Emo Conservatives

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Oh, National Review, what won't you make up a "liberals destroyed it" myth about?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the "War On Christmas," where "every" retail store "forbade" its employees saying "Merry Christmas" to customers out of a desire to "Discriminate" against "Christianity". Most of the examples of stores I've heard this myth about are Wal-Marts, and anyone who thinks Wal-Mart gives a rat's rotting corpse about anything other than cash is retarded. When I first heard of this, I worked at Best Buy. That year, we had gift cards with a Christmas tree on, as well as one with a menorah. The two years after that, I worked at Borders, where we had no shortage of Christmassy, and even Jesusy items for the season. At no point was anyone, to my knowledge, told to say any specific holiday greeting to anyone else, or refrain from saying a specific holiday greeting. I have never bought the utter horseshit idea of a "war on" any particular holiday. It certainly didn't help that it is notorious liar Bill O'Reilly's pet project from late October to whenever he gets tired of hearing himself talk.

Today, on Valentine's Day, the bastion of conservative circle-jerkery known as the National Review Online had a column on how awful Valentine's commercials are. I happen to agree with them, mainly because most of them are sexist and based on an ancient and irrelevent way of thinking. NRO, however, claim the problem is the same as the "commercialization of Christmas and the candy-fication of Easter". Okay, I don't like the commercialisation of Christmas either, mainly because I like to think of that holiday as one of family togetherness and sharing what we have in common. Easter is something I haven't celebrated in some years, so I don't care so much.

But then, the NRO went on to say that Valentine's has been reduced to "mail-order seduction by a nation of salivating Caligulas?" The obvious meaning is that Valentine's Day, in the modern tradition a celebration of love, has lost its original meaning, and this has happened recently as a result of the loss of "traditional morals", meaning of course since "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air. This is yet another example of tories being desperate for a time that never existed and using holidays that never or only recently meant what they want them to mean.

Much like Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day has its origins in a Roman festival. Lupercalia, yet another Roman fertility festival, was celebrated between the equivalent of February 13-15 and was abolished by Pope Gelasius I. According to Prof. Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas, no link between a saint named Valentinus (the alleged basis for "Saint" Valentine's Day) and a celebration of romantic love existed until the time of Geoffery Chaucer, when courtly love became popular. In short (too late), Valentine's Day and its historic predecessors have been, and always will be, about fuckin'. And really, I'm not sure why conservatives have a problem with that. Maybe they don't like what they find at every branch in their family tree.

(Fuckin'.)

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Really?!

Three stories on CNN. Three on MSNBC. Only one of the CNN stories even talks about the shooting, another is about the protests that turned to riots (I have heard due to "political tourism", that is outsiders coming in to wreck shit for fun), and one is about the cop who did the shooting resigning.

MSNBC is little better; one story about the riots, one about the tape of the shooting, and another about there being "Two stories" from the shooting. Apart from one story from the New York Times and one from the AP via the Boston Globe, I nearly didn't hear about this shooting.

Well, if it weren't for the blogs, that is.

I personally have a lot more respect for blogs as news sources now. Daily Kos and Shakesville both showed extensive sources for this criminal act. Shakesville even linked a video taken by a train passenger that clearly shows Oscar Grant sitting against the wall with three to four other men, then the police force him to lie prone on the floor while one cop kneels on him. Then the other police creature (I cannot call him a man; I know not what species one has to be to do such a thing) pulls his gun.

Multiple sources say the gun "accidentally went off". That is not remotely the point. He was doing nothing that could be interpreted by a thinking person (or even an extremely jittery, stressed, thinking person) as an attempt at violence or escape. Grant was struggling to be sure, but then again, he did have a cop's knee in his fucking back.

According to the CNN report, the fired shot (I refuse to use weaselspeak and say "Discharged round") entered through Grant's back, ricocheted off the floor and pierced his lungs. He died seven hours later. Happy fucking new year, incidentally, to his four-year-old daughter.

Throughout the period of wrestling Grant to the floor, which was not obviously justified, the people viewing and recording from the train were shouting at the police that their actions, to put it lightly, were not proportionate. One man can be clearly heard saying "That's fucked up" repeatedly. Then the gun goes off (whether accidentaly or not is frankly irrelevant, as the officer should not have HAD IT OFF HIS HIP IN THE FIRST PLACE), and there is a moment of ghastly silence and shock. Everyone begins to shout at the police (quite understandably at this point) and the train doors shut them into the car.

This is possibly one of the most hideous videos I have ever seen. If you don't want to be utterly pissed off, sickened, depressed, or shocked beyond belief, do not watch. link

Judge for your damn selves if it was justified. The police creature who fired the shot resigned Wednesday. That should not save him from at the very least, an incredibly long prison term. As the poster of the above-linked video says, "You don’t get to execute someone and just find yourself on the job market again." Grant was cooperating by all available evidence and is now dead for the crime of obeying a police officer's orders.

Damn the lot of you. You deserve Inquisition-level punishments.