The Try-Works

And raise a cheer.

You won’t have this idiot motherfucker to kick around no more.

About fucking time.  Dare we hope Heath Urie is next?

Jim Paine would like all the wogs to quit whining, please. Really, you should take a lesson from Mr. Paine. Y’know, inherit a little money, scam some welfare BLM land, and coast on your fat ass at your multi-million dollar ranch.

What the fuck’s wrong with you?

As dipstick fucking dumb as the whole thing is, there is one gem. That’d be Mr. Paine’s stab at mocking how all those darkies ain’t, like, educated as good he is.

From his idiot satirical syllabus:

Baccalaureate

* Reality 1A: Life Sucks; Get a Helmet
* Reality 293: You Are Not Important To Others
* Hold Out Both Hands: The Sad Truth About Your Demands
* Spelling & Grammar (required course; must be retaken every enrolled semester)

Here’s a tip, you fucking moron: when mocking others’ writing skills, you might wanna consider not leading with the kind of dipshit error drummed out of every middle-school kid with an IQ over 20. (Scroll down to ampersand.)

As Hilda has pointed out, Snapple is claiming that FBI shitheel Joseph Trimbach has just headed out on a book tour to pimp his barely literate cavalcade of horseshit about the American Indian Movement. A claim which, considering the fucking thing is a vanity press offering, and hasn’t had a single review in a single reputable book publication of any sort, I find rather dubious.

In fact, the book hasn’t been mentioned in any news source whatsoever that I can find, except as name-dropped by FBI shill, Tim Giago. Not that that’s surprising, of course. As I noted awhile ago, book reviewers don’t review vanity press dribblings. Ever. Nor do the fucking wingnuts who publish in vanity presses do book tours. Ever. (Usually they’re too busy writing their next book on the basement walls, using the neighbor’s cat’s blood for ink.)

And, also echoing Hilda, if you haven’t yet, make sure you head over to Trimbach’s book site to check out the styling’ Web 2.0 graphics. Three bullet holes, and the silliest dribble of blood yet seen this side of Tales from the Crypt. I’ve watched it about 200 times today, and I still ain’t stopped laughing.

Update:  Feel free to weigh in with an itinerary, Snapple.  I’ll happily repost it as an update.

Coming to an airline near you.

Ishmael Reed on Reverend Wright’s moment of clarity and precision.

Wasn’t Wright conservative when he mentioned just two of the horrendous crimes against humanity committed by the American government? Nagasaki and Hiroshima, attacks that were unique in the history because the Japanese are still suffering from the damaging genetic effects of the war. He could have gone all out as Ward Churchill does in his book A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (Paperback). He could have reminded them that the West has been bombing Muslim countries since 1911 (see The History of Bombing by Sven Lindquist.) Wright didn’t blame the three thousand casualties world trade center on the victims (nor did he say that it was an inside job, MSNBC’s Willie Geist’s lie). The fact that people abroad might be enraged by the country’s policies is a difficult message for the American public which has been kept in a bubble of ignorance by the media and the school curriculum. Three thousand lives were lost as a result of the American invasion of Panama alone. Rick Sanchez of CNN said on March 21 that some Hispanics warmed to Obama’s speech on race because they remember invasion of Panama and the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile.

The rest.

It turns our city officials don’t like Glenn Spagnuolo.

That might be news to some city officials who have dealt with him, officials who can’t stand him, say they find him “confrontational,” “adversarial” and “hypocritical,” but won’t go on the record.

One official who will is Brown, who has debated Spagnuolo on TV and radio about an ill-fated attempt to place restrictions on how the police could deal with protesters if things got out of hand.

“I wouldn’t want to get between him and a TV camera or a microphone,” Brown says.

“If you ever get him off a protest issue, he can be pleasant,” says Brown. “The problem is, he’s always on the protest bandwagon.”

