Holy Crap, Somebody Actually Wrote This
Tip of the hat to Jim Smith, without whom I totally would have missed this:
Over the past month a new Axis of Evil has emerged — not one based in Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang — but instead in Cedar Rapids, Charleston, South Carolina, Derry, New Hampshire and Boca Raton, Florida.
No, seriously. He’s not kidding!
I can hear you saying, “surely you aren’t saying that South Carolina has gone liberal — are you?” Are you kidding me? Drive through the Carolinas and count the number of license plates from NJ, NY and Pennsylvania. There is not much Dixie in the Carolinas; it’s more like Trenton and Long Island with fireworks.
HOLY SHIT, YOU GUYS, HE IS SERIOUS WHEN HE WRITES THIS. This guy is actually theorizing, for reals, that the South Carolina primary was manipulated by out-of-state voters, who moved down to South Carolina to subvert it with their liberal values. You could not make this sort of person up if you tried.
“But”, you protest, “New Hampshire, is Live Free or Die, it’s been a backbone of conservatism since the 1950’s.” No longer my friends — NH has become an exurb of Boston, with Boston’s sensibilities and, ugh, their voting tastes. NH hasn’t been reliably conservative since Reagan’s first term. These voters would rather be loved by the Boston Globe, than respected by the Union Leader.
In fairness, he has a point here. I mean, just last week I got an email saying “dear Chris, I have a problem. As a native of New Hampshire, I know I should be rightly considerate of my local media’s respect of me. However, the Boston Globe has a bigger comics page and a crossword daily, rather than five days a week. I find myself torn. Do you think perhaps if I lobbied the Union-Leader to add more sudoku, I could remain loyal to my home state’s newspaper? Signed, An Imaginary Person Who Does Not Exist.”
“Iowa, that’s America, with small town values and homespun sensibilities.” Wrong again — Iowa is just a state brimming with farmers on the federal dole, college students and ex hippie professors looking to con, libs in training at Grinnell.
oh god i can’t breathe
make him stop
please
oh god
If liberals from Englewood Cliffs NJ want to vote liberal, it’s going to get cancelled out by conservatives in Chattanooga — who might actually get to vote for Fred.
And here we come to the crux of it - this is Angry Fred Thompson Voter Man #789. This is the man who just can’t get over the fact that most people think Fred Thompson is a lazy-ass bastard who, while he may be awfully good at saying things like “the Russians don’t take a dump without a plan, son!” is not actually a particularly impressive politician, thinker, or much of anything else other than a second-rate character actor.
Make every state vote on exactly the same day. Make every candidate compete in EVERY state at the exact same time and hold every single GOP primary and caucus on Super Tuesday.
There’s pros and cons to this idea, but dumbass here doesn’t seem to realize that this plan would have annihilated Fred Thompson, who entered the campaign with not a lot of money and hoped to build momentum from a couple of early victories - you know, the traditional route for candidates who don’t have a lot of money. That’s the advantage of the primary system - it allows good candidates with low resources to gradually gain them.
The other advantage of the primary system, incidentally, is that it allows voters to spot bad candidates over the course of the campaign, like Rudy Giuliani - or, to a lesser extent, Fred Thompson. Seriously, can you imagine Fred Thompson, the biggest verbal stumblebum in the entire 2008 presidential race, as the Republican nominee? Chris Dodd and Joe Biden would have eaten him for breakfast, let alone Clinton, Obama or Edwards.
But wait, I still haven’t given you the dramatic conclusion of this dimwit’s “voters I disagree with are the new terrorists” spiel:
RINOS and Liberals have taken the GOP plane hostage, and its time for us passengers to revolt…and do what has to be done — Let’s Roll.
*applause*
February 1st, 2008 la 5:52 pm
My soul hurts from reading that.
February 1st, 2008 la 6:12 pm
Autobots roll out for Thompson!
February 1st, 2008 la 6:12 pm
I totally missed where he said “Let’s Roll.” I was joking about comparing McCain’s rise to 9/11.
February 1st, 2008 la 6:23 pm
Apparently America is doomed. Though seriously, he wasn’t exactly lying with Iowa. They got the best MFA program in the USA, and it’s the Valhalla of English professors.
February 1st, 2008 la 6:55 pm
I read RINOS as “RHINOS” and got very confused, particularly about why he was shouting about it.
