Have you noticed that none of your bullshit is showing up in the comments?
Feel free to continue wasting your time. As for “last one to utilize this,” all you are “utilizing” is our spam filter.
Thanks for the birthday wishes; I would have reciprocated yesterday except for the fact that, for my birthday, Comcast gave me yet another day of non-working internet service. (It’s gone out in the midst of composing this post, so who knows when I’ll be able to put it up. Meanwhile, I’m watching the Murdoch Follies on MSNBC.)
I went through the same crap with them for 2 months last summer, and even though THEY aren’t worried about figuring out the problem, I have figured it out: their system doesn’t work when the weather gets hot, either as a result of degraded cable or connections somewhere along the line. Because investing anything into their system to keep it working isn’t part of their budget, though, instead they have things set up to where a customer whose service isn’t working has to 1) call in to report the outage, remaining on hold for an average of 20 minutes per call before speaking to a REAL! LIVE! HUMAN!; 2) accept the only option offered – Comcast will “send a tech” out to the house, provided that you agree to sit home and wait for them for the ENTIRE DAY, and 3) if the system is working when said tech shows up, they will do nothing. When the service goes out again 20 minutes after the tech leaves, you get to repeat steps 1-3 forever, or until the weather cools off and their piece of shit system starts working again. Because they aren’t going to do anything else to fix it if they can’t locate the problem right there on the lines outside or inside your house. This is why they insist you have to be home, because “the problem MIGHT BE inside the house.” Never, since cable has been invented, has the problem for anyone EVER been “inside the house.” The “inside the house” line is one they use to make it inconvenient to request the service you’re paying for, because who wants to sit home waiting on them all day?
They’ve gotten even craftier in the past year or so about ways to get out of service calls; now they robo-call repeatedly just to “check in” and see if you still want them to come out. Apparently the hope is that, if your intermittent service happens to be working when you get the call, you’ll cancel the appointment and they won’t have to bother coming out. They’ll call 3 or 4 times on the same appointment, and if you don’t respond to the call, they’ll CANCEL the appointment – which can leave you sitting at home all day on the appointed date waiting for a tech who never shows up. I pointed out to them that calling the home phone of someone who has that phone running through their non-working internet connection probably isn’t the best way to verify an appointment.
After a month, I’ve had my fill of this crap. So, yesterday morning, during the brief window while I could get online, I went and ordered AT&T DSL service. Don’t know how it will compare with Comcast speed-wise, but if I can access the internet AT ALL during hot weather, it will be an improvement. Plus, they have a first-12-months deal for $25 per month for 12 mbps download speed, which is going to cut the bill by close to 2/3. After the first year it will go up by $23 per month, which is still cheaper than Comcast. But even if it cost more, it would be worth it to never again have to deal with these yutzes.
The sad part of all of this is, imagine that you worked for Comcast and actually WANTED to do a good job of providing service? I’m not a complete pessimist; I like to believe that most people want to do a good job. Comcast has their system set up to override whatever helpful impulses their employees may have. My experience has been that the people on the phone have been nice, when I can reach them; the techs have been polite and have done what the company empowers them to do. The problem is that the company either doesn’t give any of them leeway to really fix anything, or trains them so poorly that they can’t think of anything to try besides option A, and probably most of them are paid so poorly that a certain discouraged portion can’t be arsed with bothering to try thinking beyond option A. Whatever way you look at it, it comes down to money and the company’s desire to not spend any of it on service or fixing problems.
How does this relate to Rupert’s Little (but growing) Problem, you ask? Just this: there are a large number of companies out there whose business practices would make anyone with the slightest pride in their work or with even a rudimentary conscience ashamed to be associated with them. I can’t imagine working for an outfit like Comcast, knowing that the company’s policy is to avoid providing service to their customers whenever possible, in return for what they’re charging. If you’ve ever seen Michael Moore’s film Sicko, you’ll remember the woman who broke down in tears while describing how, in her job for a large health insurer, she would have to field calls from hopeful people she knew would be declined for insurance. Another testified to Congress about the “incentives” she was offered in return for finding ways for the company to get out of paying for customers’ legitimate covered medical conditions. We know this stuff goes on in a lot of companies, and that it bothers a lot of the people who work for them.