Not that Spagnuolo would likely care what Brown thinks about him. That has nothing to do with the issues he believes so passionately in. It’s information that has no place in revolutionary politics. You know, the kind of stuff that belongs in some puff piece.

The rest.

It’s one of the more subtle smear jobs, right down to the picture.  Get it, Mr. Spagnuolo’s always on the camera?

Unlike, say, Denver city councilman Charlie Brown?

I love the Rocky, though.  Mr. Spagnuolo doesn’t want to be interviewed, is obviously reticent, goes out of his fucking way to refuse answers, and gets smeared as a media whore.

It’s like the fucking hacks over on Colfax can’t even construct a coherent narrative when they try.  Even their smears are fucking nonsensical.

There’s a kind of sublime serendipity herein, right?

What the cops are looking for as a pretext to perform warrantless searches are exactly what is needed to ensure the cops don’t, well, perform warrantless searches.

(Thanks, NBC.)

Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District’s gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday.

The program will begin in a couple of weeks in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of southeast Washington and will later expand to other neighborhoods. Officers will go door to door asking residents for permission to search their homes.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the “safe homes initiative” is aimed at residents who want to cooperate with police. She gave the example of parents or grandparents who know or suspect their children have guns in the home.

Community leaders went door to door in Ward 8 Monday to advise residents not to invite police into their homes to search for weapons.

“Bad idea,” said D.C. School Board member William Lockridge. “I think the people should not open your doors under any circumstances, don’t even crack your door, unless someone has a warrant for your arrest.

The rest.

Inculcating a slave mentality from preschool on.

Read to the end.

And, just for the record, fuck you Clay Evans.  As commenters to your column note, your rag runs all the same skewed AP horseshit about the war as your competitors.  You can claim to be anti-war because you write a yearly editorial, but how’s about including some actual fucking news about the war?

You are the media, asshole.  Instead of whining about the lack of Winter Soldier coverage in the media, whyn’t you, like, cover it?

Democracy Now ran great coverage last week of Winter Soldier testimony, wherein US troops confessed their part in the ongoing holocaust in Iraq, which you can find here, here and here.

I strongly suggest those of you whining about my posting pictures showing the human cost of the war in Iraq give it a listen.

I’d prefer you enlisted and shipped out to get your ass fucking blown off, but, hell, since we all know you as the cowardly little shits you are, I’ll settle for your listening to a little audio.

You can also get video of Winter Soldier testimony straight from the source, here.

Stolen from the WCSN. For more on the Longest Walk, see the incomparable Brenda Norrell.

(Thanks to Rolanda.)

(Thanks to Rolanda.)

An anonymous eyewitness has been kind enough to add another account of Mr. Martin’s latest dipshit escapade.

Martin did leave out a minor detail: Throughout the “confrontation,” he waded in a pool of his own urine after he pissed himself silly out of fear. He looked very nervous through the whole thing; he could barely put two words together. Although, I could not tell if this was his natural state or if this was brought on by the events at the protest. There might be a potential lawsuit here in small claims court. Mr. Martin might have a legitimate claim that the ruffians owe him the cost of a new pair of pants.

So there’s a new collection the best of American erotic poetry out, or at least poetry that really wants to be erotic, and I’ve been chuckling all day over Dan Chiasson’s review over at the New York Times.

