I recognize what DougJ is trying to say, but man do I disagree. I don’t wish Michael Kelly is dead. I don’t wish anyone was dead, particularly someone who dies so young and leaves behind a grieving spouse and kids. I’m sad for Rick Warren, who lost his son to suicide today. The other night I posted something about Campbell Brown and Dan Senor and titled it Please Just Go Away and Die Young and I almost immediately felt guilty and dirty.
I wish these folks would have chosen different paths and decided to do good, but you know what, harboring feelings in which you wish others were dead or celebrating the death of others is the way to a dark heart. I know I am opening this thread up to “BUT HITLER LIKED ANIMALS” types of comments, but a lot of people were sad when Kelly, Hitchens, and, hell, even Breitbart died.
I am fully aware I am a total hypocrite and how I feel about things changes at a moment’s notice, and I’ll probably be dancing on someone’s grave within months of posting this, but for this fleeting moment I am trying to be a better person. Although the world really is a better place with Breitbart and others gone, but still, there is nothing to really celebrate. If anything, we should be sad they wasted their lives filled with rage and hate, and it is probably best to not mimic their behavior.
Although when Phyllis Schlafly dies, FUCK HER.
gogol's wife
@efgoldman:
Yes, that really is yet another demonstration of what a great writer John Cole is. Just brilliant. Hilarious!
ETA: It wouldn’t work so well if both (seemingly contradictory) parts weren’t utterly sincere.
The Dangerman
After 75 years, FINALLY!
http://www.halseyhall.org/pubs/images/hu.jpg
Morzer
I was reading some of the wingnut comments on Roger Ebert’s death and thinking that they were uncomfortably close to some of the views of Michael Kelly’s death expressed here. Yes, Kelly was badly wrong and often deeply unpleasantly so, but I’d like us to be better than the hate-peddlars on these issues.
LGM has quite a memorable collection of things that the haters are saying about Ebert’s death:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/04/eberts-dead-about-time-two-thumbs-way-up
Baud
Well shit. Why visit this blog then?
gogol's wife
The Rick Warren story is interesting. I wonder what Warren’s position on gun control is. I wonder why his son had guns in the house, with his “long struggle with mental illness” and all.
Baud
@The Dangerman:
It took me about 10 seconds, but then AWESOME.
Highway Rob
(a) Right wing necrophilia doesn’t do it for me, so no thanks.
(b) Isn’t she dead yet?
(c) Has anyone fucked her while she was alive? (Googles it.) I’ll be damned.
Anya
John, great, great points. I could never be happy about someone dying, unless they were like Assad and their death would stop mass murder and other destructions.
? Martin
Ah, now we know your problem with finding women. You like them wrinkled and cold.
Highway Rob
@efgoldman: That keyboard thing that efgoldman said. That. Plus, I’m stealing this.
John Cole
@gogol’s wife: I’m glad you all caught what I was really doing. I was worried for a second people wouldn’t get it.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s hard for me to play holier-than-thou on the issue because there are some people I wish were dead, and I will celebrate when they are. I try to keep the list as small as I can, but I can’t pretend I don’t feel a certain way.
I think (and maybe I’m just ass-covering for myself here) that there’s a difference between thinking like that about a few people and thinking it whenever someone who disagrees with you or that you don’t personally like goes down, like you’re keeping some sort of tally: the more of them die, the more we win. Pretty easy to go to some not-good places morally speaking if you start believing that.
I just can’t get onboard with what Doug’s doing. Yeah, he wasn’t a good reporter and said some shitty things. I really don’t think I’ve got the right to say he deserved to drown to death while under heavy fire.
David Koch
That’s sexist. You only said that because she’s a woman. You should apologize to her and Kamala Harris for being a sexist pig.
Baud
@John Cole:
You were worried that the community that gave you $500 based on an April fools joke would misunderstand?
JPL
On 9/11, I walked into the family room and the tv was on. Barbara Olsen was on the screen and I thought what hateful thing is she saying now. I felt horrible when I realized she was on the plane that crashed into the pentagon, but I still didn’t mourn her death. Doug’s post reminded of that.
the Conster
I’m the most peaceful non-confrontational rational person I know, but these assholes need to feel pain or the concept doesn’t exist for them. Somethings wrong with them – they’re missing the empath gene – so they need to suffer personally so that they understand suffering. Eggs, omelette, and if assholes wake up to their assholishness by losing a loved one and discover that they’re not special, who am I to argue with Fate?
TBogg
It would be fair to say that Michael Kelly is the only person who advocated for unrestrained war in Iraq to actually suffer the consequences of his words. On the other hand, Bill Kristol drowning in a submerged Hummer is too good for him.
Ash Can
@The Dangerman: LOLOLOL!!
scott
Hilarious, but also cool in the way gogol’s wife talks about. Should we give up a little honest hatred and anger generated by people who cheered on the deaths of hundreds of thousands? Nope, but we probably shouldn’t wallow in it either. Like anything else, hatred can be a habit, and like a good wine we should serve it cold, enjoy it, and put it away for a while.
Linda Featheringill
Michael Kelly died 10 years ago, right? This is the Michael Kelly we’re talking about here?
Sometimes some people get strange.
JPL
@scott: Even red?
Liberty60
Sometimes I think I am all the more vicious for wishing that hateful people don’t die, but live long enough to see themselves reviled, and spend a long long twilight of life in shame and humiliation.
Linda Featheringill
Phyllis is a little bundle of sunshine, isn’t she?
scott
This is actually the part I really love about John’s work here. I love the moral outrage, the anger, the visceral stuff, but I also love that he balances it out by remembering how when he was on the other side he lost the plot and forgot that his opponents were human beings. I don’t think he’ll ever forget that again, and I enjoy him chirping in my ear reminding me not to do it either. It’s like having a cool uncle telling you cautionary tales about not getting mixed up (like he did) with a Mexican thrash metal band that dealt coke and meth on the side.