Working for a company or person who expects you to daily do things you know are wrong, under threat of termination, can leave deep scars on some people’s psyches. For others, it just makes them boiling mad. Either way, you’re going to end up with some folks, maybe quite a few of them, looking and waiting for any opportunity for payback. In every company that operates more like a criminal enterprise than a legitimate business, there are going to be some malcontent pollyannas – there’s just no way to screen out ALL the moral people when hiring – and quite a few more whose morals may be a bit more flexible, but who will eventually over the course of their employment see some things that, for them, cross the line.
This, I believe, is what is currently going on inside Murdoch’s organization. I’ve seen a lot of people speculating on what finally caused the “dam-burst” we’re seeing, and I think this explains it: for years, a lot of people on the inside have been appalled by a lot of what they saw going on. But the organization was too powerful for them to speak out against it on their own. Let’s face it - Murdoch owned a good bit of the British establishment and, god willing, it will out that he owns a good deal of ours as well. (Which is to say, it’s a fair bet that he owns ours as well, whether they succeed in keeping it under wraps or not. My bet is that it will out before all is said and done.) So for years, ill-will against Murdoch and Co. had been building, not only among employees and former employees, but also among Murdoch’s targets – politicians, celebrities, and basically everyone they ever smeared or blackmailed into silence. All that was needed was for a chink in the armor to appear, and there were legions waiting in the wings to pile on.
We can only hope it all unfolds here in the same way. I’ve heard some speculate that, if it was revealed that News Corp or any of its subsidiaries had hacked the phones of 9/11 victims, that would bring them down. But even if that’s not proven, we already know that News Corp was in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, because we know they were paying off police in the UK. Already some in the US press are rallying to Murdoch’s defense: according to an op-ed in the Washington Post this weekend, the problem wasn’t in the phone hacking – it was in the law that made phone-hacking illegal. If the UK didn’t have a law against phone hacking, well then, Murdoch’s organization never would have been “forced” to break the law. I wish I were making this up; unfortunately I’m not. It makes one wonder: have most of them here been doing the same type of thing? Because otherwise, it’s hard to understand why the Post would trot out this type of weak tea in defense.
In short, we can’t rely on the US media outside of Murdoch’s holdings to either give this the coverage it deserves or to report it in an unbiased way. I’m sure the Post would claim their concern is all about protecting ”sources.” But in effect, they’re trying to create a firebreak to protect Murdoch’s US media properties. Probably our best hope is that The Guardian will wade into the practices of Murdoch’s US properties. The story in the UK might well have fizzled out if not for the persistence of the Guardian.
The other thing that makes me quite certain that there’s a lot of bodies buried on this side of the pond as well is the public behavoir of News Corp outlets in the US. Fox makes no bones about using bullying tactics or observing basic fairness or ethical guidelines; the NY Post has long had a reputation for sleaze, and under Murdoch’s ownership the Wall Street Journal has become much more agressively conservative-fundamentalist, catapulting the most egregious bullshit. People – or companies – who don’t value truth or fairness or ethics do not learn to value them more simply because they are legislated as legal guidelines, and hence they are more likely to ignore technicalities like the law. There are no limits, no lines that can’t be crossed in pursuit of advancing the agenda. We’ve seen those tendencies, on public display, in Murdoch’s US media outlets and it seems unlikely that, while wide-ranging criminality was occuring in a Murdoch-owned UK outlet, Murdoch’s employees on this side of the Atlantic were content to just skate up to the line but not cross it. It just isn’t a fit with what, it is emerging, has been the culture inside News Corp.
It’s too early to tell yet what, if any, assistance we will have from the US press in uncovering News Corp malfeasance here in the US. What we can do, however, is encourage the Department of Justice to pursue an investigation into News Corp activities both here and abroad by demanding it under the auspices of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. If you want to be heard, you can send a letter via snail-mail to:
US Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20530-0001
Alternately, you can call the Attorney General’s public comment line at 202-353-1555.
There’s an email address as well, but if you want to be heard that’s not an effective way to communicate, so I’ll leave that out. I’ve already sent my letter and I hope a lot of other people will get on board.
