Let’s say you were driving down the street in Jonesville, South Carolina and you happened to pass the Jonesville Church of God. On the church’s sign you would read the following message:

Obama, Osama
humm
are they brothers?”

What would your reaction be?

Well, mine is that the guy who put up the sign, the pastor of the church, is a fucking asshole.

The local news has a story posted, which you can read here, but more imporantly, there is also a video clip with a brief interview with the pastor where he claims “It’s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ” and when asked if he thinks Obama is a Muslim, the pastor responds “I don’t know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don’t know. He says he’s not. I hope he’s not. But I don’t know. And it’s just something to try to stir people’s minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.”

OK, so the first thing to take from this is that, what, if Obama is elected, automatically the US becomes a radical Muslim state? Maybe this guy’s never heard of something called the checks and balances…and by the way, the current iteration of the Executive (a self proclaimed “born again” christian) has done a lot more to erode the basic freedoms and systematic governmental checks then any other president in history.

Secondly, this guy thinks Obama’s a straight out liar. Well, he says he’s not a Muslim, but I don’t know…a Muslim would certainly lie about something like that.

Third, he says “it was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.” OK, then either, A) this pastor’s a clueless fucking retard or, B) he’s a FUCKING LIAR. Those are the only two options here. If you didn’t know that equating Obama with Osama would offend some people, you are an idiot. And if you did, then you lied about why you did it.

According to the story, the pastor took the issue to his congregation and they “unanimously” voted to keep the sign up.

I don’t know what, exactly, that says about South Carolina in general, or that church in particular, but I’m sure I don’t like it.

The Descendents - We

I woke up at 4 am. Well, the alarm went off at 3:30 and I got out of bed at 4:30 so I’m splitting the difference by claiming 4. This quad venti iced latte ain’t doing it yet…

So today marks the final day of the semester for me. I have an abundant amount of reading to do for my workshop since 1) A crapload of people brought in pages last week and, 2) I fell asleep during the Dodger game last night and didn’t finish. I still have five submissions to read, but I’ll space them out over the course of the day so that should be fine.

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It’s been a while since I’ve gone off on a politically minded rant…a variety of reasons having contributed to this; disgust with the democrats nomination process, nothing to say about McCain that hasn’t been said before, generally trying not to pay a whole lot of attention for a while.

In any event, the supreme court had a couple rulings today.

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Certainly, smarter (and in the case of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, much funnier and more entertaining) people than me have pondered the degradation of journalistic standards in this country. I’m not going to wax philosophic about it.

But…

I came across this article and had a thought, and wanted to hear some other people’s reaction.

OK, it’s fairly short, so I’m just going to extract the whole thing.

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Over the weekend a porn was shot in the San Fernando Valley. I know, I know, big deal, right? Well this particular one, titled “Who’s Nailin’ Palin?” is, of course, just what this country needs to heal our wounded and divided society.

You can get the “heads up” (pun intended…damn I’m childish) over at TMZ, but I would like to quote the summary of the “film”:

The plot — two drunk Russians are driving their tank when it runs out of gas in front of Palin’s home. You can take it from there.

I truly do believe that at some point, in the very near future, someone will write a PhD dissertation discussing the social/cultural impact of having farce portrayed in a decidedly “mature” medium such as porn. Maybe it’s been written already. I contend that there is no lens by which we can judge ourselves more objectively than that of the “porn spoof.”

Or maybe I’m just trying to spike traffic again…

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