Spaghetti Lee
@Liberty60:
live long enough to see themselves reviled, and spend a long long twilight of life in shame and humiliation.
Problem is that’s not gonna happen for a lot of people. I’m interested in seeing Fred Phelps kick the bucket, and I’m sure when that happens a lot of people will celebrate with me, even Republicans. But my joy if Rush Limbaugh were to die is tempered when I remember that the media will vomit up tributes to how he was a bold intelligent voice, unafraid of criticism, changed news reporting as we know it, etc.
scott
@JPL: Nah, not red. I was thinking about a nice white or a little champagne. Bygones!
El Cid
There are very, very rare people whom I think ‘deserve’ in some fantastical way death if not prolonged agony for their public actions.
Mostly, though, I don’t care which mechanism removes their harmful role from public life, I’d rather it be choice or something benign.
I’m glad an evil, malicious fuckwad like Breitbart has no role in public life anymore (directly), but I wish he didn’t have to die to do it.
These fucks, though, who manage death & destruction throughout the world? Fuck ’em. Yeah, there’s a lot of people in, say, our own former governments who should be captured by extraterrestrial chronoversal justice brigades and forced to relieve for decades or centuries the pains of their victims.
I want shitbags like Senor et al gone from public life; their role in the world is malevolent, meaning, their public participation in decisionmaking and the public sphere causes harm, hurts people, kills people.
But I wish that many could be erased from public life while continuing to live out their family life in complete lack of attention.
Others I wish to see finally hauled before some international tribunal and tried and punished, even if it’s merely a court of harsh embarrassment, including all the disgusting shits who throw entire nations and continents into desperate starvation in order to shill for rich bastards and their preferred ideologies.
Admittedly, a lot more people care about the feelings of, say, Campbell Brown and Dan Senor than those of some unnamed brown fucks whose relatives got blowed up because somebody somewhere said they were near some possible terrorist or terrorist-enough type figure, but that’s how it is.
We always mourn the 60K of our own killed while killing 3 – 5 million civillians in Indochina, so, YMMV.
danielx
@efgoldman:
Hear hear…I was reading through the post and thinking nope, can’t agree, and then I got to the last line and couldn’t keep the grin off my face. There’s the John Cole we know and love.
There are any number of people out there whose contributions to public discourse have been less than positive, shall we say. (I’ve got a little list…they’ll never be missed.) Kelly, Breitbart, Hitchens (to a lesser degree), Judith Miller, Bloody Bill Kristol and lots of others…it doesn’t mean that I want them dead, even if they are or were warmongering shitheads.
That being said, there are people out there who are vile and evil and without whom the world would be a better place – “he took two in the head and it has greatly improved him”.
James E. Powell
@the Conster:
I’m the most peaceful non-confrontational rational person I know, but these assholes need to feel pain or the concept doesn’t exist for them.
The problem is that when such people do feel pain, they don’t have an “on the road to Damascus” moment. The don’t experience humility or engage in reflection.
So I can’t hope for their pain or their demise because it doesn’t do me any good and it isn’t going to change what they do or say.
Gin & Tonic
I wouldn’t dance on anyone’s grave. There are some I can’t wait to urinate on, though.
JPL
Mr and Mrs Senor are grifters who are being paid by the media to grift. Ignore them.
mai naem
Phyllis Schlafly’s son turned out to be gay which is fucking hilarious being that she’s such a homophobic bigot.
Also, fuck Michael Kelly. He was sleeping with the Republicans who called Max Cleland anti-American, put bandaids on during the 04 RNC convention making fun of Kerry’s service, the Republicans who booed the gay soldier who was serving in Iraq during a Republican debate.
Any pundit who pushes for American troops in Syria needs to be suited up in body armor, given a weeks worth of MREs, armed to the hilt, and then parachuted into Syria along with all their loved ones.
David Koch
Primary DougJ! He’s worst than Bush! He sold u out! He’s Bush’s 4th term!
fuckwit
I support Cole’s piece 100% here.
Yes, I am squicked by the idea of being glad people are dead, wishing people were dead, and even more squicked by the idea of CALLING for the death of people (which DougJ has done, on several occasions).
And yes, I will shed no fucking tears over Phyllis Schafly, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Bush, or Feith, or Kristol, or McConnel/Boehner/Cantor, or O’Reilly/Hannity/Limbaugh/Palin/Coulter, or any of the fevered egos poisoning our collective unconscious.
On the flip side, RIP Bill Hicks, I miss him every day, and George Carlin… nobody else so thoroughly combined pure misanthropic hate with deep compassion and care for people and the world we all live in. It seems Cole has got the same curmudgeon gene going, and I have to say, I feel it too.
Gin & Tonic
@El Cid:
I’m not optimistic about this, for anyone. FFS, it took over 30 years for Ieng Sary to face an international tribunal, and in the end he died before they could do anything. If the Khmer Rouge can escape earthly punishment, then nobody needs to live in fear of any international tribunal.
marindenver
And what are these sad followers of Breitbart doing to make the world a better place for us in his memory? Sorry, trick question.
We’re all going to die eventually. Some of us will be missed more than others.
Spaghetti Lee
Believe it or not, some people (even liberals) who knew Andrew Breitbart in person said he wasn’t as awful as his public persona would suggest. I don’t know about that one way or the other, but let’s assume he was a fundamentally decent but misguided person. Imagine an alternate universe where Breitbart lived, delivered some monumental piece of ratfucking media-bait to the media in October 2012, and let Romney squeak it out. Glad that didn’t happen. Did he deserve to die? I think that’s a different question, and I don’t know the answer. This stuff is complicated.
danielx
@Liberty60:
You’ll have to live a long goddamn time to see Dick Cheney feeling any shame or humility no matter how much he is reviled. Indeed, being reviled seems to invigorate him.
