What?

Over at P.Z.'s place, he's got a post up about the -- I don't know what I'd call them: advertisements sort of sounds wrong to me, but okay, we'll call them that: ads for atheism being runs in NY city subways.

The post isn't really about the ads, which are fairly non-controversial (Put up by the Coalition for Reason, all they say is A Million New Yorkers are Good Without God -- Are you?).  It's about that, oh, how shall we phrase this?  That miseducated, overpaid Fox-news Republican-Welfare recipient, Sean Hannity, who, having heard about these ads -- I'm guessing someone sent him a link -- hopped around on TV fulminating, "Can you imagine?  What if some Christian group ran pro-God ads in the subways?  Can you imagine the outrage?"

Dude.

Apparently Sean has been living in a cave, I would respond, except, well, he and his ilk are always responding this way, aren't they?  Almost everything they say makes it clear they don't live in the same reality as the rest of us.  They live on planet Wing-Nut, Planet Xtian Loon-O-Sphere, where Obama is trying to take their guns, where there really is a War on Christmas (despite the huge decorations being put up in my public park as we speak, and the aisles and aisles full of Christmas crap that has been for sale in every store in Fuck Smith for a good week already), where White Christian Males are the truly persecuted people in America, where those huge signs on I-40 (COME ON OVER TO MY HOUSE BEFORE THE BIG GAME THIS SUNDAY -- GOD) do not exist and where, as PZ points out, the hundreds of different sects of Xtian advertising in the subways and every other public space -- why, not allowed!  Just like no little Xtian boy or girl is allowed to pray over his school lunch or read the Bible at school!  Because of the evil Lie-brals!  Because we're the ones who hate!  We're the ones who are truly intolerant!  Not them!

Gah.

How Can I Phrase This?

You gotta love Texas, b/c it makes Arkansas look good.

(Actually, that's what we used to say about Mississippi, back home in Louisiana.  But never mind!)

This utter fucking idiot in Texas has decided it's eeeeevil to say -- no, not Happy Holidays!  No, not Bless You instead of GOD bless you! No --

"Hello!"  It's Eeeeeevil to say Hello!

Why?  Don't be an idiot, you heathen.  It's evil b/c the word hello has HELL in it!

Do you want to say H-E-Double-Hockey-sticks every time you greet someone?  That's just fallin into SATAN's TRAP!

Jeesh.  Do I have to explain everything?

Going Galt

I've been reading Dr. Helen, Girl Misogynist, for over a year, so this Going Galt notion is an old one for me -- not to mention I teach undergraduates.  If you teach nineteen year old boys, you can't escaping hearing about Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, the way-coolness of Ayn Rand, yap yap yap, until you want to stick chopsticks in your own ears just to make it stop.

Also, I read that shit when I was thirteen myself, you know.  I too was a libertarian, briefly. But, you know, I grew out of it.

Why can't these folks?

Or Michelle Malkin?

You live in a country, you're defended by its armed forces, you drive on its roads and cross its bridges, you're protected by its firefighters and police force, you benefit from its social services network (and yes, you do -- even if you don't have kids yourself, even if you yourself have been lucky enough not to need medicare or food stamps, you benefit because other people's children get educated in the public school system, other people get fed and cared for, and therefore aren't roaming the streets in savage hoards attacking your big shiny SUV, you benefit because you don't have to pay a private security force to guard your armed compound, tool): you use the beaches and the national parks, you live in a neighborhood where clean safe water is piped to your house which was built to spec and you shop in markets where the food is (almost always) safe.

All of these things have costs.  They are paid for by tax dollars.  Who do you think will pay for them?  Santa?  Mr. Jesus?  Crap.  You people are supposed to be adults.  You live here.  Pony the fuck up.

Also, what Matt says here.

Please, Dr. Helen and Mr. Dr. Helen -- would you both Go Galt?  Please?  B/c you know what?  Lots and lots and lots of young academics out there need work.  Honest.

This Just In

Andrew Malcolm: Tool

Snarkily, he demands to know how the poor dare to use cell-phones.  They're poor!  Let them...you know...use payphones.

Most of the comments point out that cellphones are cheap, idiot, and homeless guys need them if they're ever going to get unhomeless (how can you look for a job without a phone, tool?), but a few chime in to rattle their rich Rethug sabers: no one who owns a cellphone is poor!  America: the only country in the world where the poor people are fat!  Har-har-har!

I'd like every one of those commenters to spend five years in the Arkansas hills in the bad half of a duplex on minimum wage and no fucking health insurance.  Driving a ten year old Dodge Ram pickup with busted windshield wipers.  See how their tune has changed at the end of that little experiment. Har-har-har.

American Blood

Over at Crooked Timber, a lengthy thread has emerged over Fred Thompason's remark about Americans having shed more blood in defense of liberty than "any other combination of nations in the history of the world," which isn't just silly, it's appalling -- and calculated, of course, since it was part of a stump speech.

He's appealing to his far-Right base, those ill-educated home schooled crowd who have only been taught that America! Is! Great!, not any actual facts, or about anything anyone else in the world might have done. Those folks are quite ready to believe egregious nonsense like that, and like this, which was at World Views lately:

The American idea itself as well as great social changes -- the abolition of slavery and segregation, for example -- proceeded from a Christian worldview.

Which again -- no. But because these folk have been home-schooled and raised on Right-Wing lies, they swallow it. And when other posters point out that they're wrong -- no, those who founded America and wrote the Constitution were, in fact, deists and Enlightenment thinkers; no, in fact, they wanted America not to be a religious but a secular state; no, really, read Fredrick Douglas, it was slave holders who were Christians, well, that just can't be true, it was Christians who preached segregation, no, that's not the case.

Now What Now?

So you might have heard about the fuss, in the NYTimes, over Junie B. Jones, who doesn't use "proper" English.

The spunky kindergartener (first grader in more recent volumes) is prone to troublemaking, often calls people names and isn’t averse to talking back to her teachers. And though she is the narrator of the stories, she struggles with grammar. Her adverbs lack the suffix “ly”; subject and object pronouns give her problems, as do possessives; she usually isn’t able to conjugate irregular past tense verbs; and words like funnest and beautifuller are the mainstays of her vocabulary.

My kid loves Junie B. , not to mention Hank the Cowdog (he's from Texas and says ain't and fixin to). Amazingly, she loves these books because Junie B. and Hank get the grammar wrong: because she knows more than they do. (Hmm. Wonder why the parents in the NYT article can't imagine that possibility?) She likes snickering over the characters' mistakes.

She also likes the other mistakes Junie, and Hank, makes -- these are trickester tales for 8 and 9 year olds. Junie plagiarizes, in Junie B Cheater Pants. The appalling outcome, for my kid, went a lot further than all of my rants about the evils of plagiarism (and yes, there have indeed been many) could ever have gone. Hank thinks his barking makes the sun come up. Will I ever have to explain the post hoc ergo facto hoc fallacy to my kid now? Nope.

Nor do I have to tell her that "I'm fixing to take me a bath" is not standard English.

Because she ain't no idiot, that's why.

Sheesh.

For more on this, read here.