Assholes of Last Week

I was collecting these last week, but got caught up in a silly little project that I will post about when it is finished and forgot to set it up. I would add Assholes of this week, but that silly project is still occupying my time. (And when I write "silly," I mean "Richard Dreyfus and the mashed potato Devil's Mountain in Close Encounters silly," but without the aliens.)

I really shouldn't read the news in the morning. I'm too grumpy and uncaffeinnated to deal with some of these guys.


1) David Brooks for his "Moderate's Manifesto." I think he has been drinking bad bong water. He writes, "The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment." Where the hell has he been for his whole life? He then goes on to argue that we must pity the wealthiest 5% who will "bear the burden" of tax reform. Moderates have to "block the excesses of unchecked liberalism." (Again, I ask, why is domestic spending a horror that will throw us into a condition not unlike a Stalinist satellite nation, while war spending that benefits only the wealthy who invest in it seen as a necessity, never a drain?) Brooks references Hamilton -- Hamilton! -- a vision of government that is over 2 centuries old! -- and a nation full of Hamiltonian moderates, all of whom must stop this incessant fighting between the extremes, stop the crazy liberal spending, and save the nation. What world is he living in?


2) These companies who call up the bereaved and talk them into paying the dearly departed's debts, even when they have no legal obligation to do so -- and often don't know that they have no legal obligation. The article describes a company that manipulates the stages of grief in order to exact payments from the surviving relatives. Worse, they get the survivors, who are often quite poor, to pay willingly and to thank the company for their "help." Vultures.


3) Rush Limbaugh, for general purposes, but also because he now considers himself relevant again. Worst than that, he is not an elected person, but even the elected officials are treating him as if he has actual power -- and maybe he does of a sort, but it would disappear in an instant if he ran for political office. His brand of journalism is dangerous and irresponsible. He reminds me of the radio broadcaster in that movie Hotel Rwanda, the one who kept calling for the extermination of "cockroaches."


4) Anyone who has the power to let Limbaugh think he has real decision making power. Apologize to him for calling him an entertainer? Please! That should be the starting point for further criticism, not the point from which to backtrack.


5) Whoever thought they were being clever, controversial, cute, or simply indulging in juvenile antics about "political correctness," for popping a book about monkeys into a display of books about Obama. Do they really really NOT get the racist implications? Do they really really NOT understand the whole pseudo-scientific history behind those implications? Or are they just being assholes? Do they really not get that black people don't just see such actions as insults against only Obama but also as insults against a whole race of people? (Via Literary Obama)