Billo!

Damn it, I hate when people agree with me before I get a chance to really rant: Leonard Pitts Jr, in a syndicated article for the Knight Ridder Tribune (”Rules Are Different For Minorities” [article no longer available online]), bemoaned the fact that Moslem groups are expected to publicly condemn Islamic terror attacks, and black politicians are called upon to denounce the likes of Louis Farrakhan but, say, Billy Graham isn’t asked to condemn abortion clinic bombings by Christians. I’d read this sort of thing before and the fallacy has always annoyed me, so I e-mailed Mr. Pitts to point out that when (for example) somebody blows up a building claiming he’s doing so in the name of Islam, then if Moslem leaders don’t condemn it they appear to be, by their silence, accepting this claim. And “different rules” are not really applying here: Reverend Graham was not required to disavow Eric Rudolph’s fatal bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic, because Rudolph didn’t do it in the name of Christianity — but anti-abortion groups were asked to denounce his violent solution.

Mr. Pitt e-mailed me back before the day was out, agreeing with me.

Big news: John Kerry might have had a girlfriend on the side. Was it really so bad the last time the Democrats had a candidate who couldn’t keep his zipper closed? He won the nomination, was elected President, and was the first Democrat in over half a century to be elected to two terms. The economy was good, and the Constitution was still in effect. Would you rather read headlines about soldiers being blown up, or the President being blown?

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A Tennessee woman is suing Janet Jackson (and Timberlake, CBS and MTV) for compensatory and punitive damages, claiming that Jackson’s exposure caused her to “suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury.” I’m thinking Johnnie Cochran must be dying to defend Jackson: “If it’s not the whole tit, you must acquit”

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I really don’t care that the woman in the supermarket this morning was having trouble with her cell phone reception while she was getting instructions on what fruits and vegetables her family needed: Anybody who actually walks down an aisle saying “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” needs to be smacked.

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Victoria’s Secret is selling flannel nightgowns. That’s just so very wrong.

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Looking at the defense and homeland security budgets, it’s impossible to miss the fact that terrorism and other threats from the Moslem world account for an overwhelming percentage of it. Now obviously, it’s in the best interests of neither the United States (some opportunistic members of the administration notwithstanding) nor the Moslem community here and abroad to have this perceived as a U.S. vs Islam conflict.

Now, the only way to remove the Moslem=terrorist link in the collective mind of the Western World would be for prominent Moslem leaders throughout the world to absolutely denounce terrorism. No equivocating. Just stand up and announce that it’s wrong.

“But Billo, people have suggested this before, and it’s just plain unfair that we should single out Moslems and force them to publicly denounce terrorism!”

Well you know what? This is all unfair. It’s unfair to the 3000 people who were killed when the Twin Towers came down. It’s unfair to their families. It’s unfair to the people living in New York City’s Chinatown, whose businesses were destroyed when the entire area was effectively shut down. It’s unfair to everybody who travels by plane and needs to get to the airport an hour or two earlier than before and whose flight might be diverted because it turns out somebody accidentally carried a nail-clipper on board or looks at a stewardess the wrong way. It’s unfair to everybody. The only people who came out ahead on this were George Bush, John Ashcroft, Rudolph Giuliani and the asshole who was in lower Manhattan just hours after the 9/11 attacks selling “I Can’t Believe I Made It Out!” t-shirts.

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A judge has ruled that online pop-ups were legal, protected as free speech. I assume it would be equally legal for somebody to interrupt a trial in his courtroom every three minutes by jumping up and screaming “YOUR HONOR, YOUR PENIS IS TOO SMALL!”

I can understand people adapting to winter if they have to (”Hey, Sven, how much, the snow, we got, today?” “Six, ur seven, inches, Olie, chust, the flurries”), but these people celebrate it, with Snow Festivals. That’s like saying Hey, let’s have a Famine and Pestilence Festival!

I came across something called Covenant News, an ultra-conservative Christian website. They refer to advocates of gay rights as “the Sodomite War Machine”, and I just have to wonder what that army’s banner might look like.

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I’ve seen this at a number of local supermarkets, in the This Is How Stupid We Think You Are aisle: They sell green peppers at $1.99/lb (or less), and red and yellow peppers at $2.99/lb. And alongside them, packages of what they call “Stoplight Peppers” — one green pepper, one yellow pepper and one red pepper — at $3.99/lb.

