The Ever Encroaching Ignorance...

I have been trying to find a way to explain dealing with the ever expanding ignorance that seems rampant in this country. From sex to politics to just plain living, it seems that even the more intellegent of us are being sucked into the vortex of ignorance. Maybe it is easier...not having to think gives the brain a rest...or something.

Then this comes along in the LA Times. A freelance writer's brother is killed. She responds by calling on a ban on handguns. What follows defies description. I offer it to you as evidence only. What Jenny Price faced on one week on the net is what I have to face on in cyber and in real time every day. Maybe you do too. The sad thing is that there seems to be nothing you can do about it. Be quiet and the ignorance continues.....speak out and you are Pearl Harbored.

I truly am at the point of losing my mind over all this. Between this and the equally increasing conversion from active alive people to walking corpses, I feel I am the only one left. There are days when I feel my head about to explode over this.

So if Jenny Price feels that she was skewerd....if she thought she felt what ignorance was that week, she has no earthly idea whatsoever....none.....

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-price13aug13,0,4206961.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

From the Los Angeles Times
Targeted by Gun Nuts
After she wrote a gun-control op-ed, the writer got threats and worse: a blogosphere hit job on her murdered brother.
By Jenny Price

Jenny Price is a freelance writer and research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.

August 13, 2006

'A SPINELESS retard with the character of pond scum." A "whacko," "greedy un-American idiot," "fascist," "whining liberal" and "nasty little gun grabber."

Those are just some of the names I've been called since I published an Op-Ed article in the Washington Post to commemorate the fifth anniversary of my brother's death. After briefly stating that David and his fiancee were shot and killed by the fiancee's mother, who was angry that she had to move out of their L.A. apartment, I went on to argue for a national ban on handguns. The gun control lobby, led by the Brady Campaign, has worked passionately to make guns safer and to regulate their sales. But such measures, I contended, will never significantly reduce the annual U.S. death toll by firearms ⠱2,000 ⠢ecause most murderers use legally purchased handguns and know how to operate them safely.

A couple of days later, while procrastinating on a writing assignment, I Googled my article. And so began my strange, weeklong trip through chat rooms on such pro-gun websites as www.keepandbeararms.com www.freerepublic.com, www.packing.org and www.rightnation.us.

I was not surprised by the insults directed at me. I'm familiar with the name-calling in gun control debates: "stupid," "beyond stupid," "liar," "criminal-coddling leftist scumbag," "Los Angeles coward."I also expected threats: "OK beotch ⦠come get my gun ⦠bullets first."

I was hardly startled by the misogyny: "bitch," "broad" and "bimbo," but also "sweetums," "Miss Jenny" and "Jenny honey" (I'd rather be called a "spineless retard with the character of pond scum").

The sheer meanness could be breathtaking, but it was not unexpected: "Gee, Jenny dear, perhaps they just needed killin.'

"I calmly read accusations that my true goal in writing the article was to sue gun companies and profit from my brother's death. The barrage of counter-statistics was standard too, as were the paeans to the 2nd Amendment and the endless iterations of "guns don't kill people ⠰eople kill people."

But objections to my account of my brother's murder left me speechless.

There were two sorts of challenges.First, many chat-room members declared that the killing had to have been justified and was most likely an act of self-defense.One participant, "armymarinedad," wrote: "I would submit it was a liberal mind-set." Liberals, many others agreed, are mean to their parents ⠭ean enough to warrant homicide. "One can't help wondering," went one response to armymarinedad, "what the mother had done in a previous life to deserve ⦠a Liberal for a daughter."The second challenge was that I had made up the story of my brother's murder. "Law-abiding gun owners simply do not commit crimes," "Gunslinger" posted ⠬ogic hard to refute. But like David's killer, thousands of law-abiding citizens annually become criminals when they pick up a firearm and shoot other people."Chances are very good," wrote "Plutarch" on freerepublic.com, "that her brother, if she has one, is alive and well."

Plutarch and his freerepublic fellows Googled my story about David ⠡nd were encouraged when they came up empty because they were certain that "this remarkable murder" would have received massive media attention."I love to catch them [liberals] lying!" declared "mad_as_he$$."Lamentably, a double homicide by a friend or relative of the victims is an unremarkable news event in Los Angeles County, where 17 people, on average, are shot to death every week.

The Times' and Daily News' stories were brief and buried on inside pages. Because the police took all day to notify our family, David's name did not appear in them.

No matter.

The freerepublic.com gang Googled some more, LexisNexised, scoured The Times' archives for headlines, dug up Social Security records. They wondered whether David and I had different last names: A "rabid feminist" like me, of course, would never use her husband's name. But "Ghengis (Alexander was a wuss!)" surmised that David and I had different fathers because that was so "common in California in the '60s.

"In the midst of my detective work, I received an e-mail from a medical doctor who praised my "terrific opinion piece" and asked for "a link to any newspaper accounts." But I quickly determined that Plutarch had sent the e-mail using his real name (I can Google too).

