Like many of you, because of Friday’s afternoon events, I was eagerly awaiting today’s Rush Limbaugh Show. This was going to be the Super Bowl of spin and schadenfreude.
Sadly, it was not to be, as Rush is off for the week, and he had some c-list yakker in his place (and again, I am simply amazed at how deep the wingnut bench is in talk radio). The show was almost complete Palin, with the usual nonsense hauled out left and right (liberals hater her because she lives a pro-life life, etc.), but things took a turn for the weird in the third hour when the Michael Jackson funeral came up as a subject. The fill-in blabber mouth then stated (and I’m paraphrasing, because I was tying tomato plants and weeding and had nothing to write on):
“I bet 95% of the people going to the Jackson funeral are the ones taking potshots at Palin.”
What does that even mean? We’ve talked over and over again how the wingnut conversation is now nothing but disjointed imagery and codespeak that only they understand (I believe DougJ referred to it as a wingnut version of Pale Fire), but that to me is a masterpiece. I’m someone who not only trafficked wingnut talking points at one time, but to this day keep up on all of them, and I simply can’t figure out what the hell that means. Beyond being unprovable, it simply makes no sense. Is there a racial component that I am missing? Is this Breitbartian Big Hollyweird four martini lunch nonsense? Have I missed a talking point or something?
rafael
The funeral will be attended mostly by black people; it’s them blacks that are insulting and attacking our Christian virginal pro-life mothers that hunt and use office to attack their enemies like good Christians.
ACORN will be at the funeral, ALSO.
zmulls
Hollywood liberalism.
Rock music.
Freak show.
Child molester.
All the stuff that the “not real” America is made of.
(There’s got to be some measure of “Thriller” == “occult” in there somewhere as well)
Persia
I think it goes something like this:
1. Black people are icky.
2. Michael Jackson was extra icky, because not only did he make more money at entertainment than any white person pretty much ever, he was mentally ill and looked funny. Also, he may have diddled little boys.
3. Sarah Palin is exactly the opposite of Michael Jackson, because not only was she authentically white and female, she failed at lots of things and likes to quit.
4. Also, real music is Bach and Mozart, not this crappy jungle music. And Michael Jackson was icky.
I may have missed a step or two there.
dmsilev
In the absence of a better theory, I’m going to go with “Black people”. It’s possible that it’s a “rock and roll is corrupting our youth” rant, but that sort of thing passed its sell-by date several decades ago.
-dms
Crashman06
My bet is this. Too many previously unbelievable things are happening too fast. Their minds are starting to break down. They are already starting to resemble crazy hobos, drunk on Night Train, and screaming nonsense at random pedestrians.
zmulls
I think you missed that one. Real music is Hank Williams and Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks.
KeithW
“I don’t like those people who will be at the funeral. I don’t like the people who took potshots at Palin. They must be the same people”.
Impeccable wingnut logic.
Ronnie Pudding
That is weird. Maybe it’s suburban-urban vs. rural?
More likely, the guy’s just going with an extreme Manicheanism, where all “bad people” are thrown together in one group. Betcha they work for ACORN too.
Louise
zmulls has it just about right. It’s really as simple as “MJfans = WeirdnessTolerators = Liberals = PalinHaters.
I saw a bumper sticker two days ago that said “Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.” Lovely.
Calouste
@zmulls:
Willie Nelson is a DFH basically, just with different music.
Ash
Liking Michael Jackson = liking accused child molster = obviously hating child loving honorable pro-life mother.
Well, Hank Williams sure. But Willie Nelson is just a dude who’s high all the time and isn’t really claimed by anyone. Also, I like Garth Brooks. Replace with Toby Keith.
slag
The code for this is the same as the code for everything else in greater wingnuttia: If it’s BAD, it’s LIBRUL! This has been the code for decades and will continue to be the code no matter what the subject matter is. That’s why it’s senseless. There’s only one point that Limbaugh and all others of his ilk want to make…liberalism is the root of all evil.
Broken economy–liberal! Happy holidays–liberal! White supremacy–liberal! Unhealthy obsession with celebrity–liberal! Whatever the outrage du jour is–liberal!
That’s it. Nothing else.
Ronnie Pudding
@zmulls:
Willie Nelson *is* real music. if there must be two sides to this world, he’s on mine. Jacko can sit with Palin for all I care.
fastandsloppy
Come on, this isn’t that hard.
Michael Jackson = ethnic effeminate child molestor
All Liberals = ethnic effeminate child molestors
And since All Liberals are Bad and Sarah Palin is Good, all people at the Michael Jackson service will be against Sarah Palin.
John, you are keeping up with the lingo, but you are losing the ability to THINK like a conservative.
David Atkins
African-American hollyweird freak show pedophile secret Muslim blah blah blah blah.
I hate to get into university cultural studies speak, but it’s all about “othering”. You can’t get more “other” than Michael Jackson, really, so by stating that 95% of those who hate Palin are Michael Jackson worshippers, it’s just a reinforcement of the “real Americans” versus the “others”.
used to be disgusted
I would vote for the zmulls theory:
big media / sexually ambiguous / unreal America
vs.
homespun / heterosexually married / real America
But even on that theory, the grammar doesn’t make sense.
Death By Mosquito Truck
File this one under Who The Fuck Cares and keep weeding.
Colette
I am aware of all internet traditions, and this is a manifestation of the tradition in which you click on an innocent-looking link and it takes you to a porn site from which you cannot escape except by manually powering down your machine. Except in this case, instead of being highjacked by a hostile site, the wingnut brain has been highjacked by a hostile meme in which everything yucky = liberal and vice-versa. It’sa good thing you don’t have a link, because it might highjack us, too.
