Lessons in “WTF? This shit worked?” Round two: Lolita on parade.

Someday, I’ll get to teach Visual Rhetoric again for real-real, and not just for play-play. Until then, I’ll just placate myself with dissecting the gems of yesteryear.

Last time it was all about Van Heusen. This time, we’ll go with the Lolita theme, purely because TLC’s show Toddlers and Tiaras makes me want to vom (repeatedly, on the people who actually stick their children in beauty pageants) and Joel McHale has been making fun of it on The Soup, like, weekly.

A chi-mo's Holy Grail for legality. Gah.

Seriously, how was this OKed by an advertising department? A magazine? Love’s BabySoft itself? So, let me get this straight: by fetishizing the concept of virginity, young girls, and sexual inexperience, you expect to sell the scent of baby powder as “sexy”? One would assume this is targeted toward women, as this ad would have easily appeared in women’s magazines for all of the 1980s; how is a woman reverting to her pre-adolescent childhood in order to attract a man at all healthy, as one can only envision the type of creepazoid who’d be into this shit? The white dress + the perfectly positioned hand hiking up her hemline + the rosy cheeks, blond hair, and blue eyes of an Aryan virgin + the phallic shape of the bottles of perfume = a Molotov cocktail of barfiness.

Pink is for gender construction.

 Pink is for girls? Why is a girl trying to attract a man with hair so soft that only Pink Lustre-… (I’m sorry. I just had a laughing fit and spat my water onto my computer screen… it’s called Lustre-Cream?! Hahahaha! A dude definitely came up with that name.) …-Cream could guarantee its magical, cloud-like sheen and bounce? Shouldn’t a woman be trying to attract a man? Unless this was purposely directed toward third-graders. In which case, at least they’d be being honest in their advertising. Nauseating shades of pinks, magentas, and carnations swirled into circular formation + a parasol that is oddly reminiscent of a target + a reverse Lolita character smack dab at the epicenter of this pastel explosion = a metaphorical vagina (no, seriously, look at it again). Pink is for girls, my ass.

Ooh! If we're comparing ourselves to fruit, can I be starfruit-shaped?!

Again, directed at girls. And I’m not going to preface this with “I’m sorry,” because I see no need to apologize for believing that girls should be allowed to be girls until they see fit to call themselves a woman. There is no need to take her out of a tee-ball uniform and stick her in a girdle and bra, just so she can kow-tow to the socially constructed concept that women are only seen as “feminine” if they fit a particular standard of beauty, established centuries ago and perpetuated by crap like this. Notice the placement of the woman under the giant, looming fruit, as it insinuates that a woman’s worth as a person is less than her worth as an object for the male gaze, to which this advertisement is clearly telling women they need to cater. Don’t even get me started on the content of the ad itself.

My eyes are bleeding.

Madre de Dios. Where do I begin? I don’t think they could get that model to look any younger unless they physically made her drink the blood of unicorns. As if the fact that she mirrors a pre-pubescent child isn’t convincing enough that youth is synonymous with innocence, they went ahead and threw in a white dress, pink-flushed cheeks and a pout, and an effing paragon-of-virtue teddy bear. When these components are compounded into the whole premise of this campaign, that adult women should mimic re-virginized versions of themselves in dress, action, and perfume purchases, in order to attract a (creep of a) man, the finished product can be scarily convincing to a demographic of girls and women who, according to Social Learning Theory, look to the media to construct an individual concept of physical beauty.

And people wonder why little girls are growing up too quickly. Quit hypersexualizing them, else you’ll end up with the little darling below. Well, you’ll end up with a doppelganger of her and an unplanned pregnancy at fifteen.

Even I don't wear that much makeup, and I take my cues from trannies.

Super Bowl ads just got way better.

The Super Bowl loometh.

Honestly, I couldn’t care less. I’ve never been a huge fan of professional sports (except volleyball! And possibly curling, purely for the irony of calling something pursued by mildly overweight, middle-aged persons in taper-leg sweatpants a “sport”!)… but, come Sunday, I will be gorging my stiff, post-tournament body with gourmet concoctions at Andy’s party like it’s my job.

