Civility, Decency, And Democracy? You Don’t Know The Meaning Of Those Words!

A Good Day

Don Imus is off the air — not for a two-week slap-on-the-hand, but for good. It’s a good day.

Save me from the fucking nannies. They’re all in their hearts like her.

Previously in this blog:
Maybe When We Surrendered To Crybabies About Speech?
Goddammit! Knock It The Fuck Off Already!
When You Let Loose The Dogs Of War, Don’t Fucking Cry When They Turn On You And Bite Your Smug-Ass Face Off

Beemageddon: More Speculation

Colony Collapse Disorder – a Moment for Reflection?

Previously in this blog:
Beemageddon: This Year’s Huge Story
Beemageddon: Soylent Green
Beemageddon: A Quantum Connection?
Beemageddon

Maybe When We Surrendered To Crybabies About Speech?

When did America become a nation of frightened wimps?

–linkswipe via reddit

Previously in this blog:
Goddammit! Knock It The Fuck Off Already!
When You Let Loose The Dogs Of War, Don’t Fucking Cry When They Turn On You And Bite Your Smug-Ass Face Off

God Is Coming To Kill Me

Monstrous Nor’easter Heads For Tri-State Area

I’m the target. Save yourselves. Flee now.

Goddammit! Knock It The Fuck Off Already!

Tom DeLay’s Action Points: If the Left Takes Imus, We’ll Take Rosie

How many bodies will satisfy you motherfuckers?

When the fuck does it end?

Previously in this blog:
When You Let Loose The Dogs Of War, Don’t Fucking Cry When They Turn On You And Bite Your Smug-Ass Face Off

The YoYos From Hell!!!

I’ve been seeing this damned game on and off for about two weeks now on GamesFever TV!

I hope this is the solution!

Today the prize was ten thousand dollars!

Someone put in my too-clever answer of zero YoYos.

Incorrect!

Damn!

They will drive me mad!!

Oh wait… I already am.

Well madder!

Update: I’m not the only one being driven to the brink by this torment!!

How did Gamesfever.tv get the answer 228 for the YOYO box?

Games Fever Discussion — this guy’s done a complete fucking blog about this insane game!!

Monday, April 09, 2007
Gamesfever is the Devil. — you might have to scroll down to find it.

Oh I just love this. Misery always loves company!

When You Let Loose The Dogs Of War, Don’t Fucking Cry When They Turn On You And Bite Your Smug-Ass Face Off

Firing Don Imus Stinks

I agree with a lot of what he says.

I listened to Imus for a time in the 1970s. I wasn’t what you would call a fan, though. He provided some cheap (and I did know they were cheap) laughs. But I never sensed it was anything but naughty humor for him. I never sensed hatred from him.

Then Howard Stern came in and ramped up the vulgarity. I couldn’t — and still can’t — stand him.

I listened to a lot of talk radio in the 1970s. WMCA (570 AM) was the talk station in New York City and it had an interesting lineup of hosts who had a variety (I will not use that fucking term “diversity”) of viewpoints. Talk radio wasn’t, back then, you will be shocked to learn, all political. Hosts actually had on real guests — like book authors, article writers, doctors, lawyers, singers, and others. Political talk was rare, but race-based talk wasn’t. One host in particular, Bob Grant, specialized in race-baiting, constantly hammering at blacks (is it OK to still use that word? or is it Afro/African-American now?) at every opportunity. His favorite phrase was that the government was “catering” to blacks. He also went after homosexuals, constantly calling them “double-gaited ones” and “fagolas” (pronouned FAY-goh-lahs).

When the 1980s rolled around, I stopped listening. WMCA had, by that time, been sold; Bob Grant had moved on to WOR (710 AM), where he was soon fired. The legendary WABC (77 AM) was murdered as a rock-and-roll station and reincarnated as talk radio. Bob Grant wound up there.

In the late 1980s, I started listening again. Christ, what a cesspool talk radio had become. There was Rush Limbaugh (who is now trying to eradicate all memory of what his show was really like — e.g., no more playing My Boy Lollipop for “Homo-SEX-yoo-ull/Barney Frank Updates”). Bob Grant had become a sour old — and old-sounding! — man whose favorite word was now “scumbag.” All the talk was political, all the talk was ugly, and all the talk was hate-filled. Talk radio no longer had hosts, it had pimps who were whoring the audience.

And it still does!

But guess what?

It’s a fucking free country, goddammit.

Or it’s supposed to be!

