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Shame on you.

Jill

Gabe says so perfectly what I also think about tea partiers, after one of them — Caleb Howe, a right-wing writer regularly featured on sites like RedState.org — taunted Roger Ebert for having cancer:

But I will also say this: come on, tea party movement. I have worked really hard to remain open to the fact that we live in a big and complicated world where millions of people (billions of people?) have vastly different ideas about how things should work, and everyone is entitled to those opinions. And this particular outburst is easy to explain away as the disgusting work of one misguided man. Except that it isn’t. And it is pretty clear at this point that your loose-knit political organization is a bastion for actual hatred. Cool! Cool loose-knit political organization!

It’s one thing to be angry about HUMAN BEINGS HAVING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE. I can definitely understand why you would be so upset about that. BOOO! They should get sick and die by their own bootstraps, right? Besides, insurance companies are neat! And they need regular Americans like you and me to DEFEND THEM FROM THE MEAN GOVERNMENT. Definitely. You guys have got it so figured out it’s crazy. Just kidding! Looks like my communist doctor gave me a prescription for Sarcasm Pills. (To be taken with ugh.)

But this? And this? And this? And this? And this? Shame on you. Shame on you so much.


It’s also really, really worth reading this piece by an Esquire writer who did a profile on Roger Ebert, and now responds to the hateful things that Caleb Howe has said about him. Ebert is a class act, and has been an amazing proponent of feminist thought and art. I like to think that there must be a special place in Hell for people like Caleb Howe.

17 thoughts on Shame on you.

  2. Someone doesn’t like the tea party and they’ve found a tea partier they don’t like and that’s an asshole? Who said stupid, hateful shit on the internet?

    Why is this post-worthy, seriously?

    Also um, making it mandatory to go to insurance companies and buy their (shitty) product? He is right on that, they don’t need us to defend them.

  3. Lasciel: If it weren’t for guys like the tea partiers, and Obama’s willingness to roll over and play dead rather than playing hardball, we could have had an actual public option. Just saying.

  4. Exactly. The tea partiers don’t differentiate between Kaiser and Canada. In failing to do so, they carry water for the same evil conglomerates whose business model provides care to people only when they don’t actually need it. If they were not so willing to drown out the reasoned discourse on said evil conglomerates and the lethal excesses thereof, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to gather support for a good public healthcare system.

    I think it’s post-worthy because, well, these people are fucking awful. They’re belligerently foolish, hateful, callous–they embody the very worst about American politics. I think it’s important that we keep saying so, for the same reasons it’s important to complain about casual sexism and racism. They can’t be allowed to seem normal, or legitimate. They’re horrible.

  5. Lasciel, you have your own blog where you get to moderate the posts. Seriously? No one cares what you think should or should not be posted here.

    [/derail]

    I still have super mixed feelings about this healthcare bill, but I don’t even think it’s worth pretending that this is what it’s really about. This need for people to become “relevant” by being “edgy” is so overrated. It reminds me of how I acted out as a kid to get my mom to look at me. Thankfully, I grew out of it enough to not suggest that someone else’s cancer is fair game for me to use to draw attention to myself.

    And how can you not adore Ebert?

  6. That post was great, but a blogger who shames a woman who is verbally guarded about her children (as opposed to all sharey-sharey and effusive and gushing I guess) and uses a caption like “the worst” b/c of it… Yeah.

    1. That post was great, but a blogger who shames a woman who is verbally guarded about her children (as opposed to all sharey-sharey and effusive and gushing I guess) and uses a caption like “the worst” b/c of it… Yeah.

      Who is that? Gwenyth Paltrow? I dunno, that doesn’t bother me.

  7. I’d disagree that these people know about other millions of people who have differing opinions. These people probably don’t associate with other types of people and they probably never talk about healthcare problems either. I don’t mean this in a “they’re so evil” type of way. That’s what they live day to day. Then they go watch Fox News that scares the shit out of them.

    So a perfect receipe for this crappiness.

  9. please tell me this is the same Gabe of Penny Arcade. because that would be way cool, and something i could see the Penny Arcade guys doing — they’ve ranted on Ebert for his irrational position about video games not being art aplenty (hey, i figure Ebert’s allowed one strange eccentricity, all things considered, but he still has to take his criticism for it) but they’ve never stooped to that sort of low blows, and i’d like to think they would stand up for him against such.

  10. Bitter Scribe, Roger Ebert is not worth 100 Caleb Howes. Caleb Howe, et al, are the sorts of people who tend to detract value from conversations they are involved in. They make us all dumber and angrier and less interesting. Caleb Howe makes the online world an ugly and horrible place, one he attempts quite openly to rot from the inside out. The glee he seems to take from making fun of the cancer that is killing a person is evidence of a person whose soul is completely and totally rotten.

    Roger Ebert does the opposite, even when we disagree. As noted above, see the video game argument. The critics of Ebert’s position – many of whose criticisms he has publicized on Twitter – bring their arguments and elevate the discussion of what is generally thought of as a rather low form of entertainment. See also: Ebert publishing a letter someone wrote him that critiques Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as an exploitation film, allowing his critic to make his full case. His love of art, of food, of conversation, of romance, and his joy in seeing other people delve into their own love — and the way he tries to share all of that with others — makes him the sort of person whose very existence makes the online world the rewarding forum it can be.

    Roger Ebert is not worth 100 Caleb Howes; I’d say it’s more like Caleb Howe is worth one negative-tenth of Roger Ebert. Because as bad as Caleb Howe is for the way we interact online, Roger Ebert adds so much more to make us better.

  12. Howe is detestable.

    However, using this as some kind of indictment of the tea party mentality generally is pretty facile. Why not take on the arguments made by Dana Loesh or Lloyd Marcus or Allen West or Nikki Haley? All people I disagree with on a couple of key issues, but ones who are substantive and not so easily punched down as Mr. Howe.

  13. Octogalore: Are you saying that there are members of the Tea Party worth taking seriously? From what I’ve seen, they’re all pretty much the same: fairly rich, really white, and stubbornly stupid. If anyone has joined the Tea Party of their own free will, they’ve pretty much forfeited all right to be taken seriously and should be mocked accordingly.

  14. Dana Loesch:

    OMG! The Socialists ate my baby!

    biggovernment.com/dloesch/2010/03/22/the-socialists-won-a-battle-now-it-is-our-turn/

    Also besties with Michael Savage. Substantive? Substantively nuts.

    Nikki Haley:

    Palin, southern version. Obama is going to take our guns over my dead body! (Setting aside reality, tea party style.)

  15. SMMO: You forgot Rand Paul. I do feel a little sorry for him- he was doomed to be a wingnut from birth. But since he’s a grown male, my sympathy is scant.

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