Chris
@danielx:
Learned man once said, “I have never wished anyone dead, but I have read many an obituary with great pleasure.”
That is all.
It’s not my preferred choice. I much prefer it when, like Charles Johnson (or John Cole) they have a road to Damascus moment, admit they were wrong and come over to the light side. That said, when a Breitbart or a Kelly or a Buckley dies leaving behind them a legacy of nothing but a lifetime of service to the rich, powerful and prejudiced, it’s very hard for me to feel much sorrow.
Litlebritdifrnt
It occurred to me today that perhaps Warren’s son was gay and rather than come out and disgrace his father he killed himself. Just a thought.
Highway Rob
And perhaps this would be appropriate at this time.
JWL
@John Cole: Well, I certainly didn’t get it. Then again, I didn’t get your wire fraud scam/April fools joke earlier this week, either. I mean, come on. Schlafly? Her one claim to fame was torpedoing the ERA amendment 40 long years ago. Now, if you’d invoked ‘Cheney’ as the punch line, maybe. Probably… but even then…
I guess it boils down to karma. I subscribe to the notion, insofar as I understand it at all. You don’t, that’s cool. But you made better sense to me before I understood you were going for a laugh. Don’t get me wrong. Given a few beers and the opportunity, I’d gleefully piss on Cheney’s grave. But come that righteous day of reaping, I won’t celebrate the evil SOB’s death . Mind you, not for his sake, but for my own. Could be I’m splitting hairs, but it makes sense to me, anyway, if only to me.
Anya
Finally googled Michael Kelly, and found out he was a vicious advocate of an illegal war. But I am still not gleeful about his death. Weird though that I know who Phyllis Schlafly is, but I’ve never heard of this Michael Kelly person. I read about Phyllis Schlafly in one of my Women’s and Gender Studies courses.
TS
Good to hear there is life after the President compliments a woman on her looks – ANY other topic is worth discussing
I hate that I am of an age when I can no longer assume those who have draconian political viewpoints will die before I do. I am consoled by the fact that they probably have houses full of guns – which gives me a fighting chance.
Patricia Kayden
“Although when Phyllis Schlafly dies, FUCK HER.”
I guess this is supposed to be funny? Otherwise I don’t see how this is different from DougJ saying he’s glad Michael Kelly is dead. Ditto to everyone who says they’re glad that Breitbart is dead.
I won’t shed any tears when Cheney kicks the bucket. I’ll bawl when Mandela passes though.
El Cid
@Gin & Tonic: Why do you think I kept mentioning the extraterrestrials, etc? It’s because there isn’t the power structure in the world yet to do such things.
gene108
I wonder if Pastor Rick can throw his considerable right-wing clout behind gun control now?
Killing yourself without a gun is hard. I tried. I failed. 10 years ago around this time, I was in a mental hospital after trying to kill myself.
No gun, the chances of the kid still being alive are a lot higher.
Redshirt
All life is precious. Every atom. We all need to live our lives every day with this awareness.
For it is but a temporary gift.
Alison
I guess I don’t get it. Maybe I’m a bleeding heart pansy or something. Oh well.
Chris
@JWL:
We all have wingnuts that really, really push our hate buttons even if others have objectively done a lot more harm.
Case in point: among the Bushies, John Yoo’s probably the single one whose grave I most look forward to pissing on. He didn’t give the orders. He didn’t commit the torture. But there’s just something about the picture of the good little lawyer sitting in his air conditioned DOJ office, meticulously explaining in bullet-point memos what forms of torture can and can’t pass through the legal loopholes that’s just nauseating in a way even the worst of his bosses don’t cause.
YMMV. If Schlafly causes that kind of reaction in Cole, who am I to judge :D
ChrisNYC
Well, I still don’t get what you’re doing. But I also had to google to figure out the baseball joke. I came really close to asking for someone to explain it to me, which I’m glad I didn’t do.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I wondered the same thing as soon as I heard.
Anya
@Litlebritdifrnt:
We cannot speculate but the above Rick Warren quote caught my eyes. It’s not possible to prevent every suicide but there are almost always warning signs. If I understand this correctly, the Warrens were with their son shortly before he committed suicide yet they didn’t notice his despair. I’ve met plenty of religious people who think they can cure everything with prayers. Maybe the Warrens didn’t educate themselves about how to support a loved one dealing with depression. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not blaming his family.
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
For me the ‘hatred beyond what they likely deserve’ medal goes to Michelle Malkin. This is all interpretation, but when I see Erick Erickson or George Will (for example) they strike me as people who primarily like the money and the TV spots and hearing people call them ‘intellectual heavyweights of the GOP and all that’, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that Malkin doesn’t believe every last hateful, bilious, shrieking call for conservative jihad that she makes, and I think that if she ever actually got political power, things like free courts and free press would start vanishing. That’s why I hate earnest rage more than smug careerism: the only thing more dangerous than a pooh-bah who can be bought is an ideologue who can’t.
Nancy
Anya’ statement perfectly typifies this blog. She learned something in a gender studies class. So funny kids!,
jonas
@gogol’s wife: That’s exactly what I was thinking. How was this kid — given his apparently well-diagnosed mental illness issues — allowed within 10 miles of a firearm?
This is a seriously under-discussed issue: people can commit suicide a lot of ways, but the fact that this country is chin-deep in guns makes it extraordinarily easy to kill yourself if your sick brain keeps sending you suicidal messages. A lot of same people (evangelical *cough* Christians *cough*) who would argue that the prevalence of abortion clinics and birth control encourages a casual attitude towards fetal life apparently have no problem having guns lying around everywhere, as if suicide isn’t the intentional taking of a life too.