February 1st, 2008 la 7:12 pm
Jesus. Who needs class when you have froth, huh?
I do have to applaud his Flight 93 metaphor, too. Especially when all the conservatives walk away victorious, just like Todd Beamer did– huh.
February 1st, 2008 la 7:33 pm
You know, if he was saying that the Republican primaries were infiltrated by Skrulls for McCain, I’d have taken that more seriously.
Just sayin’.
February 1st, 2008 la 7:39 pm
I’m not really sure what he’s advocating at the end there. Is he actually seriously suggesting some sort of violent uprising with the end goal of disenfranchising anyone who votes Liberal?
February 1st, 2008 la 8:12 pm
I’d respond, but I already made my statement with 12 original songs I wrote…
February 1st, 2008 la 8:14 pm
I went and read the whole article by this douchebag and it made my brain want to explode. The capper is his use of ‘Let’s Roll’. A determined bunch of actual heroes uttered the phrase as they charged to their deaths in an attempt to prevent an even bigger disaster. For this mealy-mouthed sob to be using that term is a disgrace. And this guy received a bunch of ‘hell, yeah’ comments back in the reply section. I understand the concept of free speech, but for this neanderthal to co-opt that phrase is beyond indecent.
February 1st, 2008 la 8:25 pm
“Seriously, can you imagine Fred Thompson, the biggest verbal stumblebum in the entire 2008 presidential race, as the Republican nominee?”
Yes, and it would be awesome. And only made better by the fact he’d have frothing supporters like this hanging around his neck like a millstone.
February 1st, 2008 la 11:12 pm
Anyone notice that the author is working towards a “Masters Degree in Homeland Security Studies”? Is *this* where DHS gets their braintrust middle management?
February 2nd, 2008 la 11:21 am
“Seriously, can you imagine Fred Thompson, the biggest verbal stumblebum in the entire 2008 presidential race, as the Republican nominee?”
*cough* Alan Keyes *cough*
February 2nd, 2008 la 12:15 pm
Aardy, Alan Keyes’ problem isn’t that he lacks eloquence. It’s that he lacks sanity. There’s a difference.
February 2nd, 2008 la 1:01 pm
Can I come live in Canada?
February 2nd, 2008 la 2:50 pm
@Dane: The fact that Iowa’s is considered the best graduate writing program is, I think, I big reason for much of the criticism often directed toward such programs, as well as the idea that graduate writing programs tend to produce authors with a very similar, very homogenous voice. The latter of which I don’t generally argue with. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a novelist/screenwriter in USC’s MPW program, which is actually “Professional Writing,” instead of “Fine Arts,” which is one of the main reasons I chose it.
Concerning the article itself, the geographical sentence hurts my brain. It’s badly edited (there should be at least two semi-colons for clarity), and it seems he cites three states (South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida) but then believes he’s actually talking about four. And after that clusterfuck of grammar and wrongheadedness, it only gets worse.
February 2nd, 2008 la 8:13 pm
I agree, Will. I have nothing against Iowa, but I’ve had professors tell me they never even bothered to apply they when they realized their writing voices wouldn’t sink up with the faculty, and it’s a bit of a shame.
February 2nd, 2008 la 8:34 pm
Actually, I’ve got less against Iowa per se than I do against MFA writing programs, largely on account of the similarity/homogeneity I mentioned before. Your professors, though, are correct to seek places they might sync up with faculty, which is also why I had such difficulty finding a program myself. My favorite writers are Stephen King and Neil Gaiman and William Shakespeare, none of whom actually teach, which meant I had an extraordinarily difficult time until I discovered that Marc Norman, who wrote my favorite movie (Shakespeare in Love), and Janet Fitch, who wrote a novel I very much enjoyed (White Oleander) both taught at USC. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky, for my part, for finding the only writing program in the country where I could study with both the man who directed The Empire Strikes Back and Never Say Never Again and the man who wrote City of Night.
The ultimate problem, I think, is that most of the writers a lot of people actually read and enjoy and find inspiration through don’t need to teach.
And sorry to everyone for the digression. I think I need to start blogging again myself.
February 3rd, 2008 la 5:09 am
Man, it’s stuff like that that makes me a bit happy to just go into Rhetoric and Composition. I don’t think my creative voice is strong enough for an MFA program yet, anyway.