The only real redeeming quality of the Super Bowl? The commercials. They’re gems. I love dissecting them and applying VisComm and Rhetorical theory whilst they play. Nerdiness never takes a day off.

Andy wanted me to blog about the Tim Tebow/Focus on the Family commercial that’s being hyped like a title fight boxing match on gratuitous amounts of Pixie Stix. Y’know, the one where Tim, college football demigod, and his mom talk about her decision to have her child (who happened to grow up to be Florida’s Achilles), and then let you draw the conclusion, as you’re swaddled in the glowing warmth of friends, 42″ plasma TVs, and your mildly catatonic state of beer-induced semi-consciousness, that all fetuses should be saved from the prying scalpels of viscious feminists who troll the earth, not unlike mind-sucking zombies, ready to tear the embryo from your womb. Yeah, that may be a little graphic, but it’s Focus on the Family. They’re tactics aren’t that ethical to begin with. And, if thought about for longer than two seconds, any viewer will realize that the methods of persuasion utilized are so transparently obvious that it’s almost insulting. But what do I know? I only have a couple of degrees in this.

Instead, I’m going to post this response. Nothing against Tim Tebow or his mom; I’m sure they are lovely people. We just simply don’t agree on this issue. My beef is with Focus on the Family, but that ’s being saved for another blog. And the high road like such a more appealing route right now.

P.S. If you want to donate to Planned Parenthood, do it here. They are a fantastic organization that promotes education, choice, and free will. Hard to argue with that, especially considering what the opposition promotes.

I’m a Duckie ’til I die, and journalistic ethics are in peril. Or, where did you get your degree again?

I love the University of Oregon, and I’m a Duckie ’til I die. Anyone who received text messages from me during football season can attest to the veracity of that claim. I spent four years on that lovely, lovely campus, played some bitchin’ volleyball, fostered the concrete relationships with friends I’m lucky enough to still entertain to this day, and nerded out to the point of getting a bunch of awards at my graduation from the School of Journalism and Communication (one of the top-ten programs in the country [Why is that important? Stick with me, cowboy, and all will become clear]).

So when accusations start wildly flying about members of the football team, frat boys, and, effectively, the university as a whole, I tend to break out those journalistic skills and see for myself what the giant clusterfuck is really about. When I find that what are being called facts are really just unsubstantiated drops of drivel, journalistic standards are having a train run over them, and potential-Heisman candidates are expended as collateral damage, I get ragingly pissed. And what better way to vent my frustration? Freedom of speech, bitches.

