Archive for October 1st, 2011
Why Erik Erikson’s childish anti-Palin hatefest on September 30th is a major problem for the Republican Party at large
[ Click above to embiggen. Screengrab of Erik Erikson's childish attack on Governor Palin and her supporters that ran every hour on the hour all day on Redstate.com 9/30/11 ]
Yesterday, Erik Erikson engaged in what amounted to a 24-hour hate directed against Governor Sarah Palin and her supporters, because Erikson believes the Governor owed him some personal duty to announce her presidential candidacy before October 1st, 2011 (when, in reality, the Governor will announce her campaign sometime between October 18-31st 2011, just before the filing deadlines in Florida and South Carolina — according to her plan all along).
Erikson lied to his readers and pretended Governor Palin promised, on a stack of Bibles taller than Denali, that she’d announce her intentions by the last day of September. What the Governor has actually said, consistently and loudly, is that she’d make up her mind at this time — with no date set for her announcement. Erikson evidently has reading comprehension problems — amongst his myriad other personal disabilities — because he missed the nuance of this. Or, more likely, he just flat-out lied because he wanted to throw an amateur hour, hate-filled, sexist, “tell the woman to shut up and go away!”, tantrum on Redstate attacking Governor Palin and her supporters every hour on the hour. No doubt, after this he held a farting contest in his basement with local Atlanta 10 year olds and waited for his wife to bring down a tray of Little Debbies and juice boxes, so all his emotional peers could congratulate him on how “rad” he was for “really showing that bitch her place”.
“Heh heh, you should totally rename your site Radstate.com because it’s so rad, Erik”, Beevis Jr. no doubt told him.
“Yah, I know man, it is totally rad. We are an online He-Man Women Haters’ Club and proud of it,” Erikson probably replied, underscoring what Redstate.com has become in the last year or so under his personal direction as his CNN gig afforded him more cover to bring his scorn for female politicians to a sustained boil.
No, Erik, you are not “rad” as you believe. I don’t care to know if you won that farting contest with your friends (though, by looking at you on CNN, I can’t imagine anyone other than Oprah Winfrey herself besting you in heated seat competition), and you have a right to use Redstate.com to make an ass of yourself all you want…but I hope other conservatives out there who read you understand just how much damage you’re doing to the Republican Party with antics like this.
Republicans at large need to learn a big lesson from the 2008 Obama campaign and how it treated Hillary Clinton and her supporters, because men like Erik Erikson who presume to speak for Republicans at large are treating Governor Palin and her supporters in largely the same way.
For months in 2008 — from just after the Iowa Caucus through the June 3rd South Dakota primary — Erik Erikson’s counterparts in the Democrat Party berated Hillary Clinton and her supporters to “shut up and go away” with childish antics like the stunt Erikson pulled on Redstate yesterday directed at the Palin camp. Obama’s supporters were ruthless when it came to haranguing Clinton supporters, calling us racists for not backing Obama and using every Alinsky-inspired bully tactic they could imagine to persecute those of us who stood proudly with Hillary in 2008.
The net result of this is that millions of people who once considered themselves Democrats — like myself personally, and all of my friends who worked on the 2008 Hillary campaign with me — no longer want anything to do with the party because of the way the Obama campaign, the DNC, and the lamestream media treated Hillary Clinton and the people who backed her.
Erik Erikson and his ilk are going to create a similar fissure in the Republican Party if they continue to engage in behavior like yesterday’s 24-hour Palin hate.
I’ve said this before and will say it again now: it’s men like Erikson who prevented me from even thinking of calling myself a Republican for the last 20 years, because I am so turned off by their sophomoric, smarmy antics.
Despite being a conservative by nature, I remained a Democrat until the summer of 2008 because I never felt comfortable joining the Republican Party because I wanted no part in the childishness of the Erik Eriksons the GOP seemed largely comprised of. I couldn’t stand the labor unions and the influence of the Left on the Democrat Party, but while it was still the Jacksonian/Clintonian Party prior to Obama’s usurpation, at least I felt I had some place to be on the political spectrum where people in my own party wouldn’t malign me.
Erikson heaped so much scorn on Governor Palin’s supporters that I imagine many who read Redstate.com yesterday feel like the Republican Party may not be for them — and I wonder where their votes will go if Governor Palin does not in fact run for President, the way Erikson so desperately doesn’t want her to run.
