Wingnut Post-Kidnapping Etiquette Tips
By Shorter J-Pod, Don Imus co-bigots, Jeff Goldstein and (natch) Jonah Goldberg: Goddammit, if I was kidnapped at gunpoint with my companion shot, I couldn’t be more sure when I was released that I would immediately start speaking purely in right-wing banalities! And if I didn’t, I’m probably secretly pro-Islamofascist kidnapping! And I would speak that way even if I was making a propaganda video as a condition of my release!
There really are certain reactionary memes so fundamentally inhuman I can’t even grasp them. This, of course, isn’t true of many consevative ideas. Consider, example, Jason Appuzo’s artistic ideal the Right Brothers, who usefully for our purposes write songs that consist entirely of lame reactionary cliches. Click the link and watch that video and you’ll hear lots of bad ideas (as well as worse aesthetics, knowledge that even right-wing guitar licks sound like Whiny Ass Titty Babies, and a low-budget video that isn’t cheesy enough–really, at least throw in some freeze-frames of the drummer hitting the cymbal, like “Workin’ For the Weekend.”) But I can understand them. But to attack a freed hostage for saying that she wasn’t beaten up (and, as far as I can tell, we have no evidence that she wasn’t), as if that would somehow make the experience less terrifying, or kidnapping less heinous? I can’t even fathom that. It’s just a different moral universe.
(Real-life Bob Roberts video courtesy of Tristement, Non!)