Punchy
Translation–Those Scary Negros will bed your white daughter, and color up your family tree. Boogah boogah!
Ash Can
@Persia:
Those Real Uhmurrikens wouldn’t be caught dead listening to that pointy-headed elitist stuff. Besides, Bach and Mozart were a couple o’ them there pansified soshulistic Yur-pee-ans who wore girly pants and faggoty hairstyles and were probably teh ghey on top of it. And their music had too many notes. Also.
David Atkins
@Persia
Are you kidding? That’s effete liberal elite. Real music is Ted Nugent.
ellaesther
I’ve only recently started commenting in these parts, so I hesitate to throw a monkey wrench into the works, but here’s my theory:
It’s meaningless.
This is a slice of the American political landscape for whom the linking together of words into something resembling a series of sentences has become Good Enough (see: Sarah Palin).
For a sizeable chunk of the American far-right, there does not seem to be any real need for “logic” — so long as the speaker appeals to my vanity and generally states opinions that mirror my own, however ill-formed.
Common Sense
Personally I liked the rant where hotshot rookie was blaming the rest of the GOP for taking her down and let loose with this gem (paraphrasing):
If these guys had any sense, they’d roll with Haley Barbour. No, I don’t like the guy. But he has managed to avoid diddling random people or breaking the law (that we know of) while in office. And there is a well established meme that he was the sole responsible politician during the Katrina fiasco (again, not saying I believe it, but the perception is real). And he doesn’t sound completely befuddled every time he opens his mouth.
I have full faith that they will let these radio loons lead them over the cliff.
Comrade Stuck
In these heady days of rampant Looney Tunes, what something means is not relevant. The correct question should be. Where is the nearest teevee, and how do we get on it?
Palin supporters just have Bizarre Jackson Coverage envy, and are projecting from the bowels of crazy, as they are wont to do..
jl
because Palin is almost as weird as MJ, and his fans are jealous of the competition? I dunno.
Punchy
This is comedy genius.
fastandsloppy
@Punchy:
Um, Wingnuts may be crazy and frequently stupid, but I don’t imagine anyone was concerned with Jacko seducing their daughter.
Bootlegger
It means the Michael Jackson’s fans never quit on him like Palin quit on Alaska. Or, that Hollyliberal-Scarynegro stuff.
Ash Can
@Punchy: Thank you, but I cannot claim credit. I ripped that off shamelessly from the movie Amadeus.
Keith G
@Colette: Brilliant, just brilliant.
FlipYrWhig
I’m pretty sure it’s not a racial thing this time. It means “homos and weirdos.”
Punchy
@fastandsloppy: Debbie Rowe….white….Prisilla Pres…white. This is what I’m drawing from.
But yeah, white sons were in the crosshairs, too……or at least some type of hairs.
Evinfuilt
@zmulls:
Agreed, Bach and such is for those filthy elites.
geg6
Despite his every seeming effort, Michael Jackson was blackety, black, black, black.
So are most of the people who will be at the Jackson tribute. That is, blackety, black, black, black.
So is Barack Obama. That is, blackety, black, black, black.
Easy peasy, John.
Litlebritdifrnt
Slightly related the Repubs get caught with their hoods down again.
http://wonkette.com/409676/young-republicans-leader-gal-thinks-its-super-funny-to-call-president-obama-a-coon-because-he-is-black
How many is this now? One of these days they are gonna learn, then we’ll be in trouble.
Persia
@David Atkins: I actually saw an article during the Michael Jackson stuff where someone was claiming no music could touch the beauty of Bach. Wish I could remember where because it was win.
Ted Nugent is Pure but his music was influenced by Teh Blacks, so I’m not sure he counts. Most of the country stars these days probably qualify though.
different church-lady
It’s the Chewbacca Defense, applied to everything in the universe.
The strategy is, “Say something so nutty that all the liberal’s heads explode from trying to figure it out.”
fastandsloppy
@Punchy:
Point taken. But the conception of virginal white womanhood being under assault from the predatory black man on which so much racist hysteria is built requires… a predatory black man. Obviously M.J. got a rep for being predatory, but certainly not with ladies.
However, virulent racism is not tightly coupled to logic so I admit you may be perfectly correct.
I still stick to my interpretation that M.J. = black, faggy and weird = Liberals = bad.
ronin122
@Persia:
Isn’t that “elitist” music? The kind you listen to with your arugula sandwich?
Common Sense
Wingnut music is summed up in one word:
Freebird
R.SZ
I thought it was actually pretty clear for wingnuttia speak.
“I bet 95% of the people going to the Jackson funeral are the ones taking potshots at Palin.”
(1) Liberal elite media going gaga over the pedophile black dude’s death are similarly going gaga over Palin’s choice to resign. And oh, black people are pedophiles but if you point that out when they die people hate on you. And, ratings. (See Obama is ratings gold stories from Politico/AP)
(2) Black folks are against Palin and for Obama, Obama’s black and we have to rally to our girl even if she did quit or else he’ll get an avalanche of support from the blacks, the browns, and liberal whites JUST as Micheal Jackson’s gotten a better shake dead than he did alive.
(3)You’re either with Sarah and will continue to support her bid to be President or you’re against Sarah and therefore supporting the insanely popular black dude in the White House; just like you’re either going to Micheal Jackson’s funeral or you’re not.
