Westboro Douche's Strike Again
Come on Guys, really? Do you really think protesting outside the school where the presidents kids go is a good idea?
Clearly that is not the point. Westboro Baptist Church, or as I like to think of it America's Favorite Hate Group, are only trying to get people to pay attention to them. They are douche-bags. Everything they do something stupid. We write about it, make jokes about God hating Figs, post funny pictures of Fred Phelps, and move on.
But that is what they want us to do. The people of skid more did the right thing. They organized a counter protest. But what should we do? Do we keep writing about them? Making fun of their general douchebaggery? Or do we ignore them?
Also, today they are protesting at the Fort Hood public memorial - because they are douchebags.
13 comments:
The problem here?
Is that.. I don't think the "They Want Us to Pay Attention" line works.
...At least, not as an argument to ignore them. Westboro isn't the petulant child who covers his face with his hands, then peeks out to see if it's working.
I'm not sure if they CARE that we're paying attention. At least not in the sense of capturing our attention to sell a message.
Our disinterest, our frustration, our disgust is what they're really looking for, because that furthers their goals - justifying themselves and proving the rest of the world wicked or what-have-you.
We keep considering them, because they're a fascinating oddity. We keep mocking them, to vent our bottled anger, and we wait and hope for them to shrivel and die out.
( In tangential side news? I'm reading Shartlet's The Family.. and.. Westboro's kinda the anti-Family, innit? )
We certainly must not ignore them. Nothing anyone will ever do can make them go away or stop being the bigots they are. Though, continuing to write about them and mock them informs more and more people of WBC's hate-filled actions and rallies those informed to take a stand against WBC. That stand one takes can be purely ideological, can affect one's voting, can drive one into the streets for a protest or rally, and/or can inspire more writing and mocking. Regardless, I feel it increases the numbers of those in oppostion to this hate and is therefore a win.
IMO.
jet
I agree with JET
The point of their protests is not to get people to pay attention to them; the Westboro folk are not attention starved tweens.
These individuals read Leviticus 18:22. Given that they have reading comprehension, they understood what it meant and so rightly derived the sensible conclusion that GOD HATES FAGS.
Because GOD HATES FAGS. Just like GOD HATES SHRIMP and GOD HATES POLY-COTTON BLENDS and GOD HATES PEOPLE WHO PLANT CORN NEXT TO SOYBEANS.
But making a sign for EVERYTHING god hates would be quite a task. So, the Westboro folk focus upon a few key messages. One cannot expect them to protest EVERYTHING forbidden in Leviticus. I mean, who wants to spend their days protesting at a shipyard or a t-shirt factory? That would require a wealth of signs and travel expenses.
So, they focus upon the fag hating and leave the shrimp hating and the t-shirt hating to other groups.
I like the Westboro folk. They are a nice reminder of what Christianity would be if the fuckers read the fucking book.
They're kind of like fanboys. Only instead of protesting movies on internet forums they protest homosexuality at soldier's funerals.
Im going to argue that they have not read the book. And that it all boils down to Fred Phelps being uncomfortable with his own sexuality. Not that he is gay, but that whatever his sexuality it makes him uncomfortable.
Also, God hates figs. Pigs also have not been too popular.
I don't think it is a matter of simply reading the book. Modern Christian faith is certainly born from the book, but it far from fully contained within the book. I think it is an issue of hermeneutics. I know plenty of Christians that have read the book and don't hate fags, figs, or pigs. Poly-cotton blends are to be universally despised, however.
IMO.
jet
Andrew's kinda right here, J. You're seeing the spectacle of Westboro,and applying reason to their actions..
without really looking into them.
They're basically one large family led by Jim as Preacher-Father-Authority.
They don't so much say THE BIBLE says this, so much as Jim tells us the Bible says this. Which is why the harridan second-in-command, Jim's wife, goes all harpy and screechy at Hannity when he calls them on it. They aren't religious scholars and they aren't adherents.
They're deluded follower-zealots.
Down with poly-cotton blends!
They're deluded follower-zealots.
Word.
A person reading and accounting for the variety of things that the Bible says, I think, would end up with a far less flat-footed approach to bringing about social change than organizing the types of protests that these folks do.
"They're basically one large family led by Jim as Preacher-Father-Authority."
I question whether the motivation for a message has any import into the message itself. Is the concern over the message that God Hates Fags or the individuals vocalizing the message?
I am currently involved, to some degree, in an argument with some other people regarding ad hominem argumentation and the degree to which Heidegger's works and writings ought to / need to be read with an understanding of Heidegger being a Nazi. Do I need to read Being and Time with "Heidegger is a Nazi" in the back of my mind? Or can I divorce the work, the message, from the individual?
If the Westboro folk were protesting, say, fundamentalist Christians by holding up signs about Darwinian evolutionary theory would we care from whom they got their information?
J, I'd say that the degree of consideration to be given to the identity of the author of a work would vary depending upon one's aims in dealing the work and the questions they're looking for the work to address.
There are all manner of means and methods involved in construing the messages of others, and I am thinking that each piece of information, regardless of how integral or tangential its relationship to the message, adds the possibility of interpretations which address different sets of questions:
Is the concern over the message that God Hates Fags or the individuals vocalizing the message?
Whether we're asking, "Does god hate fags?" or "Why would someone say that?" determines whether or not we need to know about the people themselves.
Some people reading Time and Being consider whether Heidegger is accurately representing reality. Some consider what would incline a person to understand reality in the way it is described in Time and Being.
I think that to abstract x from its context y in the current context n is not to trim the fat of y off of x, and therefore produce x as x (the idea itself); but rather it is to generate a new object x', a variation x from the context y, in the context n (like some crazy, doesn't-mean-to-be-evolutionary-but-constantly-and-cumulatively-self-augmenting world of interdependent ideas).
Which is to say, "We might care where they got their information."
... You question the motivation's impact upon the message?
Thoughts on Palin's "Drill, Baby, Drill"? it's a different message than when Texan oil barons say it.
Or Joystick Joe, forever telling us about the EVILS of video games. To no avail, only to have Hillary come in and with one press conference, on Hot Coffee, put the entire domestic video game industry in a shitstorm.
The evolution argument you present misreads the role of the people and material involved, which is what I was half trying to say originally -
The Westboro folks AREN'T preaching Leviticus. They're preaching something that APPEARS to be Leviticus, that looks like it's sourced from a reading OF Leviticus, but it's not. It's one man's issues, butressed by a couple of cherrypicked bible verses. It's those issues parroted by people who wholeheartedly believe in HIM.
It'd be as if, in your evolution turnaround, they were preaching, holding up signs refering to Darwin and maybe Scopes, but using Kirk Cameron's Very Own Evolution as their data.
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