Protected: One of these days…

We had a great weekend.  Tiring, as expected.  I’m finally popping my head up on-line and thinking about writing up a post.  I was thinking I would stay positive but still rail against some of the negativity we saw.  People-watching in the parks will make you happy you were raised right!

But then I went on-line and I’m catching up on the news stories.  I can’t make a positive post right now, I’m absolutely disgusted with some of my fellow humans and their overt glee over the story of the dinks from Westboro Baptist Church being harassed in a small town in Mississippi.

I have no idea how true the news story is, but that is irrelevant at this point.  I’m offended more by the common reaction than the story itself…

One of the Westboro members was beaten by a crowd, the police didn’t investigate very rigorously (as if gas stations don’t have cameras on the pumps).  Their vehicles were blocked in by county work trucks, the police said they’d bring tow-trucks to move them but, geesh, the towing service was mysteriously “running behind”.  And when some of them finally showed up to the protest, they were detained and questioned on phantom charges and of course, released immediately after the funeral…

If you take the idiots from Westboro out of the equation and replace them with almost ANY other group, it becomes a hate crime!  All these people screaming “Bravo”, “Amen” and “Hooha!” would be calling for the Sheriff to turn in his badge if he did this to anyone else!

And the thing that PISSES me off to NO END is that I am somehow in the sickening position of DEFENDING Fred Phelps and WBC!?!?!

There are assholes in this world; get over it.  If you want freedom, you have to take the after-birth with it.  It’s easy to defend the freedom of someone you agree with, it’s right to defend the freedom of your enemies.  You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to listen, but you do have to let them speak.

I’ve read so many “hurrah”s and “amen”s from what I would normally call peace-loving rational people.  I have yet to hear one person say, “that was wrong” and many of the people I’m reacting to are the same ones who get bent out of shape anytime there is ANY kind of rights violation in the world…  How dare these people cry oppression because their voice is silenced when they are so quick to silence those who they oppose!  Am I missing something?  Am I the only voice calling for TRUE equality, TRUE freedom?

It disgusts me to defend such a deplorable group of people that I disagree with to the point of, yeah, I wouldn’t mind taking a swing on one of these hateful bastards…  But you can’t.  We have agreed to live together by established rules, laws, rights…  And when we happily endorse city/state officials abusing their power to deny the rights of those we disagree with, well that stinks.

It’s the decaying corpse of what’s left of the American Experience.

So, Happy Easter to those of you who observe.

Happy Passover, Holy Week, Happy chocolate egg hunting season…

Belated Happy Ostara, Happy Spring, Happy Equinox to a few others…

And just plain old Happy Sunday to anyone who doesn’t have a holiday and just wants to have a great day.

I’m probably still in Orlando with my beautiful wife and daughter, spending time together no matter how hot it is or how crowded the tourist traps are, we’re together and today seems to be a day where people celebrate rebirth and growth…

I’ll take it.

Big sigh… where to start?

Okay, so last week I was listening to another one of my regular movie related podcasts. This show is one I’ve come to really like because there are (normally) three guys on there with very different points of view; one young and fickle college student, one older professor of film and the ‘host’ is just a regular guy like me; A movie fan-boy.

This is the guy that shows me how easily people can be swayed by their friend’s opinion. I’ve heard this guy rail against a movie and when the other two defend it with good, reasoned out arguments, he often responds with something like, “Yeah, I thought the same thing, I just didn’t like this or that particular scene.” Sound familiar? Yeah, we all do this to some degree or another… His malleability is actually an interesting aspect of the show. When they talk about a movie I get to hear some great conversations that show me things I didn’t think about. This varying insight is what gets me past the over-use of the same old soundbites and stale in-jokes…

He spends ninety percent of any given show poking fun at different actors, directors or any given group. Just like what I do here on this blog. He ridicules anything and anybody and has so much fun doing it to the point where even I have to say, “okay, this is getting old, move along”.

However, this ‘pliable critic’ has finally taken a stand.

He finally saw a movie that offended him. The new Simon Pegg comedy, “Paul”. It’s about British comic-book nerds visiting the SD Comic-Con with an alien on the run from the feds.

He loved most of the movie, making fun of the stereotype con-nerd as if they were all virgins living in mom’s basement, the slow southern rednecks, over-zealous American police… And then the movie made some comments about religion. Supposedly about evolution and attacked the strict-creationist line of thinking. Now I haven’t seen the movie. I probably never will, it doesn’t look like anything I’d be into so I don’t know what they said but whatever it was, this guy is making his stand; they’ve gone too far.

