I was sent this:
Here's the thing. I don't like the humor. I don't like making fun of someone - and that's what it's doing - for something they can't help. I know, he didn't have to run for office knowing full well the problems involved. And that decision to push forward in the campaign despite the high likelihood of what we've seen happen is a fair debate. I also know that it is 100% impossible to have a fair debate with progressives. Even if you tried to lay it out in the most respectable manner, for daring to point out the obvious you'd be accused of hating disabled people or wanting them killed.
Nonetheless, I say we should do what Michelle Obama only spoke of doing, and that's take the higher ground. Especially since, as Christians, that's part and parcel of the whole Jesus game. Plus, it does no good to lower ourselves to their standards. One, we don't have the institutions behind us to cover our tracks. And two, we lose any moral high ground since actually having consistent morals is supposed to be one of our selling points. It certainly separates us from the Left's here today, gone yesterday approach to morals.
With that said, once again we see Greydanus's slip into the cesspool of leftwing rhetorical tricks. Having spent my life listening to liberals mock and deride elderly Republicans, mock their misfortunes, and sometimes even mock them for their own handicaps (I recall George Clooney once mocking Charlton Heston's Alzheimer's - something I am no fan of at all), it's the height of disingenuousness to make such a partisan swipe. It suggests strongly that it's not making fun of disabilities that is the problem, but who is doing the making fun of that is the problem.
Had he simply called this out and said it was in bad taste, then no problem. I would agree. But he then pulls a favorite tactic of the Left of using a single event to tarnish the entire pool of political opponents. Perhaps he is so deeply lazy into his partisanship that he didn't bother to see if such rhetoric has been employed by his allies on the Left. To be honest he would have to have lived in a hole for these last several decades to miss it.
Otherwise, he knows it's true and doesn't care because it's his side doing it. Or he knows it's true and, like so many in our tutorial class today, is banking on his readers' own lazy ignorance so as not to be called out. In any event, it's once again a bad look from someone who used to be one of the good guys.
Biden, Fettermen: private or retired citizens, all the respect for their cognitive states. As public officials who ran, or were run by their unscrupulous loved ones, with preexisting mental conditions..fair game. The Bee headline is hardly even mean though it is a bit mocking. But it's mocking a reality that is a joke. The problem is the Left tells bad jokes. This guy should be nowhere near the Senate in his (pre-known) condition. (Thanks, PA! sarcasm) That he and Biden were even put up for election in the first place shows that Dems are entirely willing to put up very sick or mentally impaired people in the public spotlight to use as political tools. And that is FAR meaner than this Bee headline, IMO.
ReplyDeleteYou need humility to enjoy humor/have humor. It is mean that Fetterman was put in a position that requires him to use the one thing that isn’t working right. It’s like asking a lame person to make deliveries except worse bc he effects us all.
ReplyDeleteI think Fetterman is taking it better than others bc he made a funny vid about having a double.
Plus, it does no good to lower ourselves to their standards. One, we don't have the institutions behind us to cover our tracks. And two, we lose any moral high ground since actually having consistent morals is supposed to be one of our selling points.
ReplyDeleteOk, let's just go ahead and speed run how that goes:
"[insert public figure here] is a man."
"How can you be so cruel! I thought you Christians were all about having higher standards then you go and hurt someone's feelings like that! But here you are, going low..."
That's all the Left has done for our entire lives now, Dave - weaponize standards & morals to push their agenda. Heck it was done with Fetterman during the campaign when people tried pointing out he's not functional enough to do his job and were rebutted with "how dare you critique a disabled person."
No, at some point you have to take a stand and say, "this is the truth." And if they keep trying to push back against it, then yeah, it's time to turn to humor and start mocking the lies. The mocking of Fetterman is far less than the mockery he is making of our governing institutions and our society. He and Biden both need to be home with their families not on a public, WORLD-wide stage.
