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Friday, August 10, 2007
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 STUPIDITY + TYPEWRITER = EVIL: STU BYKOFSKY PRAYS FOR ANOTHER 9/11
If I ever have kids, there's one thing I'm going to tell them every day of their lives. It's an old saying, passed down through the ages and one I'd feel a duty to pass on to them: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to become newspaper columnists."
The fact that most parents apparently don't teach this to their children is all the evidence you need that most parents should be repeatedly hit in the solar plexus with a tire iron. My parents were a little different than most. Knowing that I was a born loser anyway, they let me do whatever the fuck I wanted. So I started reading history. Oh, and I started drinking a lot. That's why I keep insisting that Shecky Greene was the hero of the Battle of Hastings. Luckily, almost no one reads history - drunk or sober - so I almost never get challenged on that assertion.
Most newspaper columnists are like Andy Rooney, making observations like "airlines sure are inconveinient" and then getting all pissy that they haven't been recognized with a Pulitzer for their insight. Simply put, most columnists are douchebags.
Remember about six years ago when 19 Arabs did some crazy shit? Newspaper columnists were of the almost universial opinion that it was a pretty bad thing. Some went so far as to refer to it as "a day that shall live in infamy."
Well, Stu Bykofsky is repulsed by the pack mentality of his chosen profession. He's a rebel and the Philadelpia Daily News likes it that way. He thinks that the events of September 11, 2001 were a damn fine thing for America. So much so that it would be a nice shot in the arm if it happened again.
Turn back to 9/11. Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy - 12/7/41. We knew who the enemy was then. We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11. Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are "safer" now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting "flying imams," whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze.
Mr. Bykofsky also made much of the war in Iraq. That, combined with everything in the last paragraph, is what's tearing America apart.
So what would bring Americans together again, you ask? Stu Bykofsky couldn't be more thrilled that you asked!
What would sew us back together? Another 9/11 attack. The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda. Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again? If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.
Far be it from Bykofsky to let history get in the way of his emotionalistic twaddle. Knowledge might actually force him to draw some conclusions that would hurt his argument.
Hey Stu, most of the things that are dividing Americans are a direct fucking consequence of 9/11. President Bush may very well have wanted to break his own military in Iraq before September 11 but there's no way he actually could have. Just before the attacks, Bush's polling was below 50% for the first time and there was a very serious concern that the Republican Congress was starting to consider him irrelevant. A Congress that doesn't think that you can get re-elected isn't all that likely to authorize you to bomb folks for dubious reasons.
Does anyone really think that the NSA would be all gung-ho to listen to everyone's fucking phone calls in the absence of al-Qaeda? Yeah, because everything I know about government bureaucracies is that they just love creating work for themselves. Don't believe me? Spend a day at the DMV. Government sweats efficency. Everybody knows that.
Bykofsky wants American political discourse to return to what it was before 9/11. This because the Clinton era was a buddy-movie, sort of like Rush Hour with funnier accents. Maybe Stu longs for the days when Harry Truman was president. On any given day, the GOP would accuse the president of treason and Truman would respond by saying that the Republicans would starve everyone's children and make sure their parents died of horrid diseases. Y'know, the good old days.
In all seriousness, there are few things that turn my stomach quite like people who see 9/11 as a symbol of unity. It wasn't. You know what 9/11 was? It was three thousand innocent people being incinerated alive as their friends and families watched on television. Thousands of human beings were plunged into darkness and doused in burning jet fuel before the world around them collapsed and fell hundreds of feet to the ground.
It was more than an attack on the United States, it was an assault on humanity itself. It was a brazen, calculated act committed by psychopaths with no higher purpose than to destroy as much human life as possible. And they succeeded beyond even their own most depraved hopes.
Stu Bykofsky would like to see it happen again. He even lists suggested targets. I don't think I've ever read anything like that in something that purports to be a major daily newspaper.
I'd like to make a few points to Stu. Firstly, human life is not an abstraction in the quest for vague notions like "national unity," you twisted old bastard. Is there a specific number of lives that will need to be lost before you can feel good about your country's level of political comity again? Since you're listing potential targets, why don't you list the names of the people you feel should watch their familes and friends be murdered just so you can see a collection of political jackals sing "God Bless America" on the steps of the Capitol? You obviously think this is important, so let's get some names!
Next month will mark the sixth anniversary of those people being slaughtered for no other reason than they went to work, and the Philadelphia Daily News is proudly printing the suggestion that it should happen again because it might make politicians play nice for a time. It's shocking and sickening and I almost feel ashamed of myself for having read it. Bykofsky has proven that he's far more than tragically ignorant, he's a cheerleader of death.
If you need any further evidence that Stu Bykofsky is a fucking ghoul and journalism has become nothing more than a job ceation program for shitheads, you just might be part of the problem.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: I'm So Tired By: The Beatles From: The White Album
PermalinkLabels: Journalists Are Swine, The Smart Boy Blues
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