That’s my take.Winguttia – lit crit. for the political class. You can write a book on a sentence. It’s actually poetic in it’s density and metaphor.
Molly
Yes, off-topic, but I can’t help but be amused…
John, the Sarah Pac ad in the left-hand nav banner is PRICELESS at this time. I thought I might miss Pamela Anderson’s extra arm, but the new ad is even better.
jaime
According to Freeperville :
and, also, also
Brick Oven Bill
Hey, I like Mark Belling. He is from Milwaukee.
The point he was probably trying to make is that if you look at the type of person who was attracted to Jim Jones’ Rainbow Family, this is the same demographic that is attracted to Michael Jackson and, by extension, the modern left specifically mentioning the Obama Administration. This demographic includes victims and apologists, among others.
Elements of this demographic get threatened when some female who is married to a blue collar guy rises to the heights that she has, as it makes it harder to play victim or apologist. In this manner, Palin represent’s a personal threat to these people’s psyches, and they lash out at her and her family.
On the flip side, lots of working class people see Palin as standing up to the Harvard-Yale-Stanford crowd, and really like her. This is why she is so polarizing. Not many people with engaging, productive jobs are likely to be found at Michael Jackson’s funeral though, unless they are there for their cut.
I believe Belling to be wrong however, and predict that if there was a personal approval poll at Michael Jackson’s funeral regarding Sarah Palin it would play out as follows:
w/ No Free Cigarettes
I like Sarah Palin: 2%
I do not like Sarah Palin: 35%
Who is Sarah Palin: 45%
No response: 18%
w/ Five Free Cigarettes
I like Sarah Palin: 2%
I do not like Sarah Palin: 35%
Who is Sarah Palin: 61%
No response: 2%
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Given that it’s from a right-wing radioland c-lister, my guess would be that he thinks it’s just a clever way of calling Palin crititcs “n*****lovers”.
.
KG
Sorry, just have to ask, when did “Also.” become a sentence unto itself?
Zam
Uhh pretty certain it’s because liberals molest children. You should be able to imagine the connections made in the wingnuts brains.
Dan
There is ALWAYS a racial component. ALWAYS.
JenJen
Easy.
Michael Jackson was not a real American.
Right? Do I win a prize?
Cris
Hang on a sec, I thought Michael Jackson was a big Republican hero who could only be a product of the free market, someone ClintonObammunism and central planning could never have produced, who flourished under Republican presidencies and foundered under Democrat presidents.
Why have they forsaken him?
Xenos
@KG: I think it was used as a coda to one of Mooselini’s rambling non-answers to Charlie Gibson. Maybe it was Katie Couric. Also.
Cris
@KG: Wonkette. Also.
Punchy
Isn’t there also an element of: Scary Negros attending service in middle of workday =’s Scary Negros without jobs and making money =’s just a bunch of lazy welfare Negro mothers and deadbeat dads stealin hardworking tax dollars that could be spent at strip clubs…
geg6
@Brick Oven Bill:
And, once again, BOB makes my point.
Blackety, black, black, black.
Colette
BoB@BoBSpoofWIN:
Depends. What kind of cigarettes?
D-Chance.
@zmulls: No real country music fan would ever mention the name “Garth Brooks”. Especially in the same breath as Williams and Nelson.
Bah, no Toby Keith, either.
Try Williams, Nelson, and George Jones.
GregB
The National Re(fuse)view gets a twofer on their newest cover.
Obama slipping on a white rubber glove.
The white glove is pure Michael Jackson, but that evil grin says “you know what I do to white wimmen”, now bend over and watch this drive.
-G
Brick Oven Bill
Marlboro Mediums. Shorts.
David
Translation:
95% of all perverts are Liberals.
Skepticat
A lot of their bizarro code does indeed belong in the privy.
JenJen
@Brick Oven Bill: Ahhh. Thanks.
Common Sense
@Brick Oven Bill:
Shoulda gone with Newports BoB.
someguy
This is pretty good analysis. I think he also made some references to the Epic of Gilgamesh in that comment, and there are traces of his grandmother’s recipe for redeye gravy.
I mean as long as we’re imputing both deep thought and at-least-internally-consistent conspiratorial thinking to what amounts to crayon scrawl from a gnat-sized intellect…
Jennifer
If 95% of the people taking potshots at Palin are going to MJ’s funeral, wtf are they planning on holding services? I’m not aware of any church that can accomodate 100 million people.
gex
It’s the continual right wing “othering” of people and blaming the others. As they ramp it up in scale they will have to start using Army slogans, such as GOP: Party of One.
Ian
In his own words, “You Know I’m Bad! I’m Bad. Come on, you know. And the whole world has to answer right now just to tell you once again — who’s bad.”
Not only is he bad (Bad!), but he’s objectively fascisto-communist. There he is, telling the whole world what to do. Don’t get me started on “Black or White.”
He could not possibly be more liberal, could he?
Crashman06
@Common Sense: Or the Kools. I know it’s a monday, but you’re not trying hard enough, BOB! Turn it up a notch!
mcc
Put in this light, I suddenly realize that Palin’s move makes a lot of sense and she is showing leadership that the entire GOP can indeed learn from. Speaking as a California resident, I speak with utmost sincerity when I say that Arnold should follow her example as soon as possible.
JGabriel
Common Sense:
That’s simplistic. Wingnut music is a diverse tradition with a great deal of variety. Sure, Lyrnyrd Skyrnyrd’s Freebird sums up one branch, but you can’t completely encompass the true multiplicity of wingnut inventiveness without also including Lyrnyrd Skyrnyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, and its famous couplets:
And:
.
