I want to extend my heartfelt apologies to my conservative readers for this post. There truly is no excuse for it. I can only say, by way of explanation and not exculpation, that I did not truly understand the extent to which conservatives lack a sense of humor. Being a liberal, I assume the best about people, and while writing the offending post I thought that most of you would find it somewhat funny, or at least would shrug it off and move on. I was sadly wrong. For that, and for hurting what passes for your feelings, I am deeply sorry.
If I could have it all to do over again, I would want to graft a sense of humor onto all of you before you were subjected to my insensitive, caustic, mildly amusing wit. Unfortunately, medical science has not yet progressed to the point that liberals can donate a sense of humor to you directly. For you to develop a sense of humor organically, you would first have to have a certain amount of intelligence, ability to keep things in perspective and emotional health - but then, you wouldn't be conservatives anymore, would you?
In future, I will label humor posts with a prominent warning so that buffoons and sensitive conservative readers may steer away in time. But I repeat myself.
My deepest, sincerest apologies.
Here's a better way to indicate something is humor: actually be funny. The very content of your sarcastic apology shows how far you are from understanding what wit is, how it can be deployed to show up your adversaries, and how it differs from yelling "Fuck you, you moron!" from your car window.
Posted by: Mike G | August 08, 2005 at 11:22 AM
Lordy. I think they must pre-lobotomize them these days.
Posted by: Hal | August 08, 2005 at 11:28 AM
Hell, I'll donate some bucks if you'd do something like that again. Watching the Freepi and Little Green Fools hiss and spit while trying to form a coherent thought is always good for a laugh.
Thanks for a funny post.
Posted by: SAP | August 08, 2005 at 11:43 AM
Apology accepted. Try and do better next time.
Posted by: Gib | August 08, 2005 at 11:46 AM
I had no idea yelling "fuck you, you moron" from a car window is the same as blogging. If true, I've been blogging longer than anyone this side of Russell Crowe.
Posted by: Calling All Toasters | August 08, 2005 at 12:02 PM
The very content of your sarcastic apology shows how far you are from understanding what wit is....
Now that's funny!!! Thanks for the laugh. Not only do you manage to make a humourous comment yourself, but in the process you add to the levity of Mithras's original posts ... quite the accomplishment, I'd say. Have you considered a career in comedy?
Cheers,
Posted by: Arne Langsetmo | August 08, 2005 at 12:04 PM
Unfortunately, medical science has not yet progressed to the point that liberals can donate a sense of humor to you directly.
Ask them to lay off the "Intelligent Design" thing and the stem cell thing, and then who knows where medical science will take us?
Posted by: iocaste | August 08, 2005 at 12:32 PM
Hey guys
lets keep after John Roberts. I want to know how much he payed for those kids of his and whether the mother was given the right to choose. Why weren't those kids aborted?
GO NY TIMES, GO!
And all conservative bloggers are icky! Pew!
Posted by: I hate John Roberts | August 08, 2005 at 12:49 PM
Your post did serve to make one important point: that so long as affirmative action exists, minorities who succeed will always be vulnerable to the charge that they got to where they are because of their race and not their own merits. It's a charge that's pernicious because it can never be disproven, even if there's no evidence for it (witness your own attack). That's one of the big reason why many people (minorities included) are against affirmative action.
Posted by: Yaron | August 08, 2005 at 12:56 PM
Yaron-
so long as affirmative action exists, minorities who succeed will always be vulnerable to the charge that they got to where they are because of their race and not their own merits.
So, as long as efforts to remedy the effects of discriminatin exist, discrimination will continue? That's not the complete Catch-22. So long as efforts to even measure discrimination exists, discrimination will continue. See, the conservative solution is, ignore it and it will go away. You have much to learn, grasshopper.
Gib-
Apology accepted. Try and do better next time.
After this lil' ol' incident, I don't even regard you as a conservative anymore. You have a measurable IQ.
Posted by: Mithras | August 08, 2005 at 01:19 PM
Hey, you're my new hero for writing the "offending" piece. The characterization of Michelle Malkin -- and her career prospects if she'd been a male second-generation American with an Uncle Tom complex, instead of a woman -- made my week, and I've shared it with everyone in my newsroom who loathes her column, considers it a sullying of our paper's name, as much as I do.
Posted by: Jason Tippitt | August 08, 2005 at 01:23 PM
Hey mithras,
I found your post pretty funny and I'm sort of to the right of Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the negative reaction is from those who take politics ( or themselves) a shade too seriously.