Dear Lindsay Schnell: I know that as a relatively rookie reporter it’s a major break to scoop all of the other news outlets, but, seriously sister, what the fuck happened to your responsibility to journalistic ethics? Oh, you graduated from OSU (does this have to do with some residual bitterness from losing out in the Rose Bowl? Sounds just as pliable as your faulty reasoning in what I’m dubbing Accusation Gate). So let’s just hug this out: A) you wholeheartedly accuse these football players as the culprits to this crime, when everyone else (including the campus and city police, university administration, and coaching staff) remains reticent as to maintain that whole “innocent until proven guilty” clause that is often overlooked by gossip-mongers. That’s not gutsy, that’s one-step away from a career at TMZ.com. Hope you have some solid evidence (that isn’t total hearsay), because if you don’t, and this whole debacle proves false, I know that I’d be coming after you with slander charges like a gold-digger goes after a Trailblazer; B) you say this frat boy has no reason to lie. How do you know this? Is he a close, personal friend of yours? If so, that’s a conflict of judgment that floats on another plane entirely. If you’re going to speculate that said frat boy has no reason to lie about this incident (which, come on, he could have any reason, from losing his laptop in a bad poker hand and living in fear of his parents’ retribution to just a raging  short-man complex), then I’m  going to speculate that your relationship with him in this situation you’ve either concocted or blown out of proportion is nefarious, at best. In fact, why were you the first one to scoop this headline? Were you at the fraternity house during the time of the incident, late at night? If not, why would these boys call you?  I can’t really believe that a couple of frat boys would just happen to have the number of a Corvallis-based freelance reporter in their phones or that you just happened to be walking past 14th and Alder at the exact time that the so-called incident occurred, so all I can do is speculate that you have a close relationship with the accusers and that your reasons for accusation hinge not so much on truthful reporting as a corroborative story for his sake. You say that this kid has no reason to lie, but, as a former collegiate athlete, I can tell you that these football players would have no reason to steal a damn laptop, as getting free shit as an athlete is as commonplace as saying the word “the”; C) Also, I’m just going to go ahead and speculate that you were consuming, or had recently consumed, alcohol, especially if you were at the house, which only clouds your judgment and compromises your ability to truthfully report. Why? Well, in the majority of your facebook photos, you are clearly imbibing to the point of getting hammered (as the captions state). Did you actually see these two players take this junk? Then my assumption that you were drinking (thus compromising your ability to accurately report) with these frat boys, which is tenuous at best, holds just as much merit as your accusation of the players created off of the statement of one kid, who could have any reason to lie. Sweetheart, as a “journalist,” you know that information gathering is way too easy in this technological age. You should also know that you need to keep your entire profile in mega-lockdown-private mode. Get your shit straight before you run your mouth. If these players actually committed this crime, they are fucked. If they didn’t, they are still fucked, as your faulty reporting already convicted them in the public sphere (just look at the Emerald’s misleading headline, even though the copy clearly states that neither are suspects, nor even persons of interest [my beef with the Emerald's shoddy reporting goes way back, and this just proves my point]). Words are powerful. A journalist’s true talent lies in her ability to wield them thoughtfully and truthfully. One of my amazing profs at the U of O taught me that, FYI.

Dear frat boys: I know life must be rough as a middle-class white kid from the Portland suburbs, but breaking out a racially derogatory diatribe on the voicemail of the school newspaper (seriously?) is pathetic, jejune, and utterly sad. It’s detestable to know that this level of racism still exists in this world, especially in a place as lovely and liberal as Eugene. That’s not how SAE boys are supposed to act. How do I know? Because some of my besties in college are the true gentlemen of SAE. Boys who took care of me when I needed to be taken care of. Boys who always treated my friends and me with respect. Boys with whom I would cheer on the Ducks at Autzen, as we chanted for Mighty Oregon. Boys who lived a racially diverse house and would never utter a discriminatory epithet. I lived at SAE one summer, and some of my fondest memories from college happened at the house on 14th and Alder. Way to shat all over that, your house, and the U of O’s Greek system. And, for the record, I was GDI like nobody’s business, and I’m not in the habit of promoting, or even defending, Greek organizations. But I heart the SAE boys. What the fuck were you thinking, dude? No, seriously? Have fun trying to recruit pledges next year.

Dear press: I know it’s a relatively slow news day, but please don’t forget the concept of ethics. It exists in journalism, believe it or not, but it’s been clouded by the concept of profits, self-congratulation, and one-upsmanship. Like I said before, words are powerful, powerful creatures. They elicit fear, hope, despair, elation; they can possess a psychological stranglehold on the minds of the masses; they have the ability to create or demolish a person’s entire life’s work, whether that person be a President or a fellow journalist. The media are not persecuted; the media, in fact, have the ability to easily control society (Social Learning Theory; Accumulation Theory; and operational, associational, pure seeing? Any of this ringing a bell?). I understand the want of landing the scoop, but you, and your reporters, work for major media outlets. So instead of irresponsibly throwing names haphazardly into damning headlines when no real evidence exists to actually validate those potentially career-ruining blasts emblazoned across the front page, why don’t you try remembering some of the tenets of journalistic ethics you were supposedly taught in college and report on the substantiated proof when it actually comes along. I was also taught that at the U of O, which is just another reason why it’s a top-ten. They must not teach that at other journalism schools.

My vagina’s only about six miles wide, but it’s all good anyway.

This should be compulsory supplemental material for any teacher who’s tackling junior-high sex ed. Way better than The Miracle of Life. Well, maybe show it after The Miracle of Life, in the hopes that the screaming in the back of the room will die down once awesomeness is shown.