Because what this entire episode teaches us is this: a big corporation can get away with only as much as its employees and the public will allow. It doesn’t seem that way when we see so many big crimes go unpunished, but in large part that’s our fault for not throwing a big enough tantrum and demanding investigation, prosecution, or whatever the appropriate remedy is. A corrupt company can only indulge in corrupt practices for as long as its employees are willing to keep its secrets. When they begin to reveal those secrets, a tsunami of outrage from the public can insure that the responsible parties are punished. In testimony today, Rupert himself has sworn up and down that he had no idea there were sleazy things going on in this tiny little 1% of his empire, and that he doesn’t consider himself responsible for it. It’s fitting then, that public outcry more or less forced him into shuttering News of the World. Whether he ever admits any responsibility or not, he’s already had to pay for the misconduct, through loss of one property and having to drop his bid for sole control over the UK’s BSkyB satellite network. That is exactly how this kind of thing should work, and just imagine what salubrious effects could devolve from similar developments here in the US. It’s been an awful long time since any financially healthy corporation has been forced to shut down due to illegal practices – in fact the only one I can think of is Arthur Andersen, which was killed by the Enron scandal (Enron itself failed due to financial reasons, though these were brought on by illegal practices). I think it would be a wonderful example for other large multi-nationals.
But in large part it’s up to us to push for this outcome. So if you feel the same way about it that I do, let the DoJ know you expect to see some action. Really, is there any better way to spend your summer vacation?
P.S. It has come to my attention, via comments from the last post, that somehow B^4′s recent birthday went unremarked here. For this, our apologies. Happy Birthday, you Magnificent Bastard, whenever it was!
Step aside, Jimmy Carter…your many misdeeds, including all those houses you’ve built for Habitat for Humanity and the almost-completed initiative to eradicate the horrifying scourge of the guinea worm have been overshadowed by the malevolent designs of our current president.
This least of God's creatures will soon be extinct, thanks to the evil machinations of Jimmy Carter
President Obama, in a an attempt to show gays & lesbians once and for all how much he hates them, yesterday held an event at the White House to ridicule and demean LGBT Pride Month. Taunting the assembled activists by refusing to make an unequivocal statement in support of legalizing gay marriage nationwide, the president went on to enumerate his many offenses against the gay community - and how they do add up. There’s the hate crimes law, named after Matthew Sheppard to diminish and exculpate the suffering he endured at the hands of homophobic bigots. There’s the executive order Obama issued prohibiting any hospital accepting Medicaid or Medicare funds from keeping gay partners from the bedsides of ill loved ones. Then there’s the end of the HIV travel ban and the first-ever national strategy for fighting HIV/AIDS. Last but not least, there are the biggest slaps to the face to the LGBT community – the repeal of DADT and his refusal to order the Justice Department to vigorously defend DOMA.
Clearly, the man is hell-bent on the destruction of our gay and lesbian friends, and must be stopped. Just watch this clip, and note the hatred emanating from his every pore:
We have no choice but to primary his black ass if he does not give in to our demands to say what we must hear if we are to believe his intentions are anything other than sinister.
I am reminded of this
Ok, enough sarcasm.
It would be funny if the rights of real people weren’t at stake.
Update 7/2: Ok, this cuts it. I was willing to overlook all of Obama’s other hateful actions against the gay community, but this…this cuts it: ”Today, the Department of Justice filed a brief in federal court employee Karen Golinski’s federal court challenge, supporting her lawsuit seeking access to equal health benefits for her wife and arguing strongly that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional in terms unparalleled in previous administration statements.“ Why won’t Obama just make a big speech about how he supports gay marriage instead of all this pussy-footing around? HUH?
Great American, John Wayne Gacy
The clown show that is the Republican race for the nomination continues apace, with many delightful revelations, gaffes, and missteps. Just a couple of days ago, Michelle Bachmann was in Waterloo, Iowa, talking about how one of her favorite Americans, John Wayne, hailed from the small burg.
The only problem is, the John Wayne who grew up once lived in Waterloo was John Wayne Gacy, serial murderer and crawlspace-burier of several dozen young men - not the manly he-man actor. Bonus points: Gacy liked dressing up as a clown, and did a lot of clown portraits as a prison artist, which ties in nicely with the clown-car vibe that pervades the race.
Throw in Sarah Palin, and you'd have Snowbilly and the Seven Dwarves
Other candidates, other gaffes: man-of-the-people Newt Gingrich was revealed to have a half-million dollar credit line at Tiffany’s, which makes you wonder if he’s working on the replacement for wife #3. Other WIN in the Gingrich campaign: a couple of weeks ago, virtually his entire campaign staff quit, stating that Gingrich’s crafted-by-Madame Tussaud wife, Callista, was stepping all over campaign scheduling by foregoing same in favor of the couple’s grifting events. I guess you have to keep the cash flowing if you want to pay off your credit line at Tiffany’s.