Posted by: mark safranski | August 08, 2005 at 01:57 PM
What good would yelling "Fuck you, you moron!" from your car window do? All those fucking morons are driving around fucking hummers. Just get a Barret .50 and take out the engine block.
Posted by: KillCon2005 | August 08, 2005 at 02:12 PM
Hey Mike,
Fuck you, you moron!
Posted by: edddie | August 08, 2005 at 02:30 PM
jesus christ, with your taxonomy and your apology you've managed to either piss off, or I must assume, CONFUSE the entire right side of the blogosphere and a few lefties too.
And I guess it's because michelle malkin has tits, is half-filipino and defends internment. Ohyea, and she defends interment.................. She made her calling card defending interment.....
To all the righties and the lefties who got sucked in, f u!
Posted by: wtf | August 08, 2005 at 02:30 PM
Maybe Sally Struthers can take up the cause? For only 35 cents a day you can help a conservative buy a sense of humor...
Posted by: mac | August 08, 2005 at 02:36 PM
Holy Fuck.
Mithras, the brittle lefty response is to be assumed. I grew up in the most P.C. place in the world at the most P.C. time in history and while I'm as liberal as it gets -- humorless responses to language use (as if they're shocked to learn of satire and sarcasm) make me reactionary. There's always someone on the left who just begs to be offended by something. That's what we do. Of course, we also can claim Lenny Bruce, punk rock and the Rude Pundit.
But the right! Oh MY do their cocks get in a knot (Hey Jeralyn, is that better?). Maybe all that about 'conservative humor' and 'South Park Conservative' is really just a thin veneer of bullshit to shine up the street rep of the dullest pack of losers ever to lace up the combat boots.
You got funny in my book.
And Malkin has talent? Wow, my respect for TalkLeft has just flatlined. Talent how?
Posted by: n.o.t.l.f | August 08, 2005 at 02:50 PM
See, the conservative solution is, ignore it and it will go away.
No, the conservative response is that a "solution" to racial discrimination that itself involves racial discrimination, and in the process allows people like you (or anyone else) to cast aspersions on minorities that you dislike, due to the color of their skin, is not a solution at all.
What's the conservative solution? Ending workplace discrimination through lawsuits and market pressure, such as boycotts. But not through racial quotas. And the recognition that a government solution to problem X will often end up making problem X worse.
Posted by: Yaron | August 08, 2005 at 02:53 PM
I read your taxonomy thing and it just wasn't very funny. It's clear to me that it was just a (very) little exercise in envy, directed at the right side of the blogosphere where the influence on current events has been vastly greater than anything generated by the degenerate vegetarian contingent on the Left.
Posted by: Toby Petzold | August 08, 2005 at 02:54 PM
The very content of your sarcastic apology shows how far you are from understanding what wit is,
I know wit. I served with wit. Wit is a friend of mine.
You, sir, are no wit.
Posted by: Samurai Sam | August 08, 2005 at 02:56 PM
Boy, it sure didn't take long for Mike G. to snap up that bait, just proving the point.
Posted by: Cal Gal | August 08, 2005 at 02:57 PM
What a bunch of whiny dorks. Gracious apology but you were easy on them. Count us on your side, as we noted in our post about whiny conservative dorks, Truth and Lies: Blog for A Better America: The Whiny Right Wing
Talk about lacking a sense of humor.
Hey Mike G. "Fuck you, you moron!".
Posted by: rmg | August 08, 2005 at 02:58 PM
toby, this country is going to hell in a handbasket and taking the world with it. im glad to see wingnuts finally taking responsibility for something. thats a first.
Posted by: xdcdx | August 08, 2005 at 03:02 PM
Samurai Sam - You're a dork. (Notice how dorky right wingers pick names like Samurai Sam).
Truth and Lies: Blog for A Better America: The Whiny Right Wing
Posted by: rmg | August 08, 2005 at 03:03 PM
Heh--indeedy
Posted by: instadipshit | August 08, 2005 at 03:08 PM
Mithras, face it. You're an asshole, a hypocrite and a douchebag.
(Wow, this comedy thing is fun!)
Posted by: Dogstar | August 08, 2005 at 03:10 PM
Wow, a lesson in humor from Toby Petzold. Coming up next: tips on how to make love to your man, by Rosie O'Donnell and k.d. lang.
Posted by: edddie | August 08, 2005 at 03:14 PM
Conservatives don't need a sense of humor.
They can hire minorities and poor whites to have them for them.
