Hello, and welcome to another edition of Ask Boomer With Attitude, live from Charlotte, N.C., where you can tell the vacation season is over by the increase in the number of reader letters. Let’s get going.
Dear BWA: I know Katrina was a big mess, but other than that one obvious failure, why do you keep referring to the Bush administration as incompetent? — Tired of Bush-bashing
Dear Tired: Oh, I don’t know, the catastrophe in Iraq might have something to do with it, but the simple truth is that the incompetence never stops in the current White House, even to the point of harming national security. For example: Remember the most recent Osama bin Laden video? The inside story of how the White House dealt with it says all you need to know about Dubya’s team of geniuses.
The SITE Intelligence Group, a private company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups, was the first to obtain the bin Laden video, ahead of its scheduled release. SITE told the White House about the video and gave them access to it on the condition that Bush & Co. not reveal they had it until al-Qaida released it. By the end of that day, however, the video had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable TV news. Rita Katz, SITE’s founder, said the White House leak tipped al-Qaida to a breach in its security, and devastated a years-long surveillance operation.
The company had been intercepting and passing along secret information, videos and warnings of suicide bombings from al-Qaida’s communications network. “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Katz. I can just imagine the field day Faux News would have had if the leak had come from a Democratic official.
Dear BWA: Do you plan to keep on top of the sexocrites, as you call them? Everyone I know is sick of these guys and their holier-than-thou garbage. — Chamique Davidson
Dear Chamique: We’ve written about a variety of sexocrites©, including Concord preacher/politician Coy Privette’s flings with a prostitute, and other North Carolinian backsliders who’ve had their self-righteous wieners caught in a police wringer. BUT … did you hear the one about the Alabama preacher in a wet suit?
Rev. Gary Aldridge, 51, of Montgomery, Ala., was found dead in his home in June by a member of Thorington Road Baptist Church, where Aldridge had been senior pastor for 16 years. Last week, the Smoking Gun Web site published the police report from the June incident, which revealed that Aldridge was found hogtied with up to 11 leather straps. He was wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves, slippers, rubberized underwear and a head mask, and had a dildo covered with a condom in his anus. Looks like Aldridge’s idea of the “Rapture” was pretty unorthodox. I won’t get into how a man who was hogtied could die “accidentally” (according to the autopsy report), but I do want to point out that Aldridge was a graduate of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and had worked after graduation for Falwell.
It turns out, Chamique, that you and I aren’t the only ones who are sick of the religious right and their twisted, sanctimonious views. A study released recently by the Barna Group, an Evangelical research and polling firm, showed that under-30s in the United States have a very critical view of Christianity. Eighty percent of Christian under-30s, and 91 percent of non-Christians, believe that Christianity is too “anti-homosexual.” Only 3 percent have a positive view of evangelicals. All of which confirms what I’ve said for some time: the religious right has essentially ruined the image of Christianity for the foreseeable future.
Dear BWA: You shouldn’t say that President Bush and Iranian president Ahmadinejad (sic) are alike. Can you think of any reason why you shouldn’t be arrested for being a traitor? — Dennis Mordalisi
Dear Dennis: Yes — several reasons, in fact. One, you’d miss my column. Two, we have a Bill of Rights thing in this country — you may have heard of it — that protects freedom of speech. Three, treason is when you aid a country on which the United States has declared war. Stating that I wouldn’t hire either Iran’s president or Dubya to manage a shoeshine stand, much less run an important country, doesn’t constitute aiding an enemy. In any case, the question is moot since Congress hasn’t declared war on Iran, at least not as of this week.
Dear BWA: Is it true that former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson’s head was carved out of the end piece of a large bologna sausage? — Just Curious
Dear Just: Why yes, as a matter of fact, it was, as you can clearly see in this photograph, taken before Thompson’s presidential campaign advisers had time to apply make-up to his head to make it more lifelike. I thought Thompson’s meat-headedness was common knowledge.
This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2007.
Forget it Frank. Grooms is a genius. If you believe differently than he does, it is not because good people can differ, it is because you are stupid and bad. It’s unnecessary to actually think about what he says (he obviously hasn’t), it is only neessary to know that because those who disagree are stupid and bad, they may be ignored or marginalized rather than engaged in real discussion.
Look, the Loaf is an interesting creature. Once or twice a year it provides VERY good serious jounralism, and week in, week out it provides good restaurant and entertainment listings. The result is that it winds up with an odd audience. Some are far too high care about anything other than the drink specials listed in adds and where their favorite musician is playing. Some are actual adults who use it simply as a resource for entertainment. Others, such as my self, read it because it has the best porno phone line, massage parlor, and hooker ads. Most of the rest have grown up -and I apologize for the misuse of that phrase- thinking that Groom’s view of intellectually honest discussion is really how ideas work.
You are, in other words, whistling in the wind. Most of Grooms’ readers not only have never contemplated the concept of intellectually honest debate and disagreement, they don’t believe people that don’t think like them should be allowed to express themselves much at all. And God help you if you express the idea that you don’t care for the way your tax dollars are being spent if it involves the arts: you will be told to simply move if you don’t like it.
What you’ve missed here Frank, is that these intellectual bolsheviks don’t care about truth. In a perverse reversal of ideologies, Grooms may be reliably thought of as a sort fo Joseph McCarthy character.
I hope that has been helpful.
I am perplexed by Frank Griffin’s accusation that I slandered the Republican Party by claiming that they tried, in the past, to hold back women and blacks. I looked up the column in question, just to be sure my memory wasn’t failing me. In that column (“The Stud In The Stall,” Sept. 5) , I wrote that the GOP has chosen “to align themselves with this country’s backward, reactionary elements,” which I then defined as “heirs of the same kind of fearful people who’ve consistently been on the losing side of modern history, fighting progress every step of the way.”
It’s those backward folks whom I then described as having opposed blacks’ and women’s rights, not the GOP. Re-read the column and you’ll see it.
The ass-backward folks who fought against expanding women’s and blacks’ rights came in all shapes, sizes and parties, Dem and GOP included. I’m aware of enough history, some of it firsthand, to know that Southern Democrats were the key opponents of the civil rights movement.
It’s undeniable that today’s GOP is aligned closely with the so-called religious right, which produces some of the most virulent homophobes seen anywhere other than in Islamic fundamentalist countries.
But again, regarding Griffin’s accusation, he is mistaken to claim that I specifically accused the GOP of holding back women and blacks.