Sometimes the stupid things catch up to them as adults. Mitt Romney is in that PR hell now. He supposedly led a group of boys – there’s that leadership thing he goes on and on about – and held down a kid with a ponytail, cut it off, and badgered the kid for being gay. That’s the sort of thing that causes kids to commit suicide these days. It probably did back then too, you just didn’t hear about it as often because suicide besmirched the family reputation so much it was hidden as often as not.

The Romney Hairborne Legion Attacks

One of the bully boys met the poor hairless sot later in life. He learned that, indeed, the kid had been gay and the Romneycut had been a life changing affair. The member of the Romney Hairborne Legion apologized. It came late, but at least the guy apologized and owned up to his stupid youth.

On the other hand, Mitt first categorically denied it happened. Then he said it, um, MIGHT have happened and if it did he apologized. He defended his stupid youth by passing off the incident, if it happened at all, as a “prank” and using the bee’s knees, 1930 buzzword of the day, “hijinx”. Very jolly. Very fun. Twenty-three skidoo.

Now I’ve been on the receiving end of bullying up close and personal and stupidly reciprocated a time or two. But, a wedgie is a prank. Holding someone down, roughing them up because they’re gay, and cutting off their hair is a prank only if by prank you mean something like waterboarding.

But hey, maybe it didn’t even happen. Never know. Mittens forgot. Besides, Mitt says he didn’t know the kid was gay, because, you know, that would’ve made everything different.

Now the Mittenites have ferreted out a passage from Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, in which he cops to once shoving a girl because his classmates teased him about the possibility that she was his girlfriend. He yelled at her and she ran away.

Some conservative pundasses – like Sean Hannity – rejoiced at this “good news”. “We have uncovered somebody who has actually admitted to engaging in real inappropriate behavior as a youth.”  He pointed out that Obama also openly admits he used drugs and alcohol as a youth, saying it “puts Romney and the bully issue to shame.”

A Drinking, Stoned College Kid…Really?

Sean, a college kid who drank too much and fired up a doob or two…in 1980 fer chrissakes? Really? Now that’s some outlaw behavior. Real send ‘em to the gallows stuff. He even copped to inhaling. Nothing like your fellow anti-bully Rush Limbaugh’s brush with OxyContin and hydrocodone though. Good thing he took his rehab time to reflect on his contention that drug addicts deserved life sentences. Change is good, eh Rush? Especially when yours is the life being sentenced.

But if you’re truthful about your own youth – because let’s face it, if you are this stupid as an adult you must’ve been a colossal moran [sic] as a kid – you probably kicked the crap out of some kid every morning before smoking the third  joint of the day while cooling your bruised dukes with a 6-Pack of Old Milwaukee. But we’ll never know because I suspect your memory on that score is as bad as the Scion of Salt Lake’s.

No true blue conservative would ever engage in such brutish, bullying behavior except, well, George the Lesser. Sort of a reverse noblesse oblige and all that. His cocaine and Wild Turkeyfests are well known. He still looks and talks like he has a little Captain in him if you catch my drift. I’d wager Skull and Crossbones had some ass-kicking hazing rituals too. But let bygones be bygones shall we?

So yes, Obama admitted his dirty deeds. Admitted them without anyone even asking. Sean, your boy can’t even remember if it happened. But you know what? However lopsided the rights and wrongs appear to be in both these cases it doesn’t much matter.

Both of them did something wrong. But once you’ve done a wrong, there is really no way to stuff it back under the rock from which it came. It sticks to you like glue.

The only thing you can do is apologize and try to make amends. Adults, when charged with stupid childish behavior, do not say, “Mom! It’s OK if I do it, he did it too!”  To which any wise Mom (or voter) would answer, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Two stupid kids don’t make a President either.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney and bullying: missed opportunity, missing humanity | Michael Cohen (guardian.co.uk)
• ‘Mitt Romney Was a High School Bully’ (goodolewoody.wordpress.com)
• Romney Campaign Helped Cultivate Candidate’s Prankster Image (abcnews.go.com)
• Presidential Campaign Becomes The Bully Versus The Bullied (lezgetreal.com)
• Borowitz Report – My School Days (mbcalyn.com)
• Mitt Romney Was A Gay-Bashing, Physically-Abusive Bully in High School (kylemarchand.com)
• Mitt Romney’s ‘hijinks’ seen as bullying today (sacbee.com)
• Romney sorry for high school pranks, denies bullying (ctv.ca)
• Romney: Sorry for school pranks (timesleader.com)

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NICOLAUS COPERNICUS – 21st Century man.