Andy K
@Jennifer:
I agree. Math IS dumb.
gnomedad
@GregB:
For a moment I parsed this like “slipping on a banana peel.”
JGabriel
KG:
During Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric.
.
Common Sense
@JGabriel:
While I would never deny the value of “Sweet Home, Alabama” in the wingnut musical pantheon (or the love of common easy life so often imitated in “Simple Man”), it is hard to say they are anywhere near the level of Freebird when the entire audience spends the performance cheering for another song.
fastandsloppy
@jaime:
So grabbing your crotch publicly is suppose to be a criminal offense now in wingnuttia?
Goodbye professional baseball. You shan’t be missed.
Alyson
I think the freak-out here is with white people who admire non-white people. Sick love of the other = sick hate of your own. Ties to the confusion with women who don’t admire Palin.
Bill E Pilgrim
Okay. This is amazing.
Some at TPM were saying it’s similar to this.
Anyone want a crack at why it’s not?
Wait let me rephrase that.
I think the difference between the Economist cover and the National Review cover is pretty clear. It’s a question of rectitude.
@GregB: Just scrolled up and saw you had mentioned this (gotta stop reading this thing
from the bottom upbackwards) and yes, that’s exactly what it means. Or else just the old fashioned fear of having it done to them by “one of them”. Amazing.me
Belling, really? Rush is trolling the bottom for fill in hosts. AFAICT, Belling has never said (much less done) anything useful.
geg6
@fastandsloppy:
Not to mention, 90% of the entire male population of the United States at any given time.
gnomedad
They’re more like guidelines.
Cris
@gnomedad:
Aaargh, now I’m interpreting the banana peel phrase in reverse, and imagining slipping a banana peel on… never mind.
gnomedad
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Hee-hee, you said “rectitude”.
bago
Also. Also.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Ash:
Fail. As it turns out, Toby Keith is a lifelong Dem and possible closet DFH. He writes those songs because it pays well.
Alan
You should watch the latest bloggingheads. It features Ann Althouse who seems to be tuned not only the RW dog whistle but also offers analysis of Rush Limbaugh. Whom she seems to respect a lot.
You Don't Say
I think the code is Big City Pedophile Lovers vs. Real America Family Values Icon.
bayville
I think the code is anyone w/rhythm hates Palin and loves Thriller .
I could be wrong though, since I am new to the Wingnut secret-handshake society.
geg6
I always forget that you were one of them, John. And I saw something the other day that I found much more difficult to parse than this Michael Jackson stuff (which is still just about blackety, black, black, black).
Here is one of Peter Ferrara’s ideas of things Sarah Palin could be talking about as her higher calling:
I honestly didn’t know that there is a wingnut campaign against CFLs. I mean, I know they don’t believe in global warming or protecting the environment and all that crunchy granola stuff. However, the benefits of CFLs are not limited to the green benefits. So I can only conclude that they have a thing about saving money on their electricity bills and by not having to replace their bulbs so often. Really?
bago
@geg6: Well, Compact Flourescent is obsolete anyways. 100 watts for an incandescant, then 20 watts for a CFL, and almost 2 watts for an LCD. Because I live in a cool city, we’re using LED’s all over.
Cris
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon): As someone who likes to surprise people with the “Toby Keith is a Democrat” revelation, let’s recognize that the real lesson here is that party affiliation tells you very little about a person’s values. And it’s certainly no contradiction that a lifelong Democrat would also be a cheerleader for war.
Bill E Pilgrim
@bayville: I think they just fear a huge fairly undifferentiated mass, be they black, be they muslim, be they black and muslim, or people who listen to people who are black, and so on.
I remember my uncle used to think that “hippies” were dangerous. I mean all of them, he saw no difference between long haired peaceniks and street thugs, they didn’t wear suits so they were violent and dangerous, if you picked one up hitchiking you’d end up dead for sure. He was a very sweet guy too, actually. He just thought that anyone not dressed the way he was must be a dangerous low life.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I guess that makes Dick Cheney a mighty tolerant man, seeing as how he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. I wonder what is the word for the virtue of a man who doesn’t have any indictments either?
gnomedad
@bago:
Really? Where is that? What uses are you seeing? I live in the Chicago ‘burbs, and a lot of traffic signals use LEDs, but that’s about it. Some consumer lighting products are just starting to appear at non-insane prices.
/LED geek
GambitRF
Does that mean Glenn Beck has to break out his Barbie dolls again?
gbear
@geg6:
This is one of Michelle Bachmann’s big issues, to the point where she introduced a bill to protect ‘freedom of choice’ regarding which light bulbs we can buy. I am so ashamed that I know about this…
Brachiator
@jaime:
RE: According to Freeperville :
Uh, Elvis.
RE: and, also, also
Elvis! Elvis! Elvis!
Uh, Kenny Rogers.
These Freeperville folk are comically delusional.
John Cole asked whether there was a racial component to this. And the answer is, yes, with a disconnect from both reality and history.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Cris:
That’s why the rightwing caterwauling is so perplexing. Save for a couple of hot-button social issues, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between many/most Repubs and Dems. Sure, you have outliers like Bachman and Kucinich, but for the most part they’re all rich, middle-of-the-road white dudes.
scav
@Ash: WHICH Hank Williams?! I’m willing to abandon #2 but not Senior, no way, no how. I think they won’t want #3, but I’m not sure – don’t much care either. Just hands off Senior.
geg6
@gbear:
Well. I guess I missed that. But what’s the problem? We have freedom of choice on that. I still see the stores around here stocking more incandescents than CFLs, so they are still on sale. And if she’s against saving money, well, hey. Nobody’s stopping her from blowing her cash any way she wishes.
