One of the links I came across and shared during the past three weeks was a post entitled “A guide: How not to say stupid stuff about Egypt.” I appreciated this post not only for its useful information, but for its refreshing efficiency. This blogger was busy and did not have time to suffer fools.
But for good or ill, fools are fond of announcing themselves. Below appears the most shallow, selfish and morally vacant comic I have seen in quite a long time.
This piece of work is sadly not "out of order" for the publication in which it appears, the Purcellville Gazette. It could, I suppose, be read as a repellent insult to Americans, but on the basis of previous work I suspect that this was not its intended purpose.
There’s more, of course. A Loudoun “tea party” blogger (not coincidentally a contributor to the same Purcellville Gazette), who is at all other times piously concerned with the transcendent value of Liberty, somehow missed the revolution. You won’t find a word of appreciation on her blog for this stunning achievement of Egyptian community - the non-violent overthrow of an entrenched dictator. Think of it; an essentially leaderless uprising involving well over 20 million people who remained united and principled in the face of murder, torture, beatings, propaganda and deceit, who could not be provoked to violence, who chanted “peaceful, peaceful” while refusing to be intimidated by tanks and thugs; an uprising in which women and men participated shoulder to shoulder, and Christians, Muslims and secularists protected each other and cared for each other within a model of the nation they intend to rebuild. Such a powerful testament to the idea of Liberty, and not even an acknowledgment by this blogger - unless one were to count her sneering dismissal of our President’s statement invoking Dr. Martin Luther King and the moral force of non-violent resistance as “silly.”
What you will find on her anti-feminist blog is a post about a psychopath who beheaded his wife. That is because this psychopath is a Muslim, and the story furthers her agenda of promoting islamophobia and opposing “multiculturalism.”
If the purpose of these two commentators was to demonstrate how morally vacuous some Americans are, they have succeeded. Well done. I believe we may have located the bottom of the barrel.
As I said yesterday, when I asked you to post it here, I love this post. Thank you for writing it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Liz. I appreciate the opportunity to engage with your readers.
ReplyDeleteAnd here's something I kind of silently predicted: Some readers find it hard to believe that the cartoon isn't meant to be sarcastic. I get that sentiment. But believe me, it reflects a genuine point of view among people who listen to certain radio stations, and it would shock them just as much that anyone could read it as sarcasm.
Bottom of the barrel? I wish it were so. With every new attempt to mislead that some members of the extremely ideological bring to our board room, I used to think, "Well, this time we have finally hit rock bottom." But then some new way to make a threatening and dishonest case comes into their minds, and I find out I was wrong.
ReplyDeleteThis time, it's the suggestion by some who care nothing for clean water that Attorney General Cuccinelli should investigate county staff for fraud in connection with the results of the study done in contemplation of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Ordinance.
Other governments have used similar techniques in dealing with results they didn't like and thoughts they wished suppressed. That's why Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a Soviet gulag. That's why Nikolai Vavilov died in Stalin's prisons. That's how Uncle Joe dealt with folks whose messages and research results didn't match his big government's decree.
And now there are actually those who want Virginia to use his methods. Good for you for calling them on their factual foolishness. The revolution in Egypt is no more going to raise our gas prices than the Inquisition could make the Sun orbit the Earth.
Yes, I fear that assessment may have been premature.
ReplyDeleteToday, we received the disturbing news that reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted by a mob in Tahrir Square. I'm going to approach this as cautiously as I did the revolution itself, because we just don't know very much yet. Regardless of who the men were, it sounds like the sickening business as usual of men forgetting, if they ever knew, that women are people.
Also today, we heard about the Pentagon report of about 3,000 women being sexually assaulted by their fellow soldiers last year, a 9% increase over the year before. It's a little hard to assign values like "better" and "worse" to such a thing, but these men are supposed to be the comrades-in-arms of the women they raped. In many cases, they used their positions of authority and systematic planning to identify vulnerable targets and carry out sustained abuse. And unlike in Egypt, no one did a damn thing to rescue these women - quite the opposite. So, 'same shit, different mob' doesn't quite ring true - but they are both reports that illustrate the logical outcome of a depraved, patriarchal culture.
Guess which one was reported in lurid detail by the depraved, patriarchal blogger Barbara Curtis?
Her nauseating and predictable spin is here: http://mommylife.net/archives/2011/02/cbs_reporter_ra.html
ReplyDelete"Detail" isn't really the right word, given the scarcity of information available. Which is exactly the problem with this kind of propagandizing.