Monday, January 20, 2014

IF YOU CELEBRATE MLK DAY BY DENOUNCING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, YEWWW MIGHT BE A CONSERVATIVE!

On MLK Day -- rightblogger reactions to which we've made a point of following over the years -- it's good to be reminded that Martin Luther King Jr. was, in addition to a great advocate of equality under the law, a committed leftist who supported labor unions, a swift end to the Vietnam War, and several measures against income inequality including a guaranteed basic income for all Americans.

The reason it's good to be reminded of this is that all kinds of crazy fuckers are using the occasion to portray King as a wingnut, mainly because they know denouncing King isn't too hip and they're obliged to interpret the "content of their character" bit to mean that giving black people a break is the worst kind of racism.

At National Review, for example, Roger Clegg and Hans von Spakovsky wish to celebrate the Day with state legislation "outlawing government racial preferences" -- not in the old-fashioned civil-rights sense of Jim Crow laws, but in "the politically correct version that discriminates against whites, and often Asians (particularly in college admissions), by giving preferences to other racial or ethnic groups like blacks and Hispanics." Because if there's one thing that burned Dr. King's butt, it was some black kid getting into college and thus freezing out some deserving honky.

DaTechGuy gives his space over to some pastor who sermonizes:
We all need to be thankful that in the scheme of Providence that men like Pastor Martin Luther King, Jr., President Ronald Regan, and the founder of Prison Fellowship Mr. Charles “Chuck” Colson all utilized their great oratory gifts in a responsible manner.
DaTechGuy post-scripts that if King were alive today "he would be considered a person spouting 'hate speech' by the very people pol that profit off his legacy today" because of his "Orthodox Christianity," which conversion by King I'm not sure I've heard of -- could DaTechGuy be thinking of Rod Dreher?

You can sort of tell where Donald Conkey of the Cherokee (GA) Tribune is going when he refers to "the Negro, as King referred to his people in a day before the term Negro was 'politically incorrect.'" Sure enough, Conkey asserts that King would not be happy with "the directional changes made by his associates shortly after his death. I strongly believe his associates sold out King’s dream to Lyndon Johnston’s Great Society..." If his analysis seems appallingly ignorant of history, please remember he's just trying to defend King from accusations of liberalism. (Also, did you know that "when a white congressman attempted to join [the Congressional Black Caucus] he was refused membership"? That's the real racism right there.)

Representing the libertarian angle, Nick Gillespie writes, "Ending the War on Pot Would Help Complete Martin Luther King's Call for Civil Rights." Glad to see those cowboys have their priorities straight.

Some of the brethren can't be reconstructed. Public nuisance Kathy Shaidle revives some of her Ooga Booga greatest hits and hey, did you know King was an adulterer?  "Happy Martin Luther King Day. Obama Blames Race for His Abysmal Approval Ratings," headlines radio shouter Teri O'Brien. "If it weren’t for his race, this empty suit would still be on a Chicago street corner with his clipboard and bullhorn," says O'Brien. Well, at least she didn't refer to a shoeshine kit, so maybe King was right about the arc of history.

UPDATE. At The Raw Story Scott Kaufman fills in some blanks, and segues into some strange conservative reactions to the epic rants of Seattle Seahawk Richard Sherman. I especially enjoyed that Deadspin included John Podhoretz in "Dumb People Say Stupid, Racist Shit About Richard Sherman."

80 comments:

  1. PulletSurprise1:48 PM

    War On Christmas in December, MLK was a Republican in January. Shopworn tropes are shopworn.

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  2. Helmut Monotreme2:00 PM

    Modern conservative America seems to think dead heroes make great ventriloquist dummies.

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  3. Waffle_Man2:13 PM

    Representing the libertarian angle, Nick Gillespie writes, "Ending the War on Pot Would Help Complete Martin Luther King's Call for Civil Rights." Glad to see those cowboys have their priorities straight.

    Honestly, given that the war on drugs actually does disproportionate harm to black people this seems like an entirely legitimate point.

    I mean, I'm no expert, but black people being arrested far more often than whites for a crime that blacks and whites commit nearly equally seems like the kind of thing MLK probably would care about.

    Also, I wonder if anybody at the National Review brought up the FBI's spying on and blackmail of the Reverend King. Given that we know the NSA is currently blackmailing people over their online sexual escapades, it really seems like a good opening to attack the President.