I believe Storm Large and I were separated at birth. Go on, girl.

Note: this is not just a fluke occurrence. There is nothing in the water in Portland (so please don’t ask, and then chuckle uncomfortably on your own behalf because no one else is laughing at your lame attempt at humor). Glams are everywhere. And we refuse to wear flats to make you feel less short.

She’s so going on the blogroll

Step-together, step-touch and say “Je-SUS.”

Call it Divine Intervention. Call it the aligning of the cosmos. Call it the universe’s (vain-until-now) attempt to perspicuously beam its generative forces down into my paltry little brain  in order to relay to me the cathexis of my existence on this planet. But clarity has descended.

I don’t know where I find this stuff. At times, I feel as though it just falls into my lap, like a win at the lottery or an equilibrium-deficient stripper. But for some reason, it comes to me. And, in this time of rampant underemployment, I feel as though it is my higher calling to pass it along to whatever reader has enough spare time and expendable brain cells to be perusing my blog.

I give you: GOSPEL DANCE AEROBICS. Time to get both your fitness and your Satan Stomp on.

Bullets for discussion:

1. What’s wrong with the Cupid Shuffle? Been rocking that little ditty since back in the Clemson days, where one Missy Effing Davis taught me the importance of Southern-style booty shaking. I think God would actuallly be into it. C’mon, like God doesn’t know how to shake it.

2. Are you saying God hates fat people?

3. If the instructor is attempting to perpetuate the stereotype that all white people are devoid of rhythm, he has succeeded in his choice of the pleasantly plump frustrated prom queen and Kip’s stunt double from Napolean Dynamite.

4. In the shaking-the-devil-off sequence, I would argue that the “devil” is not, in fact, the extra weight that one carries, but the thin, tapered sweats that Kip’s doppelganger is sporting. Wang-protrusion potential is astronomical, and that scares me.

5. David danced like Beyonce does?! I had know idea the booty-pop was around back then. Mad props to David, yo.

6. The instructor looks a little, um, heavy. The lugubrious state of the fitness level being demonstrated makes me question whether this is really inspired-from-Heaven or a false idol created by Satan. SHAKE HIM OFF. SHAKE HIM OFF!

7. How is doing 2,982 counts of lateral stepping at the pace of a snail on barbituates going to work off any of the weight put on by the paradoxical gluttony of the holidays? Is this video an attempt at digital redemption? As in, God sees me mediocrely trying to shed the weight of chocolate-covered cherries and guilt by doing the Sanctified Slide, so that must count for a few swoops at the whole penance thing?

8. The amount of time marching in place in order to entertain the instructor’s loquacity is doing nothing for my heart rate. The taciturnity of ‘Da Crew is bolstering my belief that this is nothing but an exercise in futility (pun totes intended).

9. I swear that instructor was an extra in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. I think the satan variable in his personal Satan Stomp is the bitterness of failure in the dangerous, cut-throat world of pop-singer choreography. Does he find redemption in the Sanctified Slide? And why is he sweating so much at the end? IS SATAN PERSONIFIED IN PERSPIRATION?! If so, my world is over.

10. I can only wonder: what would have happened had this revelation been around during the Christ’s crucifixion? Maybe Pilate had a boogie beat. Maybe the Romans were unreached because no one ever thought to communicate the Messiah’s return through correlated shoulder-shakes and booty-pops. Maybe the entire course of the world’s history could have been mind-blowingly altered with a city-wide celebration, precipitated by the Sanctified Slide, rivaling that of Mardi Gras.

Does this mean that the aerobics instructor is the Antichrist, returning to earth as the harbinger for the Second Coming? If so, I don’t think he’s doing it correctly, as the masses are not being touched. At least get a facebook page, man.

I’m just going to go ahead and do the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet. That sounds wayyyyy more reasonable.

And here everyone is worried about a zombie invasion…

Jeez, I hate it when slut gets into my water. Can you Brita that shit?

