Tied to the Whipping Post
Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 4:01 pm
Is it OK if I post my column here? If not, just delete it....
Tied to the Whipping Post
You know what real torture is? Listening to Republicans’ lame attempts to justify their so-called interrogation methods in the name of protecting freedom and the American way of life. That, and them trying to take the heat off their guy by blaming Bill Clinton for 9/11.
The latter is reminiscent of third grade, when little Johnny got in trouble for giving Tommy a wedgie, and his response to the teacher’s inquiry into why he did it was “Well, Billy put a frog in Susie’s lunchbox.” No matter what little Johnny did, when he got nailed for it, he just pointed the finger at somebody else, hoping their “crime” would be great enough to draw attention away from his own.
The ABC movie, “The Path to 9/11”, designed and produced to perpetuate the GOP MO of blaming the former president for all the woes of the current one, was, as they claimed, “based on actual events”. It was. Nobody, anywhere, is denying the reality of the tragedies on that fateful day. And those people in the movie – real people. So there’s the foundation of truth that the movie was built upon.
Similarly, if somebody was to write a book about Abraham Lincoln being the only American president to board an alien spaceship and visit Mars, they could make the same “based on actual events” claim to truth. There was a President Lincoln. There still is a planet Mars. There is no verifiable evidence of where Lincoln was every hour of his life – so where’s your evidence that he didn’t go to Mars? Actually, that one would hold up to more scrutiny than ABC’s movie, because it is filled with un-truths than can be refuted with documentation and testimony of the still-living people portrayed in the movie.
So the movie has backfired, it seems. Clinton was kicked around, and kicked hard (maybe deservingly, maybe not) during the last two years of his second term. Now, six years after vacating the White House, in order to deflect the slings and arrows Republican candidates will surely face for being associated with this president that has dragged the country into a vastly unpopular war, pundits have pulled out the trusty ol’ flashlight and tried, once again, to shine it on Clinton, the whipping boy. “There’s the bad guy. Leave us alone”. Why not? It has worked for them up ‘til now. Clinton has been blamed for everything from the Spanish-American War (1898), to Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction (2004) to any other catastrophe that might occur between today and the Rapture (which, by the way, is Bush’s “exit strategy” for Iraq). But Bill’s decided that he’s tired of being the whipping boy, so he opens up a can on Faux News’ Chris Wallace, right there on the home field of his political enemies, and now they don’t know whether (to paraphrase my dear ol’ grandma) to …potty…or go blind. To listen to them, Clinton blew a fuse and totally lost control during the interview. In reality, he took control of the interview, signaling to non-Republicans all across the country that it is time to stand up and make Bushco take responsibility for their many, many mistakes, rather than allowing them to change the subject and/or blame everybody but themselves. The Republicans don’t like that. It’s just so much easier, and convenient, to call Democrats “wimps”.
Speaking of whipping posts, have we tried that yet with the Gitmo detainees? Maybe we could plant a bunch of Willow trees down there and make them cut their own switches, like some of us had to do when we were kids.
Does that guy know anything? Don’t know, he won’t say. Here’s an idea: Let’s strap him naked, upside down on a board, and pour buckets of ice cold water on his face until he tells us what we want to hear!
Who thinks this stuff up? Monty Python? Those bearded kids in your 7th grade class who used to brag about tying two cats’ tails together and hanging them over a clothesline?
Bill O’Reilly to a caller on his radio show: (paraphrasing) “If you could save thousands of innocent lives by torturing one person, would you do it?”
Well, duh. That question, used by his knowitallness in defense of the interrogation methods being insisted upon by our president, makes the very broad assumption that torturing that one person will, in fact, save the lives of thousands of people. You don’t know until you try!
It is the kind of logic used in the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials that used to be ridiculed by all us “enlightened” folk of the 21st century.
There are ways of telling whether she is a witch. What do you do with witches? Burn them. And what do you burn, apart from witches? Wood. Now, why do witches burn? Because they are made of wood. So how do you tell whether she is made of wood? Does wood sink in water? No, it floats. What else floats in water? A duck. So, logically, if she weighed the same as a duck, she’s made of wood, and therefore, a witch.
Someday, five hundred years from now, if “civilization” lasts that long, creative people will write “funny” stuff about the United States in 2006.
© 2006 Rick Baber
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Tied to the Whipping Post
You know what real torture is? Listening to Republicans’ lame attempts to justify their so-called interrogation methods in the name of protecting freedom and the American way of life. That, and them trying to take the heat off their guy by blaming Bill Clinton for 9/11.
The latter is reminiscent of third grade, when little Johnny got in trouble for giving Tommy a wedgie, and his response to the teacher’s inquiry into why he did it was “Well, Billy put a frog in Susie’s lunchbox.” No matter what little Johnny did, when he got nailed for it, he just pointed the finger at somebody else, hoping their “crime” would be great enough to draw attention away from his own.
The ABC movie, “The Path to 9/11”, designed and produced to perpetuate the GOP MO of blaming the former president for all the woes of the current one, was, as they claimed, “based on actual events”. It was. Nobody, anywhere, is denying the reality of the tragedies on that fateful day. And those people in the movie – real people. So there’s the foundation of truth that the movie was built upon.
Similarly, if somebody was to write a book about Abraham Lincoln being the only American president to board an alien spaceship and visit Mars, they could make the same “based on actual events” claim to truth. There was a President Lincoln. There still is a planet Mars. There is no verifiable evidence of where Lincoln was every hour of his life – so where’s your evidence that he didn’t go to Mars? Actually, that one would hold up to more scrutiny than ABC’s movie, because it is filled with un-truths than can be refuted with documentation and testimony of the still-living people portrayed in the movie.
So the movie has backfired, it seems. Clinton was kicked around, and kicked hard (maybe deservingly, maybe not) during the last two years of his second term. Now, six years after vacating the White House, in order to deflect the slings and arrows Republican candidates will surely face for being associated with this president that has dragged the country into a vastly unpopular war, pundits have pulled out the trusty ol’ flashlight and tried, once again, to shine it on Clinton, the whipping boy. “There’s the bad guy. Leave us alone”. Why not? It has worked for them up ‘til now. Clinton has been blamed for everything from the Spanish-American War (1898), to Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction (2004) to any other catastrophe that might occur between today and the Rapture (which, by the way, is Bush’s “exit strategy” for Iraq). But Bill’s decided that he’s tired of being the whipping boy, so he opens up a can on Faux News’ Chris Wallace, right there on the home field of his political enemies, and now they don’t know whether (to paraphrase my dear ol’ grandma) to …potty…or go blind. To listen to them, Clinton blew a fuse and totally lost control during the interview. In reality, he took control of the interview, signaling to non-Republicans all across the country that it is time to stand up and make Bushco take responsibility for their many, many mistakes, rather than allowing them to change the subject and/or blame everybody but themselves. The Republicans don’t like that. It’s just so much easier, and convenient, to call Democrats “wimps”.
Speaking of whipping posts, have we tried that yet with the Gitmo detainees? Maybe we could plant a bunch of Willow trees down there and make them cut their own switches, like some of us had to do when we were kids.
Does that guy know anything? Don’t know, he won’t say. Here’s an idea: Let’s strap him naked, upside down on a board, and pour buckets of ice cold water on his face until he tells us what we want to hear!
Who thinks this stuff up? Monty Python? Those bearded kids in your 7th grade class who used to brag about tying two cats’ tails together and hanging them over a clothesline?
Bill O’Reilly to a caller on his radio show: (paraphrasing) “If you could save thousands of innocent lives by torturing one person, would you do it?”
Well, duh. That question, used by his knowitallness in defense of the interrogation methods being insisted upon by our president, makes the very broad assumption that torturing that one person will, in fact, save the lives of thousands of people. You don’t know until you try!
It is the kind of logic used in the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials that used to be ridiculed by all us “enlightened” folk of the 21st century.
There are ways of telling whether she is a witch. What do you do with witches? Burn them. And what do you burn, apart from witches? Wood. Now, why do witches burn? Because they are made of wood. So how do you tell whether she is made of wood? Does wood sink in water? No, it floats. What else floats in water? A duck. So, logically, if she weighed the same as a duck, she’s made of wood, and therefore, a witch.
Someday, five hundred years from now, if “civilization” lasts that long, creative people will write “funny” stuff about the United States in 2006.
© 2006 Rick Baber
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