Ours is an era of plentiful but repetitive erotic writing, an age of “copper-lidded eyes” and “green eyes flecked with yellow,” of a “backbreaking orchid” and an “orchid boat,” of hyperlegible Freudian metaphor (silos and fountains, copper pipe and cowboy hats) and its counterpart, the forensic, literal overcorrection (aureoles, Formica countertops and AA batteries). The body parts alone oppress you: lips, testicles, shoulders, eyes, over and over again until you would rather inhabit some spirit realm where bodies are outlawed. Theme-based anthologies have the unintended effect of making poets seem trapped by their subjects: there is no more variation among poets in this book than there would be in a book called, for example, “The Best American Patriotic Poems.” Individual poets shouldn’t be blamed, though poems like Updike’s or like Dean Young’s “Platypus” (“I want to watch your face contort / like bacon as it fries”) are bad by cosmic design, not individual choice. Lusty poems by straight men are, in our era, usually prone to failure — though a cat lover might appreciate the literary power, lost on me, of Dana Gioia’s “Alley Cat Love Song,” which begins “Come into the garden, Fred, / For the neighborhood tabby is gone.” But the real problem is anthologies. The many young poets represented here, most of them (Lehman makes a point of this in his introduction) young women, seem much less original than they would if encountered on their own terms. In a magazine, I might like a post-crab-boil sex poem about (ouch!) the sting to one’s “sweet meat” from bay seasoning on a lover’s fingers. Here it feels no different from the dozens of other poems that make raunchy metaphors out of unlikely foods, weird animals and western topography.

If you find yourself in a book with an orchid on the cover, its petal languid and its pistil looking ready for action, it is really best to have written an anti-erotic poem like A. R. Ammons’s bleak two-line “Their Sex Life” (“One failure on / Top of another”) or Jill Alexander Essbaum’s funny “On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica” (“She stood before him wearing only pantries / and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze”). Or do as W. H. Auden had the foresight to do: write something really filthy. His poem “The Platonic Blow” is the dirtiest verse written since Rochester — I can’t even talk about it here. Let’s just say it makes mincemeat of Updike’s dainty secretarial fellatio. Anthologies like this one are best viewed as contests (best metaphorical labia! best profane blazon!), and dear old Auden wins this one by a knockout blow.

The rest.

So, what’s the poem too dirty for the New York Times?

Well, how in the fuck could I pass that up?

The Platonic Blow - W. H. Auden

It was a spring day, a day for a lay, when the air
Smelled like a locker-room, a day to blow or get blown;
Returning from lunch I turned my corner and there
On a near-by stoop I saw him standing alone.

I glanced as I advanced. The clean white T-shirt outlined
A forceful torso, the light-blue denims divulged
Much. I observed the snug curves where they hugged the behind,
I watched the crotch where the cloth intriguingly bulged.

Our eyes met. I felt sick. My knees turned weak.
I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to say.
In a blur I heard words, myself like a stranger speak
“Will you come to my room?” Then a husky voice, “O.K.”

I produced some beer and we talked. Like a little boy
He told me his story. Present address: next door.
Half Polish, half Irish. The youngest. From Illinois.
Profession: mechanic. Name: Bud. Age: twenty-four.

He put down his glass and stretched his bare arms along
The back of my sofa. The afternoon sunlight struck
The blond hairs on the wrist near my head. His chin was strong.
His mouth sucky. I could hardly believe my luck.

And here he was sitting beside me, legs apart.
I could bear it no longer. I touched the inside of his thigh.
His reply was to move closer. I trembled, my heart
Thumped and jumped as my fingers went to his fly.

I opened a gap in the flap. I went in there.
I sought for a slit in the gripper shorts that had charge
Of the basket I asked for. I came to warm flesh then to hair.
I went on. I found what I hoped. I groped. It was large.

He responded to my fondling in a charming, disarming way:
Without a word he unbuckled his belt while I felt.
And lolled back, stretching his legs. His pants fell away.
Carefully drawing it out, I beheld what I held.

The circumcised head was a work of mastercraft
With perfectly beveled rim of unusual weight
And the friendliest red. Even relaxed, the shaft
Was of noble dimensions with the wrinkles that indicate

Singular powers of extension. For a second or two,
It lay there inert, then suddenly stirred in my hand,
Then paused as if frightened or doubtful of what to do.
And then with a violent jerk began to expand.

By soundless bounds it extended and distended, by quick
Great leaps it rose, it flushed, it rushed to its full size.
Nearly nine inches long and three inches thick,
A royal column, ineffably solemn and wise.