I know how Copernicus must have felt.  He’s the fellow who first posited that the Sun, and not Earth, was at the center of the universe. For his trouble he was branded a heretic and ostracized by the Catholic church. It turns out Nicolaus was right and the Pope, not so much. It’s a familiar story. It has legs. It’s still happening at the hands of the far right ignorati.

Burying the Copernican Hatchet

I’m not sure some of America is even in the 21st century. After all, the Catholic church didn’t officially bury the Copernican hatchet until 1999. There’s careful consideration of the facts and then there’s a rip in the Catholic Space/Time Continuum. Or just plain denial like many other things, “Johnny, meet Father Bosco. He’ll be molesting you today.”

Across the nation, the electorate keeps putting people in office that are ignorant at best and willfully brain dead at worst. TN State Sen. Stacey Campfield (R), thinks heterosexual people are nearly immune from HIV and the disease reached humans via a gay airline pilot sexing it up with a monkey.

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community,” Campfield said. “It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.”

“Damn you United! Isn’t it enough that you charge us to check baggage?!”

Still, it’s not as if Campfield is alone in his ignorance. No lesser a Far Right-O-Con luminary than Rick Santorum once tried to explain how those filthy homos put us on a sure road to man-on-dog sex (though he denies it today).

As in Copernicus’s day, religion plays a key role in sewing the seeds of dumbassness. The Catholic Church thinks Obama probably wears the mark of the beast and Intelligent Designers think the Earth is 6,000 years old.

Noted Family Research Council crackpot, Tony Perkins, thinks homosexual characters in a Star Wars video game will damn all who play it to hell. Just to be clear software maker Bioware says there aren’t any scum sucking homosexual relationships in the game…yet. So Perkins must be launching a peremptory Iran-like strike against the Dark Side.

The far-right’s fear and loathing of the modern world is astounding. (Oklahoma Is Not OK) State Sen. Ralph Shortey is introducing legislation to keep you from getting an aborted fetus to go with that Big Mac.

“There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors,” he said. “I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be. What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here.”

The Right-O-Cons Seem Sane…to Themselves

Fear is what makes the Right-O-Con’s positions seem so sane…to them. It is the same fear that says a Muslim who has lived next door to you for decades has suddenly become a jihadist because they asked you to celebrate Ramadan with them. It is the same fear that is driving several state and local legislative bodies to enact anti-Sharia laws.

North Carolina state Rep. Larry Pittman,  is borrowing from Sharia because he’s rightfully up in arms over death row inmate Danny Robbie Hembree’s bragging about how easy life is in prison. No doubt the guy is scum and may deserve the death penalty. I don’t know. However, I’m not sure that hanging is any more beneficial than lopping off a hand for stealing.

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner,” Pittman wrote in a personal email. “If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

Some of us look at these cases through the lens of Copernicus’s time. We fear what we do not understand and that fear drags us back into the Dark Ages. The human race has been there and done that.  Now it’s time we check this insane time travel and face the 21st Century instead of acting like a village full of superstitious peasants who believe a beast eats the moon each night.

We owe ourselves better than that or it’ll be, “Welcome to 1473.”

 Related articles

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• For Copernicus, A ‘Perfect Heaven’ Put Sun At Center (npr.org)
• Because Nothing Says “America” Like Hanging a Few Doctors (slog.thestranger.com)
• TN Senator Stacey Campfield Reportedly Thrown Out of Restaurant Over His Anti-Gay Remarks: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
• A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos by Dava Sobel: review (telegraph.co.uk)
• Astronomy-Inspired Furniture – The Copernicus Coffee Table Takes on Heliocentric Cosmology (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)

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SASHA GREY - The former porn star demonstrates her commitment to the community by reading to kids.

