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| As you can see, this is a group of loyal, God-fearing Americans... |
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| ...and this is a group of drug-crazed commies trying to tear America down... |
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| ...and this is the biggest asshole in America. |
Showing posts with label Sean Hannity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sean Hannity. Show all posts
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Do You Know Right from Left?
When the Tea Party folks take to the streets protesting, many with sidearms in full view, people like Sean Hannity and dingbat Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann hail them as ordinary Americans fed up with the status quo and exercising their rights as a free people. When millions of people in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia take to the streets they hold them up as people yearning for freedom. When policemen, firemen, teachers, nurses and other hard working Americans in Madison, Wisconsin gather at the state capitol to protest legislation that would remove the right of their unions to collective bargaining, Hannity, Bachmann, and their ilk demonize them as radical, left-wing crazies and slam their strong-arm tactics. These good Americans are the very same working class folks these Republicans claim to be fighting for. In the meantime, Rush Limbaugh, no stranger to obesity, has been lambasting Michelle Obama this week for eating a plate of ribs as she campaigns to reduce obesity in America. Does this asshole have nothing better to do? How low can he go? Crankyjewishguy (CJG) says, "f#*% him."
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Half-Baked Alaska and "Blood Libel"
On the Sean Hannity program the other day, Half-Baked Alaska (HBA) defended her use of the term "blood libel" to describe the suggestion that maybe, in light of the tragedy in Tucson, she should turn down the gun-related rhetoric a bit. (No, of course crankjewishguy doesn't watch Hannity; he reads about it later.) Responding to critics who suggested she might not have understood the historical, anti-Semitic implications of the term, she asked, "how would they know if I knew what the term meant or not," or words to that effect. Note that she didn't claim to know the origin of "blood libel," she just questioned how others would know whether she did or didn't. Crankyjewishguy (CJG) is going to answer that question in just a moment, but in CJG's humble opinion HBA really stepped in her own poo here, because either she knew what it meant and still believed it was an apt comparison for the way she was being treated by "liberals" and the "lame-stream" media in which case she's delusional, or she didn't know what it meant and she's just as ignorant as many of us suspected.
Now, CJG considers HBA proof positive of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a psychological theory that posits that incompetent people overestimate their level of skill and fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. Even so, CJG doesn't think she believes that the knocks she's taken over Tucson are the equivalent of a centuries old canard that Jews drink the blood of murdered children during religious ritual. But to answer HBA's rhetorical question, the reason people can make an educated guess about what she knew or didn't about the term "blood libel" is that when people use words or phrases in wildly inappropriate ways, or make words up, chances are they don't know what they are talking about. For example, take HBA's use of the word "refudiate" when opining about what New Yorkers should do about that Islamic Center some want to build in lower Manhattan. CJG doesn't believe HBA uses her spare time to think up new words she'd like to add to the English language, so it's pretty safe to assume that when she used the word, she thought it was a real word. Except, of course, that it isn't. If a stranger walks up to you while you're walking your dog, looks at your dog, pats it on the head and asks you if your bird talks, you can assume they can't tell the difference between a dog and a bird. So, CJG would say that those, like himself, who think HBA didn't have a clue what the term "blood libel" refers to are actually being charitable, given the other option.
By the way, readers of CJG will recall that he named HBA, also known as She Who Shall Not Be Named, as the most annoying person of 2010 last year, and on January 1, 2011, the most annoying person of this year...and that was before her latest "it's all about me" moment. Boy, does she make CJG cranky. But let's move on to one final point.
CJG thinks 99% of the debate over the last couple of weeks about the connection, or not, between overheated political rhetoric and the Tucson tragedy misses the point. HBA has a long history of over-the-top rhetoric. If you accuse someone, as she accused Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, of "paling around with terrorists" while the country is fighting a war on terror, that's incendiary. When you put crosshairs on a map and list the congressmen you want to send packing, that's more than "targeting certain congressional districts," a commonplace phrase in politics, especially if you are prone, as she is, to inflammatory, gun-related rhetoric. For example, when you rouse a crowd and tell them not to retreat but to "reload," and immediately feel compelled to remind those same people that you are not calling for violence, then you obviously know there are nuts out there with easy access to guns who might just hear it that way. Let's remember that some in the anti-abortion movement label doctors who perform the procedure "murderers," and some of those doctors have paid the price with their lives, as have other abortion clinic workers. In short, it's no single poster or phrase, it's a politics of incitement that may be the spark for some nut case. (There were no "government death panels" in the health care bill, for example, but wouldn't you be angry as hell if there were?) We may never know if political rhetoric played any role whatsoever in the Tuscon shootings, but the fact that the gunman was deranged and deeply disturbed doesn't mean we shouldn't choose our words with care. To the contrary. In a country where getting a gun is easy as pie, we need to realize words fall on the delusional, and the heavily armed, too.
