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This guy walks into a bar and says... - Apr 2, 2010 - Printable Version
- Boy, Do I Like CafePress!
by Ken Shade
Do you remember when there were ads in the back of *Rolling Stone* that featured a guy in a sweat shirt that said "We print anything,"? I ordered one that actually said "We print anything." I thought I was devilishly clever and unique when I did it. I found out later that "We print anything," was their most frequently ordered shirt.
I don't often read Rolling Stone anymore, so I don't know if those ads are still there. I doubt it, though, because we now have CafePress.com. No matter what you want to say, or what you want to say it about, you'll find it on CafePress, and probably said better than what you'd have done. It's amazing. I once saw a woman at an MS fundraiser wearing a shirt that said "MS gets on my nerves." I didn't think the line was all that witty, but I was thrilled at the idea that somebody, somewhere, was making a shirt that pertained directly to something very personal to me.
Now, if I wanted one, I'd go to CafePress and probably have many to choose from, in a variety of styles and colors.
I'll check. You listen to a short song.
Just as I thought. My CafePress search yielded 1,210 results. There are shirts, jackets, hoodies, tote bags and water bottles with a vast variety of sayings about my favorite crippling neurological disorder. There are shirts specifically for me, as the patient, as well as for my children, mother, father, brother, uncles, sister and spouse, should I ever have that crippling disorder.
On Sunday night, as I was joyfully listening to coverage of the passage of the health care bill, I started noodling around on CafePress. I wondered how many of the insane, violent, ignorant and dishonest slogans used by those who have been fighting against the bill, and this administration, were available on products at CafePress.
The answer: ALL of them, plus tens of thousands more.
I searched "GOP," "Republican," "conservative," "health care," "Obama," "Glenn Beck," "Rush Limbaugh," "tea party" and "Democrat."
When I searched "Democrat," I discovered at roughly half of the results were nasty comments about Democrats. When I searched "Republican," only about five percent of them were nasty comments about Republicans. Many of the nasty comments about Democrats involved implicit, or explicit, death imagery. None of the ones I saw about Republicans did.
My Republican friends insist that the Left is far nastier. My "independent" friends claim the acrimony is evenly divided between the two. All empirical evidence undercuts both beliefs, and this is just another, small example.
I say all that knowing something you don't know as you read this. I have already written the body of this piece, and some parts of it are gleefully snarky.
Well, Republicans, you deserve it for spraying more vitriol in the first place. Besides, there's no way I could ever balance the scale.
Now, by a show of hands, how many of you have ever seen somebody's bumper sticker, shirt slogan or poster, and wanted to respond to that person's foolishness immediately? If you're a liberal, you probably said nothing. If you're a conservative, you probably said something as you keyed their car or punched them in the face.
As I was going through the Right's favorite slogan bearing products, I found myself verbally telling my monitor what I thought about each one. My kids are used to this type of behavior, but I felt stupid, anyway.
There was a little satisfaction, though, in saying what I wanted to say about each one. Just as I did when I was in radio, I pictured one listener, and spoke directly to that person. Then, I started typing it all out.
The result is this article.
Here are forty-five stickers, hats, shirts, plates, etc., and what I'd want to say to anybody I saw with them.
It's a fun game. You should try it.
Exactly who is trying to take your gun and/or your Bible, and exactly how? You can't name one any more than you can give Bigfoot's street address.
Weren't these the people who squawked "RESPECT YOUR PRESIDENT" every time "W" was criticized?
As I watch FOX "NEWS" in the wake of the health care vote, I hear elephant after elephant complaining about a lack of civility in politics. That's like Richard Speck complaining about blood stains on the carpet.
Okay, fine. Submit your telephone number to the NSA and ask them to keep tabs on you.
Your "pro life" assertions would ring truer if you gave a rat's booty about babies that have already been born. "Pro God" looks pretty weak next to that picture of what you really rely on to help you feel safe. "The Lord is my shepherd, but He's too wussy to shoot anybody, so I carry an enormous gun."
Do we miss historians' consensus pick as "worst president ever"? No, we don't.
Weren't you elephants the people who wanted to lynch the Dixie Chicks for saying something similar? And you, Toby Keith! You were all over Natalie for her comment. Why don't you go after the person who designs and sells this shirt? You could put a boot in his/her ass! It's the American way! Or, are you afraid it might be an adult male, and not a cute little Dixie Chick?
