failing to make any false deductions between a peaceful Muslim and an Islamist. Then in 2015, a kid brings a bomb-looking thing to his school and the cops are called and we are supposed to make some kind of “see?? Don’t go thinking all muslims are bomb using terrorists!” conclusion just because the kids name is Ahmed Muhammed? Since when is it okay to accuse people of oppressive race or ethnic bias without any evidence other than your own confirmation bias? Or more importantly – What about the part where the item he had, literally, objectively, unequivocally looks like a bomb you dummies?
I used to like debunking these but the joy is gone from the process. It’s just annoying at this point that people actually fall victim to such obvious logical errors just because of emotion based confirmation bias.
Nothing wrong happened in this story except what the kid did: He should have known better than to bring a suspicious looking thing like that to school. Okay, big deal, who cares? He wasn’t expelled from school for it (though creating bomb scares is usually an offense academia punishes), he wasn’t beaten or abused by any students or authority figures for it, he wasn’t even arrested as is often falsely reported (he was detained by police while they investigated) – yet this story is all over social media as some kind of example vindicating hippie victimhood mentality.
Everything about this message is wrong.
Acting as if some major oppressive weight was reigned upon this kid, Hippies are overcompensating as always by making him out to be a hero. That’s bananas. He didn’t do anything wrong except make a dumb decision so he shouldn’t be penalized but the kid does not deserve praise because he didn’t do anything special, either. People posting this story are trying to make the guy out to be a wiz kid genius unable to flourish in the field of science because of the oppressive stigma of his name and what thousands of people do in the name of his religion.
Idk what the kids grades, science fair history, or invention portfolio looks like but color me “not impressed” by this “clock” (which looks to me like just an assembly from a kit of some kind). Instead of being praised he should have been told that what he did was not smart. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t bring knowingly suspicious looking wired electronics to school unless it’s part of a project and when police question you in lawful and reasonable suspicion of a crime, you can’t be illusive with your responses and expect a good outcome.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s not even science. It’s common sense.
PS: the answer to the above image is below. This is the “clock” in question:
UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, everything I said was right and more. Much much more. In fact, this whole thing now appears to be a complete hoax, intentionally devised to illicit exactly the kind of knee-jerk hippie confirmation bias that it succeeded in stirring among the dummies I called out. Some major additions to the story:
1- While the public was lead to believe that Ahmed was some kind of science enthusiast wiz-kid building robots on his own only to be unfairly oppressed, he evidently just popped open the casing of a cheap nightstand style digital clock and put the guts of it in a supplies case (explained here and re-created below):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bnhqqVDdF4
2- Ahmed admitted that he knew the device looked suspiciously dangerous:
“I closed it with a cable, so… because, I didn’t want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I just used simple cable…. so it won’t look that much suspicious”.
This was obviously a screw-up that gave away his intent because to a 14 year old it sounds like a good defense to argue that you were trying to do exactly the opposite of what you’re being accused of, when in reality, no one actually thinks that a closed pencil case looks like a “suspicious threat”, adding a cable to the case makes it look more-not-less suspicious, and of course leaving it unlocked for people to discover unlabeled electronic wiring inside said suspicious looking cabled case is not at all the assistance to tamping down threatening appearance like he claimed. Kindov destroys the whole “racism” argument that the bomb connection was only made because of his name and religious/ethnic background when the kid himself agreed with the premise of how the device appears.
3- No one freaked out about the watch until started beeping in class, leading to the discovery of the wired contraption Ahmed admitted looked like a suspicious threat. Even though the teacher he showed the clock to instructed him to keep it under wraps for exactly the reason of it’s threatening appearance, Ahmed admitted to plugging the clock in the classroom (presumably so the timer would go off), which lead to the whole bomb investigation.
4- Turns out that his family has a history of this kind of victim-attention-grabbing stunt-doing and they used their kid. Ahmeds dadMohamed Elhassan Mohamed ran for President of Sudan (run by a dictatorship so i’m not sure what that’s all about) twice and participated in a media stunt against the Koran by serving as it’s public defender on trial for it to be burned.
So what did we learn? Repeat after me, class: “Never believe dumb-hippie talking point memes without further investigation or use of basic common sense”.