And it's a buyer's market...
Posted by: Mr. Bill | August 08, 2005 at 03:14 PM
for many, many years now, one of the personal litmus tests i have applied in deciding which people i will spend my valuable free time with is the ability to laugh at oneself... without that willingness to be vulnerable and that mimimal level of self-reflection, i just flat-out don't have time for you... no need to apologize for a damn thing, imho...
Posted by: profmarcus | August 08, 2005 at 03:22 PM
Being called an insensitive asshole by Jeff "Protein Wisdom" Goldstein is like being called a "homo" by Harvey Fierstein.
Posted by: mat | August 08, 2005 at 03:34 PM
I think you should go easy on the poor conservatives; it can't be easy for them. Just walk a mile in their shoes, if only in your imagination: Your side effectively controls all three branches of government, and you still haven't gotten your goddamn pony, as you were promised. And to rub salt in the wounds, people who disagree with you are not only still allowed to speak their minds, but--the insolence! the insolence!--they actually ridicule your opinions with impunity. And just to rub salt in the wound, Jane Fonda is still making movies, Michael Moore is still fat, raving-eyed lunatic Howard Dean hasn't been committed, and Hillary is still roaming free despite those 74 people she killed with her bare hands and buried out behind the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock.
Life is hard for conservatives. It wouldn't kill you to show a little more empathy.
Posted by: Uncle Kvetch | August 08, 2005 at 03:35 PM
I would want to graft a sense of humor onto all of you before you were subjected to my insensitive, caustic, mildly amusing wit. Unfortunately, medical science has not yet progressed to the point that liberals can donate a sense of humor to you directly.
You seem to be unaware of the latest developments in medical science. I have it on good authority that a truly amazing breakthrough that would enable doctors to graft a sense of personality onto right-wingers in utero has been made recently been made. Unfortunately, it requires an extraction of embryonic stem cells from a blastocyst. Yes, I'm afraid it requires the actual destruction of real live human snowflake babies (And every snowflake baby, or so I've been told, is unique). Tragically, even were this technology to be developed into a reliable and safe procedure without federal funding, our fellow wingnut citizens will be unable to derive any benefit from such a morally problematic procedure.
BTW, Michael Moore has tits too.
Posted by: Barry Freed | August 08, 2005 at 03:35 PM
"a sense of personality"? I meant a sense of humor. Though it is true, the need is great there too.
Posted by: Barry Freed | August 08, 2005 at 03:37 PM
You should apologize, Mithras, for believing that your post in question actually contained humor. Since it's probably not wise to graft humor onto yourself, you should probably find someone to do it for you.
Posted by: Charles Bird | August 08, 2005 at 03:50 PM
There is an old saying that I think applies to this situation.
"Arguing on the internet is like running in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarted"
the picture is here, found using a google image search "arguing on the internet"
http://www.thekodclan.com/members/img/ThatOtherGuy.jpg
Its a damn blog. Get over it. If you cant take the heat, get out the damn kitchen. Or at least grow a funny bone and start a good flame war.
Posted by: burn | August 08, 2005 at 03:51 PM
That's a good point Mr. Freed.
He's got huge tits.
Ironic Note to the Right-Wing: Remember the politically correct types on our side are the people you've been calling "FemiNazis" for almost 20 years now, so get your tits out of the wringer on this.
Posted by: n.o.t.l.f | August 08, 2005 at 03:57 PM
It was funny 'cuz it's true.
Posted by: Manual Crank | August 08, 2005 at 04:10 PM
I can't say it on Obsidian Wings, Charles, but I can say it here: you're an ignorant asshole who wouldn't know funny if it came up and nibbled on your nutsack.
Posted by: edddie | August 08, 2005 at 04:11 PM
You should apologize, Mithras, for believing that your post in question actually contained humor. Since it's probably not wise to graft humor onto yourself, you should probably find someone to do it for you.
Jesus Christ, I almost spit up the fetus blood I was sipping on. You should put a warning on that motherfucking wit. I just read this out loud to my wife and her lover Jane. "Honeys, listen to this," I said. "Here's this guy trying to slam Mithras' sense of humor by writing something straight from the funny bone of Bill Keane."
Hey Bird, did you get that housekeeper you keep in a locker in the basement to write that one for you? Or did you find that in Deuteronomy? Or is "Al Jaffe's Amusing Put Downs for Every Situation" back in circulation?