Then there’s Romney, who was presented an origami-folded dollar bill by a young boy as a luck token at a campaign event. Wanting to prevent the visual of a multi-millionaire taking money from a child, Romney went into his wallet to trade another dollar bill to the boy, only to find he had nothing smaller than $100 bills – thereby generating the visual that he’s just like you and me, except he walks around with stacks of hundreds and wears magic underpants. Ironically, Romney’s grotesque wealth and Mormonism aren’t the biggest hurdles he faces; he’s still begging the Republican base to forgive his most successful policy achievement as governor of Massachusetts – universal health care.
Things aren’t much better for the rest of the field. Cain presents as insanely out-of-his-depth (as well as possibly insane); do we really want a man who can’t even make a decent pizza running the show? Ron Paul also comes off loony toons, Pawlenty has already been dismissed as both too wimpy and too white-bread, and newly-announced candidate Jon Huntsman is both dull and wears the magic underwear like Romney. Rounding out the field is Rick Santorum, whose surname has become synonymous with a by-product of anal sex. No candidate is ever going to overcome something like that.
Well, that's ONE possible explanation...
Buzz over the past few weeks is that Bachmann will be the likely winner. That sounds nuts, because she’s a crazy lady but…really, what is there to choose from in this field? Republicans can’t risk losing the teabaggers, and Bachmann is their hands-down favorite.
Understandably, the party leadership is shitting its collective pants over this, and has floated the names of various saviors, hoping and praying that someone, anyone, will swoop in and save them from the incipient disaster.
Among the straws they’ve grasped at: Mitch Daniels, current governor of Indiana and former Bush budget director, which uniquely qualifies him to deal with an out-of-control deficit that was largely his design. Daniels put the kibosh to those hopes weeks ago. Flavor-the-week Texas governor Rick Perry’s name was floated out there about a week ago, with the usual booshwah about how he has “executive experience” running “one of the largest states in the country.” Problem is, too many voters have yet to forget the unmitigated disaster that was the last Texas governor elected to the White House. Also, Perry’s charisma is often put in the shade by that of his hair, Beauregard. It’s impossible to imagine Perry choosing anyone other than his hair as his running mate, such is the awesome power of The Dry Look. Stunts such as calling for a day of prayer to deal with his state’s extreme drought do not exactly confidence inspire, either.
More and more, the hopes of the party are coming to rest on their Great White Whale Hope, governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Not only have the media adopted the porcine governor as their newest GOP crush, but he also brings to the table that unique combination of girth, hypocrisy, and sociopathy the party has, up until now, only been able to find in combination in the person of Rush Limbaugh. He’s ultimate Base Man, satisfying the average GOP voter’s desire for arrogant dismissiveness of the electorate and contempt for poor and working people.
Thus far Christie has resisted the siren song urging him to join the race for the nomination. But with the party facing such grim prospects, he might be convinced to change his mind.
In the event Christie enters the race, I’ve put together a few campaign posters, just to help him get up to speed and overcome his late entry. As you know, I’m always happy to help our Republican friends out with creative ideas, and I hope that at least one of these images will be of use to the Christie campaign in creating an iconic theme:
To be honest, I’m not sure which is my favorite. While the one on the right does a better job of illustrating Christie’s width, I’m really enamored of the Dr. Evil vibe I’m getting from the tux he’s wearing in the one on the left. Somehow it seems to better symbolize the gluttony that lies at the heart of today’s Republican party. Let me know which one YOU like best, and feel free to borrow as needed, though a credit is always appreciated.
Member to resign:
Weiner goes soft under pressure
After standing tall and firm for over 2 weeks against withering scrutiny and ridicule, Weiner softened in his resolve and today announced that he is withdrawing. Impotent to control the narrative, and naked and defenseless against continuing revelations, Weiner’s desire to deliver for his constituents went flaccid. Looking diminished and unable to stand erect and addressing the gathering throbbing in anticipation, Weiner offered a turgid, wooden statement but shrank from answering questions, even in the face of ejaculations from the audience. Weiner had strained against the confining position in which he’d found himself recently; this announcement will allow him full release.