The point is this: when your most ardent supporters look like this...
maybe you need to be a little more careful about what you say and how you say it.
Now, CJG considers HBA proof positive of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a psychological theory that posits that incompetent people overestimate their level of skill and fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. Even so, CJG doesn't think she believes that the knocks she's taken over Tucson are the equivalent of a centuries old canard that Jews drink the blood of murdered children during religious ritual. But to answer HBA's rhetorical question, the reason people can make an educated guess about what she knew or didn't about the term "blood libel" is that when people use words or phrases in wildly inappropriate ways, or make words up, chances are they don't know what they are talking about. For example, take HBA's use of the word "refudiate" when opining about what New Yorkers should do about that Islamic Center some want to build in lower Manhattan. CJG doesn't believe HBA uses her spare time to think up new words she'd like to add to the English language, so it's pretty safe to assume that when she used the word, she thought it was a real word. Except, of course, that it isn't. If a stranger walks up to you while you're walking your dog, looks at your dog, pats it on the head and asks you if your bird talks, you can assume they can't tell the difference between a dog and a bird. So, CJG would say that those, like himself, who think HBA didn't have a clue what the term "blood libel" refers to are actually being charitable, given the other option.
By the way, readers of CJG will recall that he named HBA, also known as She Who Shall Not Be Named, as the most annoying person of 2010 last year, and on January 1, 2011, the most annoying person of this year...and that was before her latest "it's all about me" moment. Boy, does she make CJG cranky. But let's move on to one final point.
CJG thinks 99% of the debate over the last couple of weeks about the connection, or not, between overheated political rhetoric and the Tucson tragedy misses the point. HBA has a long history of over-the-top rhetoric. If you accuse someone, as she accused Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, of "paling around with terrorists" while the country is fighting a war on terror, that's incendiary. When you put crosshairs on a map and list the congressmen you want to send packing, that's more than "targeting certain congressional districts," a commonplace phrase in politics, especially if you are prone, as she is, to inflammatory, gun-related rhetoric. For example, when you rouse a crowd and tell them not to retreat but to "reload," and immediately feel compelled to remind those same people that you are not calling for violence, then you obviously know there are nuts out there with easy access to guns who might just hear it that way. Let's remember that some in the anti-abortion movement label doctors who perform the procedure "murderers," and some of those doctors have paid the price with their lives, as have other abortion clinic workers. In short, it's no single poster or phrase, it's a politics of incitement that may be the spark for some nut case. (There were no "government death panels" in the health care bill, for example, but wouldn't you be angry as hell if there were?) We may never know if political rhetoric played any role whatsoever in the Tuscon shootings, but the fact that the gunman was deranged and deeply disturbed doesn't mean we shouldn't choose our words with care. To the contrary. In a country where getting a gun is easy as pie, we need to realize words fall on the delusional, and the heavily armed, too.
The point is this: when your most ardent supporters look like this...
and you fancy yourself like this...
Saturday, January 1, 2011
CJG's Top Ten Annoying People of 2011
Yesterday, the last day of the year, crankyjewishguy (CJG) named his Top Ten Annoying People of 2010 which means it must be time to name the Top Ten Annoying People of 2011. See, that didn't take long. Topping the list for 2011, as she will every year as long as she remains publicly visible, is She Who Shall Not Be Named. You know, John McCain's running mate. The one who doesn't speak a single language fluently, even English.
Followers of CJG may have been surprised that yesterday's list did not include some obvious candidates for most annoying person, namely Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and anyone who works at FOX News and has the chutzpah to call themselves a journalist. But there's a simple explanation for why they didn't make the list: CJG has shut them out completely so they don't bother him. So, who other than the Half Baked Alaskan are the other Top Ten Annoying People of 2011?
No. 1: Topping this year's list is the guy sitting next to CJG at Starbucks right now returning all the calls he missed last year. And he's not even having a coffee. He thinks he's in a large phone booth.
No. 2: Second is the guy at the other table next to CJG who is literally ripping up a year's worth of financial records as he gets a head start on his tax return. If this keeps up much longer, CJG is going to hand him a hundred bucks and tell him to go buy a paper shredder at Staples, provided he doesn't come back here and plug it in.
No. 3: The telemarketers at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). CJG made a crucial contribution to the DSCC in late October that kept the Senate from falling into Republican hands. (You're welcome.) While CJG was happy to do so, he didn't realize that someone from the DSCC would call him every day for the rest of his life seeking additional contributions.