Posted by: n.o.t.l.f | August 08, 2005 at 04:14 PM
Is this a good time to bring up just how unbelievably f*cked-up it is for an Asian woman to defend Japanese internment during WWII? I mean, what does her community think about your political "opinions", even factoring out the Filipinos who are still sore about Japanese atrocities committed during WWII?
Posted by: Robert Murphy | August 08, 2005 at 04:15 PM
Never apologize to a con, unless you apply the same device Ann Coulter urges cons to use on liberals.
As for Charles, go kiss my great big ass you stinking, jingo, yellow belly POS.
How's that for humor Charles? You like that? I have plenty more, you murder loving, war whooping, BDSM freak.
Posted by: boilerman10 | August 08, 2005 at 04:20 PM
Is this a good time to bring up just how unbelievably f*cked-up it is for an Asian woman to defend Japanese internment during WWII?
Ah, but where you see "unbelievably f*cked-up," Robert, the Cool Kids see edgy! provocative! iconoclastic! contrarian!
An Asian woman who sticks up for Asians & women? How BORING. An Asian woman defending the internment of racial minorities? Now, that's got some zazz!
Malkin's just following the lead of everybody's favorite GayCatholicTory, Andrew "I'm so fed up with the Republicans shitting on my head that I'm going to vote for them with much, MUCH less enthusiasm next time around" Sullivan. He's built a very successful career out of incoherence. It's only natural that MM should follow in his footsteps.
Posted by: Uncle Kvetch | August 08, 2005 at 04:28 PM
Robert,
Michelle is Filipino, and Filipinos are not well disposed towards the Japanese in some cases.
In Michelle's case, we are dealing with an op/ed pundit with far out views. The operative words are op/ed. Not policy. Her book is lots of after-the-fact op/ed, feeding the rage over 9/11 and nothing more. Don't buy it and it will soon go the bargain box route.
But you probably understood this already. With Michelle, look for self-promotion. With LGF Charles, look for a tough talking, leather thug, jingo.....far from the front.
In both cases, they are "entertainers."
Posted by: boilerman10 | August 08, 2005 at 04:30 PM
Your post did serve to make one important point: that so long as affirmative action exists, minorities who succeed will always be vulnerable to the charge that they got to where they are because of their race and not their own merits.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. Do you really think he was honestly asserting that Malkin is an affirmative action hire? It reads to me like an (obviously successful) attempt to bait right-wingers by comparing the shallow PR manuever of giving prominence to Republican women and minorities with its distant cousin: affirmative action.
Malkin has nothing greater (or lesser) to offer than any of a hundred other shrill bigots. She structures screeds around anemic research; she predetermines her results, seeking evidence to support her conclusions; and she tilts wildly against windmills, hacking and slashing at liberal strawmen. Anyone can do this--too many are. All Malkin offers is a cosmetic way to disguise the inherent stupidity and offensiveness of it all: she's telegenic; she's Asian (which causes idiots to think, "How can she be racist? She's a minority!"); and she's pure venom.
Posted by: dak | August 08, 2005 at 04:32 PM
"You should apologize, Mithras, for believing that your post in question actually contained humor. Since it's probably not wise to graft humor onto yourself, you should probably find someone to do it for you."
Posted by: Charles Bird | August 8, 2005 03:50 PM
[Waves perfumed hanky]
Oh! Well, done! [claps white lace-gloved hands]
You gave that sweaty brute the thrashing he so richly deserved!
Posted by: dano347 | August 08, 2005 at 04:32 PM
I can't say it on Obsidian Wings, Charles, but I can say it here: you're an ignorant asshole who wouldn't know funny if it came up and nibbled on your nutsack.
Right, because over there I couldn't call you a dickhead, Edddie. Wow, trading insults is so liberating. Thanks, Mithras. You're a credit to the intolerant illiberal community.
Posted by: Charles Bird | August 08, 2005 at 04:37 PM
In the conservatives defense, I'm a liberal and I read it as an objective analysis, too.
psyche
Posted by: CountAsterisk | August 08, 2005 at 04:45 PM
" the degenerate vegetarian contingent on the Left."
I am so totally getting "Degenerate Vegetarian" tattooed on my ass.
Posted by: Cyn | August 08, 2005 at 05:02 PM
1960: African Americans can't vote in the American South, Democrats carry almost every southern state.
2004: For the most part,African Americans allowed to vote,Republicans carry every Southern state.
Posted by: Lyndon Johnson | August 08, 2005 at 05:02 PM
Dak,
Hear hear!
Posted by: boilerman10 | August 08, 2005 at 05:06 PM