White Trash Liberal
http://www.ralphmag.org/hitlerL.html
Bob
John, here are you comments on the passing of Geraldine Ferraro –
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/03/26/two-quick-things/
Ted & Hellen
@JPL:
Ha. That was no plane.
gogol's wife
@jonas:
See the work of Dr. Matthew Miller at Harvard.
John Cole
@Bob: Someone missed the joke.
mom
Wouldn’t you kill yourself if you were the spawn of that degenerate piece of trash Rick Warren? Hopefully Rick will kill himself next out of grief, and spare the rest of us from having to tolerate his disgusting existence.
dr. bloor
@efgoldman: i.e, a power play. There’s your problem right there.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Anya:
Actually, it’s very common for people who have decided to commit suicide to seem calm or even happy in the hours before they do it, because they’ve finally made the decision. It seems paradoxical, but it’s true.
I can’t do links from the iPhone, but there’s a book called “Night Falls Fast” about suicide that G found very helpful after one of his close friends killed himself.
Anya
@Nancy: If it makes any difference, I was 15 when Michael Kelly was killed. Nevermind!! Cary on with your mocking.
ChrisNYC
@efgoldman: The googling was only after I sounded out the various permutations of H and U and 1 and 4. “Hufourteen? Ach-you-one-four? What’s so funny about THAT?” I thought it was maybe a “Mike Hunt” type deal. Hopeless.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
Michelle Malkin is definitely up there. The shameless hypocrisy in being an anchor baby who rails against anchor babies is something special.
I’ve never really been able to decide which people are most loathsome, the earnest ragers who truly believe you’re subhuman, or the smug careerists who know you’re not and simply don’t care. Eventually decided it was a moot point, as illustrated in the wise words… of the last Captain America comic I read;
Dr. Erskine: “You work for the Nazis, even though you don’t share their ideology?”
Red Skull: “And?”
Dr. Erskine: “Am I supposed to think that makes you less despicable than them, or so much more?”
Red Skull: “Forgive me for answering your question with a question, Doctor. If I kill your family because of their Jewish blood… or if I kill them because you refuse to work for me… will they not be dead all the same?”
jonas
@Spaghetti Lee: Everybody is kind to people they *know* — family, close friends, etc. Even history’s greatest monsters — Hitler, Stalin, e.g. — were said to have been charming, warm, kind in person and real mensches to those they cared about. The true test of moral character is if you can bring yourself to care about those whom you haven’t met and whose struggles deserve a measure of sympathy — the homeless guy in Portland; the single mother struggling to get by in Miami; the disabled veteran in Syracuse; the migrant worker in Tuscon. It seems to be a defining trait of conservatives today that they, at times proudly so, are utterly devoid of empathy for anyone outside their immediate family or social circle.
the Conster
@James E. Powell:
That’s a pretty broad brush you’re wielding there. My experience is that normal people who aren’t psychopaths who truly experience the loss of another become more human and humbler in their belief that the world is organized around them, and those that don’t wake up to their shared humanity won’t be missed.
If the assholes don’t wake up to their assholery and they won’t be punished by the institutions we have that mete out punishment, and in fact are rewarded like the Cheneys and the Senors of the world, then I have no problem with seeing them die – the more painfully and ignominously, the better, even though it doesn’t change my life, it’s justice.
Bob
@efgoldman:
I didn’t keep a link, I remembered it, searched for it, because it was spot on. I liked it very much. I also like this one and will remember it.
raven
Lucinda
Pineola
When Daddy told me what happened
I couldn’t believe what he just said
Sonny shot himself with a 44
And they found him lyin’ on his bed
Liberty60
@Chris: It is difficult to discuss John Yoo without invoking Godwin.
Joel
Phyllis Schlafly is probably a better person than Breitbart ever was.
Chris
@jonas:
I’d agree with that. Most conservatives I know, I wouldn’t consider lacking in empathy all around. They’re often perfectly decent to their immediate social circle, even to people like me if we’re considered their friends. They just can’t seem to be bothered to care outside of that circle.
On the macro level, that translates to “take care of my tribe, I don’t care about the others.”
Ken
@mai naem: Phyllis Schlafly’s son turned out to be gay
One of them. Another is the mind behind Conservapedia, which has… opinions about homosexuality. I wonder what Thanksgiving dinner at the Schlafly’s is like.
jonas
@gogol’s wife: Duly noted. This is some seriously compelling research. Again, the fact that people who supposedly label themselves “pro-life” are not more, excuse the term, up in arms about this issue speaks for itself.
LanceThruster
“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” ~ not-Mark Twain
amk
I wish darth and rupie were dead.
Omnes Omnibus
“All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
-Clarence Darrow (frequently attributed to Mark Twain)
Ruckus
I think it’s different to hate someone for what they have done when what they have done is hateful and actually wishing for others to die. The world is seldom just and wishing them dead is not close to the same as them working to make death possible/probable for people different than them and their loved ones.
IOW, fuck those who hate for a living and especially for those who hate for religious bullshit or just because.
raven
Fucking whimps. Another Final Four game and you’re babbling about some fucker that died 10 years ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: As it happens, I don’t care for basketball.
raven
Must really that Beilein fell down off the Mountain.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Nuthin personal.
Anya
Am I the only one who finds this “It Gets Better” video by Matt R. Salmon incredibly sad? How can you truly love someone when you’re putting them in the category of a second-class citizenry? Imagine you’re own mother heading a group that’s spearheading a hateful campaign that permanently puts you in a second class status (on top of being so insensitive to your feelings that she’s asking you to help edit the campaign literature.) It’s hard to imagine.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: I think you should send an outraged email to Cole. I hear he likes that.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Just pointing it out.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Off Pat Lang!