Okay, Bush has declared that the war in Iraq is over. We won. Are the troops coming home? No, apparently they’re scheduled to stay there indefinitely, so they can… be targets? The party line is that they’re remaining in Iraq to help them rebuild their government. Here’s a thought: If the war’s really over, it’s time for the troops to come home. Their job is done. If we now need to help the Iraqis rebuild their government, send the politicians over there. Start with the ones who voted for the war in the first place either out of genuine conviction or poliitical expediency.

Or here’s another idea: Saddam was a threat to the world. Well, we got rid of him and his government and maybe now we should leave while there are still some Iraqis who don’t hate us. Let them create whatever new government they want, with this warning: We decided your old leader was a threat, so we came in and kicked his ass. If your new government becomes a threat to us, we’ll come in and kick some asses again.

Simple, effective, and it eliminates the need to become an occupying force.

Poor Johnny Hart… Not only must he feel lonely, knowing that just about everybody other than himself — including his mother — is going to Hell because they’re either not Christians or they’re the wrong kind of Christians, but he’s constantly being misunderstood by the media, comics strip readers, the Anti Defamation League, and all the other damned souls.

“Why is it that every time I mention Jesus, or my belief in Jesus, it upsets people?” he asks. And yes, I believe he sincerely is too stupid to understand. So for Mister Hart, and anybody else who doesn’t get it, here’s the explanation: This April 13 comic

expresses Mister Hart’s love of Jesus. Anybody who would object to it (especially being published on Good Friday) would have to be as religiously intolerant as, well, the guy who put this online two days later:

“How can people possibly be offended by my sincere conviction that Judaism is meant to give way to The One True Faith?”

Personally, I don’t care what Mister Hart believes. I’m even amused by his inability to understand the difference between the man in the restaurant who says grace before eating and the man who stands on the table screaming — like Jeremiah on PCP — that everybody who doesn’t say grace before eating will suffer eternal damnation.

And on general principles, I don’t want him censored in any way, because if you censor Mister Hart for his beliefs today, you might censor Billo tomorrow.

For the same reason, I’m opposed to anybody censoring my white supremacist buddy Matt Hale, and that’s really my point: For all his faults, Hale admits he’s both a racist and an anti-Semite (actually, he takes pride in both labels). You don’t see him crying to the media “I’m misunderstood, why is everybody persecuting me?”

Well sure, he believes Jews are persecuting him, but that’s because Jews persecute everybody — even Christians, whom Matt Hale also doesn’t like, because the Jews invented Christianity in an attempt to undermine the white race.

Damn, wouldn’t you love to watch a theological debate between Hart and Hale?

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Every single eating establishment at Disney World: an entire complex where the simplest of foods cost even more than they do in Yankee Stadium (though to be fair, while the quality of the cuisine is often no better, I’ve yet to see a Disney restaurant with a quarter inch of urine on the floor).

Okay, not really… but since I’m neither a 12-year-old boy nor a big fan of the “teen hooker” look, that’s kind of okay.

I did hear her sing for the first time yesterday, though: She sounds like one of the Chipmunks. Or a Munchkin. And in the name of the Lollypop Guild, we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland

Last year, when she denied she’d had silicon implants, she was telling the truth: she was having them pumped full of helium.

Native American superstar Wayne Newton is leading a campaign to reclaim Pocahontas’s remains (she died in England) and bring her back here “where she belongs”.

Now, can somebody explain the Indians’ fascination with Pocahontas, why to this day it’s a point of pride for Native Americans to be able to trace their ancestry back to her? She probably didn’t really save John Smith’s life, and some historians believe she might not even have sung “Colors of the Wind” while steering her canoe down a waterfall, but she’s a symbol: a symbol of how her people aided the settlers at Jamestown, which helped the Europeans adapt to live here. In fact, after a while, all the Europeans really needed was more land, which they acquired by means of one of history’s more successful ethnic cleansing campaigns.

So… why exactly do the Indians revere her so? That’s like Blacks honoring the guy who thought up the whole “slavery” concept, or Jews saying “Man, that Hymie Quisberg is one hell of a hero to us: Without him, the National Socialists may never have become a successful political party”