You Are Dumb - Alabama

Comparative Fantasy

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:16:00 -0500

Main Column, 2 July 2007

Memo to Bob Riley and Unnamed Dude: YOU ARE BOTH EQUALLY DUMB.

One of the things we atheists occasionally find a bit crazy-making is the relative level of credibility given to what seems to us to be roughly equivalent delusions. This struck me yesterday as I pondered two completely unconnected news stories. One involves Bob Riley, and one involves an anonymous individual who, for the sake of simplicity, I will dub Crazy Q. Sumbitch.

Bob Riley is the governor of Alabama. Crazy Q. Sumbitch is a random crazy motherfucker on the streets of New York. One, faced with a real problem, turned to a mythological solution. The other, faced with a mythological problem, turned to a real solution. Both, to me, are crazy, but only one of them would be hauled off by the police.

Governor Bob Riley has a problem. That problem is drought. You can add "water" to the great list of nouns that Alabama doesn't have enough of. Drought's a bitch, there's no doubt about that. Faced with drought, a state's executive could do any number of things. Order water conservation measures, perhaps. Or maybe acknowledge that the situation that's held sway for the past few decades is in fact unsustainable, and start preparing your state for the inevitable. If Riley was feeling REALLY pressured, he could even throw his support behind Kyoto. Wouldn't help this year, of course, but nothing wrong with thinking long-term.

Or he could ask his invisible sky daddy to bring rain to his sorry-ass state. And encourage the entire citizenry to do the same, under the unlikely principle that God is more likely to hear you if everybody's shouting at once.

Yes, Riley has issued an official state proclamation declaring June 30 through July 7 as "Days Of Prayer For Rain". Even ignoring the potential church-state issues that raises - which isn't easy - is that really the kind of action we want to see from our leaders? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Throughout our history, Alabamians have turned in prayer to God to humbly ask for His blessings and to hold us steady during times of difficulty." - Governor Bob Riley. Except that Governor Riley isn't asking his citizens to pray to be held steady until the rain comes. No, they're just asking for the water directly.

To Alabamans, including the head of the Alabama Farmers Federation and the Alabama Farmers Market Association, this makes perfect sense, so much so that they were willing to offer supportive quotes on the Governor's press release. Yet I can't help but think they wouldn't be NEARLY as supportive of a man's right to beat the living shit out of a vampire in a Burger King parking lot.

I think we can all follow that segue and assume that I'm now talking about Crazy Q. Sumbitch of New York, because that's just what he did. Beat the shit out of a vampire in a Burger King parking lot.

OK, it wasn't a vampire. But he THOUGHT it was. He BELIEVED it was. We know this, because that's the sentiment he expressed to the Burger King employees who happened to be in the parking lot at the time. They were concerned, you see, because from their perspective, some crazy sumbitch had just tackled the STRAY PEACOCK they'd been feeding bread crumbs to and was pounding it so bad it eventually had to be euthanized.

Both men saw a threat their fellow man. Both men took action based upon their belief in the supernatural to try to eliminate that threat. And neither one of them actually accomplished a goddamn thing. And we all may want to THINK that I'm just being snarky and deliberately emphasizing the similarities and downplaying the difference, but ask yourselves this. If there was a verse in Corinthians that had God providing rain in exchange for the sacrifice of a peacock, how long do you think it would be before the steps of the Alabama governor's mansion were littered with the corpses of every brightly-feathered bird in a ten mile radius?

Exactly. Maybe add an extra ten minutes in case PETA gets word and protests. Tops.

Another Public Service

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 21:19:12 -0600

Main Column, 9 November 2005

As members of a society built on virtually unrestrained capitalism, it's important for all of us to be aware of the tools we have at our disposal, ad individuals and collectively, to exert influence on that system.

No, not voting. That was yesterday, and we all know that doesn't mean shit. I'm talking about the BOYCOTT.

With the boycott, people who disagree with a corporation's policies refuse to buy that company's goods and services. If enough people join in, the company's profits and livelihood are threatened, and the company changes its policies. In theory.