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/vh1_reality_show_bus_crashes_in

Vh1 Reality, I still love you. Thank you for such gems as Rock of Love, Rock of Love Bus, Flavor of Love 1-3, and For the Love of RayJ. Because even when I’m feeling bitter about being overeducated and underemployed, at least I know, after watching your shows, that my life isn’t as much of a train wreck as those of the sluts on your programming.

To all of my friends in LA, please be on high alert and double Brita anything that may come out of the faucet, as I’m sure the syphilis seepage into the groundwater table has been highly compromised.

Do I need to be publicly exposed as an imbecile in order to get my own news-show? Worked for Sarah Palin.

Not that I care about the integrity of FoxNews, as there was never really any to begin with, but this? Somehow, I can’t imagine that adding the lipstick-lacquered pitbull herself to the lineup is really going to do anything for those of us who watch more than the one channel to glean what I’m going to very leniently call “news.”

Sarah Palin is a whackjob. It’s obvious. One would have to consciously avoid all mainstream media, both international and domestic, and watch FoxNews solely in order to not think that this woman is nothing more than a marginally attractive mouthpiece for the severely depressed GOP with a mentality that rivals that of a fencepost. Katie Couric’s interviews? Notions of foreign policy weighing on the fact that she could see Russia from her house? Blatant disregard for knowing anything specific about anything regarding the governmental process or, gee, I don’t know, America? Not ringin’ a bell, eh FoxNews?

BTW, was her quote supposed to be ironic? Y’know, considering that she couldn’t even name a specific medium of which she gets her news during the Katie Couric interview. (Which was not one-sided, malicious, or evilly plotted by the “liberal media’s agenda.” Woman couldn’t name a damn newspaper. Call me kooky, but I don’t think any of the other candidates, including Hillary, would have been so baffled. That’s not called the liberal media’s “agenda.” That’s called exposing an idiot and having the GOP political machine launch into PR overdrive.) “It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news”? Seriously? Okay, where’s the Candid Camera? Punk’d? No? Well, that has to be irony! Right? Oh, wait. She probably can’t comprehend irony.

“As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border.” –Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, Sept. 24, 2008

 ”All of ‘em, any of ‘em that have been in front of me over all these years.” –Sarah Palin, unable to name a single newspaper or magazine she reads, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, Oct. 1, 2008

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. … We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” –Sarah Palin, speaking at a fundraiser in Greensoboro, N.C., Oct. 16, 2008

Dude. Digging your own grave, FoxNews. Not that I really care. But don’t say that I didn’t warn you. Talk about bipartisan diplomacy, bitches.

This woman will be reporting "news." Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Purity balls. Let the double entendre commence.

Aaaaand I’m back. Sorry I took such an extended leave of absence. But the mildly catatonic state into which the holidays (and their wonderful ales) entranced me has the vice grip of a wolverine coming down off of a wicked coke bender. I barely survived.

But I return with a doozy: purity balls.

Kara, WTF are purity balls? No, it’s not the nickname of a national ballot measure that would facilitate the monetary compensation to clinics across the country in order to  require all men to get HPV screening at their yearly physicals. We can all wish. Purity balls, according to TLC’s documentary, are a glorified debutante ritual in which fathers who are way too entrenched in their pre-pubescent daughters’ inchoate sex lives parade their offspring around in dresses whiter than the pure, driven snow in an attempt to delay the very natural urges of adolescent sexual interest. How Kentucky-esque.

Way cuter than when Christ did it, all bedraggled and bloody. P.S. Dancing around it like a glorified maypole is really a pagan tradition.

Question: why is this centered around fathers and daughters? Where is the mother-son disco that promotes the younger’s virginity? What? Too Oedipal for you? Purity balls focusing solely on the daughter’s responsibility to her father for her virginity is sexist, as it perpetuates the accepted gendered stereotype that the patriarchal strongholds that a father figure establishes over the entire family are the only ones that carry any merit. So boys are just going to be boys, while girls must represent wholly the eponymous paragons of virtue their fathers come to expect? Uh, yeah, I object.

With those kinds of daddy issues, her potential for becoming a stripper someday just skyrocketed.