The Confederate flag should not be praised by the government and it should not be banned by it either. There’s nothing inherently wrong about the flag but it has been used for bad causes, giving the symbol a negative connotation. Thus the answer is the first sentence of this paragraph: Government is right to not endorse its use and hippies are wrong to blanketly demonize its use.
There. I solved your stupid non-problem.
How did I accomplish such a marvel? Behold, the rudimentary use of facts + situational reality. Tada!
The truth is that the flag is used as mind-numbingly ignorant symbol of un-american attitude of separation, segregation, hate, ignorance, and bad ideas in general, but also — none of that… Because the other truth is that it’s used as a legitimate symbol of history and heritage without any racial connotations whatsoever.
Dukes of Hazzard stuff is now banned due to history revisionism about the Confederate flag in the past week.
I think “pride” in the flag, or any other exclusively regional symbols, is dumb. But who cares? You’re dumb for caring. Or more likely, just ignorant. I’ve been interrogating Confederate flag supporters for over a decade trying to understand why any toolbag dummy would embrace it and while I disagree with the rationale I always receive, it’s not fair to lump the common arguments in with bigots, haters and truly evil people that include murderers and violently wicked humans.
Most often I hear displayers of the Confederate flag talk about pride in history. Which would be fine, except that history is about a war that caused an obscene amount of death that was largely over a dispute regarding the allowability of the ownership of human beings as property. and it lost. So… you’re telling me you’re proudly representing a period of historical bloodshed in the name of legal enslavement of humans that caused immense suffering and negative historical repercussions despite being an ultimate failure because….your family tree at certain points in history lived in the geographical area in which this horrible event took place? Are you THAT friggin tribal and stupid?
That’s *my* reaction at least. even though I know some of it is fairly dubious, such as the more ambiguous role that slavery played in the Civil War. My position on that has always been that yes, the war was about slavery, but yes, it is factually accurate to note the real-life conflicts of the issue and reason there was a separation attempt and ensuing war. But despite acknowledging the nuances of the historical record – the fact remains that slavery was AN issue if not THE issue and since it’s immoral – why would you want to fly a flag that went to war to defend against encroachments into that immoral institution?
It shows you the heart of anti-americanism in the Hippie mind when they call Confederate Flag wavers racists but defended the fighters in Iraq with the emotional relation appeal trope, saying “what would YOU do if Iraq invaded YOUR city?”. So to some dummies, it’s only okay to fight and murder encroachers into your immoral bondage of innocents if you’re not American. To everyone else – we think that regardless of the prudence of resuming the Iraq war of the 90s again in the 2000s, that like the south in the Civil War – the people defending their state were resisting forces that are there to make things better for everyone. So yes we get why they feel put upon – they’re jerks. What jerk loves to be corrected or told they have to follow the same rules of decency as everyone else? Why would you lionize a losing team that fought in protection of a thing you recognize is bad?
It seems painfully obvious to me but the response I get to this reaction raises some points, not all of which are illegitimate. Bearers of the flag always tell me that no, they are not celebrating the causes of the war or it’s goal, but yes they are representing their geographical location and that that area of the globe and heritage, losing side or not – regardless of the immoral reason behind it – was the center of a lot of death and horror that people suffered through, not all of which because they were adamant supporters of slavery. I think geographical representation is dopey, but no one else does, so if you don’t think it’s horrible to feel a sports-team style kinship with your state, then there’s no reason to do so in a collection of states.
And that’s all the confederate flag is. The problem is not what it *is*, it’s what it *can be*. And it *can be* a symbol of racism, “white pride”, pro-slavery, and any other number of subsets having to do with unjust separation of races. This is why there is a conservative and liberal divide over the issue: Liberals see things in black and white (despite liking to think of themselves as doing otherwise) and thus anything that they view as possibly racist IS racist and unless it is exterminated it is contributing to “racist culture” which a large government must remedy by force. Conservatives, being less collective and more individualistic, see things more individually and draw generalizations from patterns instead of starting with a blanket rule with which to retroactively apply to everyone in all time periods. It’s how Hillary Clintons and Barack Obama can get away with being firmly against re-defining “marriage” to include same sex unions just 3 years ago but now act like only Hitler would ever say such a thing. Likewise with the flag, people selectively choose at what time a trending buzz about the meaning of a symbol dominated and retroactively apply it to all time. Only when it’s politically expedient to try to marginalize it’s opponents as bigots in order to gain power does the Left suddenly realize a position or symbol is unjust. Many people go along with it because following the herd on an issue is most natural when there are emotional appeals involved that don’t motivate resistance or opposition research. Everyone else points out the group think of the herd and is perplexed that people are actually just going along with the history revision that the flag unequivocally means horrible things. Never mind that that unequivication is brand-new (causing awkward blind-eyes to have to be turned about that time Governor Bill Clinton commemorated the Confederacy Star in the Arkansas flag or that campaign supporters for both Bill in 1992 and Hillary in 2008 distributed completely non-controversial Confederate Flag promotional items).
