JABbering Stooge

Yeah, and I’m the heir to the throne of Zanzibar.

Diplomas won’t make jihadis go away, Barack

• Hamas’ favorite candidate, B. Hussein Osama, is too stupid to realize that the only good Muslim is a Muslim who has been stuffed into a human-sized microwave.

Alternate shorter:

Sun Tzu? What a pussy!

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

I know the two readers I have are probably also fans of Amanda Marcotte and the crew at Pandagon, but I think she’s right on about why Bill Donohue gets all up in arms whenever there’s corn in his shit:

It’s obvious that [Donohue] thinks that “religious freedom” means “the right to demand a) the right to completely define an entire religion for yourself and eject anyone who has different views than yours and b) the right never, ever to be mocked, criticized, or looked at funny”.

Indeed. And judging by his reaction to various and sundry perceived insults of his professed faith, the slightest criticism or mere examination of his beliefs is sufficient cause to be executed for heresy. Or, as Lindsay Beyerstein put it:

Somewhere there’s an Inquisition missing its Inquisitor.

There used to be a tradition in this country that said “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That’s the spirit that I was raised to believe in, and one of the things that made me proud to be an American. It’s why we allow neo-Nazis to publicly display their stupidity and regressive extremism — not because we agree with their views, but because we believe in a marketplace of free ideas where We The People™ can be trusted to determine for ourselves which speech is intellectually and morally acceptable and which is repugnant and deserving of ridicule or protest. But that just won’t do for people who think as Bill Donohue does.

Amanda suggests a possible reason for this:

Without trying to repeat much of what Jesse said, the real discrimination only occurs if someone is punished by job loss for speaking out against religion. In my case, there was a vulgarity aspect that’s kind of undeniable. But PZ didn’t say anything that wasn’t basically polite, if humorous. More tellingly that that is the fact the ire transferred neatly from the kid who innocently took a wafer out of mass in the first place. Since that kid was supposedly the original “criminal”, why is it that PZ has eclipsed him in focus just by issuing supportive statements? (bolding mine, emphasis in original)

Why, indeed. Lindsay makes the point more explicitly in her closing remarks:

The Catholic League claims to be a civil rights organization. Yet it consistently targets high-profile atheists like Amanda Marcotte and PZ Myers and attempts to get them fired. Draw you own conclusions.

And yet, the thinly-veiled attempt to remove atheists from polite public discourse isn’t the worst aspect of this whole debacle. Its the blatant projection. In his latest press release on the incident, Donohue whines that he himself is being persecuted for his stance:

Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has ‘declared a fatwa’ against him. He should know better—I don’t need others to do the fighting for me. I’m quite good at it myself. But he’d better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won’t be hard to connect the dots.

Donohue has even gone so far as to hide behind the skirts of an obscure Virginia pol (about 1400 miles from Myers’ stomping grounds in Morris, MN — very brave of him):

As a result of the hysteria that Myers’ ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia’s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia’s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers’ backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley’s request.

In light of the very real death threats that Dr. Myers and Webster Cook, the UCF student in question, have received since “Crackergate” began (two words: “holy hollowpoint“), in addition to the death threats that previous targets of Donohue’s stack-blowing episodes have garnered, Donohue’s pearl-clutching strikes me as absurdist theater at best, and blatant disingenuousness or shameless projection at worst. And to make matters worse for Donohue, it does an incredible insult and disservice to the Christian martyrs throughout history for him to compare blowback to his theocratic impulses to the very real suffering professing Christians endured in many of the places where they’ve been the demographic minority from Roman times to today.

And that, more than anything else, should nullify any credibility he might have.

Last Thursday over at America’s Shittiest Website™, where the motto is “The World’s Leading Source of Groupthink Since 1955,” they were actually having *gasp!* a genuine, heated debate! Quelle horreur!! The subject? Whether or not Bill Donohue was right to go apeshit on P.Z. Myers over “Crackergate.”

For the most part, the “debate” featured Andrew Stuttaford worrying that Donohue was replicating the “horrors” of campus speech codes on one side, and larger-than-life Kathryn Jean Lopez writing love letters to Donohue on the other side (when she wasn’t outright threatening violence against Dr. Myers, that is). At a couple of points in the “debate,” the Doughy Pantload scratches his crotch, farts, and then belches tepid support for K-Lo’s “position” (assuming she can be said to have a position other than on her knees in front of Donohue). Sadly, the reparteé only lasts about five hours before the gang goes back to what they do best: declaring that Jesse Jackson’s off-camera comments about wanting to castrate Obama only prove that Obama should be kept as far away from the Big Red Button™ as humanly possible.