I haven’t seen LEDs sold for consumer use. All the traffic signals are being changed over to save municipalities money. But I haven’t seen them for home use yet. That is perhaps because, since I changed all my bulbs over to CFLs about two years ago, I haven’t really had much need to spend time perusing the choices in the lighting aisle.
Xenos
On the subject of Palin, is she out in public any more? How do we know she is not, for example, in rehab right now?
Wile E. Quixote
@John Cole
Battle not with wingnuts lest ye become a wingnut and if ye gaze into the wingnut the wingnut gazes also into you.
Alan MooreFriedrich Nietzsche.Indylib
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon):
So is Garth Brooks. Have you ever paid attention to the lyrics of “We Shall Be Free“?
If that’s not DFH I don’t know what is.
Joe
Haley Barbour sounds like Foghorn Leghorn, I just can’t take him seriously as President saying “Ah sed boh……”
Loneoak
@Ash:
I’ll offer this amendment to the syllogism:
1) Liking Michael Jackson = liking child molester
2) Liking a child molester = liking David Lettermen
3) Liking David Lettermen = hating Sarah Palin
4) Therefore, liking Michael Jackson = hating Sarah Palin
b-psycho
I’m a “Palin-hater” & my 1st reaction to hearing about Michael was “y’know, that isn’t as shocking as it’s portrayed”. Hell, I thought his music was ridiculously overrated.
Where’s my cookie?
Wile E. Quixote
@Bill E. Pilgrim
I think the difference between the Economist cover and the National Review cover is pretty clear, conservatives are power bottoms who crave being fisted.
Beeb
Of course it’s about race. Two words: Al Sharpton. And I thought everyone knew that real music is Guy Lombardo.
gypsy howell
Let’s ask Mika. She seems to have cracked the code on what real americans think.
gbear
@geg6:
Bacmann was afraid/paranoid that people were going to be forced by the government!! to use only government approved!! light bulbs. That’s why she introduced the bill. She’s full of whack.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Wile E. Quixote: “Rectitude” was actually on purpose. Meaning: yes, I agree.
Jim-Bob
Since we’re playing the “suppose it happened” game, I think it’d be AWESOME if Limbaugh were raped like Marcellus Wallace.
“Rush, you gonna be okay.”
“Naw, man I am pretty fucking FAR from okay.”
Demo Woman
Lawrence O’Donnell is filling in for Chris on MSNBC.
Jager
Maybe its just me but everytime I see Haley Barbour I imagine him at an all white Country Club, whiskey in hand talking about some “good Nigra” he knows…I hope we are finished with national level politicians with fucking southern accents!
DanSmoot'sGhost
Sounds like classic spoof. And pretty good spoof at that.
DougJ-quality work.
Zuzu's Petals
Actually, as I mentioned on another thread, Limbaugh has already phoned in his take on the Palin resignation. He said about three different times that she hasn’t explained her reasons.
Zuzu's Petals
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Mahatma Ghandi … no convictions.
bago
@gnomedad: They’re using LED street lights up on Cap Hill for ten blocks around Aloha street. This would be Seattle.
Brachiator
@b-psycho:
Yawwn… Everybody’s music is ridiculously overrated.
No cookie for you!
patrick
This one is actually pretty easy.
1. Michael Jackson was a certifiable freak.
2. Michael Jackson fans – expecially those who are going to his funeral, by extension, are freaks.
3. Only freaks hate Sarah Palin.
anonevent
@ellaesther: @geg6: Around North Texas it is getting harder and harder to buy incandescent bulbs. CFLs are everywhere, and Wal-Mart has started selling LEDs. You can buy both LED inside lights and floodlights from them.
bago
Not to get too geek here, but what kind of idiot would not love LED’s? They last for decades, sip power, don’t have the 60 hz problem of flourescents, and are completely programmable because they have no boot time. Unless you have a Barbie bake oven there is no point in having any other light source.
freelancer
My LORD,
I’m working in an area where CNN has been on the last 2.5 hours, and it has been nothing, and I mean Nothing but MJ.
Who watches that? I mean, as someone who aspires to have an audience one day, who the hell are they trying to GET with this kind of relentless stupid coverage?
“We’ll have an interview with someone who won the lottery ticket to attend Jackson’s memorial”.
I’m wondering why there isn’t a mob with torches and pitchforks surrounding them in Atlanta right now. I know Cable News is inane, but they’re going for some kind of Dada-esqe execution of tabloid meta-journalism.
MikeJ
I wish we got CNN International here. They seem to be a lot more sane.
Origuy
One aspect that no one’s mentioned is that the memorial service (not funeral, that was private) will be in Los Angeles, which, being in wacky leftwing California, is the nexus of liberal fascism.
Comrade Stuck
Do-twat is on Hardball prattling about all the phony ethics complaints Sarah couldn’t handle. In a state where ethics is a four letter word and a small army of FBI agents patrol the ship of state.
She has fired half the state workers for paranoia of disloyalty, and the other half live in constant fear for their jobs. Who then, is left to objectively investigate?