Seriously though, has Hillary been asked about the Arkansas flag? pic.twitter.com/8yJ5ExLDzA
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 20, 2015
In the reality of cold-hard-facts, there isn’t anything actually wrong with the flag. It’s not a synonymous symbol with racism or hate or the KKK – it’s a symbol of region of the country during an event that happened that was a massively big deal, forever affecting the country and what it is and what it stands for and thereby affecting world history in a major way. Remembering that with visual representation is not a bad thing. Yes, one has to deal with the fact that haters, racists, and the official organization of the KKK cult do in fact use that flag in all of those bad ways. They fly it not because they give a fig about remembering an event or because they’re such southern-state pride-ists that they want to display a symbol of their home – they see that flag as a symbol of a glorious event in where brave men gave their lives for the noble cause of keeping the negro in chains where they belong. Since that association isn’t a direct parallel, the problem becomes “what do we do when a symbol is co-opted?”.
As with every case where a symbol is used by a group, the rest of us have to decide how to respond. The Republican party is represented by an elephant. That doesn’t mean Democrats can’t enjoy a nice National Geographic special on pachyderms. Gay pride is represented by a rainbow. That doesn’t mean we forever have to associate rainbows and rainbow colors exclusively with homosexuality. The reason is because the factual reality is that groups don’t own symbols that pre-existed them. The sociological reality is that people associate things with what is familiar to them.
There are dumb reasons that are no more dumb than reasons of history and pride that aren’t objected to, and no we shouldn’t give in to any one group claiming exclusive representation to an image or symbol (and especially not if it’s a co-opt to a bad idea like Racism), but who cares?
The whole non-issue and it’s debate is stupid. The people acting like it’s a big deal whose repealing will have any affect over anything positive whatsoever are being dumb and the people who act like the importance of proud display over it is a big deal whose act is accomplishing literally anything positive whatsoever are being dumb.
My diagnosis: Stop being dumb.
Repeat after me:
The Confederate flag should not be praised by the government and it should not be banned by it either. There’s nothing inherently wrong about the flag but it has been used for bad causes, giving the symbol a negative connotation. Thus the answer is the first sentence of this paragraph: Government is right to not endorse its use and hippies are wrong to blanketly demonize its use.
For some reason, crazy people with unstopped pathways towards violence finally committing that violence isn’t a satisfying enough explanation for why crazy people with unstopped pathways towards violence finally commit acts of violence. So they look for scapegoats. Here are 5 bad ones. The 21 year old murderer who killed 9 people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church made a series of conscious decisions stemming from a mix of ignorance, hate, feelings of victomhood, and chemical imbalance.
Here are 5 things not responsible for the massacre:
1- BLACK PEOPLE / ANY BLACK INDIVIDUAL
This is a different dynamic than the previous deaths of black individuals that were falsely attributed by race-hustlers and well meaning but brainwashed and ignorant hippies as being murders. The massacre in Charleston was an unprovoked, unjustifiable, unnecessary, murder of completely and totally innocent human beings. It’s an important note for contemporary and long-term history, especially given the misreporting and continued ignorance of previous high-profile deaths of black individuals amidst criminal activity.
This was not Treyvon Martin attacking a neighborhood watchman who was following him and then getting a single fatal shot fired through him at close range amidst bloodying the shooters skull into the sidewalk only to be misreported as a case of a peaceful boy getting gunned down just for being black.