Nevertheless, K-Lo manages to get in the last word. And what a doozy it is! Check it out:

There are many words I can think of to describe Bill — victim is not one of them. He’s protecting, and fighting for, that which he loves. And he’s doing it fairly. [He’s not. He’s blatantly lying about Myers to make his point. — Ed.] He’s not abusing our legal system. [Wrong. He’s trying to get the Minnesota legislature to punish Myers by legal fiat — an abuse of the legal system by any standard except, apparently, the standard of NRO. — Ed.] He’s not begging for special treatment from the government or anyone else. [He is. You don’t exactly see him blowing his stack over maltreatment of Muslims at American universities, do you? — Ed.] He’s certainly not rioting in the streets are calling for violence. [Not yet, but given his recent history, it won’t be long now. — Ed.] It’s a refreshing thing to see.

The pathological blindness is just overwhelming. But it’s just par for the course for K-Lo. As a commenter at Snarky Bastards put it:

[E]veryone has behaved almost entirely to form:

• Bill Donahue has whined and bitched and tried to get people fired.

• PZ Myers has acted like a complete asshole.

• Kathryn Lopez has written something embarrassingly stupid.

Seriously, guys. Call me back when man bites dog.

That she has.

Sully on “Crackergate”:

It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a “goddamned cracker” isn’t about free speech; it’s really about some baseline civility. Myers’ rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.

So, you’re saying that because PZ worded his criticism of Bill Donohue’s pea-soup spewage fit in a way that offends you, it’s okay for Donohue’s flying monkey brigade to send him death threats? That’s contemptible, and it’s the sort of thinking that fills graveyards.*

Perhaps, Andrew, it’s time you gave yourself a Michelle Malkin Award.

* With apologies to David Eddings.

Bill,

We need to talk. Either that, or you need to seek professional help.

Despite what Neal “Rarin’ Aryan” Boortz, Stalkin’ Malkin and The Savage Weiner would have you believe, it’s not just Islam.

So the DoJ has gone and done it. They’re planning on engaging in racial profiling in “terrorism” cases to a level not seen since the days of the internment of Japanese-Americans. Never mind that the practice is ineffective and easily adapted to. Never mind that it goes against everything that America is supposed to be about.

And so, the Final Solution to the Muslim Problem™ has begun. I’m sure Stalkin’ Malkin ovulated at the news.

Come to think of it, Mark Steyn probably had a wet dream, as well.

More instances of ugly Christianism have broken out this week. First there’s the case of Mikey Weinstein. Weinstein has been an ardent opponent of the efforts of the “Theocracy NOW!” crowd to turn the military academies (especially the Air Force Academy) into an arm of the Religious Right. Because of this, Weinstein has been subjected to the occasional ugly word and idle threat. Two weeks ago, those threats took a very nasty turn, as vandals inscribed a swastika and a cross on his front porch in magic marker. But that’s not all.

Weinstein is also involved in a case in flood-ravaged Iowa City where a disabled Jewish veteran is suing the VA over blatant proselytizing by VA employees during a recent hospital stay. At about the same time as the vandalization of the Weinstein house, the plaintiff, David Akiva Miller, was accosted by random strangers and blamed for the recent floods.

In an e-mail to Israel e-News, Miller wrote:

The man said something to the lady I couldn’t quite make out, and they turned around and stepped back towards me. The man said to me, “You’re that Jewish fella that’s been stirring up trouble over at the Veterans Hospital, aren’t ya?” (Okay, I’ll admit I kind of stick out in Iowa City with my long beard, kippah and tzit tzit.) I said, “Excuse me?” And he said, “It’s because of folks like you that we got this flood.” (emphasis mine)

Ugh. It’s getting ugly out there**. But don’t you dare compare conservative Christians to Muslim extremists.

* Cf.

** With apologies to Jack Cafferty.

The American Patriarchy Association’s “newswire” OneNewsNow has been revealed to be running Associated Wankers articles through its Secret Decoder Script™ in a most hilarious fashion:

But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.”

Heh. Indeed. Memo to the AFA: