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...
Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself… III
…and so I shan’t.
However, I do have an additional thought or two that I would like to put down in writing before the whole stupid controversy goes away…and Lord, I hope I’m just scoring these two points at that buzzer.
We have millions upon millions of bright, educated, otherwise-reasonable people in this country who are convinced…beyond the shadow of any doubt…that the whacko Islamic-militant embassy-burning goat-molesters are in the right on this one. Or, if they’re not in the right, certainly should be treated as if they are. That is to say, we should be looking all beady-eyed in the direction of Denmark, and between our ears we should have a thought or two kind of like “if you didn’t draw those damn cartoons, those embassies would still be standing.” In other words, the whacko goat-molesters are just doing what should be expected of them. They aren’t “responsible” in the true sense of the word, as responsibility is applied to thinking humans. They are about as culpable for torching those embassies…as a tornado is culpable for carrying away a mobile home.
I just figured out where I have seen that kind of thinking before.
Have you ever encountered one of those whacked-out families where one family member is just completely off his nut? Or her nut? Maybe the matriarch of the clan has a drinking problem. Or the baby-of-the-family is just spoiled rotten, jobless at 44, can do no wrong. Or the sister-in-law is manic-depressive and out-of-control.
Yeah, let’s say it’s the sister-in-law. Let’s say her name is Hannah. Haven’t you ever known about a family like this? Mark did something awful! What did he do? He made Hannah angry! Months pass…Oh my God, George did something terrible! What? He pissed off Hannah! Next year…that was the worst Christmas ever, Mary ruined it for everyone! How? She made Hannah upset!
After a few years, maybe someone will get married and a new member will join the family, perhaps saying something logical when he forgets to keep his mouth shut. “Excuse me, but…wouldn’t we all get along a little better if there was more of an expectation put on Hannah to take her goddam medication like she’s supposed to, and quit snapping off at everyone? How come it’s always Dave’s fault, or Mark’s fault, or Mary’s fault? How about we tell Hannah to put a cork in it, and if she can’t do that, just ignore her instead of snapping at whoever’s made her list?”
More often than not…the marriage that introduces this voice of reason into the fold, crumbles inside of two or three years. Then the dysfunctional family goes right back to the way it was. One crazy person, one or two enablers, and a whole crapload of weary people who would rather put up with the situation than do something about it. And so it goes.
The trouble is, though, the people who recognize the whacko weird-beard goat-molesters as being the problem — CANNOT just get a divorce to get out of the family. The enablers who like to make their overbearing — and wrong-headed — proclamations about who is to blame, who is a victim, and who is just a force of nature with no culpability for the awful things they do, are proclaiming this for EVERYONE. The WORLD. Not just a messed-up family.
This is one of those deals where evil will triumph when good men do nothing.
What can good men do? Plenty. Just seeing things as they really are, speaks volumes. Protesters burned down embassies. PROTESTERS burned down embassies. A Danish cartoonist did not. And the Danish cartoonist committed no blasphemy — not unless said Danish cartoonist happens to personally belong to a religion that regards this as blasphemy, which, I don’t think he does. And if that’s the case, I hope you weird-beard goat-molesters will shut your cakeholes and pay for the reconstruction of the embassies you burned. Not holding my breath, though.
But that is my opinion…and no amount of “Oh my God, what in the world did you say to HANNAH?!? SHE’S SO UPSET!!” is going to change my mind about that.
If we accept the argument that the Danish cartoonist is truly culpable, and the weird-beard goat-molesting building-burners are just non-sentient forces of nature, this will become true. The cartoonist will be punished, and in the next generation we will see many, many more burned embassies. Just like my metaphorical dysfunctional family can and will see many, many more temper tantrums out of Hannah.
Update 2-15-06: It’s awfully embarrassing for me to have to admit this, especially in a web forum visible to a whole bunch of strangers. Of course this is the blog that nobody ever reads, so how bad can it be. But it’s been asked of me if the previous rant about the reasonable person marrying into the dysfunctional family with Hannah the crazy whacked-out sister-in-law, is autobiographical.
Well, my marriage(s) history has been a rocky patch of road, and to tell you the truth, it was enough of a jarring educational experience about how the world works, which I desperately needed to learn, that…well, I just don’t know. Couldn’t tell ya. I can recall things that happened afterward with crystal clarity, but what happened before & during — really, it’s just a fog. I hesitate to call that “PTSD” because I haven’t seen combat, and I think this association would be a glaring disservice to people who’ve suffered from real PTSD. So as far as I’m concerned, I don’t have it. But I’ll admit, with the passage of time, I’ve noticed I can’t remember things like I rightfully should be able to.
Well, the trouble with Hannah has indeed been noticed by others, in fact, years before I was ever born. There’s a great illustration of it in a famous Twilight Zone episode that aired on November 3, 1961: It’s a Good Life, about that creepy kid who wished people into the cornfield. The episode starred Billy Mumy as Anthony Fremont, possessor of an (unexplained) omnipotent power, which he could use to do…anything, to anyone, anytime. As the episode worked onward, the story focused not so much on the genesis of this power, but on the reaction of those who had to exist in close proximity to the freaky kid.
Anthony had this power since infancy, if I recall right, and had matured into a young boy with a truly nightmarish personality, since, of course, he had developed without any disciplinary limits placed on him. Who could impose such limits, after all? What would happen to them? So Anthony had never been punished; indeed, Anthony had never even been criticized. His detachment from reality grew just as surely as his pant sizes grew.
It ended up being a very famous episode of Twilight Zone. It was one of the few episodes where there were no “central” characters. No “straight men.” No “ordinary” people. How in the world could there be? For Anthony, or anyone else, to conduct themselves in any “rational” way was declared to be a logical impossibility, so we, the audience, were left to supply the role of “rational” observer…watching this endless parade of strange people in front of us, one all-powerful and rude as holy hell, and the rest of them a quivering jello-like mass of puppets deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Twilight Zone made a lot of mediocre, obscure episodes, recalled nostalgically by absolutely no one, swallowed entirely by the sands of time. This would surely have become one of them, if the scenario didn’t resonate in some disturbing way with lots of people. Sadly, I’m afraid it would have been quite difficult to imagine in 1961, what a quivering, jello-like mass of puppets we would have become in 2006, with the weird-beards filling in for the role of Anthony Fremont. Just as Anthony’s parents and other relatives became just as weird and comical as he was, so too are the rest of us about to become just as weird and comical as the goat-molesters.
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