There’s little doubt that Weiner will be missed around the House. Well known for his ability to stand up to opposition and pound his points home relentlessly, Weiner drove a hard bargain and was stiff in support of his principles. His cockiness often created friction, decried by his detractors but a source of pleasure for his supporters.
There is little doubt that Weiner is sore from the rough treatment he has received of late from both factions, feeling himself rudely used by his own party and unfairly poked and prodded by both parties and the media; though in fairness, it must be pointed out that Weiner blew it through his own actions. Trying to get the problem in hand eluded him from the beginning as he was unable to stroke outrage into submission. As opinion swelled against him, his resolve to stand firm deflated, leading to the inevitable climax. Today’s announcement reflects a premature end to Weiner’s promising start - once assumed to have a happy ending - and hopefully, the end of juvenile weiner wiener jokes for some time to come.
Update: extensive edits due to stunning failure to take advantage of some quite obvious opportunities in initial draft.
Beth should appreciate this one:
It’s obvious he’s reading from a prepared statement. Somehow I get the feeling that David Byrne wrote it.
The Beast called Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and pretended to be billionaire Walker-funder David Koch. Walker gives his all to please his corporate master:
But wait…there’s more:
…because a mere 10 minutes of evidence of prostitution might not be enough to get the point across.
Just goes to show why maybe all those “liberal elitists” who insist on voting only for candidates who demonstrate competency might be on to something. When you think it’s important to have smart people representing you, it’s far less likely that they’ll embarrass themselves – and you – by getting PWN3D in a prank phone call.
I realize the bar is set pretty low, but at this moment in time, a mere 6 or 7 weeks into his term, Scott Walker is in the lead for the title of America’s Dumbest Governor.
And context for those of you who haven’t been following this as closely: the Koch brothers were the second-biggest funders of Walker’s campaign. More importantly, in the hubbub over Walker’s attack on public employee unions, there’s been a little part of that bill that’s received scant attention. It’s a provision that allows the state to sell off publicly owned energy plants etc., without competitive bidding, or the review of the state’s public service commission or any other entity. If the statehouse Republicans decide it’s a good idea to sell off the state’s public property at fire-sale prices to reward cronies who make billions in the energy sector, people like, oh, I don’t know, the Koch brothers, there would be nothing to stand in their way.
If the things that really matter got the attention they deserved in our media, this would be one of the biggest stories of the past several years. No, not “dumb Republican politician steps on his own dick,” because that, of course, happens with embarrassing regularity. No, this is more like “dumb Republican politician gives up the goods on the real conservative agenda, on tape.”
I’m wondering how Walker will remain in office after this. I mean, he basically admitted that busting unions was his stealth agenda all along, so he cut the legs out from under the “will of the voters” argument right up front…but overall, the most damaging thing, more damaging than any of the individual statements, is the back-slapping collegiality of the conversation between Walker and what he believes to be one of his billionaire patrons. “Bowing and scraping” doesn’t begin to cover it. A fucking 20-minute conversation? Are you kidding me? If it were possible to suck dick over long-distance calls, the only thing we would have heard from the governor was a series of slurps, which would have more concisely conveyed the same meaning – though the call would undoubtedly have been much, much shorter.
Update: I didn’t link The Beast earlier because the site was down – and still is (cue ominous music) but there’s the link for whenever they get it back up and running.
Updated update: And yes, the Wisconsin governor’s office confirms it’s for reals, and that their guy is indeed America’s Dumbest Governor™.
Praise Cheesus!
Of course, our rightwing brethren are all alather over this, because any time a group of ordinary people gather to express their grievances/assert their rights, it’s “thuggery.” (Glenn Beck has uncovered the link between WI teachers and the Muslim Brotherhood. Seriously.) Unless of course those protesting are confused teabaggers in drag - then it’s all about the brave patriots bravely staring down the looming danger of death panels from the comfort of their Medicare-funded Hoverounds. Very bravely. Also. Too.
I’d love to see this spread to other state capitols, and to see lots of people employed in the private sector join in. Call me commie, but it seems to me that when we had a 20% increase in productivity from 2000 – 2008, and wages remained stagnant or declined, it’s an indication that people weren’t – and still aren’t – being fairly compensated for their work. The problem isn’t that public employees are “overpaid” – it’s that the serfs toiling in the private sector salt mines are being underpaid. Bringing public employees’ wages down to that level (in reality, public employees in most states earn less – often a lot less – than private sector workers) won’t fix things – it will just make sure there’s more company for the misery.