I can’t speak for all of these people, but only for myself, and my boyfriend Justin, and the friends I’ve chatted with today about Erik Erikson’s 24 hour Palin hate. Because Erikson’s Redstate is such an in-your-face pro-Rick Perry site, and because Rick Perry chose Redstate.com as the platform to announce his run for the presidency, I can’t imagine the Perry campaign wasn’t aware of what Erikson did all day yesterday in heaping all that unnecessary scorn on Governor Palin and her supporters.
I, therefore, will forever now associate this childishness with the Perry campaign…and I’ve thus removed Perry from consideration as a choice for the Republican nomination in 2012.
I had my doubts about Perry as a viable national candidate before, but seeing Erikson behave this way brings back too many memories of watching the Obama supporters behave so disgustingly in 2008 towards us Hillary Clinton supporters. Once again, these actions clearly seem to be rooted in irrational hatred, sexism, and misogyny and I want no part of any candidate whose supporters behave this way. Obama is all the proof I will ever need that a candidate’s supporters are very much a personal reflection of the man himself.
So, I am backing Governor Sarah Palin for president in 2012 and pledge again to do everything I humanly can to elect her to the White House. If the Governor chooses at some point in October, according to her own personal schedule, to forgo a presidential campaign, then the next candidate on my list of support will be the honorable and electric HERMAN CAIN.
Rick Perry is dead to me because of Erik Erikson and Redstate’s bad behavior yesterday in berating the Palin camp for an artificial announcement drop-dead-date of Erikson’s own invention.
Tomorrow, I am going to write the Perry camp a letter telling them as much. I’m sure they won’t care much that a gay guy in Boystown who worked for Hillary Clinton in 2008 and now supports Governor Palin doesn’t want anything to do with Perry’s candidacy…but maybe if enough Palin supporters out there join me in making our voices heard someone with half a brain in Perryland will realize Perry’s close association with Erik Erikson and Redstate.com is costing him a great deal of potential votes.
Honestly, while I think Mitt Romney is a joke of a candidate and is not the kind of president we’d need in 2012, I truly believe if the race ever came down between Romney and Perry in the end…my vote would go to Mitt Romney because yesterday’s Redsate outburst was my very last straw with Perry. I don’t like what he did with Gardasil, I don’t like his awarding in-state tuition to illegals, I am disappointed by his lackluster performances in the debates, and I am horrified by the behavior of his supporters.
Mittens Romneycare may be a severely flawed candidate who is squishier than a soggy cucumber and mayonnaise sandwich…and he may indeed be the Cocktail Party Establishment’s darling…but at least he and his supporters are not misogynist jackasses who behave like fart sniffing 10 year olds playing fort in their mothers’ basements.
If you know anything about me, you know how much I detest Mittens Romneycare…so that should give you an idea of what I think about Slick Rick Perry today in light of Erik Erikson’s 24-hour hate against Governor Sarah Palin on September 30th, 2011.
How do you respond when people around you say “I’m bored”?
I’d love your input on this in comments below: how do you respond when someone around you says “I’m bored”?
I ask because this is something my boyfriend Justin does, a lot, and I honestly don’t know what to say to him every time he does it. Being “bored” is such an alien concept to me, that I just don’t know how to respond to Justin.
I can say with complete faith that I have never in my life said, “I’m bored”.
When I was in grade school, I clearly remember the nuns scolding a classmate for calling something boring. I think it was Sr. Francis Borgia, the sweet, plump, elderly white-haired nun in the most medieval habit imaginable who lectured us on the laziness inherent to “boredom” and how only people without imaginations are ever “bored”. I come close to imagining her breaking into a little song and magically dancing around the room while she educates us on the virtues of imagination, but that’s only because Sister taught me how to use my imagination properly to begin with. That’s why she, and the rest of the “ninja nuns” I had throughout grade school and high school remain forever etched in my mind and are often the go-to sources of wisdom when, 20-30 years later, I’m stymied by situations like this with Justin (who, incidentally, went to public school and never had any “ninja nuns” in his life).
This week, I forced myself to read Joe McGinniss’ truly terrible book on Governor Palin, called “Searching for the Real Sarah Palin”. If the book had been a movie, I would have been searching for the nearest exit and the quickest path to the ticket counter to ask for my money back. It was terrible, and a painful slog to get through, and I must admit it felt more like 3,000 pages than 300, but I can’t say I was “bored” during any of it. Repulsed, disgusted, and amazed this man has not yet been sued by the Governor…but never bored, despite the tedium of reading through his delusional rantings.