Jay
To a couple of commenters hanging ’round-John’s Ferraro comments were spot on. He was very tough, but he didn’t go so far over the line as to say “I’m glad she’s dead.” He argued she only deserved criticism (That was basically TNC’s take on Breitbart; he wasn’t mean about it, he just said that, while he may have been a good friend to many and a good father, neither are relevant to his work, and they aren’t the reasons he was recognized.).
Finally, Schlafly is known for more than punching out the ERA. I just finished And The Band Played On, Randy Shilts’s powerful book on the early years of the AIDS epidemic. All of you should read it. I think it’s the best work of journalism in American history, and Schafaly comes off as a real monster therein, responding to C. Everett Koop’s proposed anti-AIDS sex ed recommendations by arguing that, as Shilts wrote, “they represented little more than a call to institute grammar school sodomy classes” (the equally despicable John McCain echoed this line during the 2008 campaign, when he blasted President Obama’s support for early childhood education on such things as “bad touches” and “stranger danger” as “sex ed for kindergartners.”).
The kicker? Schlafly has a gay son.
So yeah, pile on, folks. It’s totally possible to write an entirely critical remembrance of someone. Keep it cool and factual, and you’re doing a surgeon’s work, calm, reasoned, devastating, and short of celebrating someone’s death (In this case, I took John writing “eff Schlafly” to mean not “I’ll be glad when she’s dead,” but “she doesn’t deserve a kind word in death.).
raven
SHOWFUKINGTIMEEEEEEE!!!!!
lojasmo
@John Cole:
Tee hee.
Lurking Canadian
@Baud: Took me a good deal more than ten seconds. Bravo!
Gravenstone
Mother fucking Cubs. That is all.
kdaug
Yeah.
It’s a big, strange thing, this “life” deal.
We understand maybe 1%, and it get weirder the more we learn.
Save your cradle philosophies.
I’m just going to keep making it up as I go along.
So say we all.
David Koch
Fuk! Michigan is winning. Where’s the fucking dro0nze when you need them!
raven
@David Koch: I hate em and I’m for em!
raven
McGarity is unreal! And just picked up his third!
Sean
@Litlebritdifrnt:
You’re not the only one who had that thought.
Bill Murray
@jonas: I know people that know Dick Cheney and think the world of him. Sure he directly helped them when he was their congressperson, but evidently he was quite personable
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
This was the scary part about being a suicide hotline counselor. If they suddenly get calm and peaceful they have made a decision. They have decided that their course of action is OK. At that point you can only hope they don’t succeed, unless you can physically intercede. A gun makes that a lot less likely.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: I’m charmed by your enjoyment of the games.
Ash Can
@Gravenstone: When Marmol comes into a close game, kiss it goodbye. Nice touch that it was both Upton brothers that he served the meatballs up to.
Zelma
I’m not sure that there is an afterlife or a God, but one reason I wish there were is that I have a whole list of people whom I’d like to see having to face what shits they have been in their lives on earth. If there is a hell, I believe it is having to live for eternity with the knowledge that one has truly done evil. Maybe a merciful God would limit the suffering of someone like Cheney to say, 100,000 years or so. Sounds a lot like purgatory, and me a good Lutheran! But it’s a satisfying concept.
Come to think of it, that’s not enough for someone like Cheney.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks, I really do love it and I hate the 6 months till football.
jonas
@Bill Murray: Absolutely. I’ve heard stories about how awesome Strom Thurmond was from old folks in South Carolina. Complete gentleman. Would do anything for a constituent.
Of course he was also a completely evil old segregationist son of a bitch who wanted to perpetuate Jim Crow while shagging his family’s black maid. But wev. Great guy in person, apparently!
David Koch
C’mon Orangemen, win one for Ebert!
Jay in Oregon
@the Conster:
The problem is that they have constructed a reality where they are always the victim. Their abortions are different than other womens’ abortions because THEY made a mistake while those other women are just dirty sluts who can’t keep their legs closed.
I would love to see Rick Warren have a come-to-Jesus moment regarding gun control, but I don’t see him rocking the boat when it comes to his gun-fetishizing followers; if he gets kicked out of the conservative evangelical tribe then there are probably 5 or 6 guys just waiting to take his place.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: They play baseball during that time. You may have heard of it.
raven
@David Koch: He was an Illini, he’d be for Michigan.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Just Some Fuckhead
Was it like yesterday when you wished Mr. And Mrs. Dan Señor dead?
raven
@efgoldman: It’s a really tough game.
This guy McGarity has been possessed.
Comrade Luke
I have Syracuse in my pool, but couldn’t care less.
(Gonzaga grad…)
slag
This made me happy. I am not ashamed.
Karmus
I recognize what you are trying to say, John, and man, do I agree.
I am down with the Dougster but I had the same basic reaction when I read his post: “dude, you’re too good to go there.”
This.
I love you, man.
raven
@Comrade Luke: You knew when my Illini thumped you at home it was hoax.
Jay in Oregon
@Morzer:
If you want to troll the haters then ask them what videogame Matthew Warren was playing, since we all know that’s the cause of gun violence.
(And with that, I take off my infrequently-worn Evil Hat…)
Yutsano
@efgoldman: ALLEZ LES HABS!!
(Sorry. But FWIW I rooted for Canada in 2010. I REALLY need to emigrate.)
@Jay in Oregon: :: slow clap ::
Well played Mauer…
David Koch
sarah silverman forced to apologize for racist remark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIqgfN9NFCk
raven
Whoa, Michigan pissing it away.
Morzer
@Jay in Oregon:
I have no desire to troll anyone, Jay. I’d just like to try and live my life with some measure of decency and humanity, even towards those who have behaved so appallingly and recklessly as Kelly.