I tested its length and strength with a manual squeeze.
I bunched my fingers and twirled them about the knob.
I stroked it from top to bottom. I got on my knees.
I lowered my head. I opened my mouth for the job.

But he pushed me gently away. He bent down. He unlaced
His shoes. He removed his socks. Stood up. Shed
His pants altogether. Muscles in arms and waist
Rippled as he whipped his T-shirt over his head.

I scanned his tan, enjoyed the contrast of brown
Trunk against white shorts taut around small
Hips. With a dig and a wriggle he peeled them down.
I tore off my clothes. He faced me, smiling. I saw all.

The gorgeous organ stood stiffly and straightly out
With a slight flare upwards. At each beat of his heart it threw
An odd little nod my way. From the slot of the spout
Exuded a drop of transparent viscous goo.

The lair of hair was fair, the grove of a young man,
A tangle of curls and whorls, luxuriant but couth.
Except for a spur of golden hairs that fan
To the neat navel, the rest of the belly was smooth.

Well hung, slung from the fork of the muscular legs,
The firm vase of his sperm, like a bulging pear,
Cradling its handsome glands, two herculean eggs,
Swung as he came towards me, shameless, bare.

We aligned mouths. We entwined. All act was clutch,
All fact contact, the attack and the interlock
Of tongues, the charms of arms. I shook at the touch
Of his fresh flesh, I rocked at the shock of his cock.

Straddling my legs a little I inserted his divine
Person between and closed on it tight as I could.
The upright warmth of his belly lay all along mine.
Nude, glued together for a minute, we stood.

I stroked the lobes of his ears, the back of his head
And the broad shoulders. I took bold hold of the compact
Globes of his bottom. We tottered. He fell on the bed.
Lips parted, eyes closed, he lay there, ripe for the act.

Mad to be had, to be felt and smelled. My lips
Explored the adorable masculine tits. My eyes
Assessed the chest. I caressed the athletic hips
And the slim limbs. I approved the grooves of the thighs.

I hugged, I snuggled into an armpit. I sniffed
The subtle whiff of its tuft. I lapped up the taste
Of its hot hollow. My fingers began to drift
On a trek of inspection, a leisurely tour of the waist.

Downward in narrowing circles they playfully strayed.
Encroached on his privates like poachers, approached the prick,
But teasingly swerved, retreated from meeting. It betrayed
Its pleading need by a pretty imploring kick.

“Shall I rim you?” I whispered. He shifted his limbs in assent.
Turned on his side and opened his legs, let me pass
To the dark parts behind. I kissed as I went
The great thick cord that ran back from his balls to his arse.

Prying the buttocks aside, I nosed my way in
Down the shaggy slopes. I came to the puckered goal.
It was quick to my licking. He pressed his crotch to my chin.
His thighs squirmed as my tongue wormed in his hole.

His sensations yearned for consummation. He untucked
His legs and lay panting, hot as a teen-age boy.
Naked, enlarged, charged, aching to get sucked,
Clawing the sheet, all his pores open to joy.

I inspected his erection. I surveyed his parts with a stare
From scrotum level. Sighting along the underside
Of his cock, I looked through the forest of pubic hair
To the range of the chest beyond rising lofty and wide.

I admired the texture, the delicate wrinkles and the neat
Sutures of the capacious bag. I adored the grace
Of the male genitalia. I raised the delicious meat
Up to my mouth, brought the face of its hard-on to my face.

Slipping my lips round the Byzantine dome of the head,
With the tip of my tongue I caressed the sensitive groove.
He thrilled to the trill. “That’s lovely!” he hoarsely said.
“Go on! Go on!” Very slowly I started to move.

Gently, intently, I slid to the massive base
Of his tower of power, paused there a moment down
In the warm moist thicket, then began to retrace
Inch by inch the smooth way to the throbbing crown.

