Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Overwhelming Majority Of You
From a culture elsewhere on the planet where you apparently can’t even pick your nose or squeeze a zit without signaling your strength and/or weaknesses to anyone watching — Osama bin Laden sends two messages to us. a) He’s about to kick our asses, and 2) he offers a truce. Pretty freakin’ weird.
It’s the third message buried much further in the transcripts that raises my eyebrows a little:
Your President Bush has been misleading you. He has lied when he said that the people are behind him. Opinion polls have indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want him to pull the troops out of our land.
Okay, let’s noodle this one out. Who is bin Laden talking to about these opinion polls? Is it the “overwhelming majority” who want the President to pull out of Iraq and effectively surrender, or the underwhelming minority like me who are in favor of winning? Maybe he’s going after both?
To resolve that, let’s shift the topic to something else to help tone down the emotional glare. Suppose bin Laden sends a tape to us so he can let us know that, gee whiz, if we haven’t gotten around to seeing that new movie “The 40 Year Old Virgin” we should probably get with it because it’s a real hoot! Ha ha! That Steve Carell, he’s so funny that we don’t know what we’re missing. C’mon you old fuddy-duddies living in the Great Satan that is America, get the sticks out of your butts and have a good time for once. Besides, polls say the overwhelming majority of us have seen the movie and agree with bin Laden. Funny, funny, funny!
See, if you’re bin Laden you wouldn’t do that. Osama’s a sharp enough guy to realize that sure, we got some people here stateside who see things the way he does, and we got some people who don’t — and there really isn’t anyone ready to advance the argument that bin Laden’s a big dummy, although millions of people feel that way about their own President. But when it comes to persuading people to come ’round to Osama’s way of thinking, he doesn’t pack a lot of endorsement punch. Put another way, if I like to hang my toilet paper over the roll instead of under it, I’m not likely to change my mind because Osama bin Laden sends me a message, “I put it under the roll, and the vast majority of your fellow Great Satanists do the same.”
I’m not going to change my mind about a movie I decided not to watch, because bin Laden sent me a message saying hey, trust me, it’s a crack-up.
And the same principle applies for everything all the way down the list. I like to use a spoon to crack open hard-boiled eggs. I’m not going to start banging eggs against the side of the pan because Osama bin Laden cracks his against a rock, and the vast majority of Americans do, too. I like strong black coffee with no cream, and if Osama bin Laden tells me the vast majority of Americans prefer a Vanilla Latte Mocha Machiatto…you get the idea.
And the principle applies to the war in Iraq.
Osama bin Laden is politically astute enough to realize all this, so it’s pretty silly to take this part of the tape at face value and interpret it as a “c’mon, all you Americans who are opposed to pulling troops out…get with it. You’re in the minority.” He’s not using peer pressure to persuade the hostile audience, or even for that matter, to persuade the unconvinced.
This is a pep talk for Americans who already agree with him. The anti-war pinheads. Keep at it, guys. Don’t forget that you’re in the “overwhelming majority.” You might see some discouraging signs soon, so just keep your majority status in mind. Who ya gonna believe, CNN and your buddy Osama, or your lyin’ eyes?
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