Precision Guided Humour

Nov. 25 - This week's Precision Guided Humor Assignment from the Alliance of Free Bloggers is to determine what kind of punishment would be accorded anti-war protesters under American sharia law.

The all-important word "American" should mean that sharia law not violate either the First or Eighth Amendments of the US Constitution (the latter forbids that "cruel and unusual punishment be inflicted") so American sharia would be both more humane and necessarily more imaginative than current Muslim sharia law.

It is somewhat fitting that this question come up as Americans prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving. It is super fitting that I read A Puritan Idealism in Iraq at Earthly Passions last night because I was also reminded of how the Puritans dealt with minor trouble-makers. [More on this excellent post downstream.]

However, I don't think that either the pillory or stocks would be allowed under American sharia law, although the feather-tickler might get by. So I had to go further back in our history to come up with something that would not violate the Constitution.

Then I remembered the practice of shunning. It's pretty self-explanatory, and just means that the citizens of a town decide they will neither speak nor acknowledge a person or persons who consistently violates the sensibilities of that town or are unrestrained mischief-makers.

That may sound like I'm going easy on them, but given their penchant for drama and over-the-top actions, constumes, props and exhortations, depriving them of attention would be hitting them where it hurts. All that time lovingly spent on Hitler=Bush posters, applying magic marker with bold strokes to draw a mustache on the President, and the laboured the construction of the ubiquitous effigies, and nobody even looks!

Sheesh, if you're going to turn the water of fountains red as a puerile statement and nobody even looks twice, where's the thrill?

They could march and holler slogans, but people would just keep on about their business. (Since they're being shunned, however, anti-war protesters would be well-advised to cross only at marked intersections and with the light. People subject to the shunning can't expect drivers to yield the right of way to people who don't even exist.)

Actually, we've already put the shunning into practice on a small scale. What else explains the fact that the all-important and influential media (in their minds, at least) consistently issue dire prognostications yet are ignored?

Another possibility, still in keeping with the Thanksgiving theme, would be to make them eat all the leftover turkey. And dressing. Yeah, especially the dressing.

But they can't have any of the pumpkin and pecan pies. They're mine, and the whipped cream too, which doubles as a topper for Scotch Coffee (because I drink Scotch whiskey, not Irish.)

Posted by: Debbye at 03:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Pussification of The Western Male

Nov. 6 - This is a must read for all men and women who stoutly defy attempts to remake and recondition and improve them: an essay by Kim Du Toit.

It is an absolute must read for those with male children.

Canadians may read this with a different eye, and wonder if what Kim's talking about might possibly have anything to do with the disrespect with which our veterans and present military personnel are treated. How about our police? Hmm? If it is no longer respectable to catch and punish the bad guys, even in child's play, how we treat our adult law enforcement personnel is going to feel the impact.

Zero tolerance has come to mean you must back down when someone is bullying you. Bulls***. Sometimes a black eye is a badge of honour, and fighting for someone weaker is worthy of respect. Zero tolerance means we aren't supposed to tell the difference, but there is a difference. Women know that, or they used to.

We've come a long way, baby. Now girls are among the worst and most vicious bullies in our schools and workplaces.

I was a feminist at the time of the first woman's rally August 26, 1970, which celebrated 50 years of the vote because I believed in choices, and let me tell you right now that I wasn't a feminist because I wanted a different group of women telling me how to live.

I was dismayed at how I was treated by other women when they learned I was a stay-at-home Mom. I had made my choice. What was the deal with this new judgement thing? I'm a bitch myself, though, so changed my strategy. Thereafter, when people asked what do you do I replied: "I'm an early childhood specialist." I was treated with respect then. Morons.

I wasn't a feminist because I hated men. I loved men then and I still love men, or more specifically, a specific man. A good man who has a moral code, who knows right from wrong, and who won't tolerate bullies of either gender.

My honey dumps his dirty clothes on the floor (but restricts it to one big pile.) He also does the laundrey, which inevitably means picking up those clothes. If it was really that important I would have made careful inquiries into his value system of clothes storage between laundrey days but didn't because I was interested in other attributes (no, I mean other attributes other than those attributes. Sheesh.) (Not that those attributes aren't important. Right. Ahem.)

When you really love someone, you don't try to change them, you love the good and the bad. You accept the good and the bad. Getting together with someone when the goal is to change them is a sign of mental instability because it means you are with someone you don't like and don't approve of. That. Is. Totally. Sick.

And Kim? Men aren't the only ones abandoning television. A lot of women are sick of female characters who are castrating bitches. Quite frankly, I find most television extremely embarassing.

[As an aside, I've often wondered if we are finding it a tougher go in Iraq because American television, which is sold throughout the world, portrays American men as groveling before the Superiority of Women.]

So I'll keep watching Stargate SG-1, and Buffy, and old John Wayne and Charleton Heston movies because they're about people who, by and large, know who they are and what they are. Oh yeah, and mute the commercials.

Link via One Hand Clapping who in the link cited, adds some depth and further substance as a Christian, and encapsulates the entire controversy (at least I hope it will become a controversy) quite admirably:

Manhood must no longer be defined by women, but by men. Specifically, men who are self-confidently masculine and don't regret it, who don't want to regret it.

I know I'm a little over the top on this one, but I'm quite serious when I say that young boys and young girls everywhere need you to fight this battle.

Death to political correctness and all it's lying liars who are trying to socially engineer us in the image of ants.

Posted by: Debbye at 03:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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