This was not Michael Brown being approached by a police officer for walking in the middle of the street after he had assaulted a clerk in a store he stole cigars from and then amidst trying to grab the officers gun, was fatally shot in the scuffle, only to be misreported as a peaceful black man being hassled for no reason and getting gunned down despite putting his hands in the air and saying “don’t shoot” (the most persistent lie of these cases that was most widely believed even after being debunked).
This was nothing like those previous high-profile cases. This was a group of religious Americans exercising their rights and tradition of congregating peacefully, welcoming in a newcomer with open hearts and minds, and then having their loved ones senselessly targeted and slaughtered by him for no reason outside of the killers deranged hateful blood lust.
Yes, there have been previous high-profile instances where people did regrettable things that caused them to get killed and yes a bunch of people became falsely convinced that they were murdered because of racism. This isn’t one of those cases. 9 Americans in Charleston are in the ground for no reason other than one evil sicko premeditated a day of murder fueled by his racism. No one in that church had any culpability in the unjustifiable bloodshed that befell it and no retaliation violence, protests, or hate came in the wave of response (as opposed to the previous 3 dubious examples). Instead, the church members forgave the murderer and asked God to have mercy on him for stealing their loved ones – an act I don’t agree with, but recognize as amazing.
2- A’MURKAN RACISM & GUN CULTURE
The Charleston murderer was a racist – therefore racism is an epidemic problem that requires social upheaval to correct? Some people wish that was the case, but thankfully it isn’t.
Ideology can convince people to commit acts of violence who otherwise wouldn’t and people with a propensity to commit acts of violence can be drawn to or invent ideologies as vehicles to do so. I’m specifically avoiding showing images or using the name of the piece of human debris who pulled the trigger that ended those innocent lives, but if you look at him – the dude looks not-sane. He looks a lot more like the Batman theater murderer than he does a competent sane person driven to kill. But fine, sure, I admit that having a stupid haircut and looking a little bananas isn’t exactly forensic evidence that would stand up in court, proving that a person has lost touch with reality. What I *do* know is that this fruitcake douche was going against the grain of America, not with it.
There are groups in America that make a good living out of making certain classes of people victims and so in order to justify their profit model, they need to perpetuate myths about alleged behemoths you need them to turn the tides against. The truth is that the popular sentiment in white America is that race is unimportant, not that it’s so important that dark skinned individuals need murderinz. Everyone hates this guy. He has no support. The lunatic rantings of the killers hate rants are supported by less than one half of 1% of the population of this country. Fringe freaks exist, its true. They congregate and share propaganda. It’s not an epidemic. American racism against blacks was not the reason 9 people are dead in Charleston.
It’s also not unique to America. Despite President Obama’s claim that “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries” – doubling down to repeat “It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.” – it does. Unless of course he meant “this kind of [low] frequency”. Then he was right… Finland, Slovakia, Israel, Switzerland, and of course Norway (which suffered a massacre of 77 in 2011) all have a higher per capita rate of rampage shootings than the United States, which itself is closely followed by other “advanced countries” like Belgium, Germany, the UK, Canada, and France.
But what is more important than the Presidents slander of his own country vs others is that even without the comparison to others – rampage shootings are not common in America. That’s why they’re such big news items when they occur. Every one is one too many and it’s frustrating that most of the recent high-profile ones could have been prevented with the right actions from those around the killers but it’s still factually false to cite a pandemic or support to these universally condemned shootings. It’s doubly false to blame a culture of anti-black hate.
3- THE CONFEDERATE FLAG
The church murderer had posted a picture of himself with the confederate flag, another picture of him burning the American flag and others still. While this sparked a return to the legitimate debate over the prudence of the possible implications South Carolina’s flying of the Confederate Flag over the State House, it also re-ignited an illegitimate debate over the voodoo powers of the Stars and Bars, which had no culpability in this church murder.
A renewal of focus on South Carolina’s flying of the Confederate flag makes sense but it’s legitimacy of display or lack thereof was not a catalyst for the murder of these 9 people. Whether or not the symbol that represented the region of the country involved in the American Civil War who lost the most lives (over 600,000 vs the Norths 100,000+ deaths) is good to display by individual or government is a debate that has nothing to do with this act of violence which was not inspired by, facilitated by, boosted, or in any way aided by the design on that particular piece of Civil War memorabilia. It’s a symbol that’s been used by racists, not an ideology that influences racists to BE racist and/or commit acts of hate, violence, and murder.
