Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet (Day Three)

Memo to Creationists: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Welcome to Creationists: The Stupidest People On The Planet Week: Day Three. Thus far, we've learned that creatinonists want to teach your children, think black people are like monkeys, and believe that Martin Luther may have had to wait for a DINOSAUR to finish walking past before he could nail things to a church. And we're letting them rewrite biology textbooks.

It is a battle taking place in the year 2004, what many of us considered "the future" when we were growing up. It's a battle pitting 200 years of hard work, learning, and thought against remarketed superstition and hokum. At most, they should be treated like a pesky six-year-old who's patiently explaining to his mother that he's found an elephant in his closet. Nod, smile, give them a cookie, and under no circumstances let them drive the minivan. But showing remarkable savvy for people who can't count past 6,000, the creationists are fighting all over the country, and winning.

Dover Area School District, Pennsylvania: Henceforth known as the Scraggly Toehold of the Stinky Foot of the Creationist Horde. The district has just become the first in the nation to approve the teaching of "intelligent design". Now, remember, I.D. is creationism with the serial numbers filed off. It's a pseudoscientific rubber mask covering the ugly face of the Six Thousand Year Universe People. It is a lie, and it will be taught to children in rural Pennsylvania in the name of "balance".

It's important, by the way, to remember WHY the mask is necessary, and why the creationists have to put on a white lab coat from the Halloween Store before they can say anything. Teaching creationism in public schools is ILLEGAL. Unconstitutional. Can't do it. Supreme Court said so. Not allowed. No way, no how. If creationists robbed a bank, and explained that it wasn't a robbery, it was an "unconventional transfer of funds", they would still go to prison. Yet "Intelligent Design" gets a pass, because there are plenty of people in positions of power willing to aid and abet the obvious charade.

People like William Buckingham, born-again Christian and, coincidentally, evil fucking idiot. It's ACTUAL CREATIONIST QUOTE TIME!

"I think it's a downright fraud to perpetrate on the students of this district, to portray one theory over and over," Mr. Buckingham said. "What we wanted was a balanced presentation." Really. That's a downright fraud, Mr. Buckingham? If teaching the thing for which there is evidence instead of the thing for which there is not is "downright fraud", then bypassing a constitutional restrictions using a name change and some sleight of hand is first-degree intellectual murder.

Mr. Buckingham also said that "This is not an attempt to impose my views on anyone else." Interestingly, there are two competing and equally valid theories behind the source of this statement - the Bastardists believe that Mr. Buckingham is both lying through his teeth and knows it, while the Delusionists believe that Buckingham actually believes that he's not imposing his view on others, even though he patently is.

Grantsburg, Wisconsin: The school board there has approved the teaching of "multiple theories of origin", which also means CREATIONISM. The president of the school board that approved this decision is David Ahlquist. Ahlquist is the pastor at the town's Grace Baptist Church. He also says, "I've tried not to let my particular view on evolution or origins get in the way of my academic. To promote only one view is indoctrination." Given that viewpoint, I'll be looking for a Buddhist with a bullhorn who's free on Sunday and knows where the fuck Grantsburg, WI is. Wouldn't want the Grace Baptists presenting only one view, would we?

Georgia: In the land of Zell Miller, they're trying to decide whether to add a "warning sticker" to textbooks informing students that evolution is not all that, and certainly should not have a bag of chips added to it. A WARNING STICKER. It should have a little cartoon devil on it. "Dipshit the Devil says - DARWIN'S IN HELL WITH ME! Don't be like Darwin, kids!"

Today, it's two small towns and a hick state. But that's three more locales than there should be. It just emboldens them. Makes them try for more. And they have allies in high places.

They Shall Over-Rev

We live in troubled times. Corruption is rampant. Abuse of power runs unchecked. The vaunted "will of the people" is sapped, thwarted, ignored, and manipulated on a regular basis. But finally, the people are saying they have had enough. They are going to send a message to those in power. They are going to take to the streets and raise their voices. Their rallying cry: two bucks a gallon is an UNSPEAKABLE CRIME AGAINST AMERICAN HUMANITY.

Yes, Americans last week were out in front of gas stations, protesting high gas prices. Take a second to read that sentence again. It's slippery. It glides off the mind, as we are well-conditioned to treat something like that the way we'd treat a pink elephant hallucination. Pretend we never saw it and move along. But it's true.

In York, PA, Dan Wagner waved a sign outside a gas station encouraging people driving their cars to honk their horns if they thought gas prices were too high. The resulting vibrations in the pillars of civilization were picked up by ultrasensitive seismographs in Ohio for nearly three minutes until a bunny started hopping outside the Akron Seismology Institute, completely obscuring the readings.

The average price of a gallon of gas in York County that day was $1.99 a gallon. Dan Wagner's message? "I'm here to say, 'Hey, let's get 'em down there'." Dan Wagner is an idiot.

Right here in Minneapolis, there were signs and chants outside gas stations on Friday. Signs like "TANKS A LOT". And "Bushgivesmegaspains.com (Yes They Are Setting Up A National Web Site)", which is right up there with We Shall Overcome as protest slogans go. I'd love to make fun of them even more, but nobody bothered quoting any of them. And when local TV news decides you don't have anything interesting to say, that's a much harsher indictment than I could ever come up with.

Average price of a gallon of gas in the Twin Cities when these protests took place? $2.04.

In Huntington, West Virginia, Marcella Adkins, also requesting the honking of drivers sympathetic to her cause, explained that "As working people, we need lower prices. As things are today, you work and you put it in your gas tank." Upon reading the phrase "working people need lower prices", four dozen economists had aneurysms and died. Fortunately, the total was two short of the 50 dead economists required to qualify Adkins for the Congressional Medal of Honor, because she didn't do it on purpose. She's just dumb.

Gas prices in Huntington as of May 10, which is all I could find because some hick probably got chaw in the Huntington newspaper's websearch function, causing it to be completely unable to sort results by date? $2.05 a gallon.

These protests are apparently being organized by America Comes Together, a group devoted to two goals. First, they want to convince Ameriica that George W. Bush is to blame for the current prices at the pump. This is a noble goal, as it reduces complex global political and economic trends into a wave of anger at someone I can't stand. Unfortunately, their second goal appears to be spreading their message through the somewhat nonstandard medium of "annoying fuckheads with astonishingly poor handwriting and signmaking skills". If these people expect to be taken seriously as a movement, they need to manage better spelling and more legible signs than, say, a Monday Night RAW audience. If you cannot leap this astonishingly low bar, STAY HOME.

Better yet, stay home anyway, you whiners. People on the coasts have been paying $2.20 a gallon for over a year now, and they suck it up and they pay because they need to get to where they're going. People in other countries pay $4-$6/gallon for gas, and have for years, and they suck it up and they pay because they need to get to where they're going. You need to get a fucking grip.

And here's your happy, gift-wrapped grip, courtesy of You Are Dumb. You know where else they're protesting gas prices this week? Beirut, Lebanon. A place where the average salary is considerably lower than Minneapolis, MN. Know how much a gallon of gas costs in Lebanon? $3.28. You know what happens to people in Lebanon who protest gas prices? They get SHOT TO DEATH.

So suck it up. Count your blessings. Count your mileage. Take your signs, especially your Pavlov Specials that make other drivers think they're doing more than adding to noise pollution when they lay on their horns, and shove 'em up your ass. Die fast, die soon, and get your corpse squished by lots of rocks so that a hundred thousand years from now, you'll be useful to some future society that needs to make plastic out of you.

Wascally Wabbit

Memo to the Easter Bunny: YOU HAD IT COMING.

I mean, I understand why some people may choose to follow the deviant lifestyle of a pagan fertility symbol. I don't APPROVE of it, but I don't appreciate you calling me lupophobic. I love all the animals equally, even the sick freaks who "hide their eggs", "hop down the bunny trail", and engage in other perverted activities behind closed doors.

But if you keep flaunting it in the faces of good, kind, normal people who just want to celebrate the torture and murder of a 2,000 year old guy with a beard, well, don't think there aren't going to be repercussions. I mean, I'm not saying I condone the horrific act of violence that occurred in Pennsylvania. I'm just saying I understand how it could have happened.

Sure, it may have seemed, on the surface, to be a friendly little Easter play in the friendly little Glassport, PA's friendly little memorial stadium. But then it turned ugly, as the Easter Bunny was flogged, eggs were broken, and children were traumatized by a church who simply wanted to get across the vitally important theological message that a man suffered horribly for days just so you could get jellybeans and plastic grass.

They whipped the Easter Bunny. In front of four-year-old kids. That kills me. So do the various headlines: "Easter Bunny's torture scenes upset children." Gee, can't imagine why. "Easter play makes point, but upsets kids." That's a surprisingly kind headline for a play that also featured a drunken man and self-mutilating woman. Still, it's entirely possible that this play wasn't meant to be offensive.

And in fact, Patty Bickerton, the youth minister in the bunny suit who does not in any way shape or form get sexually excited by dressing up in a bunny suit, being whipped, and having eggs broken over her head, told the AP that in fact, the play wasn't meant to be offensive.

Glad that's cleared up.

Once again, by the way, I'm confronted with the kind of thing we atheists simply would not pull. This is partly because we don't have an excuse to meet every week and plan stuff out, but even if we did get together to watch Nova or something, I can guarantee we wouldn't hatch diabolical plans. You won't find atheists sitting on a street corner around Hanukkah, under a giant FREE DREIDLES sign, setting tiny yarmulkes on fire and explaining the combustion properties of oil. For one thing, that's mean. And for another, it's frickin' cold in December.

I'm also a bit confused about how you can have an Assembly of God in the first place, since supposedly there's only one of him, and he's everywhere, and he knows everything, and he doesn't need to be instructed on proper hallway behavior between classes, which is what I always thought assemblies were for.

All I know is, there's no way in hell I'm going anywhere near the Bunny Pride Parade next year.