Better Than Expected

 

This is a Vice documentary about people leaving the Jehovah's Witness cult, which I thought was gonna suck, but turned out to be pretty interesting. It digs into the agony and suffering, that those people dish out, a little more than most. That's how you keep my attention, anyway,...

 

Another Week: More Colorblind White American Racism

Does VICE do This Week In Racism on their television show? There ought to be a program for this "colorblind" phenomena - began by Ted Nugent and Paul Ryan - of a weekly roll-out of some new flavor of (supposedly-deceased-and/or-previously-non-existent) racists, determined to have their say on the very subject they're equally determined not to understand. 

Here would be this week's guest, from Salon:

"We don’t need your apology, Princeton kid 

Tal Fortgang wrote an essay saying he's not sorry for being male and white -- but who asked him to be?"

This sociopathic demand whites not feel guilt (or anything else, really) is a never-ending trope of the colorblind racist. Here I am, for the umpteenth time, also refuting it - over two weeks ago - on Althouse:

"Nobody wants, needs, or is asking for your guilt - we want you to discover 'justice'."

That white racists are stuck on this straw man doesn't say much for their intellectual prowess, but, as Chauncey DeVega noticed at We Are Respectable Negroes, it says quite a bit about how language can be used in an attempt to distract from more salient topics:

  "Historically, white supremacy's most socially deleterious power, and what so many white folks are desperately clinging to in the United States, is white racism's ability to elevate mediocre, failing, low-skilled, degenerate, unmotivated, and otherwise sub par white folks to the level of 'respectability' and 'middle class' over people of color who are in almost every way superior to them."

That's it:

Every week I'd host a comedy/game show, featuring a different colorblind racist saying whatever he or she wants, in an effort to fool others (and even themselves) into believing they've sincerely pondered and heard America's most-important issues.

We could call it: 

 SQUIRREL!!!

 

Watch This And You Might Reconsider Your Pet Options

You know what's kind of mind-blowing? 

What's been chosen to be on TV vs. what could be on TV,...

Black People Can't Get Jobs (Whites Can Get Anything)

"The White Man Is So Bold He Will Crawl Inside A Can Of Beans" - Paul Mooney

How Did Dennis Rodman Become Kim Jong Un's BFF?

It was VICE, baby,...

Sonofabitch

There are times when I think destroying my idealism was the only point of my birth (Mom: "Let's cheat on my spouse and abandon the kid to Whatever Happens-Happens, whattaya say?") Now I can be assured that's true after discovering VICE Magazine isn't a trustworthy American news source:

"VICE founder, famous for truth telling, has history of lies"

That's the fucking Daily Caller. Great.

Fuck. Damn. Shit. [Audible inhuman groan,...]

It seems like betrayal's the only thing that can be expected anymore - and it still never is:

I'd want my mom if I had one,...

 

Finally: Generation Jones (And Generation X) Have Been Able To Crawl From Out Of The Media's Dead Hippie Ass

Now, at last, the post-Boomer media world is on the scene:

On Friday, HBO will premiere "Vice," a half-hour weekly news magazine that promises viewers in its opening credits that it will be there "uncovering the news, culture and politics that expose the absurdity of the modern condition."

I'm an old Vice magazine reader (they're one of the few outlets to cover cults in depth) and, I can tell you, this won't be The Daily Show but real news from - imagine that - a sane perspective: 

 They won't be covering Dancing With The Stars,..

 

The Mexican Mormon War (Yet Another Unknown Story)

The number of stories surrounding Mitt Romney and the Mormons, that have gone un-investigated, is astounding. Why is Vice magazine telling us this, while the majors and blogs are only working the who's-up-and-who's-down horse race angle? Not a word about blood atonement, the oaths taken - nothing about cultists taking it so seriously they'd kill each other. Maybe because it would ruin the carefully constructed image of how Mormonism can affect the minds of those under it's influence.

This is the story of one gigantic enclave in Mexico and their battle against the drug cartels. It was started by Mormon polygamists - including Mitt's family - which is also one of the ways "the world's fastest growing religion" has come to rule Utah.  It is not without it's heroes, but the fact remains that, like many issues involving Mormons, it's also one of the weirdest, most twisted, and creepiest cult stories you're ever going to find:

Mormon-on-Mormon carnage, narco religions, kidnapping, guns, and lots and lots of kids and cocaine - all under the clean-cut cover of angels, and because of the loopy teachings of Joseph Smith.

So meet Mitt's Mexican cousins, hear the political controversies between them, and even get a real-world glimpse into the issues surrounding the "Fast & Furious" case. And then hate our news culture - mainstream and blogosphere - for being as totally corrupt as what you're witnessing here,...