Teleologically speaking, what sucks most thoroughly about this whole debacle I’m dubbing as the Virginity Crusades (offshoots include the Purity-Ring Purport and the Whitest-Wedding-Gown-on-the-Block Inquisition) is that these girls aren’t allowed to make their own decisions, which will adversely affect them for the rest of their lives. Anyone possessing even the slightest degree of perspicacity could discern, especially when the little girl asks her father what word would be acceptable to use instead of “boyfriend” (as I’m fairly certain that I spoke whatever happened to be flitting through my brain at the moment as a teen), that the authority these fathers adopt and exasperate into an oblivion demonstrates either a petrifying fear that their daughters may become (gasp!) individuals over which at some point they must relenquish control or a raging inferiority/short-man complex. Whatever the case, the Draconian-in-Disguise Daddy toes the line of addled whackjob-ness, and his daughter will be the one who must contend with the consequences, as her obtuse-at-best knowledge of sexual education will leave her naive and vulnerable. 

I’m sorry. But all a woman wants to hear is that she’s beautiful? The concept of the father passing the daughter to the groom that exhibits the woman as a pretty possession belonging to the men in her life is as antiquated as the idea of the dowry, so get off this notion that a woman’s only worth depends on how aquiline her nose may be and how proportional her body is to siring your offspring, as it perpetuates women’s second-class citizenship in this world, as well as the royally effed-up standard of beauty to which our society continues to kow-tow. Female virginity is not a male-owned commodity. And as one who was once an adolescent girl (raised in a household where Dad got sole custody of his three teenage daughters), I’m pretty sure that a young female wants to hear from her father that she is loved, smart, strong, creative, capable, and will be supported in whatever informed decision she wishes to make about her future. Girls will only become slaves to beauty if the main people in her formative years, like her father, press the issue to be so.

Good to know that the crappy prom decorations are used more than once a year. Umm, awkward much?

If this doesn’t expound the skewed concept that Prince Charming exists, waiting to sweep these girls off their feet in true fairy-tale mode, then I don’t know what the hell does. And when the natural interest in sex actually begins to manifest in these girls (way to get ‘em when they’re nine and not even thinking about sex, Daddy dearest), they will interpret what is wholly normal as pruriently libidinous, thus stunting the perfectly expected transition from female childhood to adolescence to womanhood. It’s like Purity Balls stole the concept of Catholic guilt and flambed it beyond recognition, while still managing to maintain the  lingering heartburn/brainburn that sticks with one for an eternity.

Why don’t you ensure that your daughter gets the comprehensive sexual education that all kids deserve, and then trust her to make whatever decision she feels is best, instead of ramrodding her mind with visions of fire, brimstone, chlamydia, elitism, potential daddy issues, control, and pretty white dresses? I’m just saying.

Don’t even get me started on debutante balls.

I love you, Bill Maher. 

1987 was, apparently, a very good year.

Ah, the 1980s. You were so amazing. The clothes. The hair. The fads. My childhood.

Oh, your mother wasn’t a rabid aerobics instructor, who once forced her entire varsity volleyball team into pounding out a three-hour-long sweat-your-balls-off cardio-exorcism as a practice session before going to the 3A OSAA state volleyball tournament? Your mother didn’t have the aplomb to rock coordinated leg-warmers-and-headband combos as everyday attire? Your mother wasn’t the Jay-Z of the 1980s, making her own mix-tapes of smashed-up kickin’ beats, such as Roxette, George Harrison, and Salt-n-Pepa, before the advent of JockJams? Your mother didn’t watch Jane Fonda videos for fun?

Lucky you. I think there are pictures floating around of my sisters and me dressed in fleuro spandies doing box jumps and moves like step-together-high-kick-left/step-togther-high-kick-right to eight-beat counts. My decision to never go into public office was solidified at about age six, as I knew the blackmail potential is astronomical.

Blogging is so much cheaper than therapy.

1. They’re the Bad Boys, and don’t you forget it! Else they’ll take out your eye with a high-kick.

2. Describing your act in one word as “hot” can only be backed up with a few hamhock slaps. Oh. I see you’ve got that covered.