I’ve already ranted elsewhere about how the GOP has gone from bitching about “welfare queens” in the 80s to ranting about how pretty much everyone (except people more affluent than themselves) is overpaid. 40, 50 years ago, any politician who questioned the work ethic or value of ordinary working people would have been crucified. These days, the people they refer to as “the producers” are people who have made a lot of money from the labor of others. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a company or individual making something from the labor of an employee, but these folks are so out-of-touch with reality these days that they seem to think money is asexually reproduced – the workers who make the things of value are “parasites” who are overpaid.
Thus the need to suppress organized labor. Because if John Galt’s employees go out on strike, and stop making the widgets that Galt sells to add to his mountain of cash, that mountain stops growing and starts shrinking. Conservative theory would have it that once Galt is free of his parasitic employees, that mountain should grow into a veritable Everest of green. Oddly, this doesn’t happen in the real world. And it’s so starkly obvious that even a stupid teabagger would be able to figure it out if he saw enough real-world examples of it, which is why unions are evil and must be destroyed. Otherwise, the conservative fairytale about how things work in the real world is unsustainable.
These portable steps will come in handy for those frequent occasions when you find yourself climbing up onto the cross.
I’ve put off writing this post for a couple of days now, letting things develop. I should have known that by the time I got around to it, the incident on Saturday in Tucson would have become just another example of how Sarah Palin is the real victim.
Look, I don’t know if the kook who shot all those people was a follower of Sarah Palin or the Tea Party or if he had ever heard any of her or their incendiary rhetoric or seen any of their incendiary graphics.
But I don’t need to know if he ever heard or saw any of that stuff to know that it was utterly classless and irresponsible. I think about as good as it gets for Palin and the other mouth-foamers would be to say if the kid had seen or heard any of their incendiary stuff, it would have done nothing to dissuade him from his actions. The issue here isn’t whether or not a direct causation can be drawn from any one statement or image; it’s that when such statements and images are ubiquitous and go largely unremarked, as they have been for the past couple of years, they become normalized. Just part of the way things are. And the problem there is that for those whose grasp on reality is more tenuous, the implicit message is that lots of people believe and feel the way you do, and they’re all suggesting – or at least not disagreeing with - the basic premise of the crazy plan you have in mind. So maybe it isn’t all that crazy after all. You’re just stepping up to do the job that many others agree needs to be done.
And no, both sides don’t do it equally. While there is inflammatory talk on the left, I’m not aware of any example of a candidate, elected official, or liberal media personality using gun imagery in reference to achieving a political end. Why is that important? Simply because this country has a long history of political assassinations being carried out with guns. Responsible people don’t go there in their rhetoric, for the same reason no one thinks it’s funny to joke about having a bomb in your suitcase when you go through security at the airport.
So while the rightwing media has been wringing its hands about how intolerable it would be to have any limitations whatsoever to what is acceptable to say in political discourse, I’d like to suggest a simple rule, one so simple that even a conservative should be able to remember it: don’t make statements or use images that link guns to politics. Period.
This leaves you free to talk about tarring and feathering, pitchforks and torches, guillotines, heads on pikes, boiling people in hot oil, dropping pianos or large boulders on their heads, etc. etc. – because those aren’t things that have been used in the past in this country to kill politicians, and even the kooks will be able to pick up on the fact that you’re using a metaphor to describe your anger being at the point of physical violence while you’re not actually advocating physical violence. This should leave plenty of latitude for our conservative brethren to vent their hostility at the evil people who don’t agree with them, and may even inject some much-needed creativity into their rants, while at the same time not suggesting to the unstable that all they need to do to solve this problem is go down to Wal-Mart and pick up a gun.
Back to Palin: despite her spinning, the facts in all of this are clear. Palin put a gunsight graphic on Gabby Giffords’ district way back in March of 2010. Giffords herself, at the time, publicly said that it made her feel threatened. Palin didn’t respond, either with an explanation that the gunsights were actually “surveyor’s marks”, a lie so stupid that it’s failed to find traction even with our stupid media, or in any other way. Giffords was not the only one who complained, either. The response from the Palin camp was to leave the graphic on the site until Saturday, when its poor taste became inescapable even to Palin herself.
Now it turns out that even asking the question about whether this type of thing may have contributed to an atmosphere that made a horror like this possible is a “blood libel” against Sarah Palin.