Nor do I think it would serve any purpose to make crass remarks about the death of Rick Warren’s son and video games.
raven
Three turnovers in a row.
PeakVT
@mai naem: Kelly died well before the 2004 convention.
Yutsano
@efgoldman:
Durn tootin’. Seattle doesn’t have a team and they’re the closest. Plus I LOVE Vancouver.
Bruce S
Cole covered his ass here because during the day Phyllis Schlafly sleeps in a coffin and only comes out at night to drink the blood of liberals. She’s 357 years old.
raven
Ooooooo, big moving pick call on the Cuze.
Comrade Luke
@raven: Stay classy.
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe someone more acquainted with CBB can help me. Why have there been so many games this year where no one broke sixty points? Is there some new rule change favoring defense or something?
raven
@Comrade Luke: I just never thought the Zags were “the best team in the country” as Mr Cowherd said in January. I’ve always enjoyed their teams.
raven
@Spaghetti Lee: Seth Greenburg, the ex-VA Tech coach was talking about how there is so much pressure to win now that coaches slow everything down, especially in the tourney.
raven
@efgoldman: You must be talkin to someone else.
Svensker
@jonas:
Hitler, yes, but I don’t think so in Stalin’s case. When he was dying apparently he was lying there gasping and choking and none of his staff came to his aid because they were afraid if they did the wrong thing they’d be killed. So they just watched him die.
raven
Jesus Michigan
raven
OOOO, Michigan up three, 15.7. Missing free throws like mad. Foul the Cuze????????
arguingwithsignposts
FWIW, I root for hockey. A good game, whether lots of goals or a 1-0 triple OT game in the playoffs, it’s all a beautiful game, and I’m glad it’s back. But Fuck Gary Bettman and the shitheel owners.
To the topic at hand: I have got to a point where I don’t wish anyone dead, although I would be pleased if some people were removed from public life somehow. Unfortunately, the Magic Hand of the Free Market doesn’t seem to be able to do that when so many assholes put their thumbs on the scales.
I feel sorry for Rick Warren and his family. I had the opportunity to meet him a couple of times. He was nice enough in that pasty white overweight preacher guy way that is common in Southern Baptist life. I thought his book was bullshit, and I still think most of what he believes is bullshit. It would be nice if he somehow changed because of what happened with his son, but I’m not holding my breath. Regardless of any conversion, the pain we feel when a loved one dies is similar, and I don’t wish that on anyone.
Spaghetti Lee
@efgoldman:
Roger Scott is tried in Massachusetts for sleeping in church.
Man, if that was still around, imagine the loss of all the uncles who drank too much at Christmas dinner before midnight mass.
raven
BBBYYYEEEEE Orange.
Spaghetti Lee
@raven:
Didn’t know he had a last name.
Spaghetti Lee
So it’s Michigan-Louisville. I love the ’80s!
raven
@efgoldman: And Nance and Special K are really good compared to many others.
Morzer
@Spaghetti Lee:
Is it too late to institute a similar sentence for those who advocate the use of pink Himalayan salt, rather than God-given white American sea salt?
priscianus jr
John,
Nobody is perfect. Each of us is a mixture of good qualities and some not-so-good qualities. In considering our fellow man, we should remember his good qualities and realize that his faults only prove that he is, after all, a human being. We should refrain from making harsh judgment of a person just because he happens to be a dirty, rotten, no good son of a bitch.
AxelFoley
@The Dangerman:
LOL, took me a little while to figure out what the hell you were talking about.
Well played, sir. Well played indeed.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts:
THIS!! Mother. Fucking. This.
Jasmine Bleach
I’m not that familiar with Phyllis Schlafly or Michael Kelley, so I really have no opinion there, and Breitbart was just a blowhard–but for some people who are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands for no justifiable reason, I will definitely toast their passing and celebrate when the time comes.
I don’t think it’s a way to a dark heart, but it is celebrating the removal of evil from this far too violent planet. Sorry. All life is transient. All living things die. In some instances, the sooner it happens really is the better.
Just my opinion, of course.
Anne Laurie
@Spaghetti Lee:
Well, Malkin recently said, on tv, that her father used to beat her with a belt “and with more than a belt“. So I think we can conclude that physically abusing children risks turning them into hateful, bilious, shrieking abusers themselves…
To know all is not to forgive all (at least in my case) but it’s instructive to see how monsters are made.
mainmati
@TS: CDC statistic: People who keep guns in their home are 22 times more times at risk to be injured or killed by a gun than those that don’t. Darwinian evolution at work.
arguingwithsignposts
Also, I don’t get into the overly dramatic mourning when someone who lived a long, fruitful life dies (like, this week, Roger Ebert). Such individuals contributed greatly during their lives, but they lived longer than many. I don’t like that they died, but I appreciate that they lived a long life.
I am much more disheartened when someone dies in their prime – the Bill Hicks, the RFK, the MLK, Heath Ledger, John Belushi, Stevie Ray Vaughn, etc.
Spaghetti Lee
@arguingwithsignposts:
Not trying to attack you, but Ebert was only 70 and his mind was still sharp as a tack. He was still in his prime. Even if he just had another decade it would have been a decade full of inimitable writing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: My dad just turned 70, and he’s, like, real old and stuff.
arguingwithsignposts
@Spaghetti Lee: I totally get that. But he also had fully 50 years of writing.
“Even if he just had another decade it would have been a decade full of inimitable writing.”
Maybe. Or not. The calculus on this is difficult re: “young” or “old.” I’m just sharing my view. It was a loss.
Gian
what I usually say is something like I’m sorry that (name of winger here) died without repenting.
it seems much nicer than “satan laughing spreads his wings”
Mandalay
@mom:
Your post is really, really creepy. Get a grip.