Cat G
@Brick Oven Bill: You know, I can’t figure out when the Republican Party and it’s opinion makers just went collectively stupid and signed some kind of mutual suicide pact. Is this some kind of late onset autism? (look it up) Some people prattle on about victimization and don’t notice that Sarah Palin has just anointed herself as the poster child of victimization. She has repeatedly embarrassed herself and then quits in an historically memorable manner and blames others. And the response of the R Party is to treat her as martyr after she self immolated Friday. WTF? She is no longer a threat to the nation, thank Allah, but she is a huge threat to the R Party. Did you see the beating that Jonah Goldberg took last week when he wrote a reasonable column about the things she might do to improve her chances? He had the crap beat out of him, in a classic case of shooting the messenger. She is a very loose cannon, and if R’s don’t figure out how to deal with her and her fan base, R’s are going to be in the desert for a long, long, time. You have got to stop enabling the crazy.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@bago:
As someone who is in the lighting business, I’m someone who doesn’t care for LED lighting.
Trust me, they don’t.
ironranger
@geg6: Michele Bachmann has ranted on CFL’s, also. I think they are really sisters who were separated at birth.
On Pawlenty, I have watched his pressers & I swear the guy gets animated & excited when he talks about cutting health care & education. Creepy. As my local Dem rep said when we were talking about this, he can think of a lot of better ways to have fun.
Redshirt
Yeah! I have an expertise I can use!
Re: LED lights. Folks here have it generally right. Traffic lights are well under way for replacements; street lights are starting, especially in Europe; you can go into Wal Mart and Home Depot and buy cabinet LED lighting today, and the cheapo adhesive type LED’s as well.
BUT! For office, and home, believe me, it’s going to take a while. I would expect offices to be converted first, because of the efficiencies of scale, but home… it might be a while.
My company made an LED Bulb, but it was more of a novelty. Cost is pretty much the sole limitation — even though an LED lightbulb could be made today, and last ten years, I doubt many folks would pay 20-40 dollars for that bulb.
So, prices need to come down. But it will happen soon enough. The CFL lightbulb will quickly be a thing of the past.
Also. Palin something or rather.
Cris
Sounds like the free market at work. No wonder loyal Republican Bachmann is opposed to it.
jenniebee
@Brick Oven Bill: Um, personally, I don’t like it when someone takes an “everything I need to know, I learned playing varsity basketball” philosophy and applies it to high political office. If Sarah Palin was everything else you think liberals like – I dunno, let’s say she went to Bryn Mawr or something, and she couldn’t name a current events magazine she reads, I’d be embarrassed for her. I’d be doubly embarrassed for her if she’d, you know, recently been on the cover of some major current events magazines. You’d think she’d at least have skimmed the articles about herself…
And if she was really awful, say somebody who complained about these awful “gotcha” questions when an interviewer asked her “you said x. What did you mean by that?” or if she complained when late night comedians told jokes about her, or if she was forever whining about how the press was just out to get her and it was so unfair, well, I’d want her put out of sight as quickly as possible, because you know how quickly the right is to jump on anybody with a victim mentality…
dr. luba
@KeithW:
A wingnut Venn diagram?
Tonal Crow
Don’t go all elitist on us. If you don’t watch out, pretty soon you’ll be promoting “standard deviations” and other, even-worse kinds of preversion.
Nutella
Sorry I don’t have the link, but someone on a ThinkProgress thread said that feminists don’t like Palin because she’s a working mother. I think that’s even nuttier.
Demo Woman
@gypsy howell: If real Americans are able to understand Sarah’s gibberish, then I’m not a real American. According to Mika, real Americans must live in the south cuz that’s Sarah’s base. They also tend to fly the confederate flag.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
It was refreshing to have right-wing talk radio take a break from bashing Obama to talk about how unfairly Palin has been treated by the left-wing media.
Also, she messed up the basketball metaphor. In a full court press you want your point-guard to bring the ball up and not pass it. The point guard is typically your best dribbler. Why pass off to a center or forward?
Parnell 2012
Martin
More appealing to the southern base.
Only the south broadly likes Palin and relatively few from the south would come to L.A. to attend a Michael Jackson event.
Pretty much any wingnut statement should first be translated into mid-19th century terminology and then put it the context of a South Carolinian speaking it on the dawn of the Civil War. That’s the most likely process to make sense out of most of this crap.
Shorter wingnuts: Palin is the misunderstood slave owner running a productive plantation, and Yankees hate her because of it.
Tonal Crow
@Nutella:
Modern GOPers are giving The Big Lie a bad name.
Colette
@Martin:
Frankly, wingnuts, I don’t give a damn.
Lettuce
You know, Mark Belling is from Milwaukee, and he goes to the Bucks games (and apparently the Brewers as well), but he’s:
a) From Kaukauna
b) Went to UW-La Crosse
and
c) His show which is advertised as “standing up for…” is apparently standing up for Waukesha County and its residents.
The previous writer can “like him” if he wants, but it’s apparently rare in Milwaukee. He may have the hot drive-time show, but Steve “the Homer” True on ESPN radio here, considers Mark Belling even further right than he is, and Steve True (who lives in Wauwatosa) is further right than nearly anyone around here… And you’d have to be far to the right to be that far right. Belling apparently has many listeners in Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee counties, people who drive in the the city and work downtown, plus their “homebodies”.
He’s as much a “real” Milwaukeean as Santa Claus.
rs
Hank Williams sang soul music. He was more Steve Earle than Toby Keith.
Betsy
@Nutella:
Wait…what?? I thought feminists hated housewives! Now we hate working mothers too? I can’t keep straight all the women that I, as a feminist, hate. Because that’s what feminists do: hate on women.
