Liberal Media Elite

Normally I don’t reprint e-mails that I receive without first specifically receiving permission from the person who sent it — but in this case I kinda thought, well, fuck it.

hey… you pieces of shit. that was the most fagasious shit i have even witnessed in my entire life. you call yourselves actors, ha, I call you fucking, faggot, china babies, whose use of arrogant words such as, nigger, are for shock value alone. You call your selves playwrights? who the fuck do you think you are coming to my city? seriously? You come here thinking your cool and then you call my city a ghost town as you drive into the distance… fuck you! seriously? why don’t you fuckers go back to china where you belong and wright shit plays for them instead.

sincererly

FUCK YOU! minnisota nigger cunts!

niggggggggggerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
chink, gook, honkey, chinese piece of shit cong!

come back soon we miss you already!

NOT!

Now, putting aside for the moment that the most wounding part of this missive is its utter butchery of the English language — this is far from the first message of this nature that I’ve received, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’d hope that it’s self-evident that there’s more going on in the play than shock value, but the accusation of carelessness in my writing is always dismaying. The true arrogance on my part, I suppose, is the assumption that I can write political satire — containing much material that I know will be hurtful to members of the audience — and not expect to receive any backlash from it.

That said, it’s almost impossible to discern exactly what his purpose is — whether he’s someone offended by use of racist terminology (in which case his e-mail is either a case of failed irony or stunning hypocrisy), or whether he’s a racist himself annoyed at having been shown up (in which case, well, I will cheerfully and unapologetically say “Fuck him”).

Still — good to be back in Minnesota, y’know?

This new RNC video is comparing Barack Obama to David Hasselhoff because of the senators huge success last week in Berlin, where Obama gave a speech in front of 200,000 happy Europeans and Americans. And it has all the good stuff: Gotcha questions, Eurotrash innuendos and Marxists!

That’s some primo smearing of one of our biggest trading partners and a coalition partner in our war effort in Afghanistan.

That aside, I really have a problem with the continuity of this strategy. First Hitler, THEN Hasselhoff? What’s next!?

Just a quick note – I’m currently on the road doing political comedy, and I’m keeping a tour diary of the experience over at http://libertarianrage.blogspot.com. It’s pretty meta, in that it’s more about the experience of writing political comedy than it is necessarily political in and of itself: but the meandering musings may be of interest to readers here.

If you’ve been unemployed like me for the past few weeks, and watching way too many re-runs of Deadliest Catch, you’ve probably seen this ad.

Cute

It may not benefit Team Coleman to try to get cute with their ads because cute ads are painfully easy to mock. Especially when your opponent is a satirist.

A T-shirt company is selling shirts they claim are the pinnacle of conservative humor. By pinnacle, I mean “abysmal trench,” but then, after watching Dennis Miller, you should know that any sort of achievement in conservative humor is just this shy of genital mutilation.

Anyway, in this site, you can find all the “Go ahead, make my day” style machismo, eating-a-steak-off-my-boner nonsense you can handle, and a bunch of other crap for the Looky Here How I’s Gonna Prove All Them Stereotypes You Thunk Up About Me Is True ‘N’ Shit! crowd will eat up with a spoon and tell Rush about:

I love how they’re proud of all the wrong things, like wanting to kill people. I mean, they actually want to kill people. In the name of freedom. And against terrorism. Kill people. Because they’re defending freedom. Murder=freedom. Yup. It’s kind of cute in its way.

So I dutifully spent my Treason Day as every American should: seeing good theatre, drinking good beer, and watching shit blow up.

While I was waiting for my bus on Nicollet Mall, a cadre of naked bikers coasted past, singing The Star-Spangled Banner. Near me, an Old White Dude shook his head in disgust.

OWD: I like bicycles, but there’s no excuse for that. That’s why I live in the suburbs.

He notices me leaning against a pillar and reading City Pages.

OWD: Excuse me. Move that newspaper.

I do so, hesitantly. Now, note that I’m wearing a T-shirt with an image of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, with the caption “I’m from the government. I’m here to help.”

OWD: So, that’s Beijing?
ME: Yeah, man, Tiananmen Square.
OWD: Oh.

(pause)

OWD: China deserves to be fucking crushed.

(pause)

OWD: I’m going to go get a copy of The Onion.

(pause)

OWD: Thanks for talking to me.

(pause, then, walks away)

Now, I know I don’t look Chinese — my Hennepin County Jail wristband blandly identifies me as a “WHITE MALE”. And it’s not as though I disagree with the underlying sentiment. Although I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “deserves.” Or “crushed.” And I might want to add a couple of qualifiers to “China.” But “fucking” I’m totally on board with.

This exchange, edifying as it was, did get me to thinking. Even if China’s current government could be easily, peaceably dismantled, would that be desirable? It’s not even close to addressing the underlying problem of what China is, and has been for longer than any other country. The citizens of every nation are indoctrinated by their respective societies, but the Chinese people have been subjugated to a single monstrous intellect for two and a half thousand years. I’m not referring to Mao Zedong or Karl Marx, both of whom are fairly late comers to the party; I’m referring to Confucius, whose collectivist philosophy perhaps found its ultimate expression in Communist doctrine.

After all, isn’t this one of the underlying problems of the occupation of Iraq? We tear down a secular dictatorship, only to find a significant body of people who want to set up a theocracy. Contrary to what The Rascals would like to believe, ask me my opinion, my opinion will be — people everywhere don’t want to be free. Certainly one of the many issues I struggle with within my own faith is the concept of one man dying for another’s sins. Is it possible to pay for somebody else’s sins? Isn’t that something like what we’re trying to do? And from whence does the moral authority come to make a sacrifice like that meaningful?

My understanding is that the most rational and moral course available to us is one of non-interventionism. It’s certainly possible that that’s a mistaken belief, based on a poor education. And it’s certainly true that that understanding rejects me from the two major parties, both of whom seem to believe that overseas intervention and entangling alliances are necessary to our continued stability — a fact making this November’s election yet another no-win scenario for me.

But thinking about all of these ideological and geopolitical conflicts leaves me with one clear thought: that our own revolution, two-hundred and thirty-eight years ago, was nothing short of a miracle, in both a military and philosophical sense.

So thanks, Old White Dude. And a happy Treason Day to you, too.

Darcy Burner is running for Congress in Washington’s 8th District. She’s pretty cool. She ran in 2006 and incumbent Republican Dave Reichert just barely kept his seat (by an average of 5 voters per precinct.). She’s running again this year.

On Tuesday, she lost her home to a fire.

The laws of campaign finance say we can’t donate to her family directly. But we can donate to her campaign.

Do that right here

(Also, check out the shirt she’s wearing.)