Xenos
@Gian: It would be interesting to see if Kelley would have repented. Then again, that is probably offering him more credit than he deserves. He probably would have viciously attacked anyone from his ‘team’ who started to review their conscience publicly, and we would have even less accountability than we have now.
Just imagine his response to abu Ghraib. yikes.
Xenos
@Mandalay: Ignore it. It is just a bit of trollery from a Breitbrat to facilitate nutpicking at a later date.
Mandalay
@fuckwit:
This. Thanks for saying that.
It seems that the inmates are running the BJ asylum this evening.
Spaghetti Lee
@arguingwithsignposts:
Well, 70 being the new whatever and all that. Of course, he was also in very poor health and he said many times that he’d come to terms with his condition, so I’m happy he left on his own terms. I guess I’m just sour because I think he was a brilliant writer and I’m sad we won’t see more of his writing.
Spaghetti Lee
@Mandalay:
It seems that the inmates are running the BJ asylum this evening.
I challenge you to find a night when this wasn’t the case.
Mandalay
@efgoldman:
I think I’d prefer the quadrupeds based on tonight’s posts.
Mandalay
@Spaghetti Lee:
Fair point, but it seems extra obvious in recent threads. Every wacko psychofuck in the country is in front of a keyboard this evening.
On the plus side, I suppose BJ is making the streets safer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Did you read Kelly’s work for the last ten years of his life? Can you think of any redeeming feature in Schlafly’s life? Vicious, dishonest, bloodthirsty, and gleefully mean.
LanceThruster
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s the ref I couldn’t recall. Thx.
eemom
I’ll make any and all of y’all a deal: if you will please, please, please, refrain from using that godawful piece of shit nails on blackboard non-word s_____d, I will refrain from ever expressing any opinion whatsoever on your present or future demise.
kthxbai.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: I think this probably sums up what most of us really want to express.
wds
@Litlebritdifrnt: @Anya: Sorry, but they went far beyond “prayers”. If you’ve never suffered that kind of debilitating depression and all that goes with it, I hope and pray you NEVER do. I suffer from it, and the best way I can describe it (after 4 suicide attempts) is that once you shut the switch off, nothing and do mean NOTHING will get in the way of what you want to do. I don’t care what his “reasons” were, I can deeply sympathize. Also, we as depressives become VERY good at hiding it. I had an “in-depth” meeting with my counselor 48 hours before my last attempt. As I said, once the switch is turned off, nothing is going to get in the way….and it can happen just that fast.
wds
@Karmus: this is purely my personal opinion but – to publicly wish someone’s death is nothing more than a cheap shot … >shrug<
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Your questions are irrelevant and immaterial since I never wish anyone dead. Not Hitler. Not Dahmer. Not OBL. Not Manson. Not Sandusky. Not anyone.
I completely agree with Cole’s OP which stated “harboring feelings in which you wish others were dead or celebrating the death of others is the way to a dark heart”. Of course you are free to wish people dead all you want, and to feel good about their death, but IMO you only diminish yourself.
In a column DougJ linked to in an earlier thread TNC said of Kelly “It’s the glee [of Kelly] that burns“, and I fully understand that view. But I really don’t understand the leap that many are making to then gloat over his death.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fine. I’m with you and Elvis all the way with outrage, anger, contempt and disgust. But I won’t wish for anyone to die, and I won’t ever be glad when anyone dies.
Seems that there are plenty of folks here already doing that anyway, so you don’t need my help.
cckids
@Joel:
Phyllis Schlafly is the DNA from which Breitbart was spawned.
Gretchen
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
A close friend of mine had that experience. His wife was severely depressed, but then she seemed better, and he thought the crisis had passed. Then he came home after a planned absence and found that she had shot herself to death. He realized too late that she felt better when she had her plans in place, and so seemed better to him.
I have a 28-year old son named Matthew, with depression, substance abuse issues, and suicidal ideation. I’d never in a million years let a gun near him. But I know that people can find a way out, and feel bad for the Warrens. The thing is, lots of people have a hard time coping with life. But keeping guns out of their way is a good first step in making sure that they get the chance to figure things out before they’re dead.
Gretchen
It would be fabulous if the Warrens throw their weight behind gun control. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Tehanu
Every word you wrote here, John. Every word.
jamick6000
“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”
— Voltaire
all these smug, dead war mongers can get fucked, that’s my opinion.
Ruckus
@jamick6000:
And of course that’s the point. The people who are wished to be dead have no respect for the rest of us and we are just returning the favor. We didn’t wish them dead and then they started their spreading of hate and desire to have others die, we wished it for them after they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that is how they feel about people. We all die, and very few know when that will be. We are not requesting anything that isn’t going to happen to all of us, we’d just like the time we have left to be a little more pleasant while we wait.
Gian
way late. but if anyone bothers to get this far. All I have to really say is simple. We are all going to die. Some of us have the belief that offing yourself is an affront to God because it interrupts God’s plan or something (look, the concept of a “good” God who makes people want to off themselves, and sends them to hell if they do it… well umm anyway)
Look, if we went back 10 years and the host of this forum was dancing on a pulled down for the camera’s statue of saddam and choked on a cherry stone. I’d still say I wish he repented.
years later I’d call him an unrepentant war-mongering ghoul. But he did freaking change his mind. Damn, now I have to go geek…
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.”
I guess I could’ve gone with Hamlet and the bit about worms… or Floyd for that matter. We are what we are, and bad chemicals in the brain can make us think or feel and do things we shouldn’t. In the final analysis, if this tortured soul was weighing “final exit” versus being the next adam lanza and made the right choice, I’d like to think that a “good” god would show mercy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gian:
Yeah, and the way people reacted to that environment had a strong effect on me. Cole, to his credit, admitted that he was wrong, and he apologized for being an asshole back then. What he did and said back then still colors my judgment of his views on any related issue. If someone didn’t change his or her mind, I get to call the person an unrepentant war-mongering ghoul. If the person died too soon to change, then the last opinions one had from the person are what we can use to evaluate.
jayackroyd
@gogol’s wife:
I’d put it a little more mildly–when I saw that it was suicide, I said to myself that the odds were that it had been a gun.