Did you like it when it was done to American prisoners of war in Vietnam? Admit it! Being cruel to people, especially "fer-in-ers," gives you a four-hour boner you should call your doctor about.
If you're so self reliant, why aren't you in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban yourself, instead of making the "guv-mint" do it for you? Oh, I guess you're only self-reliant when it's safe.
The whole notion of some sort of unique American self-reliance is nonsense, anyway. People who talk about it a lot usually mention the "Old West," and how it wasn't "won with a registered gun." Well, it wasn't won by self-reliant individuals with their unregistered guns. It was won by the United States Army, and their guns. It was the biggest government give-away, entitlement program if you wish, in history! When the Army killed all the Native-Americans, divvied up the land, and handed it out, they didn't give it to self-reliant people. A self-reliant person wouldn't have accepted it.
Most settlers didn't even have guns, other than the rifles and shotguns they needed for hunting. Those few who did own sidearms were required by the laws of almost every western town to check them in with the sheriff for the duration of their stay there. Now that's gun control! Heck, that's what the famous Gunfight at the O. K. Corral was about! The Clantons wouldn't turn their guns over to Wyatt Earp! These illusions you have about our self-reliant pioneer forefathers, and their legacy to us, are the "history" you learned watching cowboy movies.
(ASIDE TO RATIONAL PEOPLE: Have you ever noticed how "innovations in education" proposed by "conservatives" almost always serve to lower educational standards or narrow the curriculum? There's a reason for that.
If you learn too much about science, you won't accept their anti-science garbage about climate change, oil reserves, intelligent design or AIDS.
If you know too much about economics, or even mathematics, you won't agree to the frenzied, mouth-breathing pleas for tax cuts as a solution to every problem.
If you have more than a passing acquaintance with our constitution, you'll know they're full of coprolite when they say that something, such as the health care bill, isn't constitutional, or when they say we need to return to the Constitution "the way it was written." "The way it was written" designates each member of my family, other than me, as three-fifths of a person who can't vote, own property or be free. Have they forgotten that, or are they "outing" themselves?
And, if you know more than they want you to know about history, you won't follow when they insist that we "return" to an America, or a world, that never existed in the first place. Republicans, deep in their hearts, mistrust education because it keeps making them look foolish. As Ronald Reagan said: "Facts are stupid things.")
Okay, back to the t-shirt vendors!
"There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 25 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie (his wife), who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?" ~ Paul Addison of Edinburgh University (WWW.winstonchurchill.org)
Do you mean protect them from things like disease, death and criminal insurance companies? Surely you don't mean politicians who'd sell weapons to our sworn enemies, or presidents stupid enough to believe that ICBM's can be re-called once launched. That would just be too ironic!
You weren't proud before? Gosh, I was! In '08, conservatives were dancing on Michelle Obama's head because she said she was proud for the first time, yet they see nothing wrong with stickers and shirts like this.
The person who designed this, and the person who'd wear it, would probably insist that they are not bigots. Aside from the "birther" silliness of it, the choice of a village hut scene from a Tarzan movie tells what they really feel, even if they don't realize it.
I hear some of you angrily claim that everybody who opposes President Obama's plans is unfairly being called racist. You miss the point. It isn't the fact that you oppose his plans, it's the fact that you oppose his existence. It's what you say about him that you never said about any president before. It's syntax and symbolism that would never come to your mind if he were white. When you show him climbing into a coffin; when you portray him as a witch doctor; when you don't object to Rush's characterization of President Obama as "uppity," you are showing what is really governing your decisions. Face it, and learn from it!
Tangentially, do any of you ditto-heads feel even a wee, tiny bit uncomfortable when Rush derides anybody else about their ego problem?
WOW! We could all lie with impunity, and be paid for it! We could commit multiple prescription fraud to get fun drugs like Viagra and Lortab! We could avoid the military service we insist others serve if we have infected ingrown hairs on our asses! (He likes the term "pilonidal cyst," but it's basically just a bunch of ingrown hairs.)
Actually, I wish I didn't even know about his questionable draft status. Two of the things I least like to visualize in this whole, big, beautiful world are pockets of pus and Rush Limbaugh's ass. Learning about how Rush avoided Vietnam forced me to visualize one on the other! I know of nuns who have been driven to atheism by less!
