two people decided to weigh in on the just-past oscar winner, '12 years a slave'. rush limbaugh claimed the only reason the movie was named best picture was because it had in it's title THE MAGIC WORD (and he didn't mean 'harry potter'). the WORD? slave. apparently someone somewhere is still playing on the "white guilt" bill o'reilly claimed was what put obama in the white house, figured out how to make it into a movie and make money. meanwhile, right-wing journalist, james bowman, expressed his displeasure, but not so much that it won, but it, in his view, was not a fair and balanced portrayal of slavery for, surely, there had to have been some happy slaves owned by good and generous people. why, he wants to know, weren't there any grinnin', hand-clappin', foot-stompin', hymn-singin' step'n'fetchit's in the movie? as sky palma wrote for aattp, "maybe bowman could write his next column about all the missing happy jews in holocaust movies." just think of the musical spielberg could make! staying with hollywood for a moment, the new movie 'noah', starring russell crowe, was forced to add a disclaimer by evangelical christian groups because of the film's many 'historical inaccuracies". in other words, they couldn't, in clear conscience, recommend it to their congregations because it could not, as filmed, be considered a documentary. but 'son of god', with it's white jesus (okay, he's portugese, but that's still not middle eastern) gets five stars.
a rural church in kentucky decided to extend the hand of fellowship and recruit new members by giving away guns to men who would sign a 'profession of faith' and 'seek salvation'. they claim to have had 1600 men sign up. i would assume they're waiting for written confirmation of their salvation status and the delivery of their "i have been saved" certificates, signed by god and witnessed by j.c. and the holy spirit. a different church decided that, for this year's fund raiser a bake sale just wouldn't do, so they'd auction off an ar 15. nothing says god to me like firearms! hallelujah!!!
religion also played a role in the cpac gathering this year (i know. color me shocked). sister bachmann took it upon herself to chastise jewish voters as sellouts for daring to support democratic policies and candidates because of obama's lack of support for israel. in doing so, they are apparently delaying the rapture, the second coming and the overly anticipated armageddon. such spoil sports! how terribly rude of them to deny them the end of the world they seem to crave so desperately. she also decried the veto of az 1062 as being evidence of terrible intolerances being afoot against american christians. when it was pointed out that members of her own party thought the bill was a bad idea, she dodged answering by simply stating "protecting religious liberty is right". so, protecting religious liberty trumps protecting personal liberty unless religious liberty is a personal liberty. do i hear another hallelujah for sister bachmann?
and the parade of clowns at cpac continued.
paul ryan tried to tell the gathering that children who didn't carry a brown-bag lunch to school and had to rely on a free lunch simply had parents who didn't love them. he proceeded to retell an anecdote he said he got from a member of scott walker's staff who claimed to have witnessed the whole thing. in it, a young boy says that his being able to carry his own lunch proved that somebody cared for him. the only problem was, the anecdote was actually from a book written in 1996 and not from the source he cited. plagiarism is obviously a party problem.
wayne la-pee-air proclaimed true freedom, the GREATEST FREEDOM, is being allowed to buy all the "rifles, shotguns and handguns you want. what? no bazookas or rocket launchers? damn. guess that means i have to return my tank.
aside: not at cpac, but in iowa, the house decided to tackle the subject of gun violence by making silencers legal. right. guns aren't nearly as dangerous if you can't hear them.
and lastly, from cpac...though by no means the final clown car in the parade...oliver north (i thought he was dead!) in his address attempted to tell the assembly that the democrats, in their handling of the veteran's benefit bill, were treating the vets like "lab rats", ignoring the fact that it was defeated by conservatives who insisted on attaching stricter sanctions against iran.
for a few words on the on-going fight for marriage equality, we go first to michigan where the state decided to present an "expert witness" who proceeded to "testify" that unrepentant gays would suffer eternal damnation. they must have used the 'fox expert list' to come up with someone so knowledgeable on the subject. at least george will doesn't present himself as an expert, but he does think that we're being sore losers and not acting nice and neighborly when we continue to demand equal rights. after all. he says it was all settled when the civil rights bill was signed in 1964. yes george, and racism no longer exists. taking a brief trip to texas, we find republicans there pulling up once more the spirits of the founding fathers by saying they would never have approved of letting 'sodomites' marry. but the fact that they felt it was okay to make educating their slaves illegal, a black man was to be considered only a partial person and women weren't allowed to vote...oh, for the good old days!
the final one for this week concerns a passenger on a canadian airline flight who felt compelled to leave a note expressing his displeasure that the plane was in the hands of a female pilot. he goes on to say that he should have been told before takeoff so he could have made alternate plans and continues with a reference to a verse from the book of proverbs (because it specifically says in the bible that a woman should not be allowed to fly a plane, lest she be locked in the cargo hold as punishment, denied access to the bathroom, and definitely no little bag of nuts!) proving only that he should spend more time reading the bible since the verse praises the abilities of a woman to own land, run a winery and do pretty much anything a man can do. maybe he just wanted his name on the 'no fly' list. in that case, please oblige him.
of all of the above, there will this week be no winners (but i'd be inclined to go with the carnival at cpac, but with no beads). it should then be enough to know that each and every one has a spot for which they are all uniquely qualified.
and now, as monty python used to say, for something a little different. i can't deny i get a sense of what some may call perverse pleasure out of bashing the stupid and ignorant, but, let's face it, even the most enjoyable of things can lose a little of their patina over time. i mean, you can only play pictionary so many times before you get tired of drawing the same stick figures, and like those stick figures there are only so many ways to call stupid stupid. either that, or i just need to find my thesaurus. with that in mind, i've decided to pick a few things that actually made me feel good about some of my fellow human beings. unfortunately i've found such examples are few and far between or i just don't know where to look.
i'd like to start off with two people who decided, for whatever reason, to take a stand. state senator steve gallardo, after leading the fight against az 1062 decided to publicly declare something his family and close friends already knew....that he was gay, and it was his state's blatant attempt to legalize discrimination that led him to believe that this was the right time to come out. steve had previously led the fight against arizona's "papers, please" law that targeted hispanics
liz wahl, a reporter on the government sponsored russian television, quit on air declaring she could no longer work for an organization that blatantly ignored or misreported the actions of president putin and his agenda. she has been criticized for being an american working for the russian english-language station, called un-american and her actions self-serving, but i want to believe she's just someone who, like steve, had finally decided that enough is enough and took a public stand.
a young boy in detroit, cayden taipalus, was upset when he saw a classmate having to put back food because he didn't have enough money in his school account to cover it. determined to do something he started collecting donations to help out and started making money by recycling. as of last count, he had enough to pay for 295 lunches.
and i know what i've always said about surveys, but going along with what seems to be an overall national trend, a recent one by abc news and the washington post now shows that 59% now support marriage equality, 50% feel that it is a right guaranteed by the constitution and only 34% were against same-sex marriage. the cynic in me just smiled a little bit.
th-th-th-that's all, folks.
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