What did women do? We had the gall to want to be our own masters.

and masters of our own bodies. How dare we!

I hope the GOP falls deeply into the gender gap - a gap so vast they'll never be able to climb out of it again. EVER.

Welcome to DU, Jerry442!

Glad you're here! Great point you make!

LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!!!!!!

Whoever you are, joshdude12000,

As my late mother-in-law used to say: "they don't suck it out of their thumbs."

That kid CLEARLY was in an on-going, predominant environment where that shit was flung around with no apologies. It was evidently common enough, and he heard it often enough, and from enough of his friends and peers and possibly also the parents of his friends and peers, so he just absorbed it. Pretty obvious that's what was around him often enough for him to take notice. Obviously that behavior was not corrected by his parents, or isolated, or described in any way as offensive or something one must not do, or things one must not say, or ideas that one must not embrace. There was clearly no effort to correct this kind of bad behavior when that kid was younger and more impressionable and more open to instruction and guidance. Now, that shit is set. It's been allowed to dry and harden and the stain of it allowed to sink in.

Happy Fathers Day, flake - you ASSHOLE. Piss-poor job YOU did as a parent! We all have the evidence of the shit job you did, don't we?

You make a GREAT point, Iceberg Louie. These freakazoids have been allowed to come out of the closet

and to gain broad respectability. They were embarrassing to themselves and everyone else around them, and they sure were NOT admired or taken seriously in any way! They were laughed at - for the ridiculous creatures they were.

I remember when I worked at a big FM rocker here in L.A. years ago, and across the hall was a then-big AM talk station. They had a VERY erudite and brilliant 9a-1p host who was a liberal and had a rolodex that must have been the size of the building (for the sheer mass of the significant or famous people he knew and the VIPs for whom he had private numbers). There was a lot of sports in the afternoon, and a harmlessly amusing news-talk morning team, AND this ridiculous crackpot on the overnights. The resident conservative. A true nutcase that everybody rolled their eyeballs and laughed at, and snickered at and scoffed at, and no one took seriously. He was the crazy uncle in the attic of that station and his opinions were pretty much up his ass.

He reminded me of the "Frank Burns" of that station. Anyone remember the prime time series "M*A*S*H"? There was this one character who was a knuckle-dragger John-Bircher Commie-chasing, joe mccarthy-worshipping hypocrite extremist who was the comic foil and butt of jokes for Hawkeye, Trapper, and even the CO - all of them more open-minded, tolerant, liberal, and reasonable. They were the protagonists and poor hapless ridiculous Frank Burns was the antagonist and the fool. He was a figure of ridicule. And no one took him seriously either.

These figures were ALL regarded that way. They, and their opinions were simply the stuff of embarrassment. You were embarrassed by these people and Good GRIEF they were the LAST people on earth you regarded with an respect or admiration. You certainly never took them seriously. They were an embarrassment that you tried to downplay if they were part of your family. They used to be like that proverbial crazy uncle people hid away in the attic when company came over because you didn't dare let him out among nice normal people. These were all once regarded as subjects of ridicule because of what they said, what they stood for, how they came across. WIDELY understood as exactly what they were: crackpots, nutcases, out-of-step, ridiculous, not worth taking seriously for one instant.

NOW, however, they've all been allowed to come out of the closet and they've gotten respectability. They're no longer regarded in the media as little more than some berzerko at whom you just rolled your eyeballs and shook your head. They're no longer just the comic foils you laugh at and dismiss. Now, we bow and scrape to them and make room for them on the air and take them completely seriously as though they deserved a seat at the grown-ups table, instead of at the kiddie table, or in the monkey house with the baboons who threw their own shit at each other. The whole social and cultural scene has changed with regard to where these semi-deranged idiots are taken seriously and are able to exert tremendous influence and do tremendous damage.

I put a lot of the blame on ronald reagan. HE made it respectable to have a Neanderthal worldview - AND soon enough, unfortunately, to force it down the rest of our throats. They all rode into respectability and into the Establishment on his coattails. He made it okay, in many cases EXTREMELY okay (pardon the pun) and even "all-American" and "patriotic" to think that way, talk that way, and hold those views, and insist that those views should be the primary ones that carry the day and dominate. Around that time, too, I remember "Family Ties," where Michael J. Fox's Alex Keaton character was the odd-man-out, the conservative reagan-lover fish-out-of-water character in a family of liberals with ex-hippie parents. But Michael J. Fox had such an appeal and played his character so well that he, too, helped rehabilitate the nutcase reactionary, bring that whole social construct in out of the cold, and give it respectability - if nothing else, a "legitimate" place at the table. And because of reagan, the whole religious nutcase crowd was able to wriggle out from their hiding places under the rocks and in the shadows, and stand in the sunlight with their friendly charismatic president and ALSO share in his mantle of credibility and respectability.