3. Your spandies totally kicked my spandies’ asses.

4. Roboting to Devo? My pupils just detonated.

5. I think I saw Spirit Fingers!

Alas, the Bad Boys didn’t take the crown in the 1987 Crystal Light National Aerobics Championships. Meet the winners:

1. If you look closely at the beginning, you can actually see Alan Thicke’s career begin its downward arc.

2. Gold lame never looked so good.

3. At 0:59, a spectator (assumedly named Paul) presumably shits himself.

4. Holy Push-up Trifecta!

5. They seem to have combined cardio with gospel praise. I bet this is how God does aerobics.

I think that trip down memory lane actually cost me a few hundred brain cells. Especially because when I saw my mother last, she was wearing one of her many OSAA 3A state volleyball tournament t-shirts. Judging by the shades of day-glo pink covering it, I assumed it was from either 1987 or 1989. I know she still has her leg-warmers and spandies tucked away in one of her various closets.

Those Saturday mornings of my youth that were supposed to be filled with Thundercats and Chocolate-Frosted Sugar-Bomb cereal but were controlled my my mother when the one channel we got pre-empted my cartoons to show stuff like this, though mere drops in the bucket in the bigger scheme, are, nonetheless, Saturday mornings I can never get back.

On a side note, that year, Alan Thicke was named both Honorary Chairman of the International Sports for Peace Foundation and Special Advisor to the National Fitness Foundation. Who needs a successful television career when you have that to fall back upon?! But, um, since when was cocaine and skinny ties considered healthy?

“Jesus did not advocate Socialism.” Wait…

The News-Review, the newspaper serving the majority of Douglas County, published a letter from a local Roseburg citizen in the Public Forum section of November 27th’s daily issue entitled “Jesus did not advocate Socialism.” (I’m not joking.) As a Dixonville/Glide native who has been reading this newspaper since the glorious day that all of those letters jumbled together on a page suddenly made sense and I learned how to read, I feel it’s my duty to respond. Although, knowing that The News-Review would never publish anything as liberal as my writings, I’m going to go ahead and use the most democratic venue at my disposal: my blog.

The title alone is loaded with a caustic type of rhetoric that implies that if one is a Christian, one cannot also be a Socialist. Considering that the majority of the population (all of it) in Douglas County is (fervently) Christian, then Socialism and Socialists (the outsiders), according to the obviously Christian author and her opinion, are inherently un-Christian and, therefore, lost, unsaved, and potentially heathen. Following this slippery-slope type of fallacious rhetoric, all Socialists are banished from the realm of the spiritually elite, and their ideals, in true ad hominem fashion, must surely be as low as they.

The title’s statement, that Jesus did not advocate Socialism, also implies that the author knows exactly what Jesus did advocate. Really? Do they entertain long, luxurious bubblebaths together, where they share their innermost feelings and intimate details of their existences? Is she privy to a mystical long-distance carrier that magically transubstantiates a supernatural telephone conversation out of the voices in her head? No. We can only infer what we think Jesus may or mayn’t have advocated, but to exclaim it so definitely means that the author is either carrying on an exclusive relationship with Christ of which Billy Graham (et. al) would be most jealous or else she’s just employing some hefty hyperbole to (unsuccessfully) make her point. Umm, that’s what the Inquisitors did for about six-hundred years, killing whomever they deemed heretical “in God’s name,” including seniors, women, children, and scores of innocents. P.S. that didn’t work out so well for the history of Christianity.

“The definition of socialism is a system of economy based on cooperation of labor and community property under the control of the government.” A) what dictionary is the author referencing? As she makes no citation, one can conclude that it’s the Dictionary of FoxNews; B) umm, no, that’s actually Communism. Socialism, as according to the OED (aka the Bible), is defined as “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” FYI, that’s pretty much what it would seem Christ would advocate, as opposed to, say, the dictatorial rule of Pilate and his cronies; C) we obviously still live in a propagandist-machinated society, where we associate anything that is not democracy with evil, bloodsucking Commies intent on slurping the brains and life-force out of our wholesome, Christian nation. How McCarthy-esque. BTW, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, not 1253.  