McGinniss rambled on for whole chapters, making little sense, and describing in detail putting together a gas grill so he could cook fish outside and watch waterfowl called “grebes” sit on lily pads in the water. His prose was amateur — like reading a third grader’s creative writing assignment — but I still did my best to picture the lake, the “grebes”, the gas grill, and the antlered, toothsome, bloodthirsty Wendigo I know just had to be crouching in the woods just off his deck waiting to much on McGinniss once he’d polished off his grilled trout (with would have made him an Alaskan version of a “turduckin”, him being a jackass chock full of lies stuffed to the gills with fish, or a “McGinniss” for short).
Whenever I read anything, no matter how talentless the author or dry the material, I can always conjure a visual that keeps me entertained, if not enthused, with the material in front of me.
It’s the same with doing any task at hand…if it’s not interesting in its own, I make a game of it for myself, even if it’s just a race to see how fast I can clean the fridge or wash the dishes (to see if I can break my last, best time).
I grew up an only child whose parents left him to his own devices most of the time. I had a dog that was always my buddy, and I had lots of school friends always coming over (when I wasn’t playing at their houses), but I guess as an only child I never counted on anyone to entertain me so in times when I had to buckle down and do something I didn’t especially enjoy, I always had my imagination to keep me company and enliven things.
Justin can’t do this.
He either needs his Ipod to listen to music, or he needs YouTube videos up, or he needs me to keep him entertained and/or focused on something he thinks is “boring” if he’s ever going to do it.
I have to tell you, it kind of horrifies me a little when Justin says “I’m bored!” or “this is SO BORING”. It’s not a deal-breaker in our relationship by any means, but I react to it the same way I would if I caught him clipping his toenails by biting them with his toes drawn up to his mouth (with I actually caught an ex doing once, coincidentally not long before we broke up for good).
I tried telling Justin about what Sr. Francis Borgia said about “boredom”, but tales from Cleveland are never received well by Justin (who I think is secretly jealous of the wonders of my home town on the Cuyahoga) and any stories from my past that begin with “Sister So-and-So always said” are deemed “BORING!” by Justin by nature of including septuagenarian nuns in them.
I have a very good friend with a very sweet, otherwise well-behaved six year old daughter who actually screams and cries when she’s “bored”. Once, when babysitting her, I heard wails coming from the living room while I was making lunch and I thought someone had broken into the apartment and hurt her, but instead April was just sitting there, with her coloring books and crayons laying in front of her alongside a bag full of toys her mom left at my place…and she was crying and screaming “I’m bored! I’m bored! I’m BORED!”.
I didn’t know what to do with her, and I don’t know what to do with Justin either, because “boredom” is such an alien concept to me.
Can you offer any advice on how you handle this when you encounter people in your own lives who claim they’re “bored”?
Do you understand what the nuns taught me, about making anything you are doing interesting and using the intellect and imagination God gave you to enhance and enliven everything you do?
25 Things You Need to Know About Joe McGinniss’ Book “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin”
Joe McGinniss’ book, “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin”, is a poorly written collection of lies and ramblings of a very strange man who spent a summer stalking the Palin family and their friends in Wasilla, Alaska (often incorporating the squirrels and waterfowl of the area into the book as characters, like the author was some sort of bitter, agenda-driven, drag-king version of Beatrix Potter). Kevin DuJan of HillBuzz.org read Joe McGinniss’ book so you never have to — and has collected the only 25 things you ever need to know about “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin” as a public service below.
What follows is an exhaustive attempt to tell you absolutely and definitively EVERYTHING you need to know about this book (so no complaining that it’s a long essay, all Ye of the Twitter and the 140-character maximums; this is meant as a resource for those who want to counter the vile things said about Governor Palin in this book without having to further line McGinniss’ coffers by actually buying a copy of his mutterings…as told to him by geese or squirrels). The book is 300+ pages of craziness that I’ve distilled into 25 sections for you, which also amounts to an identification of the Left’s 25 most common attacks on Governor Palin, since nothing in The Rogue is original. If you’ve been following Governor Palin’s political career with any interest, then you’ve heard almost all of this garbage before (and probably told better by the likes of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and others in the lamestream media). The Rogue honestly amounts to several days of my life that I will never get back, having to slog through this dreck so I’d know what the Governor’s most mentally unstable detractors continue to say about her, so terrified by the clear and obvious realization that Sarah Palin is indeed the woman who’s going to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 and become the 45th President of the United States.
HillBuzz Open Thread: Saturday October 1st, 2011
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