Sex work holds an odd niche in America. To some, it’s strictly taboo in any situation. To others it’s a personal choice based on pay, circumstance (both private and public), or genuine preference for the work. Even sex workers have a difficult time in defining it as empowering or misogynistic.

The line between moral turpitude and hating both the sin and the sinner is a thin one indeed. Many people suggest Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart‘s definition was a too-weak copout that opened the floodgates to all sorts of naughtiness and moral rot.

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]“; Stewart wrote in an opinion, “and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

Last week a perfect example popped up in the news. Former porn star and current mainstream actress Sasha Grey participated in Read Across America by reading Dav Pilkey‘s Dog Breath to first and third graders. A predictable screed-screaming uproar immediately followed.

A Fatal Psychological Blast
How dare a filthy tramp read a kid’s book in a kid’s class? Just her meer presence was a fatal psychological blast to pious kids’ mental health. But, a few things further confuse an already confusing situation.

LAURA BUSH READING - Laura Bush demonstrates her commitment to the commuunity...not that much different than Sasha Grey, is it?

Dog Breath is a run of the mill elementary school page turner. There was no mention of sex in the book or classroom. The accused trollope was presumably approved by the Los Angeles school district (though they insisted she never appeared – photos to the contrary). Teachers monitored the readings to help protect the tikes from life’s fleshy evils. And, I assume the complaints probably came from a member of the pious set slogging through the evil porn muck they condemned.

But, there’s another Sasha Grey. She volunteered to read in a successful program. That’s a rare thing in these budget-decimated days. She said she’d volunteer again, though that’s a remote prospect given the current uproar.

Why Were Mommy and Daddy Showing Their Kid Porn?
If you’re one of the stone-casters, remember that she quit several years ago to follow a mainstream career – a move that would seem consistent with the view that she should cast the sin from her life to pave the way to salvation. Further, the morbid preoccupation over who she was didn’t extend to the young scholars. If it did, why were mommy and daddy showing the kid porn? Otherwise, how would they know who Sasha was.

Sex – whether for work, pleasure, or procreation – is a personal choice. How does it matter if you’re an Alabaman needing a vibrator to tingle your nether reasons? How is gay sex something that should offend one who’s never seen what goes on behind closed homo-doors? BDSM? Tickle fetishes? Furry fetishes? The list goes on.

The more important thing here is that she did a public service for the community. We should give her a medal for her public service, not tear her down for having a perfectly legal career that ended several years ago. Your private sexual behavior boils down to this:

Whatever blows up your skirt (pun intended) should be OK.

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• That’s Your First Grade Teacher: Sasha Grey (videogum.com)
• Sasha Grey, Porn Star, Reads To Elementary School, Parents Outraged (bullshitfighter.wordpress.com)
• Would You Let A Former Porn Star Read to Your Kids? (blogher.com)
• Parents Complains after Former Porn Star Sasha Grey Reads to School Kids (blippitt.com)
• Sasha Grey Vows To Continue Reading To Children (pinkbananaworld.com)

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California Sen. Mark Leno (D)  has sponsored legislation requiring schools to include historical contributions by gays and lesbians. It passed on a party line vote and went to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for signature this week.

Gays and lesbians are only another in a long line of groups California requires its texts. It already requires history about women, African-Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians, and labor. But in fairness they aren’t alone in writing history by legislative order. Other states, most notably Texas, have legislated a pantload of changes too – albeit at the other end of the political spectrum.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiono (D) reasons gays and lesbians are under-represented in current history books. True enough, but then he goes on to explain CA needs the legislation, “because of the bullying that happens to gay students.”

For their part, Republicans called it a well-intentioned, but ill-conceived bill. That’s fair too, but Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R) was offended as a Christian that the bill would promote a “homosexual agenda” in public schools.

“I think it’s one thing to say that we should be tolerant,” Donnelly said. (STOP TALKING BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE TIMMY!) “It is something else altogether to say that my children are going to be taught that this lifestyle is good.” (DUH’O!)

Practically speaking, neither argument holds much water.