And that’s what’s got me riled up… Whatever they said, how bad could it be when contrasted against what this guy says about everything else? I may have to actually see this movie just to see what offended him. If you’re the quiet, no hassle type, then you are allowed to be offended. But when you’re the guy stirring up the shit, how can you possibly get upset that some of that stirred shit gets out of the bowl and on your hands? Why is it okay for someone to relentlessly mouth off at every possible opportunity, but when someone else mouths off about something you care about, you cry foul?

Almost everyone has a pet topic. Something that isn’t open to discussion, a topic that is taboo and can not be attacked. And when we’re having fair and civil conversations, you play by the rules. But when you pride yourself on being an equal opportunity offender, everything is fair game. Including your little pet topics.  It’s all or nothing!

If we can have a laugh at the expense of “dumb-ass X” then it’s only fair when “dumb-ass Y” is exposed, even if you’re part of “group Y”. Otherwise you get into an Isaac Hayes situation. Hayes was the voice of “Chef” on South Park. They poked fun at every possible situation, sometimes making good and interesting points, sometimes just having a laugh at dick and fart jokes. Many of the better episodes are when they lampoon religion. There is so much raw material in religious dogma, a show like South Park barely has to try to get a great episode when they satire religion. But when South Park made an episode about Scientology, Isaac Hayes (a Scientologist) quit the show.  He said they had “gone too far” and had become “mean-spirited”. This prompted the show creators, Trey and Matt to point out, Isaac cashed plenty of checks when they ‘went too far’ and were ‘mean-spirited’ toward the Jews, Mormons, Christians and Muslims, where was his outrage then?

And where was the outrage by this movie critic when he was lambasting every special-interest group along the way until they finally settled on his particular nerve ending?

If you deal in hyperbole and sarcasm, you can’t call “time-out” when someone begins to use your own tools against you.

I’ve GOT to be open to criticism, I stab at everything here on this blog and I don’t apologize for that. I may be sorry if your feelings get hurt, I may be sorry if you no longer want to talk with me, but I pick open the scabs and let it bleed. Right or wrong, good or bad, I like opening up the closed doors and talking about what we find inside. I see no reason why we can pick all day on any particular group, but we have to be “fair” and “accepting” when we talk about religion.

Why is religion the only subject people expect a pass on? Politics is considered to be an explosive topic but people have no compunction in congratulating you or damning you based on who you voted for. As if politics were that simple… Everyone feels free to attack the other party(s).  I love the fact that we are free to publicly criticize the sitting President of either party, freedom of speech baby!  But people are fucking rabid about politics. They go on and on about how horrible the current party is and how they’ll change the world when they are in charge. Positions of power change hands and we hear the same arguments coming from different players. And each time their party is attacked they’ll defend just as rigorously. These people are passionate about their politics and they have wild conversations about it.

But we’re not permitted to discuss religion.

If ANY of their religions are true, more is on the line when you choose religions than when you choose a political party. But we can’t discuss it. We can discuss varying opinions in music, movies and politics until our ears bleed, but we can’t discuss religion. Oh we can hear you talk about your religion, and you have to give room for others to talk about their religion, but once you criticize, once you disagree, you are labeled as “intolerant”. I’m not intolerant for saying that I think your favorite political candidate is a lying scumbag but I’m intolerant for saying that I don’t agree with your brand of god.

Maybe the problem is that I don’t have many buttons to push. I’m not that easy to offend. I have no religion so maybe I just don’t understand holding something sacred to the point that it is unquestionable. The closest I come to it would be my relationship with Teresa. It is special, it is important, but is it really beyond question? No. It’s a living and changing thing. Either of us could at any point decide to change it. So far, both of us have chosen to stay together. Allowing myself to think that it is beyond questioning would be to allow myself to take it for granted. Always question everything. If you don’t evaluate it, how do you know it to be true?

Could you offend me? I’m sure if you tried real hard you could come up with something. If you make personal attacks on people I care about I will put out your lights, but that’s not really the same thing. “George W. Bush stinks”, “Barack Obama stinks” or “There is no god” is not exactly on the same level as “Yo momma so fat…”

So when someone talks about sacred cows making the best hamburgers, I have to believe that my destiny is to open up a Hindu burger joint.