A friend of mine, who has a blog called Conservatism With Heart decided to eulogize the Bush Administration with a list of ten things the President got right. So, here, from my vantage point are 8 things in the last 8 years that pissed me off.
8) Sean Hannity and others feigning outrage and criticizing people like Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens for their attacks on Jerry Falwell shortly after his death while calling Shirley Phelps Roper a ‘nut.’ Actually, Hannity was right about Phelps. It was one of those rare occasions where I agree with him. I’ll even go him one better. She, her family and her church, Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, are not only nuts, they are dangerous, evil cunts and it is of the utmost importance that we fight them with everything we have. He told her, “You are as mean and as sick and as cruel as anybody that I've ever had on this program.” Again, he’s right about her.
But to then turn around and eulogize Jerry Falwell, praising the work he’s done, indignant that anyone would dare criticize him so soon after his death is disingenuous at best. Falwell did have the good taste not to show up at funerals with picket signs, but the things he had said about America, about homosexuality, about the loss of life in Iraq, about why 9/11 happened are virtually identical to the things that Westboro Baptist Church has been saying. It’s frustrating when those fashioning themselves pundits concern themselves more with manners and how people express themselves than the substance of what they’re saying.
And delicacy and good manners are the only difference between Falwell Ministries and Westboro Baptist Church.
7) Hearing countless conservatives demand ad-nauseam that Obama roundly condemn Reverend Wright. This would have been easier to take if these weren’t the same people who consistently ally themselves with the likes of Falwell, Robertson and Dobson. Somehow, the insistence that a public official not be tied in any way to an extremist hate-filled pastor sounded disingenuous.
6) Being torn between wanting to read What Happened by Scott McClellan, and at the same time, being unwilling to contribute to that piece of shit’s wealth. Way to grow a conscience after helping get thousand of people killed. You’ll pardon me if I invite you to suck it. It was a conundrum. Then, a friend suggested I just check it out at the library. I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t think of that first.
5) The systematic discrediting of anyone who turned on the administration. When I checked out What Happened from the library, my wife, Joia, (rabid Republican for those of you who don’t already know) said, “You know he’s a pathological liar, right?” My response was, “Yes, yes he is.” Obviously our difference of opinion lay in when he was lying.
4) The RNC’s cynical strategy of putting marriage amendments on ballots in swing states across the country to polarize their base by dividing Americans in 2004.
3) My cat, Atticus died. He was the greatest cat in the history of the world. And while I can’t prove it, and while words phrases like ‘old-age’ and ‘natural causes’ were thrown around, I believe in my heart of hearts that Karl Rove is somehow responsible.
2) The silencing of dissent and/or ‘offensive’ speech from Don Imus to the Dixie Chicks to Ward Churchill to Janet Jackson’s tit. We also saw the return of the Flag Desecration Amendment and countless local ordinances across the country banning picketers at funerals in response to the depraved, vile, despicable, noxious, iniquitous and many other synonyms for stomach churning, Westboro Baptist Church. (I love my thesaurus.) It seems that there are still a lot of people who think that the best way of dealing with someone saying something you don’t like is to force them to shut up.
At one point, I was arguing with a friend at work about the sacking of Don Imus and my friend actually said, “Free speech doesn’t mean anyone can just say anything.” Actually, that’s exactly what it means, fuck-nuts.
1) Traitors questioning my patriotism. I can’t let this one go. I’m sure most of you are tired of hearing about the outing of Valerie Plame, but we can’t afford to drop it. The right seems to think that nothing improper happened, while the left has pretty much treated the whole incident as if it were any other scandal. No. This is different from anything else the Bush administration has done. It’s worse than lying about Oval Office head. Hell, it’s worse than Watergate. We shouldn’t be afraid to use the word ‘treason’ here because it is applicable. I posted at much more length about this here. Also, Bill Maher said it much better than I ever could, so I’m going to shut up now.
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You should be commended on only posting 8 - that's some restraint, like the kind it takes at McDonald's to only eat two fries.
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