In practice, fo course, nobody gives a shit, and all that happens is a bit of bad and/or hilarious publicity. Still, to make sure you have the latest in boycott news, it's time to unveil the Retarded Boycott Roundup!

BOYCOTT: ARUBA

Yes, the whole island. You see, the governor of Alabama would like you all to avoid spending your tourist dollars in the island paradice of Aruba. Why? Remember that teenager that went missing and got non-stop coverage for three months on all the news channels until actual horrifying tragedies bumped it? Natalie Holloway. Anyway, in the mind of Governor Bob Riley, the fine detectives of the island haven't done enough to find the missing Alabama teen. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"There are no other alternatives to get Aruban authorities to take this as seriously as they should." - And in Riley's defense, after Holloway went missing, all other crime on Aruba stopped to honor the memory of the pretty white American, so it's not like the police have had anything else to do since June.

While I empathise with the family to the admittedly small extent I can manage after being deadened inside by endless media coverage, shit happens. If Bob Riley thinks it's so easy to find Holloway, then he should grab his deerstalker... wait. Alabama. His John Deere hat, his corncob pipe, and his faithful cousin Bobby Joe Watson, and crack the case himself. Alabama is perfectly capable of running itself into the ground without him at the helm pretending to aim.

BOYCOTT: ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH

Yes, again. Yes, over t-shirts, again. Yes, over offensive t-shirts, again. This time they've set their sights a bit higher, from Asians to an entire gender. Specifically, shirts that say "Who Needs Brains When You Have These" and "All Men Like Tig Old Bitties".

I don't have a problem with the first one. The first one serves a useful identification purpose. Any woman wearing that shirt either makes it true, or has shitty taste in irony. Any man wearing that shirt should be allowed to look at the cold-cast busts in the dealer's room while the rest of us keep a minimum 20 foot safe distance.

The second shirt, however, is unacceptable. You can't just switch letters around and pretend it's a spoonerism. The results have to FUCKING WELL BE WORDS. I'll even be gracious on "bitties", which I can do because "tig" is so incredibly not a fucking word. I don't know if the designer was just lazy, or thought "tig" was a verb meaning "the up and down oscillating motion of Felis tigris, but either way, the son of a bitch is dead wrong.

Oh, and they're also offensive to women, so some people complained, threatened the embarrasingly-retitled "girlcott", and got the retailer to pull the two shirts. However, the also-not-a-spoonerism "Muck Fe" remains on store shelves. Apparently wordplay pedants do not buy cargo pants in sufficient quantities.

BOYCOTT: KSTP CHANNEL FIVE, MINNEAPOLIS

This one's my favorite. The Minnesota Vikings are proposing a boycott of Minneapolis network affiliate KSTP.

The "why" is funny. See, after the glorious Sex Boat incident, a KSTP "investigation" went through eight bags of trash dumped by two players. Now, this is fairly low class, even for local TV news, but the Vikings, who, as you may recall, threw a drunken public orgy on a pair of lake cruise boats, felt this was an invasion of their privacy.

But what makes this boycott really great is that it was posted in the Vikings locker room.

Yes, that's right. The Vikings are encouraging the entire roster of the Vikings, all several dozen of them, to boycott a local television station. Now, unless KSTP has become the state's leading wholesaler of K-Y Jelly since the last time I checked, the only way 50 football players could hurt a TV station is if all fifty of them were... 20 to 30 Nielsen families. And I'm pretty sure Nielsen likes to spread things out more than that.

So remember, folks, if you want to contribute to retarded causes, don't go to Aruba, don't buy shitty T-shirts from a shitty store, and don't become a professional football player, get a position with the Vikings, and watch "According To Jim" unless it's down in Atlanta with a hooker.

Come For The Racism, Stay For The Gay-Bashing!

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:40:20 -0500

Main Column, 3 December 2004

Memo to Rep. Gerald Allen and at least half of Alabama: YOU ARE DUMB.

