Hangover Haven, Chapter 2

"Oh, no more yanky my wanky...
the Donger need food!"
***************************

And so Chapter II begins...

"I SAIDS WHATS?! "

There's a popular belief that Franklin D. Roosevelt may never have been elected as our 32nd President if there had been televised debates, because people would not have voted for a man in a wheelchair. The reverse of that claim surfaced when Nixon apparently lost his debates with John F. Kennedy because he looked like an awful sweating hog on television. If these theories hold any truth in them, then the question must be raised as to whether or not George W. Bush would ever have been elected President if not for televised debates. Just think of all the stumblings and bumblings that fall out of W's mouth... now imagine if the only medium to hear them in was radio! Would people ever have voted for a man with such a limited grasp on the spoken English word?

Yes, there are countless examples of these "Bushisms" as they're known. Such as this audio clip, or this one, or one of my personal favorites. Now, even though the human being and fish can coexist peacefully according to Bush, he still needs to learn that when speaking about literacy or the education of our children that he needs to exhibit at least a semblance of competent speaking himself. Which is what's so sad about his latest comment:

"Children's Do Learn." Yesums, me supposes they does.

Now as easily as these things are turned into "I Said What?!" hangover moments, it's not as simple to explain them all away. Like when Bush declared that Nelson Mandela was dead:

Even if he was trying to make an analogy, it was a horribly stupid one.

In fact, this ranks right up there with the completely innacurate reporting in 1991 on the death of legendary singer James Brown (see the clip below), when in fact James Brown was actually alive until earlier this year.


"I SAID WHAT?!"

A long time ago I remember hearing a pretty terrible joke:

"What did Abraham Lincoln say after he went on a 2-week drinking binge?" ..... "I freed who?!"

And while the concept of the Hangover Haven can be summed up in the "I Said What?!" style of that joke, it's the people who think that the joke holds any ring of truth to it that frighten me. Which brings me to the unbelievable article posted on the right-wing website Townhall.com written by former movie-critic Michael Medved titled "Six Inconvenient Truths About the U.S. and Slavery." This is truly shocking to read! It puts a whooole new spin on the phrase "When life hands you lemons, just make lemonade." No, I'm sorry Michael. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that what you have in your hands are just that: lemons. They're sour and you can't squeeze a drinkable juice from them no matter how much sugar you add to it.

Here's one of the things that Medved wrote:

"...at least 97% of all African men, women and children who were kidnapped, sold, and taken from their homes, were sent somewhere other than the British colonies of North America. In this context there is no historical basis to claim that the United States bears primary, or even prominent guilt for the depredations of centuries of African slavery."

Ahhhhhh, the "but everyone was doing it" defense. I'm sure that kind of reasoning helped some of the Donner Party members sleep better at night, too. Of course, once they fell asleep they were then eaten.

Medved also wrote:

"SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS."

First of all I'm not shouting at you - writing this in ALL CAPS was not an accident. This is actually how he wrote it in his article, as if making a very strong point. Worse than that, he followed up that "point" by writing:

"Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves. Given the fact that the majority of today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% -- bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor."

I can't really fathom where Medved's going with this other than to suggest that all the people who owned slaves are dead....so we're square. Then it goes back to the ALL CAPS for Medved as he states the 3rd of his supposed "inconvenient truths":

"THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT."

Finally!!!! A defense that makes sense in terms of the conservative movement. Basically: ok, it was kind of brutal, I'll give you that one....but we tried not to KILL our slaves, because that would have dipped into our profits! So, it wasn't genocide. Hmmmm.... And it also wasn't mail fraud, so don't try pinning that on the slave owners, too!

Here is where I really wish that I could just move on and not have to post this last comment from Michael Medved, but it's one that just makes your jaw drop....obviously, it's posted in ALL CAPS as well:

"THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA."

Ya See! Come on people, this is so clear! Fine, slavery was "bad". But if you're handed lemons, you just gotta make lemonade. We all know that to make lemonade you just need to add sugar to sweeten it. And I gotta be honest with you, the sugar needed to sweeten the lemons is a hell of a lot easier to produce if you've got slave labor harvesting the sugarcane. I'm just saying.

WOW! Apparently, this has to be the ultimate in ends-justifies-the-means arguments. (Of course the "means" in this case refers to kidnapping, human sales, the splintering of families, enslavement, beatings and more than 100 years of racial hatred and inequality, even after they were set "free".) But I do have a question about this: Isn't the ends-justifies-the-means argument usually only applied when the ends are a goal that you strive to achieve, no matter the means of how you reach that goal? Following this logic, is Michael really suggesting that slaves were brought here for labor, with the long-term goal of one day being set free so that their descendants could make a better life for themselves? Seriously?! It was all a big plan!!

So, in essence, slavery in the U.S. was actually just a For-the-Greater-Good kind of action? Mmmmmmm....who wants lemonade?!

"I SAID WHAT?!" (...or "SAY WHAT?!" )

Unfortunately, Medved isn't the only person who subscribes to a very warped and elitist view of the world. So, does it really come as a surprise when Bill O'Reilly gets caught making racist remarks? On his Sept. 19th radio broadcast he was talking about his recent dining experience with Al Sharpton at Sylvia's, a famous restaurant in Harlem. O'Reilly said that he:

“had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful,”

adding:

“I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”

Wow! Now how can that be taken as racist? In typical O'Reilly fashion he claims that his remarks were taken out of context. What a great Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card that is! Apparently, he feels that he can spout off any kind of remarks he wants to and then fall back on the time-proven: "When I said that, what I really meant was..."

And that makes sense, right? Shouldn't people always be given a chance to explain away their racist remarks, rather than face the consequences - and reality - of just being a racist? I mean, I'm sure O'Reilly has a perfectly good explanation for what he also said right after those remarks:

“There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’ You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

Wow...What I think Bill O'Reilly MEANT to say was, "Who wants some M-Fing lemonade? It's sugary sweeeeeeeet."