“I don’t recall Jesus ever asking Caeser to tax people more for any reason, to run any programs, to assist the people, etc.” A) about which Caeser was the author actually speaking? As Caeser actually means “emperor,” (kaiser is a direct derivative, naturally), she could mean pretty much any of the hundreds of Caesers who ruled Rome. I’m assuming she was going for Gaius Julius Caeser though, as he’s the only one people actually remember; B) Julius Caeser was a dictator. If Jules were a Socialist, he would have never been stabbed on the steps in the Largo di Torre Argentina. A dictatorship is the system through which this country just spent eight years trying to survive. Linking a dictatorship to Socialism, the system the author implies is so maliciously threatening America’s  very maidenhood (please.), is the ad-populum approach to rhetorical fallacy; C) and the author couldn’t possibly recall Jesus chatting it up with Jules, because it would be a physical impossibility that it could ever happen, as Julius Caeser was assassinated in 44 B(efore)C(hrist). Snap. My sis, the Bible guru, pointed to me the possibility that the author is speaking about a generic Caeser, as the Christians and Romans weren’t exactly besties, and their long, torturous history spans centuries; even so, it wouldn’t have mattered, as all of the caesers were dictators, not socialists.

P.S. if the author is going to go ahead and mix religion in with a supposedly non-secular argument (in this case, the implied bashing of Obama), then I’m going to go ahead and give a little history lesson.   

“When government takes our money by force (i.e. taxes) and gives it to others, this isn’t charity, it’s theft.” A) comma splices aside, according to this logic, the American populace has been victims of theft, regularly, since 1862. Every president has enacted taxes. Without taxes, America would have lost all those wars since, including WWII (y’know, the one America fought in order to remain a democracy.); B) before taxes, America was funded by things like slavery. That’s not a very popular alternative; C) we live under a democracy. Does the author honestly believe that our system believes in something like charity? Please. In an ideal society, then yes, charity might work; but in an ideal society, Communism would work better.

“Our government is deeply in debt, trillions of dollars in debt.” (I’m stopping the quote there, because the rest is so poorly punctuated that it makes my eyes hurt.) A) of course the government is in debt. It’s been in debt for ages. Who really pays attention to anything like debt? Obviously, Bush II certainly doesn’t, as he plunged this country into a war (six years ago) that the majority of the public does not support. And we wonder why our public schools are so underfunded; B) did you know that by the time Bush II left office, he was alotting $500 million to abstinence-only sexual education? Is that money well spent? Not really, considering America has the highest teen-birth rate and STD-rate of all first-world countries. If that’s not a byproduct of an agenda-driven dictatorship, I don’t know what is; C) it’s not Obama’s fault that he inherited such a faulted White House. He’s trying to clean up Bush II’s mess. You can’t expect him to do it overnight. While Bush II was off playing golf on mega-vacays until 9/11 forced him to pretend like he was the President, Obama’s first year in office has been spent promoting peace and facilitating open communication with the super-powers Bush II royally shat on; D) yes, the American public certainly pays a lot of taxes. And yet, with all of those taxes paid, still, 1 in 7 American citizens is uninsured. With all of those taxes paid, the poverty level in this nation is astounding. With all those taxes paid, the homelessness rate is mind-boggling. And, with all those taxes paid, even “the greatest country in the world” can’t even afford to take care of all of her veterans who have fought to keep her so great. But those all seem like Socialist kinds of issues.

This article has nothing to do with Jesus or Christianity or human compassion or charity. It had to do with one person’s attempt to libel Obama because he’s a Democrat in a society that has been Pavloved, by way of Karl Rove’s evil genius, into accepting shit as absolute gloriousness.

You know what I heard an incalculable amount of times as I demonstrated against Bush and his feckless administration’s dirty tactics: if you don’t like it, get out. I’d relay this same message to the author and her constituents, meaning that if they don’t approve of the current administration, they are more than welcome to expatriate and live elsewhere in the world, but pretty much anywhere else they would be wont to move operates under some form of Socialism (successfully, may I add).

P.S. I’m a Christian.