It's too bad John Kerry and Max Cleland didn't have third-degree ass-zits. They wouldn't have had to go to Vietnam, been shot and blown apart, and come back home to hear Gush Douche-bag question their patriotism.
Nobody's pissed off at you for being white. Nobody's pissed off at you for being straight. Nobody's pissed off at you for being male. Nobody's even pissed off at you for being a Republican. We're pissed off at you for being an ignorant, mean-spirited, narrow-minded pilonidal cyst!
This is true, unfortunately, even though President Obama --I LOVE saying that! -- even though President Obama poses zero threat to anybody's guns. Threats on the President's life skyrocketed when he was elected, and have stayed at a very high level; much higher than ever before. I went to a gun show shortly after the '08 election, and there were Obama targets being sold. 'Nuff said.
This seems appropriate, since Sean Hannity's head is like a toilet in so many ways.
Read the Constitution? You guys can't even read the first half of the second amendment. You've all got the second half memorized, but you look at the first half like it's in Swahili.
During more than a few of your tea parties, you and your elected quoted from the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, The Bible and a few others, claiming that you were reciting the Constitution. The people standing nearby didn't even know enough to correct them!
It's similar to Mary Matalin's recent appearance on The Colbert Report. She claimed that the adage "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day...." is from The Bible. Conservatives do this all the time. Many of the things that actually are in The Bible make them uncomfortable because they sound so socialistic, so they just insist that their fave rave aphorisms and country song lyrics are really from scripture.
Or...is it possible that they really do think all those things are tucked in somewhere between Genesis and Revelation? (There's no "S" on it.) If they believe that, does it mean that they're not really reading their Bibles? Are they just using them to hurl at homosexuals or hit intellectuals over the head with?
It's even more bizarre with Mormons. Parts of the Book of Mormon read like they could have been written by Karl Marx, yet most Mormons consider Sarah Palin a radical, left-wing, hippy extremist.
But I digress.
You guys certainly didn't seem to have read the Constitution when your buddy George and his Dick eliminated habeas corpus, ignored the need for warrants for anything, simply decided not to enforce laws they disagreed with and ruled by executive order.
Tonight, on FOX, Geraldo Rivera had to explain the commerce clause of the Constitution to Tom Delay. One of your great leaders is less informed and less principled than Geraldo!
Now, go to your time-out corner and think about what you've done!
There is no "War on Christmas." There never was, and there never will be. If it were true, it wouldn't be the ACLU waging it. It would be the ACLU trying to stop it.
That whole silly notion was ginned up by Bill O'Reilly. Look, if you really must take O'Reilly seriously, do it in some manner that enriches your life. Do yourself a fava, and use a falafel as a sex toy. Not alone, you pilonidal sissy! Use it on your wife! As O'Reilly knows, nothing drives a woman wild with passion like a coochie full of chick peas and tahini. In fact, a falafel is such powerful aphrodisiac that it can be used to win the fleshy favors of any random woman on the street. Just carry a falafel in your pocket. (You don't need a fresh one every day. Their power intensifies with age.) When you see a woman you desire, just run up to her and start rubbing the falafel all over whatever parts of her body you find most attractive. There's no need to play it rough. A slow, soft, rhythmic falafeling will do. Before she has a chance to comprehend what is happening, she'll be beyond all restraint, and probably performing falafellatio on you on the spot! If she stands there indifferently, supplement your falafeling with O'Reilly-esque sexy talk, like: "Oh, random babe on the street, I am a bold, fresh piece of humanity."
If that doesn't work, she’s surely a lesbian Democrat. Just walk away
And that's why you voted for him, isn't it?
By golly, you're right! One thing the human races hasn't tried nearly enough is war!
Tonight, when Speaker Pelosi mentioned the President's name, the Republicans booed. The glaring irony is that the guy you Republicans insisted we bow before for eight years wasn't even legally elected. President Obama was, though. Even Nixon didn't get booed by Democrats in the House.
Well, he'd tell a few heartwarming stories about an America that never was, change the way every economic statistic is figured to create the illusion of recovery, exponentially expand the deficit and illegally sell weapons to our enemies. I'm not sure that's the right way to go.
But that gun is made by Fabrique Nationale de Herstal, a Belgian company! They bought Browning and Winchester, too.The Belgians are SOCIALISTS with UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE! Half of them speak FRENCH! Their favorite food is frites, they don't call them "freedom fries," and they eat them with MAYONNAISE!