Indwelling excitements swelled at delights to come
As I descended and ascended those thick distended walls.
I grasped his root between left forefinger and thumb
And with my right hand tickled his heavy voluminous balls.

I plunged with a rhythmical lunge steady and slow,
And at every stroke made a corkscrew roll with my tongue.
His soul reeled in the feeling. He whimpered “Oh!”
As I tongued and squeezed and rolled and tickled and swung.

Then I pressed on the spot where the groin is joined to the cock,
Slipped a finger into his arse and massaged him from inside.
The secret sluices of his juices began to unlock.
He melted into what he felt. “O Jesus!” he cried.

Waves of immeasurable pleasures mounted his member in quick
Spasms. I lay still in the notch of his crotch inhaling his sweat.
His ring convulsed round my finger. Into me, rich and thick,
His hot spunk spouted in gouts, spurted in jet after jet.

And, highly entertaining and truly filthy though Auden’s be, I’ve been reading (and thoroughly enjoying, fuck you) Robert Frost of late, and was delighted to see the inclusion of his “The Subverted Flower.”

The Subverted Flower - Robert Frost

She drew back; he was calm:
“It is this that had the power.”
And he lashed his open palm
With the tender-headed flower.
He smiled for her to smile,
But she was either blind
Or willfully unkind.
He eyed her for a while
For a woman and a puzzle.
He flicked and flung the flower,
And another sort of smile
Caught up like fingertips
The corners of his lips
And cracked his ragged muzzle.
She was standing to the waist
In golden rod and brake,
Her shining hair displaced.
He stretched her either arm
As if she made it ache
To clasp her - not to harm;
As if he could not spare
To touch her neck and hair.
“If this has come to us
And not to me alone -”
So she thought she heard him say;
Though with every word he spoke
His lips were sucked and blown
And the effort made him choke
Like a tiger at a bone.
She had to lean away.
She dared not stir a foot,
Lest movement should provoke
The demon of pursuit
That slumbers in a brute.
It was then her mother’s call
From inside the garden wall
Made her steal a look of fear
To see if he could hear
And would pounce to end it all
Before her mother came.
She looked and saw the shame:
A hand hung like a paw,
An arm worked like a saw
As if to be persuasive,
An ingratiating laugh
That cut the snout in half,
And eye become evasive.
A girl could only see
That a flower had marred a man,
But what she could not see
Was that the flower might be
Other than base and fetid:
That the flower had done but part,
And what the flower began
Her own too meager heart
Had terribly completed.
She looked and saw the worst.
And the dog or what it was,
Obeying bestial laws,
A coward save at night,
Turned from the place and ran.
She heard him stumble first
And use his hands in flight.
She heard him bark outright.
And oh, for one so young
The bitter words she spit
Like some tenacious bit
That will not leave the tongue.
She plucked her lips for it,
And still the horror clung.
Her mother wiped the foam
From her chin, picked up her comb,
And drew her backward home.

There’s a word you never thought you’d be reading around here. But, anyway, seeing as how Larry Hales has been a recent target of asshole bigot John Martin’s latest attempt to provoke a confrontation with local activists, here’s one of Mr. Hales’ latest articles. And it’s on a couple of my favorite subjects: our exploding prison population and “broken windows” policing.

By the way, all you young readers: I’ve said this a hundred times, but there’s only one answer for the horseshit, fascist, anti-Constitutional strategy of “broken windows” policing.

It’s easy to do, it can be done in an evening of carousing, and it takes naught but a brick to accomplish.

Well, a brick, and, of course, a window.

Inner city areas are faced with a neoliberal form of ethnic cleansing that has generally become known as gentrification. From San Diego to Los Angeles and San Francisco, to Harlem and New Orleans, inner city areas are being gobbled up by developers. Katrina was the excuse in New Orleans, “blight” in Detroit and other cities.