Plutarch found a photograph of me on the Internet and posted it on the freerepublic site. He worked so hard on the case that I was rooting for him to be the guy who finally figured it out. But just after he promised his colleagues that he'd call the L.A. County coroner's office, "DakotaRed" posted a recent newspaper piece about my family that mentioned the murder. The freerepublic discussion stopped abruptly, and the chat rooms on the other pro-gun sites soon moved on as well.

So ended the efforts to prove that David either deserved to be shot to death or that he never existed.The discussions left me profoundly sad.

"You know," a friend tried to reassure me, "these are just guys who sit in front of their computers at 3 a.m. in their underwear."But when these gun-obsessed guys in their underwear talk to like-minded guys, they build a community that reinforces a level of intolerance that is off the charts. After all, the Internet doesn't create community. People create community and how the Internet is used depends on the people who use it.I'd spent a week in the company of people with closed minds and cold hearts.

And what saddens me most is that vengeful intolerance is all too common and leads people every day to reach for a handgun to kill people.When the National Rifle Assn. commits itself to spreading peacefulness and tolerance among its members, I'd be all for it.

Meanwhile, do you really want these people on these websites (and 40 million other people in the country) to have guns?I can cite statistics, and I can tell you why the right to carry a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun with a 10-shot clip is not guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. But the paranoia and bone-chilling hatred that spew from such sites as packing.org and freerepublic.com make for an equally and unusually effective argument for a ban on handguns.

The New Dark Ages

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Malibu Apocalypto

For those who love to see the migty fall face foward into a pile of thier own leavings, this has been a glorious weekend.

First, poor Lindsey Lohan gets her ass handed to her by her studion for constant worl cancellations for things like heat exhaustion (read: too many parties)....

Then there's Mel Gibson.

Lindsay's problems can be solved simply....stay sober and show up on time.

Mel, on the other hand....

Unless you have been under a rock, this weekend, Mr. Gibson was stopped for speeding down LA's Pacific Coast Highway. When the breathalyser ranked him, he was beyond drunk.....closer to embalmed.

Nothing unusual....that would have gotten a two-liner and a couple of jokes. But like many drunks, Melsy had to open his big mouth.

And in a police report that would have been silenced if it wasn't for Harvey Levin (yeah, that guy on People's Court) and his blog, who got the original report before it was remodeled.

Proctor & Gamble and Amway, working together on 24-hour shifts, for three weeks straight, could not come with enough soap needed to clean out the mouth of Mr. Braveheart.

Lets see, we start with calling a female officer "Sugar Tits." Then a few words threatening the officers.

Oh, but the anti-semetic stuff!

All of it lovingly detailed on Levin's tmz.com site. If you notice, I will not repeat what was said by Mel at the station.

But this is what he said in a carefully written apology, with......I'm sure......his legal team looking over:

"I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested and said
things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable.

"The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I
was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person.

"I disgraced myself and my family with my behaviour and for that I am
truly sorry.

"I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life
and profoundly regret my horrific relapse." http://movienews.virgin.net/Virgin/Lifestyle/Movies/virginMoviesNewsDetail/0,15384,1374420_movies,00.html

Nice.

The reaction has been swift, and not kind. One producer who wants to remail nameless has said he doubted Gibson could ever get over the anti-Semitism taint.

"The drunk-driving stuff, you can get over that if you've got box-office clout," the producer said. "But you can't get over the fact this is a Jewish town. Frankly, I don't know how he can walk into a meeting in this town ever again. (Source: The Austrailian)

So far, he has had TV deal gone sour, and his studio is wondering what to do with Apocalypto, the Mayan-language adventure planned for Xmas release.

The bigger problem is who want to work with the guy again.

If you remember when Mel was plugging Passion of the Christ, the movie was seen as having an anti-Jew taint. Mel's dad did not help much. A passionate denier of the Holacaust, Hutton Gibson has said "Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," to the New York Times in 2003. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, 6 million?"

For his part, Mel never said he disagreed with Dad, although he had plenty of times to do it.

However, Mel said that Passion was not an anti-semetic work and that he was not one either.

You lying scheming stinking nasty sack of liquid crap. Mr. Gibson.

May we now add hypocrite as well.

The question now is, who want to work with a man who has said such horrid things. He may be in alcohol rehab, but what of rehab of the heart. Would a trip through the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles change it. Or talking with holacaust survivors?

I used to like Mel. I still think that Lethal Weapon 2 was, frame for frame, the best action movie ever made. I think he is a highly talented filmmaker and storyteller. But this trumps it all.

If you want my business, it's simple. Renounce your dad on this one thing. Hutton Gibson is wrong. His hatred is wrong. And your accepting it is extremely wrong.

Renouce the hatred. Otherwise, from here on, personally, you are no one to me.