Even if the murderer had written manifesto’s on how awesome the Confederate flag is and the history of what it means and why he’s killing in it’s glorious name (he didn’t) and/or how it specifically drove him to kill (it didn’t) – we don’t typically take a crazy murderers motives seriously when they spawn from totems or other objects. Trying to ban a historical symbol because it was co-opted by murderers is only a fraction of a degree crazier than banning dogs because David Berkowitz (aka the “Son of Sam” killer) said he was driven to murder because his neighbor Sam had a demon possessed dog that demanded it from him.
4- LACK OF GUN RESTRICTION LAWS
If you don’t like guns, as I don’t, then it seems too good to pass up to not use mass killings with a gun as examples of why there need to be more restrictive gun laws. Hoever… Nothing about the murders is attributable to gun laws that allowed any of it’s components to happen.
The murderer had a felony (making it illegal for him to poses a firearm), the murder weapon used was a gift – given to the murderer illegally (so improper registration laws can’t be to blame), South Carolina does not have concealed-carry or unconcealed firearm carrying rights without a permit (which the murderer obviously didn’t have with his illegally gifted gun), and you can’t bring a gun legally into a Church in South Carolina anyway.
Lack of gun laws did not facilitate this evil person to get ahold of a gun he could and did use to murder innocent people. They existed and were broken. Creating more laws to be blithely ignored by criminals ignoring the arguably more important law of “don’t murder people” is not the barrier required to stop such acts from happening.
5- FOX NEWS OR SOCIAL COMMENTARY
Just when you thought the goofiest scapegoats had already been pinned, Democratic State Rep Todd Rutherford told CNN that the murderer committed his crime “because he watches things like FOX News” and hears “coded language” that is actually “hate speech”. This is just stupididy that actually is on the level of my previous half-joking example of blaming the dog for the Son of Sam murders. At least the Confederate Flag has actually been used as a symbol of racism by racists, but claiming a cable news channel is secretly broadcasting “coded” advocation of racial murder is fruitcakery that shouldn’t be whispered by dummies in a bar, let alone broadcasted by elected representatives on national television.
Rutherford claimed that the broadcasts on FOX “talk about the president as if he’s not the president. They talk about church-goers as if they are really not church-goers. And that’s what this young man acted on. That’s why he could walk into a church and treat people like animals when they are really human beings.” Somehow the right-wing watchdogs failed to pick up all those reports by FOX about “some guy at the Whitehouse” who isn’t really the president and/or how people don’t go to church and thus it’s totally cool to murder people who go to church. Or something. Wtf? The reality is just the opposite – commentators on FOX are more likely to give President Obama more, not less, power in their analysis of his allegedly criticism worthy actions, and they put too much emphasis on religion in America, not less. In fact the Daily Kos attacked FOX for allowing the commentary of the shooting being an attack on religion (because the Daily Kos wants to keep the discussion focused exclusively on blaming a culture of racism).
When asked by FOX News host Bill O’Reilly about the comments, Rutherfords defense was… not so good. He said that the “not really the president” comments were about the Birth Certificate conspiracy (which FOX News debunked, not endorsed), admitting that he had no evidence that the murderer ever watched FOX News (reiterating that he said “things *like* FOX News”, whatever that means) and continued to claim without example that unnamed outlets *like* FOX (but not specifically FOX I guess?) report on non-news in order to smear black Americans as inherently violent rapists, tacitly condoning murder of anyone with dark skin. I wish I were exaggerating…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEXZZ1w_sHA
These dubious scapegoats are a problem. When people murder for ideological reasons (as opposed to situational motivations such as personal gain or targeted animosity like in mobs and gangs), the ideologies are never to blame unless they were force fed cult-style to the murderer without access to the reality that debunks the hate-propaganda. So unless a murderer is doing their killing spree because of their life teachings in a hate-sect of a Mormon desert (doesn’t happen) compound or one of the Al Quaeda branches or partners (happens), the inspection of the symbols, culture they associated with, and literature they wrote or endorsed are all not causes of the murder (if one is to think of it as a virus we’re discussing in order to stamp out) – they’re symptoms of the murder disease.
These are distractions and damagingly foolish ones at that but have you noticed the pattern? These 5 scapegoats are scapegoating from what?… The individual.