Ah, Alabama. Colloquially known as "The South of the South". Take Louisiana, remove all the jazz, leave in all the pigfucking, and you've got Alabama, the headquarters of the fight against the Civil Rights movement, home of George Wallace, where the natural beauty of the land is nicely accentuated by the flickering light from all the burning crosses.

Lest you think, by the way, that I am condemning Alabama for the sins of a less enlightened time and a previous generation, I present to you as evidence the recount underway on Amendment Two even as we speak.

Amendment Two would remove the following provisions from the Alabama State Constitution: mandating separate schools for white and colored children, imposing poll taxes to keep black people from voting, and, in a 1956 amendment, the declaration that there is no constitutional right to a public education, adopted in an attempt to keep their schools segregated. While all of this stuff can't go on because of federal court rulings, it's still part of the state constitution. The recount on Amendment Two, taking place in the YEAR 2004, is required because the amendment was DEFEATED by a couple of thousand votes.

Opponents of removing segregation from the state constitution say they're not racist fucking Klan-sympathising rednecks, they just figure that if public education isn't constitutionally denied, activist liberal judges will make them spend money on their shitty Alabama schools. These opponents aren't too concerned that this could tarnish Alabama's sterling image as a beacon of hope, freedom, and equality. IT'S ACTUAL PIGFUCKER QUOTE TIME!

"We're too concerned about the image of this state as compared to others. I hear about Wisconsin, where a maniac shoots six people, or California, where men are marrying men and women are marrying women." - Former state GOP chairman Elbert Peters, who, for fuck's sake, is named ELBERT. Here's a newsflash for Elbert, which, if his telecom infrastructure is anything like his mindset, will be delivered to him in the hands of a dead messenger on a horse with four arrows in his back sometime in mid-2005: Half of the voters in Wisconsin did not vote to SHOOT SIX HUNTERS. A few dozen (nullified, I might add) gay marriages in California are not equivalent to disenfranchising millions because of their skin color. And for fuck's sake, you're named ELBERT.

Having now established, at length, my bonafides for thinking that Alabama is full of backwards pigfuckery in white hoods, let's move on to Gerald Allen, Republican representative from, and I am not making this up, "Cottondale". Rep. Allen is sick and tired of his government supporting the rampant, straight-converting agenda of Team Selfish Hedonism, and feeling a little bit rambunctious in post-election red-state America, has proposed an elegant, time-honored, traditional means of dealing with the problem:

GET RID OF ALL THE FAG-BOOKS.

Yes, Allen's bill would ban the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle". Any novels with gay protagonists or characters, any textbooks that say homosexuality is genetic or not a bad thing, "Heather Has Two Mommies", all of these books would, if his bill passes, have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed. I'm not exaggerating. This is what Allen said. He specifically suggested taking all these books and burying them in a "big, big hole". Which makes me think he's a little bit latent, but that's just me.

And don't think you pervy straight folks are getting off easy* either. Any books that contain any content that contradicts Alabama's paleolithic sodomy and sexual misconduct laws go in the Big Big Hole too, if Allen has his way. None of those pesky blowjobs, no premarital sex. Alabama libraries, already bordering on oxymoron status, will be reduced to two bibles, the one Garfield book in which everyone's favorite lazy cat eats neither hot dogs nor muffins, and several hundred Ford pickup truck repair manuals. The only bright side is, the circulation rate should barely nudge.

To be fair, though, Allen's bill probably won't pass. I mean, the thought that Alabama lawmakers would vote for such a wide-ranging, vague, repulsive act of censorship and book burning is practically unthinkable. After all, it's not like this is some kind of murky, gray-area, divisive issue like SEGREGATION.

Win or lose, of course, Allen's already got what he really wanted. Publicity, face time on local news, and presumably the continued support of the racist, homophobic pigfuckers in Cottondale who put him in office in the first place. Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama, where reading makes you queer and the constitution keeps the darkies in their place. Hooray* for America!

* So to speak.