11% of conservatives have expressed the belief to pollsters that Hawaii is not part of the United States. That number would probably go up to about 30% if you spelled it "Hawai'i."
"He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids....Your Commie has no regard for human life, not even of his own. For this reason men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or in strength. He may even appear in the form of our own troops. But however we must stop him. We must not allow him to gain entrance to this base. Now, I'm going to give you THREE SIMPLE rules: First, trust NO one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally; Second, anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be FIRED UPON; Third, if in doubt, shoot first then ask questions later. I would sooner accept a few casualties through accidents rather losing the entire base and its personnel through carelessness. Any variation of these rules must come from me personally. Now, men, in conclusion, I would like to say that, in the two years it has been my privilege to be your commanding officer, I have always expected the best from you, and you have never given me anything less than that. Today, the nation is counting on us. We're not going to let them down. Good luck to you all." ~ President Glenn Be...er...I mean Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper ~ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
...out of his cotton pickin' mind!
So do, or did, Ronald Reagan, William Jennings Bryan, Bishop Sheen, Abraham Lincoln, Sarah Palin, Gandhi, John Paul II, Winston Churchill, Billy Sunday, Jerry Falwell, Margaret Thatcher and Jesus Christ. What's your point? People with an attention span are concerned with the content of what is said. In President Obama's case, it's damned good.
This is supposed to be Glenn Beck, but doesn't it really look more like Richard Dreyfuss?
This is a 9/12 movement shirt. Glenn Beck says he wants us all to feel like we did on 9/12/2001: United. This is only half true. He spends several hours a day seeding the clouds with hatred, superstition, suspicion and division, so it's clear that the 9/12 feelings he wants to revive are the ones that made many of us want to lash out at anybody different.
Let's see...You're completely ignorant; You can't organize your thoughts; You're an obligate mouth-breather; You're utterly dependent on parental figures; You cry for no apparent reason; You pout and whine when affronted; You live in your own little universe, and you scream and crap yourself whenever you hear loud noises. You're already like Glenn Beck!
Quick! Without looking at The Drudge Report, name a lie and a freedom that died! BEEEEP! Time's up. Thank you for playing, there'll be some lovely parting gifts for you on the way out.
Oh, yeah! The 9/12 movement is all about unity, isn't it!
These words are from The Book of Mormon. They were written on a standard called "The Title of Liberty" by Captain Moroni. Captain Moroni was rallying the Nephites to defend their liberties from a bunch of angry, unprincipled, dissenting rabble rousers who wanted to install their leader, Amalickiah, as a king. It was the legitimate government that represented God, religion, freedom, peace and family. It was the mobs that wanted to destroy what they cherished. So, in order for the Title of Liberty to be relevant on the modern American political scene, it breaks down this way:
President Obama = Captain Moroni
The dissenters = birthers, deathers, tea partiers, Glenn Beck, etc.
Amalickiah = Sarah Palin
"Respect your president! Respect the Presidency!" ~ The GOP, 2001 - 2009. Gee, I saw "W" compared with a monkey, but this is ridiculous!
How else would the F. B. I. have found out that Rockefeller Center is a portal for communism, like the building in Ghostbusters was a portal for evil? Thank you, Glenn Beck!
Perhaps not, but he's still much cooler than Chuck Norris!
Don't knock it. I have the best prostate exam of my life at the DMV! I think they should hire that guy.
Damn straight! No government meddling in my Medicare!
If it was made out of John Boehner (R - Tan-tastic!) it would be Soylent Orange. Kidding aside, the world depicted in Soylent Green seems to be the very world the GOP wants for all of us. It's where their policies on regulation, the environment and agriculture could well lead.
To Canadian doctors and hospitals, like they do now.
Constant repetition of these three canards have made them credible to "America's Next Top Model" contestants and other deep thinkers, but it will never make them true.
The mirror-image-to-the-GOP response to this: "So, what? My grannies are already dead. I protected them while they were alive. Now you protect your own! Don't expect the government to do it for you, freeloader!"
Republicans seem so afraid of despots that are dead and ideologies that are moribund, unless there's money to be made. Then, they love 'em. If they see a cheap labor market to exploit, it's falafellatio time in Tiananmen Square!
Case closed!
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