Current Comedy 8/27/09: Dear Reader,

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our regularly scheduled entertainment, for this latest installment of “Flogging the Reader.” Tonight’s contestant, Mr. "Hatred and Yelling i don't think so" from the comments section on “Preaching to the Choir” part one.
Dear Reader, though you follow standard Republican rebuttalist techniques, I am impressed. Your will to distortion is mighty; I must hope that my quest for the truth is more powerful. Left no other place to start I must say:
Either you live in a world so hate-filled you don't recognize it, or you're lying, or have become so desensitized from living on a diet of too much Rush that you now no longer actually register the feelings of others. I'm betting on door #2, but judging from the viciousness that spews from my TV, lynch mob mentality i find on right-wing websites when I research and the sickening forwards i sometimes receive from my right-wing readers, perhaps you really can't perceive the anger embodied in your message. Perhaps you really think that everybody’s vision of god involves striving for constant warfare and the dehumanization of other cultures, but you’re wrong. And yes, Jesus loves me, even if a room full of his supposed followers have forgotten how.
But maybe as you insist on claiming, you actually are too ignorant to parse the words you type. It was an argument that Bush used, though to little effect and much misery. Here let me help:
Let’s just start with your apparent assertion you had no idea your typical tired right-winger remarks about me needing to get a job (have one, paid well, you?) and the creaky "love it or leave it" coda are intended as intentionally deflective insults. You used them the same way you were insulting my Patriotism, then i countered with the Navy thing--Just a childish game to take us off topic. I consider it my patriotic duty to stand up for my country when I must defend it from its politicians or supposed holy men, don’t you?
But none of that (your insults nor my counters) actually has bearing on the discussion at hand, except as a low blow technique to weaken me through insult, because, like so many right-wingers who’ve considered it their patriotic duty to insult liberals through the years, when you find yourself challenged and don’t want to mount an actual argument, you simply start calling us stupid, slinging mud, and blaming your victims for the messes you chose to create. Naw, no hatespeak there in those word choices. You're innocent, right? What is your purpose? Good clean fun? It’s just those stupid commie hippies picking on the poor conservative again.
As well, Mr. "Hatred and Yelling i don't think so," you obviously are also impaired at understanding the words of others, or again disingenuous in your distortions of the passages you mangle by me and by Kim, so let me explain your deception to you. I said in my column that it is the lobbyists, in particular Dick Armey's business, Freedom Works, a company that gets paid to organize disruptors that they are stirring up trouble dishonestly. Here is the passage: “those overweeningly upright fake Patriots, actual big pharma lobbyists, Dick Armey’s Freedom Works.”
Looking at it anyone can see who is called fake. Like one could see right now I am presently doing to you, Mr. "Hatred and Yelling i don't think so." I wrote it’s those guys that are the "fake patriots," not the Kingmanites at the event and we can all see it when we look at the text. But you look so much more maligned with the misquote; so i see why you chose it.
The same is true with your distortion of Kim Lawrence’s blog: she says what made her uncomfortable was not the merely being in church, but hearing so much hatespeak in a church. Maybe you recall the hatespeak: Hate Obama, Hate Moslems, Hate Immigrants, Hate people who write legislation in language beyond the JH level, and especially hate anyone not Christian enough to measure up to your standards. I heard all that stuff, others heard it; in fact much of it is quoted in articles. For you to feign ignorance, makes you either a liar or … what?
People, meaning more than one, more than Kim, came to me and told me of the hate that filled that room. How they felt threatened, glared at, stared down. More than one told me they feared for their safety after I was booed down and that then they kept silent in the oppression. I did too because that was the intention. Of course you didn’t realize that either.
Like you didn’t notice it was NOT a Republican rally; it was not a secret sect church service. It was supposed to be a chance for all of Franks’ District 2 constituents to listen and speak. We listened to your hate, even if you couldn’t hear it. Did you hear anything I said there or here? Probably not.
You were, to your credit, up front acknowledging you weren’t writing to change my mind and had no intention of opening yours. You write about this attitude as if it is something to be proud of, like you are so proud of refusing to open your heart to the poor, the sick, peacemakers and the needy. Whoever has been telling you that that is Christian needs to be stopped. It’s giving good man a bad name. If that mindset is the one you see as most holy, you are a poor witness to our god.
--mikel weisser, a pantheist, which by definition includes Christianity, writes from the left coast of AZ.