To pull it off, city administrators beef up police forces in poor, oppressed neighborhoods and institute “zero tolerance” or “broken window” ordinances, such as that in New York under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The theory of “broken windows” was authored by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. Wilson, a right-wing policy advisor under Reagan and the first Bush, also believes in dismantling Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and further privatizing public schools.

The “broken windows” theory is classic: blame the victim for the ravages of the capitalist system. It postulates that ignoring a broken window invites more windows to be broken; in other words, cracking down on petty offenses “decreases crime” and “cleans up the neighborhood.”

In general, most cops placed in oppressed communities are not people from the community, and many times are white.

The inhabitants of the community do not dictate the conditions of the community; the conditions are forced on the inhabitants. Poverty, joblessness, homelessness, the lack of health care, underfunded public education, the lack of after-school activities, poor housing choices, slum lords and the history of racist oppression in the U.S. are to blame.

It is capitalism and the culture that comes with it that are the culprits when it comes to “broken windows;” in fact the imperialist U.S. ruling class is constantly, actively engaged in breaking windows all over the world.

Prisoners super exploited

As prisons are warehouses for the poor and disposed, they are also depositories of a reserve of superexploitable labor.

Not only does the prison industry provide money and jobs to impoverished areas, but it also provide opportunities for industries to take advantage of the prisoners by putting them to work at superlow wages. In turn, the money prisoners earn is shuffled back into the prison system as prisoners purchase necessities and pay exorbitant fees for telephone usage.

Private prison companies house more than 100,000 U.S. prisoners. According to a Centre for Research on Globalization report in 2001, prisoners make on the average $.22 per hour and can work up to 40 hours per week.

The growth of prison labor continues, along with growth in the prison industrial complex as a whole, which is more and more privatized. This crime is perpetrated against workers and oppressed nationalities at alarming rates, and in an era of capitalist decline it will only grow worse.

The rest.

Well done, gentlemen; the next round’s on me. Thanks for making my fucking week. Told you he was a creepy little motherfucker.

Seriously, Mr. Martin, you’re in your mid-fifties and this is your life’s work? Trolling anti-war protests in hopes of provoking a confrontation? That’s what you quit drinking for?

Because if that’s all you got, hoss, I recommend you take up the bottle again. Jesus, watching your old ass sleep off a vodka binge in a gutter would be good sight less depressing than the current void that seems to be your life. If these antics are any indication, yours is the kind of existential hell that forces the rest of us to muster our entire reserve of intestinal fortitude to withstand the sudden, overpowering impulse to drive ten-penny nails through our eyes. Hell, I’ve seen six-year-olds huffing Freon who were less pitiful than your dried up old ass.

Update: Having had, shall we say, a couple of run-ins with John Martin (here and here), I’m a little skeptical as to the cool, contained, mild-mannered version of himself he’s concocted for the above post. The Mr. Martin I know more resembles a spastic rhesus monkey with a greasy little erection and shit crusted around his mouth. I’ll never quite forget the first time I saw him hopping about and tugging at the front of his pants in the direction of a few college girls unfortunate enough to be in his general presence. I have it on good authority that at least two of the poor kids are still undergoing therapy.

So . . . if any of you Try-Works readers have firsthand knowledge that contradicts Mr. Martin’s tale, email me or leave it in the comments. I’ll happily repost it on the main page.

Update II: Seems Mr. Martin was fudging just a wee bit in his account of the so-called harrassment he endured on Columbus day. I’ve been emailed one report in from an unnamed journalist, who describes him thusly:

Foaming at the mouth is right . . . He was just trolling around, black hat backwards wearing some kind of ridiculous looking cargo pants with a vest to match. Very creepy.