DonnaInMichigan
This is as ridiculous as saying those people that support Palin, are probably thinking McNair deserved to get snuffed, because he was screwing a white woman……
JGabriel
Redshirt:
Yep. They cost about 5-15 times as much as a flourescent bulb, and even the $50 home use bulbs put out about 1/4 as many lumens as a 23 watt CFL (1600 lumens).
LED’s will have to become 5 times brighter while dropping 80%-90% in cost before coming into everyday home use. I think that’s gonna take about 5-10 years.
.
cliff
@dmsilev:
Sadly, No.
I distinctly remember staying at a beach house in SC and seeing on tv some preacher freak flipping out about how rock and roll was devil music or something like that. It was no more than 10 years ago I think.
Mike in NC
Trust me, coulda been last week.
Jennifer
@Tonal Crow:
I described the wingnut Venn diagram here within the last week or so but can’t be arsed to find the comment and link it, so, it went something like this:
In the Venn diagram for Stupid, the circle for “wingnuts” is entirely surrounded by “stupid”, while the circles for “liberals” and “conservatives” overlap with “stupid” (by varying degrees, of course…though in all fairness, conservatives have a much larger overlap with “dishonesty” in the Venn diagram for Dishonesty than they have in the diagram for Stupid).
bryan
well I remember when MJ was accused of being a homosexual, so I gotta figure it’s:
pedophile
black
if not pedophile
queer
dresses queer
his sister said he had sex with the chimp
can we put weird religion in – no? ok.
drugs,
came out recently,
that explains why he was black – it was the drugs done it.
high voice, queer.
danced.
danced queer.
asexual, maybe virgin. not real man. queer.
queer pedophile virgin, is there anything more disgusting I ask you.
owes lots of money. not financially responsible. black. probably on welfare. I am going galt and not supporting michael jackson anymore.
people were sad at the funeral they cried. cried people are weak. liberals. queer pedophile liberals in line after their god who dressed like sgt. peppers queer hearts club band.
he wrote beat it. heh heh.
Billie Jean.
step 1: Billie is a little boys name.
step 2: underpants half off.
step 3: ?
step 4: profit.
bad family values in his family. They are all black.
Have you listened to some of those people’s names.
Jermaine, LaToya, Barack Obama Jackson. Weird family, weird names, might not be americans.
Damn. I could go on, but you get the wingnutty points in highlights.
gypsy howell
@Jennifer:
This wingnut Venn diagram?
cliff
oh and BTW, I bought my first CFL in 1999 and its been on over 8 hours a day ever since ..
I only had one cfl burn out and it was in the first month and was replaced free.
that first generation one has now migrated to my bedroom cause it now takes a min or so to get up to full brightness which is really nice.
well over 29000 hours on that one!!! (it spent the first 5 years on nearly 24/7) I’m still amazed every morning that it still comes on. (phillips 14w earthlight, made in china – why don’t we make these here again?!)
cliff
oh geez, my bad on the math – over 40,000 hours in that first 5 years + 4-8hrs a day since then .. WOW.
binzinerator
@bago:
What about the color of the light (spectrum)? The 60hz flicker of a fluorescent isn’t the only thing that makes that light crappy for people. (try this trick — turn on incandescents in one room, fluorescents in an adjoining one. From the doorway of the fluorsecent room stare out at the incandescent light on a bright surface for a minute or so. Then quickly turn around and look that what you have in the room behind you. A lovely greenish-yellow. It lasts for a second or two before your brain automatically adjusts the color balance. But it’s there and it affects everything from colors to a person’s mood. (Which is why it sucks to pick your wall paints from the chip samples in the store — paint stores typically have fluorescent lights. You need to take them home to really see what you get and the relationships between it and the other colors in the room.)
The ‘full’ spectrum fluorescents are better but not really full spectrum.
I’ve never seen the LEDs other than in flashlights. The light seems shifted toward blue to me and is often either too intense or too weak. (intensity comes from having the surface area of the source of light the size of a tic-tac). Sometimes super efficient is not very human-eye friendly.
priscianus jr
I find something off-kilter about this thread. I think it’s because there seems to be an underlying assumption that if the wingnuts hate Michael Jackson, then we all have to love Michael Jackson. That if they attack him, that just confirms he was some kind of lefty cultural hero. If that’s your opinion, I don’t share it. Actually, I liked the Jackson Five very much, early solo MJ progressively less and less, and have paid almost no attention to him since about 1983, except when mass exposure of scandals has made it virtually impossible not to. I don’t know whether he was a pedophile or not, I still can’t stand him. Now of course we see his bizarre mug everywhere, and I, for one, can’t even look at it. In addition, MJ pretty much sums up everything that has gone wrong with the music industry since — well, since MJ became the world’s greatest pop icon. For weirdness, Michael Jackson and the wingnuts give each other a good run for the money.
Redshirt
LEDs are bright enough, and if you if add a color mix, you can achieve almost any color you wish. A light yellow or green can be nice. Or a very bright white. LED’s are ready for prime time, right now; it’s only cost which prevents them breaking out. That barrier may last several years.
Brachiator
@priscianus jr:
No it’s more that one of the wingnut quotes that led off this thread, “I bet 95% of the people going to the Jackson funeral are the ones taking potshots at Palin,” is patently absurd. It is also evidence of a strange, crabbed, paranoid, and navel-gazing world view.
