Tag Archive for ‘likely to offend’ at Three Roads Blog

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I don’t get it.

Published on March 27, 2008 in trends.

I CAN UNDERSTAND the Fed’s desire to preempt a larger financial crisis by helping broker a deal between JPMorgan and Bear Stearns.

I can also muster a high degree of sympathy for the hapless Bear employees who had everything in Bear stock.

I can’t, however, fathom why Bear shareholders should be entitled to get a certain price for their shares. I just don’t get it. (Please, someone explain it to me.)

I’ve never used the following acronym before, but it seems fitting now:

WTF?

Gotta love Vermont

Published on March 7, 2008 in politics.

Pretty proud of my home state today:

Vt. towns put Bush, Cheney on arrest list

Link

Thanks to Bora for the link.

“Stars and Bars”: not just racist

Published on January 22, 2008 in politics.

No, I will not respect your Confederate heritage, you treasonous bigot:

So slack is our grasp of history and principle that we seem unable to think of the Confederacy as other than “offensive” to blacks. But there are two Republican candidates in this election—[Mike Huckabee and] the absurd and sinister Ron Paul being the other—who choose this crucial moment in our time to exalt those who attempted to destroy the Union by force, and those who solicited the help of foreign powers in order to do so, and whose treason led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Should their patriotism be questioned? I would say most definitely yes, and questioned repeatedly, at that, perhaps especially if they are seeking the nomination of the party of Lincoln.

–Christopher Hitchens, “Why are the media ignoring Mike Huckabee’s remarks about the Confederate flag?”

I’d also like to second Hitchens’ characterization of Ron Paul as “absurd and sinister.” More absurd than sinister, but still.

Swear Festival

Published on November 8, 2007 in words.

Here are two events on the agenda at the upcoming Swear Festival, which will be held in San Francisco on Nov. 10.

Panel: Experts Discuss How Shits and Fucks Change Our World
Swear Into the Light – Curse torture, sponsored by The Dick Cheney Ideas Group

Link
Via: Errata, the Wordie blog

Nothing is obscene anymore

Published on October 15, 2007 in music and politics.

Last week, I came across some great footage of Frank Zappa on Crossfire.

The subject was music, obscenity and censorship. The show (it aired in 1986) also featured Robert Novak (who, curiously, looks exactly the same as he does today—old and crotchety), a columnist from the Washington Times named John Lofton, and host Tom Braden.

A lot of commentators say we’re shriller than ever before, but when you look at this video, you’ll consider the possibility that we have made progress since the culture wars of the 1980s.

Not surprisingly, Zappa takes the anti-censorship side. He’s conservative in the libertarian sense of the word—he doesn’t want the government to tell him what he can listen to.

On the other side, there’s the goon from the Washington Times. I say goon not because he supports censorship, but because he’s a ridiculous caricature of the hyperventilating social conservative. Mencken wouldn’t have bothered to dress this guy down. To make your counterpoint is simply to let him talk.

The debate veered toward one song that the Washington Times guy thought was particularly offensive—“Sister,” by Prince. He claimed the song promoted incest. It’s certainly a foul song, and my guess is that Prince, now a Jehovah’s Witness, would like to put it as far behind him as possible. But I doubt that it had much of an effect on the sexual mores of innocent listeners at the time.

Continue reading ‘Nothing is obscene anymore’

I guess that makes me a Dodd-ball

Published on October 11, 2007 in politics.

I was surprised at the results of a candidate-matching exercise I did today.

Sen. Christpher Dodd, D-Conn., and I disagree on only one issue—immigration.

I checked the ‘provide a path to citizenship/secure border’ option. I think the discrepancy comes from the fact that, according to this site, Dodd would like also to see a fence along the border.

My idea of securing the border has nothing to do with erecting physical barriers. In fact, securing the border, for me, is more about terrorism than immigration. But the more I think about it, the less practical border security seems as a terrorism prevention measure. Similar to how to you can never have a totally poo-free food supply, you’ll never have a hermetically sealed border, even if (god forbid) that were the top domestic priority.

I hate fences. My opinion on fences matches that of Owen Wilson’s character in Shanghai Noon:

I am like a wild horse. You can’t tame me. You put the oats in the pen, though, and I’ll come in for a nibble every day… But if you ever shut that gate, I’ll jump the fence and you’ll never see me again.

OK, it’s not the most apt quote, but my point is that fences aren’t the answer to anything. They never have been. Not only do they not work (people have been successfully jumping them as long as they’ve been around) they’re philosophically and aesthetically repulsive, and that’s enough for me to never support them. So, to be clear, even if they were the best way to curtail illegal immigration, I think a fence—and what it represents—is a bigger threat to the republic than Mexicans looking for work.

I might consider quarantining Texas, though.

The White GOP

Published on September 28, 2007 in politics.

In the past 50 years, how many non-white candidates have vied for Republican presidential nomination?

Presidential politics is a pale affair on both sides of the aisle, but it’s particularly pasty on the right side. And since the 1960s, the Grand Old Party seems to be getting whiter and whiter, in all areas of electoral politics.

The current crop of Republicans running for the nomination couldn’t even be bothered to debate at Morgan State University, a predominantly black school. The conventional wisdom says they were nervous about possible negative reactions from the audience.

Can anyone tell me of a non-white person who ran in the Republican primary? (And this isn’t simply a rhetorical question meant to make a point about the homogeneous nature of the Republican Party; I’m actually curious.)

Anyone? Bueller?

Here’s my second question: could a black candidate win the Republican nomination?

I wonder if it’s possible. In the current context of Republican presidential politics, I sort of doubt it. Why? Because so much of the party is controlled by the fringe, and that’s never more apparent than in the primary months.

In 2000, push polls and whisper campaigns about John McCain fathering an illegitimate black child helped George Bush win South Carolina’s primary.

The “illegitimate” part was immaterial. (At best, it was a cover for supposed family values voters.) It was the “black” part that mattered.

As recently as the 2006 midterms (the Tennessee senate race, specifically), Republicans in the south have played on racist attitudes toward inter-racial relationships. Although we’ve come a long way as a country, the Republican Party, once the party that freed the slaves, is still mired in prejudicial politics.

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