David Koch
so let me get this straight: according to the Reverend Rick Warren, his son suffered from a life long history of mental illness, needing various therapists and medications, and yet even with dangerous limitations, he could go into a sporting goods store and buy a gun.
lovely.
chris y
@Gin & Tonic: We have a bottle of Veuve Cliquot waiting for Margaret Thatcher and I don’t care who knows it.
pablo
But Hitler liked dead people more.
john (not mccain)
america will be a better place if both warren and his whore have to waddle on off to heaven over the loss of their defective spawn.
WereBear
My own philosophy is that such hateful people live their lives in misery and torment; far greater than I would have the heart to inflict upon them.
In one day, living humbly with my husband and cats, good friends, decent job, and my health… I have more happiness and sense of satisfaction than those who pile up wealth by nefarious means. Their whole lives.
Look at Rush Limbaugh… if you can. Drug addict. Lost his hearing because of it. Can only get married through bribery. Probably a pedophile, and certainly impotence-troubled. Is it any wonder he orders his valet to have 300 scented candles burning when he arrives home?
And yet it is not enough to cover the stench of his rotted soul.
Do not be fooled by what these people chase on the material plane; they cling to their pennies because that is all they have.
satby
@WereBear: A-fucking-men.
Kathleen
@WereBear: Beautifully put. I agree that their tortured consciousness is their own self inflicted punishment. Also, it does not matter if a particular hate monger dies. One, if they are prominent, we are always subjected to a media whore mourn fest. Two, there is always someone else to take their places. Always.
Kay
Right, okay, as long as we’re not saying that a person’s work is off-limits due to tragedy or untimely death, because I don’t agree with that.
People are remembered by what they did when they were alive. Kelly has a body of public work. We’re not privvy to his actions in his personal life, but we can absolutely judge his work.
I don’t think dying is meant to be a kind of blanket amnesty or complete pass on the work one did while alive.
Rick Warren’s son isn’t even Rick Warren, let alone “Rick Warren’s work”.
It is okay by me to judge public figures on the work that they do, no.matter how they die or what tragedies they suffer.
Hillary Rettig
@WereBear: I love the thought behind your post but not convinced they live in torment. People can justify or rationalize anything, it seems, and money seems to be a good enough anaesthetic for many.
That said, this thread hits on something that has troubled me a long time. As a vegan I have an explicit ethical commitment to nonviolence, and veganism aside, as someone who strives to be a good person, I do, too. But I can’t help but wanting to applaud the premature death of someone who contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of absolutely innocent others – esp. someone who, as Tbogg pointed out, died karmically, in the war he helped foment. I guess there’s a utilitarian strain in my thinking.
Then I remember that wishing someone dead prematurely is what the repugnant right does with their so-called “prayers of imprecation,” and I recoil. No way I want to behave like them. I guess in this case, the repugnance keeps me honest, and so although I wish I operated from higher motives I’ll take what I can get.
It’s also a slippery slope and you soon get to the Palestinians who celebrated (literally, on the streets) 9/11 and the murder of thousands of innocent civilians who happen to live in what they see (rightly, in my view) as an oppressor state. While I agree we’re all complicit to some extent in what our government does, that’s too far.
I keep thinking it’s better to err on the side of caution, and compassionate nonviolence. But is it? One of the things I like about this blog is its moral acuteness, and erring on the side of caution itself seems like a kind of fuzzy thinking and abdication.
Hillary Rettig
So amazing how this thread converged on both Kelly and Warren’s innocent son. Re the latter, I can’t help wondering how the Right’s (and esp. Religious Right’s) antipathy to the whole topic of mental illness influenced his fate. They tend to conflate it with moral turpitude and be suspicious of therapy and other solutions.
JoyfulA
@Gian: My feelings exactly. I aim to feel regret that a person died without repenting of evil actions and then going forth to do good. Sometimes I immediately feel satisfaction that an evildoer died, but I quickly repent—
Gex
I’ll just note that Rick Warren was one of the American evangelicals that spoke to and motivated Ugandan leaders to propose the kill the gays bill. And we’ve seen the stats on how much more likely GLBT youth are to attempt suicide.
I can’t say I’m sorry that some of the kind of pain he works to create is visiting him. You unleash darkness in this world, you get enveloped in it too.
Oh, and I don’t give a fuck how good he was on social justice issues. There are Christians who can work towards that AND not work to get gays killed.
I’ll stop short of rooting for these types of things. But I have to admit in cases like Rick Warren I will both feel a slight bit of satisfaction for his plight and a lot of guilt about feeling that way. I agree, that is the way to a dark heart.
Kyle
@Hillary Rettig:
It’s sad that his father’s ideology and political buddies made a large contribution to making the world a miserable place for people like this.
Another Halocene Human
@Anya:
As someone who’s struggled with major depression and suicidal ideation for years, that’s not really how it works.
That does concern me. Yet Warren strikes me as someone who views his followers as ‘marks’. Which means I doubt he drinks the koolaid like his deluded followers.
Or maybe their son became a statistic because many suicide attempts fail, but with a gun there’s no second chance.
Patricia Kayden
@David Koch: That was funny but loads of down votes for some reason.
Paul in KY
@JPL: That was the only little itty bitty teeny weeny not terrible thing about that horrible day: The Barbara Olsen was no more.
So sad that innocent people ended up on that flight with her.
Would have read her vile dreck for many years if it had meant 911 never happened.