I wish I were making that up; sadly, those are the words she used herself.
The Greg Stillson analogy is now complete; while Palin has in the past used her own children as shields to deflect criticism, she’s now hiding behind the body of a 9-year-old child who was “collateral damage” in an attack on a congresswoman Palin targeted with gunsights.
I don’t know why I do these things to myself, but ever since I typed the name “Thomas Kinkade” in yesterday’s post, I’ve been kind of outraged. You know, by the things that pass as cultural touchstones here in Idiocracy - schlocky paintings of hobbit houses and maudlin songs about buying mama new shoes so she’ll look pretty when she meets Jesus. Or maybe the outrage just overfloweth; I’ve had a shorthand term for this for over 2 decades: the LCD, or lowest common denominator. The LCD Principle dictates that anything that starts out kind of hip and cool – TV shows, fashion and decorating trends, etc. – will in short order be rendered into lame pablum for the masses. That’s because in our society we define success by the baseline of money, and the only way to attract more money is by appealing to more people – which means watering down your concept or product for broader appeal – and, inevitably, turning it into a commercialized, banal piece of shit.
So anyhows, I got this outrage, and I gotta have somewhere to put it; where better than Thomas Kinkade? It’s not worth wasting too many words, plus there are some great links to people who have said it much funnier than I can, so let’s just enumerate the offenses:
First and foremost, his “art”:
All that's missing is a hairy-footed hobbit racing out the door to escape the "accident" that occured while building the briefcase nuke. See, things have been a bit unsettled in Middle Earth and...aw, fuck it.
This is what a house looks like a split-second before the natural gas explosion blows it apart.
Probably what makes Kinkade “America’s most collected living artist” is the phenom of buying art to match the sofa. What this means is there are some ugly-ass living rooms out there – a lot of them.
Offense the second: he’s trademarked the phrase “Painter of Light” and describes himself as above: “America’s most collected living artist.”
Above and beyond: that second image was made into an inspirational, straight-to-DVD movie about how Thomas became such a successful “artist.” I’m pretty sure Lifetime was involved:
Sweet lord, how did Peter O’Toole get roped into this pile of crap? But I love the snide joke in having Chris Elliott play the guy who hires him to paint the mural – with the dog on the bike. To inspire the townspeople.
Further offenses: he painted this, and actually describes it as follows on his website (note that the link goes directly to the “buy Thomas Kinkade shit” page):
“As part of the redesign of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was asked to provide an image for use on a large wall. A very large wall – truly a moment of destiny for any artist.”
“To create the oil painting that would be the basis for the final mural, I utilized one of the largest canvases I have ever attempted in my studio. A full 6 feet wide, this canvas would be enlarged to create the final epic sized mural. As I worked it was as if heavenly light began to pour upon the canvas.”
“A final aspect of the creative process came when Franklin Graham himself suggested a fitting title for the work: The Cross. This simple title reflects the lifelong calling and legacy of his father, the evangelist Billy Graham.”
“My prayer is that this painting will bring hope to many just as Billy Graham has brought hope to millions through the gospel message.”
I saved the best for last, though…check out this post from Salon, posted in June, with this titillating sub-header:
Pooh abuse, you say?
And then there was the time he supposedly relieved himself on a Winnie the Pooh statue in a Disney hotel in Anaheim, Calif., while saying, “This one’s for you, Walt.” (Imagine Ashdown Forest at daybreak, and Winnie is drenched from a spontaneous shower; Tigger, Eeyore flee in terror. Title: “Golden Moments.”) When asked about this last story, Kinkade conceded in testimony that “there may have been some ritual territory marking going on, but I don’t recall it.”
Which brings us to one point of redemption: the above story inspired one of my favorite ever comments out of context:
N__B said,
June 15, 2010 at 3:59
To be fair, who hasn’t urinated on Winnie the Pooh. I mean, the bear’s obviously into water sports.
Sadly, No!, 6/15/10
Also. Too. This guy really hates Thomas Kinkade in a lot funnier way than I do. And as noted in comments, “Bob Ross could kick this dude’s ass…”
It just doesn’t get any better than that, my friends.
Update: From StringonaStick’s most excellent tip, you can see the Something Awful crowd’s take on Kinkade at the linkee. Here’s a sample:
Better yet, commenter B^4′s find:
Cthulu-meets-Kinkade mashup.
BDay
lytanorman
jennofark