But even better, Glenn Spagnoulo has chimed in at Mr. Martin’s blog with what I kinda gathered was the case:

You are so pathetic. Trying to act like you were in some kind of real danger. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have and there would have been nothing you could have done about it, but it would be a complete waste of time. Never claimed to be a peacenik. Oh yea, thanks for the ten buck donation. Nice not to mention that the scarf guy was playing with you, but I know, you need to create a story so go with it. We do not mind the attention, but speaking for myself, I do mind your false bullshit. Keep it up though, when someone like you starts writing something positive about me is when I know I have gone wrong.

Hey Drunkawife, your husband was never in any real trouble, he likes to pretend so he could look all dangerous to turn you on when he gets home. I guess you would have to be a drunk wife to cuttle up to that poor excuse of a man.

. . .

One more thing John, that is not Shareef in the picture with Larry Hales, but I guess to a scared little white man like yourself, “they all look the same” right.

Wm:
I pointed him out because people thought some one shit their pants because of the smell, I assumed it was John so I let them know. No reason to hide, right John. After all you were never really in any danger were you. Plus the fearless John Martin was trying to act like he was really into it all, thought people should no he was a fake. Keep hiding El Pres. Maybe some day you will grow a pair and introduce yourself to me. I won’t hold my breath. The only place any of you have any courage is when you are in cyber-space.

Well, that’s our Mr. Martin. He tries another goofy attempt at provoking an incident, then whines when his shenanigans are met with the mildest of reproval. Methinks he’s been hanging out with Heath Urie of late. One hopes the tender little darling never stubs his toe at one of these events. One can only imagine the snot, tears and howls of outrage attending.

Seriously, where was Mr. Martin drinking during his epic days of debauchery? Christ, given the levels of levels of self-pity he evinces when sober, one wonders who the hell would drink with him? I can’t imagine any self-respecting alcoholic who wouldn’t drown him in a toilet after about five minutes of his whining. To paraphrase Tom Waits, get down off the cross, asshole, we could use the wood.

Update III: Mr. Spagnoulo’s right, of course, Shareef Aleem ain’t anywhere to be found in this picture.

I profoundly apologize for the rash of Snapple posts while I was gone.  I’ll delete them at some point, but now and then it’s nice to remind ourselves exactly how fucking lunatic the other side is, ain’t it?

And, hell, in the interest of tolerance, I’ve decided to respond to one of Snapple’s queries.  S/he would like to know what I think of certain recently unearthed statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years.

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.

The rest.

Well, my response is easy, Snapple.  While I admire Reverend Wright’s intent, I see no reason for the reticence and reserve of his statements.  It seems to me that given his insightful analysis, it might be indispensable to coin some snappy term for those who benefit as a result of US foreign policy choices.  Some way of describing the, well, banality of evil endemic to those in the upper echelons of, say, international trade.  Y’know, the folks who make their millions wiping their ass with the rest of humankind.  Particularly brown humankind.

Any ideas?

Update:  Charles Coulter of the Kansas City Star points out the obvious.

So the Rev. Jeremiah Wright made comments that some portray as hate-filled and anti-American.

So what? I think that’s covered by something called the First Amendment.

And some want Barack Obama to distance himself even further from his spiritual mentor. Why?

Rev. Wright has not said anything that has not been said or is not being said in bars, poolrooms, barber shops, hair salons or anywhere else more than three black people gather.

And don’t fool yourself. It’s not just the black urban poor, those without jobs, education or hope, who express these comments. Many members of the black middle class have the same sense of history; the same sense of anger.

The rest.

Not to follow Mr. Coulter in his rather slavish obviousness, but it ain’t just blacks.  A fucking third of Americans believe 9/11 was a direct inside job.  Not blowback for US foreign policy decisions, which is what Mr. Wright and Mr. Churchill argue, but a direct conspiracy to either commit or allow the attacks.  The only pinheads left on earth who deny that US foreign policy is the reason they hate us are either working for Fox News or sipping Metamucil over at Jim Paine’s place.

But I’ll be offline for the next week or so.  Please, nobody feed Laurie.  It’ll only encourage her to keep coming around.