I have no problem with teaching kids that former UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld was gay, but I don’t think a schoolyard bully is going to let that get in the way of pounding the crap out of a gay kid nor will the gay kid yell, “Hey! Dag Hammarskjöld is one of MY people!” when the bully steals his lunch money.

Hammarskjöld is a legitimate historical figure and should be discussed in the relevent historical context. However, I don’t see how that “promotes the homosexual agenda”. “Martha, did you know that Dog Hammarwhatisname was Swedish? I don’t want Timmy to be exposed to that Swedish agenda!”

History is history. Sometimes Christians make it. Sometimes homosexuals make it. There are contributions from every community. Labor’s there too, as is business and hundreds of other history making groups. Even this enforced historical polemic is history. It highlights the absurd twists we’ll go through to stamp our ideological prejudices on the next generation. It is, unfortunately, the history of our time.

Oddly, perhaps the only good sign in all this idiocy is that kids do poorly in history.

If we’re lucky, the next generation won’t remember any more history than the current pack of loons learned back in their day.

 Related articles

• Gay history in the classroom: bill passes to California governor (theglobeandmail.com)
• LA Assembly approves bill to require textbooks and history lessons to include contributions of gays (therainbowpost.com)
• Reasons Number 5,042 and 5,043 to Pull your Kids out of Public School and either Homeschool or send them off to a Private School (ferrellgummit.wordpress.com)
• The Queering of America (papundits.wordpress.com)
• California Passes LGBT Inclusive History Bill (lezgetreal.com)
• History is So Gay: LGBT Americans to Be Added to CA Textbooks (sfist.com)
• Bill passed to get GLBT history put in California public school curriculum (queerlandia.com)
• California Assembly Passes LGBT History Bill (towleroad.com)

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U.S. bishop resigns after allowing pedophile priest to flee

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is outraged. Outraged because those damn gays are getting married. Bill says that if you open the door, a Rick Santorumesque world holds sway – threesomes and moresomes will suck all the life out of the Catholic church and bring the human race to ruination.

Bill’s outraged that nature disqualified homosexuals from parenting because they don’t have matching equipment. Yet, they insist on marrying to raise children within the framework of stable 2-parent couplings. Or as Bill more electrifyingly puts it, “I mean, let’s face it. If you want electricity, if you want juice, you can’t have two sockets touch each other or two prongs. The prong has to penetrate the socket.”

Make sure you have a good solid ground too.

Methinks Bill should think more about that whole, “the prong has to penetrate the socket” analogy though. Clearly, there are lots of gay prongs penetrating lots of gay sockets as we speak. Presumably lesbians would need to make other arrangements. Perhaps a turkey baster plug for their procreative sockets.

He’s afraid of dysfunctional Hallmark moments too. “We just had father’s day,” he explained. “What do you say to these kids when you have two mothers?”

How about, “excuse me Johnny you have two Daddies. We know that makes picking out a Father’s Day card a little tricky, but suck it up. Life’s hard kid.”

It seems this whole gay marriage thing is a bigger issue than holding Latin-only mass. What would happen if Fridays went fish-free? What if that papal infallibility thing turned out to be wrong? What would happen if Ratzie suddenly said, “Oops, it turns out that pedophiliac priests really aren’t very wholesome after all. Phew, glad I can make infallible corrections.”

Bill, priests are hard to come by these days and your congregations are shrinking. Isn’t it time you and Ratzie drag the church into the 16th century? A time when the Earth is round and the planets revolve around the sun? Americans are running from this medieval nonsense and that can’t be a good thing. Your Big Boss upstairs can’t be happy about your results and you know it’s not nice to fool with your Superior Being.

C’mon Bill, let’s plug Prong A into Slot B and catch up with the times.

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• Another Idiot of the Week: Bill Donohue (atheistrev.com)
• The Catholic League Blames Gays for Abuse Scandals (releasedorothy.wordpress.com)
• Why does the Catholic church allow Bill Donohue to speak for them? (scienceblogs.com)
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• “Bill Donohue: Abuse report’s failure to note role of homosexuality ‘unacceptable’ (clericalwhispers.blogspot.com)
• Jesus Thinks Bill Donohue Is a Dumbass (passthedoucheys.com)

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