And I suspect that with the rise of hate radio that began to flower in the reagan era, these views about which those of us in an earlier generation felt suspicious and distrustful, and viewed as objects of derision and CERTAINLY never to be taken seriously, allowed people with those views to come out from the shadows and stand in the sunlight and claim "their" territory. No longer objects of ridicule, no longer spouting idiocy that nice people were embarrassed to hear, because now they had famous radio and TV people and even a whole White House crowd from the top down, making it okay to think the way they did, and embrace the kinds of worldviews they did. Suddenly they had a voice, too. Suddenly they had cover. Suddenly they had respectability and nobody was laughing at them anymore or subjecting them to mass ridicule. And they boasted some of the biggest voices in the game. Soon enough, it was MOST of the biggest voices in the game.

And the teabaggers are their heirs, their beneficiaries, and their sons and daughters. They grew up in an atmosphere in which it WASN'T shameful any longer to think the way they think and say the things they say. They were no longer regarded as the clowns and idiots and fools and unhinged nutcases and Neanderthals and Bronze-Age "thinkers" that they actually are. They could be proud of their shit - that they were now able to fling a lot farther around the public square. Hell, they grew up worshiping a president who was the biggest flinger of monkey shit on the American cultural landscape.

DAMN that was a horrible time. Horrifying. To watch the slow-motion lobotomy of America begin, develop, gain ground, and eventually dominate.

HORRIBLE. What on earth got into us????

...and if she were having an affair with Sir Paul McCartney, you'd have a Deng Beatle!

...and a kitten! LOVE IT!!!

Hey DonRedwood, I hope the two of you (or actually - three, counting the kitty) have a long and happy life together!!! Sounds like you certainly have the makings of it.

LOVE your post! Heck, I love a LOT of your posts!

The only "healthy distrust" I feel - is toward idiot shmucks like YOU, johnson.

Get the hell OUT of our government if you hate it so much! Leave it to people who know about governing, and what having a government in the first place is all about. You anarchy-lovers can all move to Somalia for all I care.

Great photos in this thread! Really love them!!!

Thanks everybody for posting!

So many troubles. This is such a welcome little break.

Hey, everybody, I appreciate all the feedback. Thank you!

I appreciate you guys helping me kick something around in my head from time to time. Sometimes I just need to know if I'm simply getting too carried away or if it's a reasonable doubt or question to have. And there's no place like here! I love DU!

Thanks. Here's what I wrote on the other thread, thanking the people there. I mean it here, too:

Hey thanks everybody! I appreciate the feedback.

Nice to know others are concerned about this. If those reps don't want to meet with the families, why can't they just come out and say so? Why the cowardice? If they're gonna take a stand like THAT, at least they could own up to it. Stand by what they did. Maybe, waaaaay deep down, even some of them think what they did is probably not cool? Otherwise stand up and claim it.

I want to know who they are. I want to know who feels it necessary to refuse even to meet with these parents? Refusing means they're doing something actively, not passively. I think about these grieving Americans a lot. Now they have to go through their first Fathers Day without their precious children. A few had to endure their first Mothers Day last month, without their mothers. It's beyond imagining. You have to be pretty damn hard-hearted actively to refuse even just to meet with them - even if only to re-state condolences or something. But to refuse to meet with them...

Sorry, I'm just kinda hung up on that one. Don't know why I feel so affronted by that whole idea, much less the harsh, calculated reality of it, but I am, dammit. Deeply so. I can't imagine turning one's back in this case. This sorta transcends - with GREAT apologies to the many, many multiples of gun-violence deaths in this country - whose losses are an equally profound loss to us all. I guess it's because most of the victims of Sandy Hook were very young children, so this one stood out in the national mind. But I'm stuck on the statistic we had earlier this year, where for a stretch of three or four consecutive months, it was akin to having a 9/11 every month: some three THOUSAND people per month were dying directly because of gun violence. I think the numbers have slackened since, but they still mount up by the day.

Sadly, we don't seem able to do anything to stop it - or heck, even slow it down. But beyond that, aside from that, Dear God, where's the simple human compassion? The simple human decency. The simple, basic, oh-so-plain and uncomplicated wish to reach out and connect with another human being in pain? Is fucking politics that important? Is a fucking damn ideology so much more important?

Sheesh.