Insulting all Americans = Free Speech
Insulting American President = Free Speech
Stomping on Bush doll = Uproarious Comedy Moment
Dissing Paul Martin = Expulsion From Caucus
This is it, folks, the most rabid and unreasoning assessment of the Bush victory. It's a heart-felt piece called "The unteachable ignorance of the red states" by Jane Smiley, a California novelist. For sheer distilled quintessence of bile, this takes the prize; hatred oozes of out of every pore for those Americans, her fellow-countrymen -- her own relatives, in fact -- who live in states which did not vote for John Kerry. By simple virtue of living in these areas, these folk are of one flesh and soul with the evil-doers of past centuries, being responsible for the mistreatment of slaves and natives. They manifest the following characteristics: ignorance, of course, and racism, but they are also predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant; they love to cheat and intimidate. Worse yet, they are dupes and fools in the hands of (drum roll, please) "the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, [who] decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey—workers and consumers."
So there is the answer of the Left. The problem with this country is: the invincibly ignorant Americans of the south, west and mid-west who disagree them.
Brian Williams: "Three cheers for the United States...we now have a chimpanzee for four more years. An idiot that is going to rant, scream, and throw his shit at the world no matter how stupid or dangerous it is."
Eschaton: "The people who voted George Bush and the Republicans into office this year didn't do so because they were conned by a right wing asshole posing as a compassionate centrist. They did so precisely because he is a right wing asshole."
Dain Fagerholm: " I am in shock and despair at the re-election of the Bush administration. The first thing I wanted to do was leave the country, perhaps move to Canada. It was a devastating defeat for all rational human beings. This is primarily a culture war between Christian Evangelicals in the midwest and southern states who resent and despise the "decadent" coastal states which are primarily Democratic. Get ready for a mass exodus of American expatriates. Many parallels here between Nazi Germany pre WWII. There is something insane happening here. Help!"
300 Western Washinton University students protested the re-election of President Bush. Riley Sweeney, an 18-year-old freshman, elected to wear his protest: He showed up in a gray fedora and checkered blue bathrobe.
"I am in mourning because of the decision our country has made," he said. "I don't think I'll be wearing pants for a while."
Blogger: "I really don't care what happens anymore. From here on out, we
get exactly what we deserve whether it's a fiscal depression,
increased poverty, return to witchhunts, terror attacks, whatever.
I don't blame the rest of the world for hating us. I hate us too."
Daily Mirror:"You make me laugh America. All this going on about terrorists and stuff. The biggest terrorist in the world is about to run your country for another 4 years. Soon he'll start to build his big oil pipeline from iraq to america. Just remember there are alot of people you have managed to annoy."
Daily Mirror: "So what if I am a lesbian and was once a prostitute. I came from a very big family and we never had much money so my mother sent me out on the streets. That aint my fault, although I did get to like some of my clients. I hate Americans because my granny went out with a GI in the 1940s and she got pregnant. the GI then toed it back to Wisconsin and left us in the lurch."
Daily Mirror again: "As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity...the self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong"."
CB from New York: "We're not all morons. Only small town, religious Americans are. Unfortunately, they turned out to vote more than the rest of us did."
I've been trying to come up with the most rabid and unreasonable response to the Bush victory. There are a lot of good candidates:
The front page of the Daily Mirror in London: "How can 59, 054, 087 people be so DUMB?"
Gary Wills in the New York Times: "It's the end of The Enlightenment."
James Wolcott of Vanity Fair: "Good, Go Ahead, America, Choke on Your Own Vomit, You Deserve to Die." (There may have been some irony intended which I missed. On the other hand he admits to living on Manhattan's Upper West Side with his three ocicats Roland, Jasper, and Henry.)
Lawrence Martin in the Globe and Mail: “The world, his election opponents believed, could not withstand four more years of Bible Belt imperialism. Now they've got it. The impressive triumph of the radical right on Tuesday has indeed broken the historical consensus. America has moved outside the box. It is in a new, potentially toxic territory.”
A blogger: "I'll be spending my energy looking for a secular country where I can beleive [sic] that the majority of the population values and can discern intelligence, honesty, integrity, tolerence,[sic] diversity, community; some place I can be proud to raise my kids...it no longer is America."
Maureen Dowd in the New York Times: Dick Cheney "is creating the sort of "democracy" he likes. One party controls all power in the country. One network serves as state TV. One nation dominates the world as a hyperpower. One firm controls contracts in Iraq."
For now this is my favourite:
At Harvard a Republican student was yelling the phrase "I love America! I love democracy!" in the hallway, and a colleague exploded at [him]: "It's completely inappropriate to express your homophobic views like that!"
Michael Moore The European Left Dan Rather
Hollywood Eminem Jesse Jackson
The French Svend Robinson Maude Barlow
"Speedy" Zapatero Jack Layton Tim Robbins
Alec Baldwin Cameron Diaz Carolyn Parrish
Jean Chretien The CBC Osama bin Laden
Howard Dean Harold Pinter Mahathir Mohamad
Bubba The Love Sponge Loses Race To Be County Sheriff
300 children bitten by 'blood sucking' monkeys at famous Indian temple