I don’t get much of a sense that the people hot to attend the Jackson memorial care much about politics, but there is no evidence at all that are either pro or anti-Palin.
But the wingnuts have a deep need to always look for signs of who might be real Americans, and to fabricate evidence when necessary. And because the Jackson memorial is being held in Los Angeles, there is a desire to make sure that the city is derided as the left coast, a suburb of France.
Jackson is irrelevant to politics, left or right, except in the wingnut imagination.
Kilkee
@bryan: Just brilliant.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Hmmm. All the dogs in the neighborhood started barking as I read this post. Whatever could it mean?
Barbar
Not really true; the guy had literally hundreds of millions of fans around the world.
The truth of course is that the sentence is just nonsense.
grumpy realist
Cost of LEDs will come down quite a bit in the next few years. There’s been several breakthroughs using nanostructured materials–now we’re just finessing the details.
Any new light technology will first be seen in Japan because of the cost of energy there. Compact fluorescents were everywhere before the US even started thinking about using them.
DaBomb
Wingnut logic somehow has equated that only teh blackity black people probably hate Palin. Because only blackity black people loved the ex blackity black Michael Jackson. Let’s throw that blanket generalization out there and forget about all of the whites and other races who are seen crying over MJ.
And according to BOB, they don’t care who Palin is even if you give them Marlboros? Huh?
It would be more like Kools, Newports, and Swisher Sweets.
As for MJ’s influence on music, IMHO, he was hugely influential. Regardless of the crazy life he led you can’t deny his influence on music. I have always said that.
drumwolf
A lot of you are seeing a racial subtext, and that may very well be part of it. But that’s not the only thing to consider and it’s not the thing that stands out the most for me personally. Wingnuts also have a tendency to tar weirdo and/or vapid celebrities with the “liberal” brush. And they conveniently ignore the fact that it’s the very same predatory capitalist system they support that causes the schlock pop culture that they decry.
That hilariously backfired on them when they tried to run that commercial linking Obama with Paris Hilton and it turned out Hilton’s family are Republicans.
Side note: I was never a Michael Jackson fan, but I did have sympathy for the guy – he seemed to be a prisoner of his megastardom (not to mention a victim of his scumbag dad).
cliff
@binzinerator:
actually mine are very warm .. nowhere near a tube fluorescent. they are warmer than (most standard) halogens too.
also as someone who gets headaches from flicker of standard tubes, I’ve got zero issues with flicker on my bulbs.
I remember a few of the very first ones way back flickered a bit and were cooler ..
also, as they age they get a bit warmer in color.
mapaghimagsik
Meanwhile, Alaska is doomed.
Ecks
@Ash Can: No no no, you didn’t rip it off from Amadeus, you made a witty reference to Amadeus.
That’s how the pros do it ya know :)
(and it was a funny witty reference to boot, BTW).
Tax Analyst
I was working at a Termite Company sometime around 1976 and one day I happened to be wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. One of the inspectors there – a real nice guy, who was maybe between 55 and 60 said this to me in all complete sincere seriousness, “I don’t understand. Can you explain to me why someone would be grateful if they were dead?”. He had heard OF the Grateful Dead but did not know that they were a band. I had to think that one over for a minute – “No, Joe, I honestly cannot.” If I had tried I might still be standing there trying to explain it to him.
chrome agnomen
WWJD? (what would jesco do)
bellatrys
I suspect it’s equally from column A, equally from column B – that is to say, there is both dogwhistling at the Black!LibrulMedia!HeathenHedonistWorldlyUngodlyPopCulture auditory nerve endings going on, AND the Conflation of Enemies that constantly goes on (and has at least since the mid-Seventies) among right-wing pundits that we saw illustrated rather strikingly when Dr. Mary “Ravished Virgins” Grabar argued so cogently that the same kids who picked on her in grammar school because her mother was a cleaning lady had – obviously! – grown up to all be Obama voters today…
It’s a form of logical argument that makes perfect sense if you believe a) yes, the world really DOES revolve around you, and b) everyone really IS out to get you – if you don’t like A (in this case, Michael Jackson/MJ fans), and you don’t like B (Democrats/Liberals/Sarah Palin opponents), then A & B simply MUST be the same thing! because they couldn’t be unconnected Venn sets, that’s inconceivable. QED &c &c.
bellatrys
Addendum: obviously this “I hate A, I hate B, ergo B=A” schema isn’t limited to the right – q.v. Sadly, No! and their pathetic persistent conviction that fandom=wingnutteria, without exceptions (no matter how much debunking has been attempted in the past, providing yet another example of how these sorts of thought patterns are human problems, not party-specific ones.)
priscianus jr
bellatrys,
The logical fallacy you refer to is different from, but akin to, the one I talk about above (152). I agree with you, these automatic fallacious thought-habits are rife at all points on the poltical spectrum.
Joel
MICHAEL THE NARC-ANGEL
Millions of little members of the worldwide F.F.A. (Future Followers of the Antichrist) have finally learned how to find a certain part of their lower anatomy and quickly touch it while dancing – thanks to Michael Jackson, the highest paid Lower Anatomy Toucher of all time! Special thanks also go to the Jesus-bashing, Hell-bound Hollywood moguls who were just as quick to see higher profits in lower anatomies! [Just saw this opinion on the web. Other grabby items on MSN, Google, etc. include “Separation of Raunch and State,” “David Letterman’s Hate, Etc.,” “Tribulation Index becomes Rapture Index,” and “Bible Verses Obama Avoids.” – something for everyone!]