Ah here we go, I knew you'd have a recent example:
Deletehttps://davidgriffey.blogspot.com/2023/04/our-world-is-so-deep-into-idiocy.html
See what I mean? If you oppose the left, they'll frame it as you going against your morals. (In this case, torturing children.) Not that I'm even saying you're wrong, I do think lines and boundaries are important, but not to the point of permitting child mutilation.
Note that in order to get his digs in on "MAGA Christianity" SDG has conceded the point that Fetterman is disabled from a severe stroke. He does not say "Fetterman can easily make his thoughts known, so this article is inaccurate." His point is that Fetterman is too disabled to do his job but you are a meanie for noticing.
ReplyDeleteAn argument can be made that the right should simply say "Fetterman is unqualified for office and should be removed immediately" without mockery, but SDG and his ilk would still call this mockery of the disabled. After all, his reference to inviting the blind etc. to a feast doesn't make sense here unless the senate is the feast.
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteThis is a game of the Left. Some years ago they had a 12-year-old address the Democratic convention, using her as a mouthpiece to criticize Republicans. Who's going to challenge a child (and her handlers were cleverly hidden, to make her words appear "spontaneous")? When I once loudly criticized Greta Thurnberg for some loony rants a family member scolded me for "yelling at a kid".
We were discussing child-soldiers in a religion class (7th grade) and my kids asked me: what do you do if a kid takes aim at you. I think I startled them by responding that if you train a gun on me, I won't consider your age in shooting back, for I have a right to defend myself. Whether Biden or Fetterman are agents or mere instruments, they are taking aim at my liberty. I will fire back (verbally, in this case) and scolds like SDG can go boil their heads.
I don't think it's mean satire or even in particularly bad taste, as it's not mocking disabilities qua disabilities; rather, it's mocking a system that allows such a thing to happen and tries to gaslight you into thinking it's normal or that tries to morally cudgel you into thinking that criticizing it or mocking it is out of bounds. People for whom politics is religion (which is party agnostic) intentionally put persons whom they think it verboten to criticize because of some trait in positions of power precisely because they understand that any criticism can be deflected as being bigoted, intolerant, mean, etc., and that most people are unwilling to suffer the societal scorn and cancellation that they are able to direct towards them. It's an old game, but presumably a fairly effective one since they keep running it back.
ReplyDeleteMental disabilities certainly aren't funny as a condition, but neither should those who suffer with them be in positions of power in which they are cynically used as a proxy for others' designs or ambitions. I have some measure of sympathy for him, as it's clear that there is no one in his life who actually cares for him or loves him, but rather sees his pain and suffering as a means to further their own ends. That is what is actually distasteful and disgusting.
Mocking human hubris when it fails to acknowledge its limitations is also a well-worn field, from mocking Icarus flying too close to the sun to the parable of the rich man which mocks him for building bigger barns when his soul will be required of him the same night. Both (and many others) have a wry humor about them because we all experience when our ambition runs into the brick wall of reality. Unfortunately, our current political system not only wants to keep running into the brick wall, but insists we remove any crash helmets.
700 words to say nothing is a clever way of poking fun at SDG.
ReplyDelete"Deacon" Greydanus (he's not important enough to be known by his initials) discredits himself every time he jumps behind a keyboard.
DeleteMr. Griffey overlooked the most disgusting aspect of Greydanus' tweet, which is the fact that he invoked Jesus Christ's name to defend an abortion-supporting ghoul. I get that I'm this blog's resident non-Catholic, but that's really, really bad. It's like citing Jesus to defend a Satanic ritual.
ReplyDeleteI'm not interested in claiming the high ground. Insults have their place. If Biden and Fetterman didn't want to be mocked for being vegetables, they could have refrained from endorsing child sacrifice. And scolds like Greydanus, who infiltrate religious institutions and use their positions within the clergy to serve as fifth columns for the left, deserve every insult you can think of. That's how public life works. Having emailed Greydanus and lashed out at him on more than one occasion, I can think of no good reason to treat the pro-abortion left with charity. At the very least, their willingness to exterminate millions justifies their mockery.
Hear, hear!!
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