FRED PHELPS: NOT METAL

I’m back from Hainan. What’d I miss?

ITEM [via dr_p_venkman ]: The Westboro Baptist Church has put Ronnie James Dio’s funeral on its “to do” list.

Ah.

I confess, I wasn’t expecting this, if only because the WBC usually sticks to gays and soldiers, and Dio was neither. Yes, people like WBC are naturally going to have negative opinions on metal in general, but it’s been low on their priority list compared to, you know, teh gayz and teh jooz. Still, metal gods don’t die every day, so I guess you’d be foolish to pass up a golden opportunity to protest someone with that high a profile.

That said, protesting a “celebrity” funeral means they’ll have to contend with a couple of new and challenging elements:

1. Professional security

2. Metal fans.

I’m almost looking forward to the results, though I doubt there’ll be any. The WBC said they’d protest Michael Jackson’s funeral too, and as far as I know it never happened, probably due to the security element. Or maybe it did and the news media collectively couldn’t justify giving them so much as a soundbite’s worth of airtime – which is really what the WBC wants anyway.

I probably shouldn’t be calling attention to them myself. It’s just that ... well, denouncing heavy metal as Satan Rock is so 80s.

As Dee Snider can tell you.

Watch on YouTube

Granted, back in the 80s you could actually get liberals and senators (or at least their spouses) to fight The Metal. Nowadays, it seems limited to the usual batshit fundamentalists.

Progress!

In a metal mood,

This is dF

QUILTS: METAL

Speaking of metal ...

You may think that heavy metal and quilts are mutually exclusive concepts.

Not if yr Boo Davis.





You can order one here, but be prepared to wait up to five months to get it.

It’s cold in Hell,

This is dF

LESS TAXATION, MORE FLIRTATION

So I’ve been doing some catch-up on current events, as I’m a little behind, what with a recent deadline week and my trip to Hainan, where the only TV channels we could get were Chinese channels, and while they do have news shows, it’s from CCTV, which is what American TV news would be like if Ann Coulter were president, only with a different POV.

Anyway, I missed the biggest political contest of the 2010 mid-terms so far, and I have to say I thought there’d be more media hype and punditry outrage over this. I mean, forget that the Tea Party and its supporters aren’t that well known for having a sense of humor, especially when it comes to Sarah Palin, and surely this is the kind of money trail they’d be scrambling to disavow, which of course would be great television, so why the networks aren’t jumping all over this, I have ...

Hmmm, what? Rand Paul? You mean Ron Paul, right? No? Rand Paul? What’s he got to do with ...

Oh, the primaries.

Sorry. I was talking about the Sarah Palin Look-alike Contest.

Watch on YouTube

Which, you’ll notice, also doubled as a Tea Party fundraiser.

Which you’d think would be newsworthy.

Granted, Tim Brown of the Admiral did suggest that they might have trouble finding someone to accept the cheque. And neither Sarah Palin nor Rod Blagojevich accepted invitations to be judges.

Still, as far as I can tell, no one in the Tea Party seems to be going out of their way to condemn it – not even Fox News. Maybe as a courtesy to the GOP?

Liberals – by which I mean Daily Kos – seem to be slightly more vocal in condemning it on traditional sexism grounds, though that’s mainly an excuse to bag on Tea Partiers for complaining about the Liberal Media being all sexist in criticizing Palin when they’re more sexist than liberals etc etc.

Is it sexist? Well, inasmuch as you can argue that no one ever reduces male politicians to campy sex objects. Except that there are also porn versions of Elliot Spitzer and – yes – Barack Obama and his stimulus package, among others, so I’m not sure that argument holds as much water as it used to. And in Palin’s case, it’s not like she was never an object of parody before Larry Flynt saw a cash-in opportunity.

Still, it’s interesting that many Americans – including fans of Palin – remain unaccustomed to the idea that a politician can be a hot MILF, and are having trouble reconciling this with their pre-conceived ideas of MILF hotness. Put country simple, yr not supposed to have sexual fantasies about politicians.

Then again, maybe that changed in 1992. I’ve lost count of how many women I know who have admitted that, had they been in Monica Lewinsky’s position, they would TOTALLY flash their thong at Bill Clinton too. And I know several more who saw that photo of Barry at the beach and thought, “Oh God yeah, I’d totally hit it.” Even Junior Bush drove women wild in his flight suit. 

So in that sense, treating Palin any different would be, well, sexist.

Of course it’s all silly. But Christ, what isn’t in American politics anymore?

Which is why I don’t have anything to add about the primaries or Rand Paul. Yes, he talks crazy, but so does half the Senate these days.

Stimulation nation,

This is dF