I haven’t listened to talk radio for perhaps a decade now. Bob Grant was ultimately fired from WABC for making a very nasty comment about the death of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown (the vultures had already been circling and tried to take him down several months earlier, incited by a hit piece published in New York magazine combined with Grant being made an issue of in a New Jersey gubernatorial election). He wound up back at WOR where he was given star treatment and where he became even nastier yet also cowardly. He recently retired (good riddance!), finally sensing that his time had passed and that he was never going to get Rush-like stardom (which he had always craved).

Grant turned up last night on local TV to comment about the Imus firing. It was all self-serving (as is usual for Grant), with him being shocked, shocked! (in that famous “There’s gambling in Casablanca?” way), that such comments were ever made (someone out there must have tapes of Grant in the 1970s! He should be made to listen to himself). This from a guy who always trotted out his right to free speech and who built a career on spewing words and phrases calculated to incite hatred in the New York City populace. Or, more to the point, that fraction of the population who listened to him.

And that is the point: None of these hosts — not even Limbaugh — command the attention of the entire country’s population. No matter how large their audiences get, it is still a fraction. There are more people who do not listen — people who tried them and decided never again to listen, people who are too busy living to devote their attention to others on the radio — than any host’s listenership.

So Grant was ugly and inspired hate.

So Stern popularizes the basest human instincts.

So Imus made a comment that caused some people to take offense.

So fucking what?

There is an Off switch on a radio. There is an Off switch to the Internet (you can find it on your PC!). There is an Off switch to TV. To Fox News. To CNN. To whatever the fuck gets under your holier-than-fucking-thou skin. Don’t listen. Don’t watch. Don’t read. Whatever it is that disagrees with you, avoid. It’s really that simple.

Saying such things should not exist in this country, well, that’s a sentiment that — surprise! — turns you into someone who is no better than one of those mullahs in the Middle East. Into one of those dictatorial fuckers of the Taliban.

Is that your goal?

Ayn Rand said it best: Ideas must be fought with ideas.

What’s happened to Imus is not the idea of “Gee, perhaps you went too far; would you like to apologize?” It’s the idea: We Don’t Approve. You Must Die. But The Only Way To Legally Kill You Is To Deprive You Of Income.

Keep up that shit and guess what? Someday the pendulum will swing and you’ll find your ass being targeted.

It’s all freedom or no freedom.

Period.

Book Chronicle Blog Issues Litty Awards

Litty Awards: Litblogger Recognition

Today, we are pleased to announce the first ever Litty Awards, the first annual award for litbloggers; bloggers that have worked hard to keep you informed of the latest book news, provide their opinions and insights, and feed your brain with a regular intellectual banquet.

Litty Awards: Best Christian Litblogger

Litty Awards: Best Publishing Litblogger

I won’t ruin the surprise. Go read.

Of course, if they ever come up with a Litty for Stark Raving Madman Blog Which Also Mentions Books, I expect you lot to stuff their ballot box!

Previous book/reading coverage in this blog:
Photo Album: America The Illiterate
Dear Read
M. Dylan Raskin Shows His Face In NYC April 26th
Book Me! Beat Me!
Morons Full Stop
Get The Word, Nerd
Nerd Word
Writer Max Barry Touring America
You Think You Can Write? How Well Do You Read?
Ralph Nader Has A New Book
This Month’s Subhead
I Begin The Month With Sherlock Holmes
What Is This New Technology Called The Book?
When “Free” = $$$
Charity Auction: Get Your Name In A Mystery Novel
This Month’s Subhead
Philip K. Dick Freaks Me Out Even While He’s Dead (And He’s Still Dead, Isn’t He?)
Book Drooooool!
Help Out Someone Being Crushed By MammothMedia!
Larry Beinhart
John Scalzi
Congratulations to Warren Ellis
The Astounding Christopher Fowler
Christopher Fowler Slays Me
Christopher Fowler’s Bryant & May
Bill Bryson: Two-Fisted Gusto!
The Homo Fag Queer We All Owe
That Funny, That Nasty, That Charming Man
Wilmerding-Dong-Ding-Ding
Morrissey
M. Dylan Raskin – Part 2 (of 2)
How Everything Happens
M. Dylan Raskin – Part 1 (of 2)
The Most Dangerous Place in NYC
I Miss Jack Tramiel
Hemorrhaging the Neural Net
Writer Added
Currently Reading
He Did Not End Raising Bees
Currently Reading…