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18 May, 2008

Incoherent Bullshit by Kathleen Parker

It's worse than I thought.

I'm gonna need a bigger woodshed. And a paddle made of tungsten carbide.

Kathleen Parker, darling of the Washington Post's op-ed page, is competing hard for the "More Inane than Bill Kristol" title. She's written two steaming piles of shit served up hot and stinking in just the past few days. If this keeps up, there won't be enough Airwick in the world to kill the stench.

Let's start with her May 14th column in the Jewish World Review, "Getting Bubba." This chunk of detritus riffs off the twisted theme of a West Virginia voter who said he'd vote for McCain over Obama because he feels more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president." Kathleen agrees with him:

Whether Fry was referring to McCain's military service or Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

No we don't, Kathleen. What we have is assclowns like you who think there's a patriot divide. Somehow, in your twisted, misfiring little minds, you think that there's such a thing as "full-bloodedness." According to you fuckwits, a person somehow is disqualified from being a patriot if their ancestors don't meet some undefined residency requirement. Look at your list - two of three relate to birth, not character. You know what that is? That's fucking aristocratic bullshit. As if a person is more of a patriot for what their ancestors were than what they are. As if "core values" have no meaning if a person is a first-generation American or, gods forbid, an immigrant who believes more in the American ideal than "full-blooded" Americans do. As if a person who displays patriotism is somehow a fake patriot because their ancestors came late to the party.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.


People aren't plants, you stupid bitch. My roots run far deeper than Obama's, and you know what? That doesn't make me more of a fucking patriot. He's far more a "full-blooded" American than I am. He's willing to sacrifice his personal safety, his privacy, and his sleep for this country because he believes in it. You know what I'm prepared to sacrifice for America? Bugger-all. I wouldn't die for my country. I'm too ashamed of the little shits like you to even consider it. The most I'm willing to do is vote for the person most likely to pull America's head out of its ass and write ass-reamings aimed at the people who'd prefer this country remain firmly head-up-rectum. Who's the patriot now, eh?

And what the fuck is this "blood equity?" You sound like you've been hanging around a few too many Grand Dragons, there. This nation was founded by immigrants, made great by immigrants and children of immigrants, and it'll stay great just so long as it keeps accepting infusions of fresh blood. Some inbred idea of what America is will kill off its greatness and leave it snivelling on the sidelines.

The "guns, God and gays" trope has haunted Democrats, and Republicans have enjoyed dusting it off when needed to rile the locals. It's an easy play.

But so-called "ordinary Americans" aren't so easily manipulated and they don't need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off and they have a hound's nose for snootiness. They've got no truck with people who condescend nor tolerance for that down-the-nose glance from people who don't know the things they know.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Clinton's own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to. She understands viscerally what Obama has to study.


How much more fucking incoherent can you be? You say the "guns, God and gays" trope is an easy play for Republicons, and in the next breath, "'ordinary Americans' aren't so easily manipulated." Ask Marie Antoinette on this one - you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Which is it? Easy play or loser's game?

By the way, learn some evolutionary biology, you fuckwit. Clinton's DNA isn't cobbled with American values. This who "American blood" and "American DNA" argument betrays a breathtaking ignorance of basic biology. It doesn't even work as a metaphor. It sure as fuck doesn't explain that fake drawl Hillary likes to swagger around with when she's trying to out-rural the rubes. And that viscereal understanding - you can explain it just as well by realizing that Hillary decided to imitate the Republicons when she decided to go after the xenophobic white asshole vote instead of sticking to her principles. There's no viscereal understanding there unless it's a viscereal understanding of how to manipulate people who beg to be lied to.

Some Americans do feel antipathy toward "people who aren't like them," but that antipathy isn't about racial or ethnic differences. It is not necessary to repair antipathy appropriately directed toward people who disregard the laws of the land and who dismiss the struggles that resulted in their creation.

Full-blooded Americans get this. Those who hope to lead the nation better get it soon.

What fucking "laws of the land" has Barak Obama, who's certainly the target of this shit-cannon of yours, disregarded? What struggles has he dismissed? You don't mention a fucking one, aside from his "bitter" comments, which were brutally honest and therefore anathema to the "choose your own reality" set. Is it a "law of the land" that you have to be dumber than the village idiot?

Your whole column implies that the only "full-blooded Americans" are small-town, rural Christian whites. That leaves out a fuck of a lot of Americans. There's a fuck of a lot of us in the cities. There's a fuck of a lot of us who aren't white, but whose roots go just as deep as those rural Christian whites you're so enamored of. There's a fuck of a lot of us whose roots are shallow by your standards, but whose American values put your American values to shame. America, despite what you think, is a fuck of a lot more than the xenophobic, God-bothering, anti-intellectual, easily-led, not-racist-but-you're-not-really-an-American-if-you're-not-white small town dimwits you're lionizing here.

Oh, and by the way: small town America ain't limited to your definitions, either. You're taking a tiny subset of rural America and turning it into the American ideal. It's an old chestnut that gets roasted nearly every election, and it's no more true now than it has ever been. Your misty-eyed view of America is just the dream of a fearful, tiny mind with delusions of grandeur.

I'm sure you thought that last line of yours was a brilliant Parthian shot. It wasn't. It was a spoiled, ignorant little brat stamping her foot and screaming, "You better do what I say or else!" No one's impressed except for the mental midgets who think foot-stomping tantrums are the height of learned discourse.

I can't even get to your Washington Post tripe. My arm's too damned tired. Sadly, No! and Glenn Greenwald already took you to their woodsheds over it, and all I'm going to do is administer one final swat: rampant homophobia has no place on the op-ed pages of any national newspaper, much less The Washington Post. I know you have absolutely no shame over it, and probably never will - your brain ceased functioning long ago, as evinced by your babble about bloodlines. But I'm hoping for the kind of outcry over your poisonous bullshit that will ensure the most prestigious news outlet you get published by in the future is the Worldnutdaily.

Now get the fuck out of my woodshed. I can't take another second of you.

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