    I know I'm proud I lived to see the first black J. Edgar Hoover.

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  4. Halloween_Jack2:16 PM

    Holy crap, that Deadspin thing... some of the tweeters make, well, Gawker commenters look classy.

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  5. PulletSurprise2:18 PM

    While he had a pulse, Reagan was one of the greatest living ventriloquist dummies.

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  6. Gromet2:29 PM

    Liberals are the real racists -- always pointing out that MLK was black! As if color mattered!

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  7. whetstone2:37 PM

    I take it the NRO employed Hans von Spakovsky to write a Very Special Martin Luther King Day Column because their first choice, Bull Connor, couldn't be reached, even though you'd think that if there's a a direct line to Hell, it's in the NRO switchboard.

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  8. moelarryandjesus2:43 PM

    Yeah, uh huh, MLK didn't even know he was black!


    Or something.

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  9. We all need to be thankful that in the scheme of Providence all utilized
    their great oratory gifts in a responsible manner.

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  10. We all need to be thankful that in the scheme of Providence that men
    like all utilized
    their great oratory gifts in a responsible manner.

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  11. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps3:10 PM

    Then we get "why isn't there a WHITE history month" in February, "why isn't there an international MEN's day" in March, and the nascent War on Easter in April. We've got a full schedule to look forward to!

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  12. Ah, the annual holiday of conservatives trying to misappropriate King (and Roy ably chronicling and mocking them). It'd be interesting to chart the full timeline of National Review opinion: Supporting segregation and openly expressing white superiority; denouncing King as a commie; opposing MLK Day; trying to claim King was really a conservative. But where are the intermediate steps? Where are the get-off-my-racist-lawn rants about shifting polls and how the kids today don't appreciate how King was dangerous, and the whole "standing athwart" thing is failing on yet another front? Where's the column from some Jonah Goldberg precursor (shudder), dipping his toe in the water by claiming King might be an admirable figure – and thus by definition a conservative? ("I'm not saying King was entirely commendable. I am saying that King expressed some conservative values." etc. with some thinly-veiled racism that King might not have realized this himself, thus proving King and his kind still merited National Review's existing derision but Conservatism! eternally uber alles.) Where's the column that implicitly acknowledges the King bandwagon even on the right, and attempts outright highway robbery and commandeering of the wagon? (One of the fascinating aspects of Mandela's death has been seeing these dynamics play out again, but, as Roy has chronicled, plenty of dead-enders are still fighting the bad fight.)

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  13. chuckling3:13 PM

    Looks like you've got an imitator, Roy. Perhaps they'd be better off employing a little affirmative action over at Raw Story. Not that I'm not happy to see Tbogg turn up at a better formatted site.


    Way off topic, but I glanced down through TBoggs recent posts and saw one that referred to the alleged knockout game. That reminded me of an email I got the other day from my kid's school about an assault on one of the students that happened in the neighborhood. The police said it was the result of kids playing the knockout game. Been meaning to look into it more as I've read that there's no such thing. Do the police just blame everything on that now? Or was it real? Or did it not exist until the lie was publicized?


    Anyway, happy MLK day, all. Great man accomplished great things. Wish more people would use the occasion to talk about the great success that has been affirmative action for minorities and low income people in general; how it makes the country more of a meritocracy, unlike affirmative action for the wealthy such as legacy admissions and unpaid internships and numerous other examples.

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  14. DocAmazing3:15 PM

    Having Hans von Spakovsky comment on legislation and racism indicates not merely tone-deafness, but complete sensory shutdown.

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  15. edroso3:19 PM

    The police said it was the result of kids playing the knockout game. Been meaning to look into it more as I've read that there's no such thing.
    You certainly didn't hear that from me. It's one of a whole line of JD routines that goes back a long ways. I wonder when the kids will bring it all back home and start using zip guns again.

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  16. DocAmazing3:20 PM

    Give Kathy Shaidle credit for honesty, at least. While the rest of the brethren are furiously pushing sanitation workers' strikes and opposition to the Viet Nam War down the memory hole, she's at least recognizing King as having been in opposition to Her Side.

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  17. Mooser3:21 PM

    Krupke, we've got troubles of our own!

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  18. Mooser3:23 PM

    ....and then he got even better.

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  19. DocAmazing3:23 PM

    Why cobble together unreliable and unsafe firearms when well-made examples are available? Wayne LaPierre has assured us that no one will have to suffer injury because a length of car antenna or gas pipe was used in place of a mass-produced barrel in a functioning pistol.

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  20. chuckling3:25 PM

    Nah, it was the New York Times. Not surprised that you know more about JD routines than they do. It's not like hiding the letterman sweater really counts as JD.

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  21. Helmut Monotreme3:27 PM

    You say that like he doesn't have expert level knowledge and first hand experience with the institutionalization of racism via legislation.

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  22. edroso3:28 PM

    I see your point. It will take a lot of legalization to, though, to equalize incarceration numbers across the board:

    "Data on traffic stops also demonstrates the influence of racial bias on law enforcement practices and arrest rates. In the U.S. Department of Justice’s report on Contacts Between Police and the Public released in 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that while white, black, and Hispanic drivers were stopped at similar rates nationwide, black drivers were three times as likely to be searched during a stop as white drivers and twice as likely as Hispanic drivers. Furthermore, black drivers were twice as likely to experience the use or threat of violent force at the hands of police officers than both white and Hispanic drivers." (Source)



    I understand why Gillespie would rather use the weed angle -- I'm guessing his readership is not very worried about the consequences of Driving While Libertarian.

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  23. Mooser3:28 PM

    "Supporting segregation and openly expressing white superiority;"


    As far as I know, they haven't renounced, simply obfuscated, and played for time,

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  24. like, "johnny got his gun" level.

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  25. BigHank533:58 PM

    What, have you missed one of the reruns of Weekend at Hayeks?

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  26. "could DaTechGuy be thinking of Rod Dreher?" No, he's only half-wrong. Dr. King secretly adopted Orthodox *Judaism*, undergoing a bris shortly before his death, during the presidency of Judith Regan, the girlfriend he shared with Bernard Kerik.

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  27. catclub4:00 PM

    Well, NPR had Danielle Pletka for even handed comments on the Iran Negotiations. Not sure if that or H. vSPaz is more unfair to the audience.

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  28. BigHank534:02 PM

    In the amount of time it takes to make a nasty, dangerous single-shot pistol (don't miss, kids!) one can merely cruise suburban neighborhoods until finding a pickup festooned with NRA bumperstickers. Come back the next day while the shmoe is at work and you can steal yourself an arsenal.

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  29. John Fund is kind of building that bridge in the Corner today, celebrating Conservative King indirectly by writing about scary Communist Mandela. I wrote a little piece: http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2014/01/and-very-happy-dr-king-day-to-you-too.html

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  30. DN Nation4:20 PM

    The Cherokee Tribune was actually my first job out of college. Wingnut shit like that was par for the course, but hey. Beer money was beer money.

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  31. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume4:41 PM

    Gloriosky! That's why I'm a jerk!

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  32. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume5:05 PM

    January--you start the year with a whine
    February--you're my little wingnut valentine
    March--I'm gonna march you into climate denial
    April--you're my tax resister when you Heil

    Yeah yeah
    My heart's in a spin
    I love I love I love your daily calendar din
    Each and every day of the yeeeeeaaar!

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  33. witlesschum5:14 PM

    You know what's happened since then, though? A bunch of breathless media coverage talking about the Knockout Game. If it wasn't a thing before, it's probably a thing now. The myth part is also that it's a black thing. Some very stereotypically country gentleman just got arrested in Indiana for walking down the bar and punching people in the back of the head. He got two, but the third one tackled him and appeared to be giving him the business on security cam footage that made the local news.

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  34. MikeJ5:22 PM

    The hed, "Young men everywhere are complete assholes" doesn't get the same kind of clickthrough as, "Zulus are coming for your women"

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  35. AlanInSF5:34 PM

    Conservatives have come a long way from "blacks are shiftless and lazy" to "federal programs are making blacks shiftless and lazy."

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  36. This is true. If incarcerating a lot of people of color is the goal, then marijuana bans are a useful tool to accomplish it, but hardly the only one.

    Privatized prisons are making a lot of money off of the US's stratospheric incarceration rate, and they're not going to just shrug and give that up even if marijuana is legalized nationwide tomorrow. They're a powerful lobby and they'll find something else that can be enforced arbitrarily and at the discretion of local cops and courts, some of whom might just happen to be a tad racist.

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  37. M. Krebs6:20 PM

    "If it weren’t for his race, this empty suit would still be on a Chicago street corner with his clipboard and bullhorn,"

    And if it weren't for Dr. King's race, he'd have just remained pastor of his black congregation in Atlanta.

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  38. M. Krebs6:27 PM

    I'm guessing it's par for the course at just any small town newspaper in Georgia -- or the South, for that matter -- that has an opinion page. It could be a rich vein of idiocy for Roy, but in the interest of sanity I wouldn't recommend it.

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  39. M. Krebs6:55 PM

    What's JD?

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  40. DocAmazing6:56 PM

    Juris Doctor. It's the stuff lawyers do.

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  41. Mooser7:20 PM

    Inside, the worst of them is bad!

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  42. M. Krebs7:28 PM

    Lemme guess. You're over 50?

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  43. mortimer20008:02 PM

    Teri O'Brien: Some people just don’t like the idea of a socialist president who uses the Constitution as toilet paper to whip his ass, no matter what color it is, Brainiac!

    Yeah, Constitution! Whip that black ass. Whip it good. Whip it back and forth. Just whip it. Pay no attention to them haters. Whip 'em off. Whip that black ass real hard!

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  44. parsec9:25 PM

    Now that we've gone back in time on the subject of Juvenile Delinquents and zip guns, recall one makeshift design that incorporated one of those cigarette lighters that had the "hammer" covering the wick. A few fellows would bore a hole through the bottom to the wick and insert a piece of antenna for a barrel. Cops tended to overlook these in searches until the guys started beefing them up by pouring lead into the chamber surrounding the "barrel."

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  45. smut clyde9:49 PM

    President Ronald Regan, and the founder of Prison Fellowship Mr. Charles “Chuck” Colson all utilized their great oratory gifts in a responsible manner.

    "Oratory"? Clearly we are not talking about Ronald Reagan, Hollywood actor, happy to fake sincerity while reading whatever lines were put in front of him. Perhaps DaTechGuy or his meatpuppet parson had someone else in mind.

    And I had never come across Colson mentioned as one of the great rhetoricians of his generation, either. Nixon Consigliere and Dominationist Taliban scumbag, certainly, eager co-signer of any number of pro-war, pro-Christian Sharia declarations... but "orator"? I suppose these christgrifters have to stick together.

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  46. JennOfArk9:50 PM

    That's an impressive display of the dumbass, even for a conservative.

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  47. smut clyde9:55 PM

    There is a strong movement in Catholicism to canonise Savonarola and coopt him as a defender of Catholic orthodoxy, and I imagine that the next step will be sainthoods for Giordano Bruno and Martin Luther.

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  48. Why do you think they call it Black-Male?

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  49. Sometimes I think the new anti-racism resolves itself into shrieks of "Don't make me call myself whitey again." Its that tortured.

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  50. I somehow had been under the impression that Bruce Willis had knocked Hans von Spakovsky out a window to his death, but evidently I was misinformed.

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  51. DocAmazing10:03 PM

    Yippee ki yay.

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  52. "Used in a responsible manner?"What does that even mean? To which uses of irresponsible oratory is that contrasted? Jimmy Carter? Malcolm X?

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  53. redoubtagain10:14 PM

    Not just small-town: the AJC's opinion page is so reactionary nowadays, no wonder they moved to Dunwoody--the revolutions from Ralph McGill's corpse would have shaken the old Downtown building down. Also, the news side now seems dedicated to putting all black politicians behind bars.

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  54. smut clyde10:33 PM

    Sarcasm... Dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.

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  55. Derelict10:43 PM

    That direct line to Hell is constantly tied up as Bill Buckley keeps trying to get through to scream obscenities at Jonah and K-Lo for screwing up the franchise.

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  56. smut clyde10:43 PM

    I mis-heard it as the Gnocchi game, and spent the weekend stalking people so I could cudgel them from behind with pasta.

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  57. smut clyde10:51 PM

    while the shmoe is at work
    I detect a minor flaw in your plan.

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  58. people seem to forget that while reagan was governor of california, he quite figuratively snarled his way through his two terms; indeed, that he sneered and laughed at protestors, students, civil rights activists (latino and african american), crusading journalists, and black lady college professors was what made him a conservative folk hero to begin with - none of that tear down this wall shit. and that's not even getting into his ooga booga radio addresses after he left office.

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  59. I know you wrote Bill Buckley but my brain insisted it was Bill Buckner. It was my impression that all of New England had forgiven him after 2004 wiped the slate.

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  60. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:20 PM

    Is a, insatiable desire to stick one's hand up a corpse's ass listed in the new DSM?

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  61. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:35 PM

    Ah, the dulcet tones of the incomparable Neil Sedated...

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  62. montag212:04 AM

    "Knockout game" is the new "black flash mob" which was the new "wilding" which was the new "demonstration/riot."



    Ooga-booga has near-infinite variants.

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  63. Leah Appet1:06 AM

    Precisely; what they most admire about MLK is his deadness; it's so convenient.

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  64. DocAmazing1:25 AM

    Uh...unwrapping a roll of whip-ass?

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  65. humanoidpanda1:27 AM

    Sorry, but this story about the NSA sexy blackmail is exactly why so much of the coverage of the NSA story is so frigging stupid. Blackmailing citizens, like the FBI did under Hoover, is against the law. Blackmailing foreigners for espionage purposes,which is what the NSA did (and the story you cite nicely obviates by using "Muslims" , who can be either Americans or not in the headline when the body of the story makes clear the NSA is blackmailing foreigners) is something intellegence services had been doing since time immemorial. You can argue that this is immoral and should stop, but pretending that sex and espionage are just now getting acquainted is stupid at best, made to look like Obama is doing something he is not actually doing at worst.

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  66. DocAmazing1:40 AM

    If you actually click through to the HuffPo article that the statecolumn.com article refers to you find that at least one of the people being blackmailed is in all likelihood a "US person", either a citizen or a resident foreign national. Obama didn't invent it, but he sure ain't stopping it.

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  67. DocAmazing1:41 AM

    Muppetophilia.

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  68. smut clyde1:51 AM

    http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Media/MappleImg/SelfPortw_whip.JPEG

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  69. BadExampleMan1:59 AM

    And I guess that has to hold us until October when we can look forward to "why isn't there a TESTICULAR cancer awareness month".

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  70. smut clyde2:38 AM

    Heaven knows, we need the encouragement to self-examine our testicles.

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  71. You mean where is the amphibann, missing link in the fossil record

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  72. Fascinating. Get a reformist jesuit into the pole pope position and the fucking dogs of christ try to rebuke them by getting savonarolla sainted? Hope frzncis orders a few more of the old guard burnt at the stake. One must have a house cleaning every few hundred years.

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  73. glennisw9:28 AM

    I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived!

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  74. Derelict9:43 AM

    The thing you have to understand is that the conservative dynamic regarding MLK goes something like this:
    1.) We can't really run down MLK for having been an uppity blah because people will call us mean names, so
    2.) We have to co-opt him while simultaneously laying the groundrules to still be able to denigrate the blahs, so
    3.) When MLK said that line about judging by the content of one's character and not the color of one's skin, he really meant it. So
    4.) Affirmative action is thus racist and should be abolished as people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But
    5.) As all true conservatives know, being poor is a direct result of some great character (and moral) failing. And since most of the blahs are poor,
    6.) We can run them all down because we're judging them by the content of their character!

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  75. DN Nation10:17 AM

    You have to sift through a lot of banality to get to the really good nonsense. For every classic rant about *those* people, you have about 10 columns complaining about garbage collection or TADs or strip mall right-of-ways or stop signs or zzzzzzzzz.

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  76. Funkula12:17 PM

    Gnocchi ain't pasta! Gnocchi is dumplins.

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  77. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:34 PM

    The Virgin Ben, natch...

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  78. GlockPalin3:36 PM

    And in five years it will be "federal programs are making African Americans shiftless and lazy."

    Progress!

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  79. Mothra9:34 AM

    I went over to Da Tech Guy's blog-that's some real analysis about Dr. MLK. Then I went to The Other McCain. Why do I do that to myself, and how do you stand to check out what some of these folks have to say?

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  80. Shyam Joseph10:44 PM

    This information is very interesting and also very useful. It looks great.

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