In Her Web She Still Delights

Calendar

««May 2008»»
SMTWTFS
     1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18192021222324
25262728293031

Get mail when I update

Would you want the rows in your garden to be labelled with singulars or plurals?
Singular: there's only one kind of plant there
Plural: since there's more than one plant, the label should reflect that
Don't care: as long as I can read it, the details are unimportant
For passwords, additional information, private comments, and more humerous anecdotes, please email carrie@in-her-web.blog-city.com.

Shudder

posted Thursday, 8 May 2008

You know, it's things like this that make me want to learn Láadan.

"This" is a book-length essay about Fred Phelps, the abominable "pastor" of the Westboro Baptist Church.  He and his clan (his wife, the nine children of 13 who did not leave his household, their spouses and children) are the ones who show up at the funerals of gay folks with signs reading "God hates fags" and similar charming slogans.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the most fundamental "two kinds of people" division out there is whether or not you care what other people get up to if it doesn't affect you1.  Phelps and his ilk are just the Caring part of that division, taken to its most virulent extreme.  It doesn't help that the man appears to be a narcissist of the first water, doing everything in his power to stay in the spotlight and in control of those around him at all times.

I hesitate to say that there are (to borrow a phrase from Firefly) some people who just need killin', but if I were to say such a thing I know at least one who'd be on my particular version of the Little List...

1: Caring about others' business is not, by the way, limited to the conservative side of the political spectrum, as witness the radical feminists who insist that a woman who loves her job as a stripper must be secretly from an abusive home...or that women who are attracted to men are somehow Betraying The Sisterhood.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit