Tennessee Conclusion*

Memo to Tennessee: ONCE MORE IN OH FOUR!

I really thought they were going to make it through the rest of the year. I did. But the official Dumbest State in the Union could not settle with its accomplishments to date. Being the home of the class action lawsuit against Janet Jackson's right tit was not enough. Trying to ban gays from living in an entire county wasn't enough. Launching the national tour of Roy Moore's Ten Commandments and almost lynching an atheist wasn't enough.

You simply weren't racist enough, were you? Not backwards enough. Not homophobic enough. Not xenophobic enough. You won't settle for the gold medal in the Pigfucker Olympics, you've gotta set a world record. You demand more from yourselves. You give one hundred and ten percent. You are the MARK FUCKING SPITZ OF HICKDOM.

If you want to see some of the worst humanity has to offer, look no farther than Somerville, Tennessee. Somerville, which is 20 miles east of Memphis. So it's not some isolated Brigadoon. It's a half-hour at most from Graceland. Yet, when the Memphis Muslim community wanted to use a five-acre plot in Somerville for a cemetery, guess what happened?

If you guessed "they opened their arms to their fellow Americans in the spirit of goodwill that makes this country great", you haven't been reading this column for hte past year. And you may not even be reading it now. I believe it's ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We don't need bin Laden's cousins in our neighborhood!" - An unidentified woman, shouting from an angry mob during a planning meeting on the cemetery proposal. FUN FACT: Tennessee is one of only three states to include "unidentified individuals shouting from an angry mob" as a recognized branch of state and local government.

Luckily, there are some Somerville residents who are only a little tiny bit ignorant and hateful. Providing this mitigating force, we turn to Herbert Howell for his insightful take on why his opposition to the plan was justified:

"We are not at war with all the Islamics. I have no problem with who they are or what they are. If it was a filling station, I wouldn't want that either." I'd like to thank Mr. Howell for keeping his racism almost entirely confined to subtext, and as a result, qualifying for membership in the Tennessee Progressives Club.

Between Howell and the Lynch Lady, opposition to the cemetery included the fear that the cemetery would become a staging ground for terrorism. Really. Apparently, in Tennessee, many people believe that Muslims set dirty bombs by gravesites instead of the more traditional bouquet of gas-station flowers.

"We know for a fact that Muslim mosques have been used as terrorist hideouts and centers for terrorist activities. Ladies and gentlemen, you may think this is far-fetched, but that is what the Jewish people thought when the Nazis started taking a small foothold, a little at a time, in their community. I don't think anyone who has read the newspaper or seen what investigations have gone on about other mosques would not have those kinds of concerns." - Farmer John "Farmer John" Wilson.

That's the kind of quote that makes you wonder if there isn't something larger at work here. What could make anyone, even someone from Tennessee, think that it's perfectly reasonable to compare your neighbors wanting to bury their dead family members to the early days of the fucking HOLOCAUST? They were building a cemetery, not a gas chamber, you stupid fuck. But maybe there is an explanation. And maybe that explanation can be found in the OTHER objection to the cemetery - that Muslims, traditionally, do not embalm their dead.

Yes, in Tennessee, it's apparently a problem when NOT ENOUGH FORMALDEHYDE leaks into the environment. embalming doesn't stop decomposition. It doesn't stop corpse molecules from making it into your tap water. But let's face it. Without all those extra chemicals, how can Tennessee retain its history, culture, and traditional way of life? By depriving Somerville residents of one of their major dietary sorces of wood alcohol, future generations of Tennesseans might have to settle for being not quite as dumb as Alabama. And we cannot let that happen.

Embalming fluid. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

*You will not get this joke. This joke is intended for 0.33% of any given day's readership.

Racists and Psychos and Bears, Oh My!

Memo to Desperate Republicans: YOU ARE DUMB.

Seriously. When it comes to finding a candidate, Republicans are like overconfident high school seniors who don't bother applying to a "safety college". And then when a meteor strikes the one university they DID get admitted to, they're forced to head off to Devry, or order correspondence courses from Sally Struthers, or go to one of those "accredited medical universities" in the Caribbean.

Let's move to Tennessee, where tongues are drawn to windowsills like magnets to steel. Every two years, in the 8th District, a racist douchebag named James L. Hart runs for Congress. He believes in "eugenics", a.k.a. the breeding of Aryan super-men like Khan. That thing ol' Adolf was a big fan of. Anyway, things were going along as usual in Tennessee. The sun rose every day, the cows got milked, the pigs got fucked, and all of a sudden, the Republicans realized, to their dismay, that they hadn't managed to run any other Republicans for the 8th District! Oh, no!

A failed scramble later, and all of a sudden, the Republican Party is being represented by a man who claims that non-whites should be sterilized, and that their "poverty genes" will turn America into Detroit. Of course, the Republicans are adamant that they don't share Hart's values, and I'm sure most of them don't. Yet despite that, Hart's runs every year as a Republican, not a member of the Eugenics Party or some other fringe group he made up himself. It's almost as if, especially in the barely-Reconstructed South, the GOP has spent the last 40 years courting the racist vote through thinly-veiled campaigning on issues like "states' rights". But that's just crazy talk.

And speaking of crazy talk, let's turn our gaze to Illinois. Illinois Republicans face the dubious task of challenging Barack Obama for a U.S. Senate seat. Obama is that rarest of Democrats. He sounds like he believes what he's saying. After his DNC speech, I spent 42.6 seconds in complete cynicism remission, which is a personal record. To oppose Obama, the GOP has considered:

• A horny, sex-club-frequenting Borgfucker
• A short-tempered celebrity football coach
• A couple of former governors
• A crazy right-wing failed presidential candidate from another state with financial liabilities and embarrasing hypocritical past statements who also happens to be black like Obama.

Guess who they went for? Alan Keyes, who vowed he would never "imitate" Hillary Clinton by running for senator in a state he didn't live in! Hooray for the process! Lest people be overly concerned with the embarrassing thing he said a coupla years ago, Keyes got right to work saying even more embarrassing things. I believe it's a Special Carpetbagging Edition of ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I would still be picking cotton if the country's moral principles had not been shaped by the Declaration of Independence." I mean, sure, I remember learning in school about how the Declaration of Independence ended slavery, but I also remember my teacher going to a locker every five minutes to take a swing out of a bottle. At the time, I just thought he was very, very thirsty.

Keyes is also rabidly anti-gay, rejecting the idea that sexual preference is not a choice. "We as human beings cannot assert that our sexual desires cannot be controlled. [That would] consign us to the real of instinctual animal nature-- and we are not there." I love the conservatives who think gay people are A-OK in their book... as long as they stay celibate and alone. Hooray for compassionate conservatism!

Which is ironic, because when it comes to candidates, Republicans are less discriminate than even the sluttiest gay man. As we've seen, the GOP'll grab any ol' asshole that passes by for a shot at finishing the race on top.

BAD CALL

Today, we inaugurate the latest in a seemingly endless string of Friday gimmicks designed to ease the tired brain of your weary columnist: BAD CALL FRIDAY. Where I go through and single out individuals in the world who have, perhaps, shown poor judgment, or made a... BAD CALL.

Like whoever lets Dubya out of his fucking cage and allows him to open his mouth. While signing into law the spending of four. Hundred. Billion. Dollars, ol' cottonmouth told Pentagon officials: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." This is the guy that gets to sign the four hundred billion dollar checks, folks.

It's not even a traditional Dubya fuckup! Look at the sentence... it's deliberately employing that politician-speak rhetorical device where rhythms are repeated. The ending with "and so are we" twice is a classic speech thing. It's just horrendously misapplied. A professional speechwriter would have caught that, which means a professional writer didn't script Bush's speech, which means they're letting him make up his own words. During an election year, no less. What were they thinking? Putting Bush in charge of his own mouth is always a... BAD CALL.

Moving to the other end of the political spectrum, we look at sex columnist Dan Savage. I like Dan Savage, I really do, but he's been doing this long enough to know not to submit a paragraph like the following, from this past Wednesday's column, to his editor:

"But there's always a catch: I've never actually seen an extremely beautiful goth girl myself--most of them seem to have weight problems, which has always struck me as strangely contradictory. From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, 'Oh, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!' From the neck down, their look seems to say, 'I'll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.'"

Dan, Dan, Dan. Why would you do this? Are you feeling tired? About to go on vacation? Trying to fill your next two columns with angry e-mails denouncing you for being an insensitive prick? You gotta know you're gonna get letters when you say something like that. You always get letters when you say something like that. I know this, and I -never- get letters.

Plus, fat jokes? Making fun of goth chicks for being fat is like making fun of Dubya for his receding hairline. It may be technically true in certain cases, but come on. That's not where you go. You make fun of goths for treating unhappiness like a lifestyle choice. You make fun of goths for being in front of you in line at Hot Topic when all you want is a goddamn Brak T-shirt. You make fun of goths for still thinking Trent Reznor had something to say. You make fun of goth nerds who do live-action vampire roleplaying and then tell you about everything that happened to their characters the next day. Making fun of goths for being overweight is just a... BAD CALL.

Of course, as bad calls go, you can't get much worse than Joe Brown, city council chairman, Memphis, Tennessee. Hey, look! It's Tennessee again! Didn't you just try to lynch an atheist a few days ago, Tennessee? You've got to pace yourself. At this rate, you'll be too stupided out to do anything retarded in November and December. You don't sprint during a marathon, son.

Joe Brown was in City Hall a few days ago when seven Iraqis came to visit. They had an appointment with a city councilman. They'd been brought in by the United States government, and were touring the country to learn how our form of government works. And, to be fair, they got an accurate picture from Joe Brown, who, in a triumph of local control over federal mandates, refused to let those damn dirty Iraqis in the building.

In fact, in a move that I think really exemplifies the concept of "Southern Hospitality", he threatened to evacuate the building and call the bomb squad if they set foot in City Hall, and said, "We don't know exactly what's going on. Who knows about the delegation, and has the FBI been informed? We must secure and protect all the employees in that building." It's ironic, really, that someone named Joe Brown would have an irrational fear and hatred of people who share the trait embodied by his OWN FUCKING LAST NAME.

And that, my friends, is why Memphis is famous for GRACEland. What better way to show graciousness and willingness to help the people we've allegedly liberated than to have a screaming, Anne Jacobsen-style panic fit when they come for a visit. Brown has since been forced to apologize, but even by the lower standards I set for Tennessee in general, I'm afraid Joe Brown made a.... BAD CALL.

Rockin' In Dayton

Jerry Garcia is dead. Phish has broken up. The nation feels a palpable lack. Society, subliminally aware of an empty ecological niche, seeks to fill it almost without noticing it's doing so.

All the elements are lined up - a traveling show, featuring either an ancient artifact of the past or a simulacrum of that artifact, being followed and viewed by a bunch of out-of-touch, technology-shunning superstitious wanks.

Unable to find a long-haired pot addict willing to noodle on an electric guitar for 94 minutes at a stretch, the mysterious forces that settle these things settled on putting the Ten Commandments on tour.

Well, OK. Not THE Ten Commandments. If they found those, they'd be justified in putting that on tour, assuming they could stop the whole face-melting side effect conundrum or, barring that, get everyone to sign a waiver. No, these are Roy Moore's Ten Commandments, the giant stone memorial that resided in an Alabama courthouse until an unreasonably long and inexplicably controversial court fight got it, and the judge who championed it, kicked out of the courthouse for good.

Now, if you were kicking off a tour to promote an excessively religious, church-state merging, hick-loving, liberal-hating monument, where would you want your debut to be? Yes, Dayton Motherfucking Tennessee, also known as the Redneck Epicenter of the United States. Home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, home of the annual festival celebrating the conviction of an evolution teacher, home of the recent misguided attempt to ban homosexuals from the county, place where it took until 2002 to get them to stop teaching BIBLE CLASSES in the public high school. That's where Roy Moore's behemoth is starting its trip around the country.

It's almost as if, despite their backwards, science-despising, mud-wallowing yeehaw existence, the people of Dayton have developed a complex electronic monitoring system that tracks both the number and percentage of fibers of my being that I fucking hate them with. I can only assume an alarm went off a couple of weeks ago when the level dropped below, say, 41%, and so they made some arrangements, got some press, and proceeded to say and do stupid shit in front of reporters. They believe in a gentler time. They believe in a simpler time. But I know what time it really is.

"I think it was awful for them to make them move it from the courthouse. That is what our country is based on, is God and the Bible. Why we want to take God out I don't know. I think we are headed for big trouble when we take God out of schools and everything." - 70-year-old Jewell Sneed, who is secretly desperate for the country to turn back the clock to a time when "Jewell Sneed" was a perfectly respectable, even common, name.

The tour's opening went about as well as could be expected. They found an atheist (Larry Darby, head of the group that got the monument removed) posing for a picture next to the commandments, exposed him to the crowd as such, and the crowd then threatened to kill him. John Rocco, age 73, because Dayton, TN is apparently some kind of Twilight Zone-inspired mystical Brigadoon for ancient hick asswipes, shouted, "Why doesn't someone shoot him? He's not worth a damn".

Rocco also admitted to kneeing Darby in the back using the time-honored middle school "accident... on purpose" ploy, and confessed that he'd have shot Darby if he'd had his gun with him. Silly inbred fuck. The Seventh Commandment clearly states thou shalt carry thy shotgun at all times, lest ye be unable to defend the Kingdom of Heaven against varmints, liberals, and meddling kids.

Bob Lacy, who, at a spry 66, is Dayton's entire eighth-grade class, felt no remorse about potentially starting the world's slowest-moving lynch mob. "If he wants to lead an atheist group, people ought to know that. Let him wear that badge." After a quick check of City Hall, where they keep the atheist badges, they discovered that the dastardly atheists had failed to turn in the ones they'd checked out the LAST time Dayton became a hotbed of rabid church-state controversy.

This week, the City Council is expected to approve $12.60 for new badges, plus $8 in gas to send Jeb into town where there's a Kinko's. Another funding request, for four new AA batteries for the "How Much Does That City Boy Hate Us Ometer", should also pass unanimously.

Gluttons For Punishment

Memo to Gluttons For Punishment: YOU ARE DUMB.

What, do you enjoy this? Is this some kind of Southern S&M thing? Do you secretly thrill at the words of anger from us Northerners? You're like some kind of coprophilic dog who keeps pooping on the carpet because he gets off on having his nose rubbed in it.

I mean, I look over at Tennessee for a few minutes, and all of a sudden Georgia, who tried to get rid of the word "evolution" a month or so back, is now trying to ban genital piercings. But only for women.

Can you people not be left alone for one second without fucking things up? Is all the mercury in the water bringing out everyone's latent tightass qualities simultaneously? Has something emboldened public officials, and if so, what, and can we find it and kill it?

See, what apparently happened is that the Georgia House of Representatives was pondering a bill banning involuntary female genital mutilation. Now, I don't know how big a problem female genital mutilation is in Georgia, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the problem was absolutely rampant, and if the legislature hadn't acted when they did, there wouldn't be a functioning clitoris in the Atlanta city limits by the end of the decade. I do not have a particular problem with banning the harmful rituals of a superstitious group of people, even if I'm also sure that a vast majority of GA's legislators wouldn't treat their own superstitions equally.

But then Rep. Bill Heath tacked on an amendment adding "piercing" to the list of outlawed female genital mutilations. And the whole thing passed the House unanimously. UNANIMOUSLY. Not one member of the Georgia House of Representatives thought this might be a bad thing. Not one member noted that after this law, the Prince Albert would still be perfectly legal. Nobody.

I need to quote from the Associated Press here, because they have captured a pristine moment of cluelessness and deserve the credit. Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings. "What? I've never seen such a thing," Heath said. "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing." 

How are these people even getting on ballots? Do the state parties actively search under rocks and in hermit caves for their candidates? I am not a huge fan of the metal-filled hole in one's junk, but I have, on occasion, heard that it happens. What else doesn't Bill Heath know about, and how long before he bans it?

This, like Ryan County's gayhate, is one of those things that'll get national play, everyone will point and laugh, and the amendment won't become law. But the astonishing fact remains - ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY elected lawmakers in the state of Georgia passed this bill, complete with amendment, without any debate.

If anything should be criminal, this kind of mental mutilation ought to be. Voting for this amendment should be an impeachable offense, and Georgia should be forced to replace its entire legislature. In fact, as a gesture of outreach, the new legislature should be made up ENTIRELY of people with genital piercings. In fact, they can just switch places. All the genitally-pierced can go to the legislature, and all the legislators can be forced to work for Hot Topic at minimum wage. Once the guys that operate the metal detectors at the Capitol building are retrained, it becomes a win-win for Georgia, for the South, and for the nation as a whole.

Plus, these fuckbrains probably can't work an electronic cash register worth a damn, so every time I'm in Georgia, I'll be able to get me a bunch of T-shirts for cheap. BONUS.

The South

Memo to the South: YOU ARE DUMB.

We've covered some of this ground before, but it keeps cropping back up. The South needs to clean up its shit if it wants to be seen as smart, sophisticated, modern, and non-sister-fucking by the rest of civilization.

Start in Tennessee, a state already ON THE LIST. Specifically, Rhea County. You may remember Rhea County as the home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, an event they commemorate each year with a festival. Apparently, an annual celebration of anti-evolution hysteria didn't make them seem backwards enough. Like Avis, they try harder in Rhea County, TN.

So the county commission voted, unanimously, to ask the state legislature if they could kindly* change the laws so that Rhea County could charge homosexuals with "crimes against nature". Oh, and they checked with their attorney general to see if there was a way to keep gays from living in the county.

Essentially, Rhea County is hoist on their own petard. By denying the idea of natural selection, they've failed to realize that all they need to do is keep being an entire county of backward, inbred gaybashers, and, with the possible exception of a few Log Cabin Republicans, all the gays would NATURALLY SELECT to stay the hell away from there.

And what's worse, they're pussies. A day later, after their leader was quoted in publications saying "We've got to keep them out of here", some of the commissioners are now claiming that they need a "clarification" of the measure. That they voted unanimously for. Seems they thought they were just endorsing the commonly accepted bigotry about gay MARRAIGE, not the less palatable bigotry against gays in general. Unfortunately for these commissioners, the state's recently enacted "No takebacks" law means they're stuck looking like jackasses.

And here's where we get to the crux of the matter. Remember, back after 9/11, when pretty much every single Muslim or Muslim-looking person was expected to individually and publically denounce what happened, under pain of being sympathetic to the terrorists? Well, I think the same standard needs to be applied south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Every time a county wants to kick out all the gays, or Miami police are found to be following and photographing rappers who visit "just in case", or anyone in Texas does... anything, really, everyone in the South, and everyone living in the North but with a twangy accent, has to publicly denounce their actions.

It's really the only way for the South to escape their horrible, unfair, stigma of deep-seated DUMB. Get crackin'.

*I do not know for a fact that the measure they voted on included the word "kindly". However, I have it on the highest authority (Andy Griffith as "Matlock", Andy Griffith as "Andy Griffith") that Southerners use "kindly" like I use "motherfucker", i.e., as punctuation.