No. 4: Christine O'Donnell. There's a big cauldron of trouble brewing for the erstwhile Senate candidate from Delaware; something to do with using campaign donations to pay her rent and other personal expenses, such as her three year supply of eye of newt. She blames disgruntled former aides for her legal troubles, but CJG thinks that anyone who claims that scientists are breeding mice with human brains has bigger problems than an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. Are we doomed to have to spend the rest of our lives hearing from this pea brain? Maybe she should try and get into that mice experiment.
No. 5: Allen West. You may not have heard of Allen West yet, but trust CJG, you will. CJG first learned of Allen West while doing a little research on Idaho militias (that's another story) and one of them had a web site with this video of Allen West giving a speech somewhere. West is an African-American right wing extremist, which sounds about as dissonant as pastrami with mayo. More troubling, West is also the Congressman-elect from the the Boca Raton area. How a heavily Jewish congressional district in south Florida elected a black right wing extremist to congress is beyond CJG, especially since the incumbent's name was Ron Klein, but this is one scary dude, and really, really annoying, too.
No. 6: Stewie Griffin. Everything CJG's younger son knows about sex he learned from watching Family Guy. CJG actually loves Family Guy and Stewie Griffin but he has to admit that allowing Seth McFarland to effectively raise his younger child may have been a mistake.
Followers of CJG may have been surprised that yesterday's list did not include some obvious candidates for most annoying person, namely Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and anyone who works at FOX News and has the chutzpah to call themselves a journalist. But there's a simple explanation for why they didn't make the list: CJG has shut them out completely so they don't bother him. So, who other than the Half Baked Alaskan are the other Top Ten Annoying People of 2011?
No. 1: Topping this year's list is the guy sitting next to CJG at Starbucks right now returning all the calls he missed last year. And he's not even having a coffee. He thinks he's in a large phone booth.
No. 2: Second is the guy at the other table next to CJG who is literally ripping up a year's worth of financial records as he gets a head start on his tax return. If this keeps up much longer, CJG is going to hand him a hundred bucks and tell him to go buy a paper shredder at Staples, provided he doesn't come back here and plug it in.
No. 3: The telemarketers at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). CJG made a crucial contribution to the DSCC in late October that kept the Senate from falling into Republican hands. (You're welcome.) While CJG was happy to do so, he didn't realize that someone from the DSCC would call him every day for the rest of his life seeking additional contributions.
No. 4: Christine O'Donnell. There's a big cauldron of trouble brewing for the erstwhile Senate candidate from Delaware; something to do with using campaign donations to pay her rent and other personal expenses, such as her three year supply of eye of newt. She blames disgruntled former aides for her legal troubles, but CJG thinks that anyone who claims that scientists are breeding mice with human brains has bigger problems than an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. Are we doomed to have to spend the rest of our lives hearing from this pea brain? Maybe she should try and get into that mice experiment.
No. 5: Allen West. You may not have heard of Allen West yet, but trust CJG, you will. CJG first learned of Allen West while doing a little research on Idaho militias (that's another story) and one of them had a web site with this video of Allen West giving a speech somewhere. West is an African-American right wing extremist, which sounds about as dissonant as pastrami with mayo. More troubling, West is also the Congressman-elect from the the Boca Raton area. How a heavily Jewish congressional district in south Florida elected a black right wing extremist to congress is beyond CJG, especially since the incumbent's name was Ron Klein, but this is one scary dude, and really, really annoying, too.
No. 6: Stewie Griffin. Everything CJG's younger son knows about sex he learned from watching Family Guy. CJG actually loves Family Guy and Stewie Griffin but he has to admit that allowing Seth McFarland to effectively raise his younger child may have been a mistake.
No. 7: Justin Bieber. CJG got annoyed just typing his name. Too much fame too fast. My twelve year old niece loves this guy. Anyone want to hazard a guess when he'll do his first stint in rehab? Send your predictions to crankyjewishguy@gmail.com and whoever comes closest to picking the exact date will win a t-shirt with Bieber's picture on the front and the words "I Told You So" on the back.
No. 8: Speaking of rehab and cautionary tales, Lindsay Lohan makes this year's list in anticipation of repeated parole violations in 2011. Will someone please e-mail CJG and explain what this woman is famous for other than being a complete train wreck? Why do we keep reading about her?
No. 9: Finally, last but not least on CJG's Top Ten Annoying People of 2011 is college basketball color man, Dick Vitale. CJG hates to pick on another Jersey guy, especially one who hails from his home county of Bergen, but if you watch college hoops, as most of us do, you know the ubiquitous Vitale can wear out even the most enthusiastic fan. CJG can take the guy in small doses, but by the end of the basketball season in March, Vitale's over-the-top, non-stop boisterous exuberance can leave a ringing in your ears that doesn't abate until Labor Day. This is why your TV remote has a mute button.
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| How about a little peace and quiet, baby! |
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