"Precious little snowflakes"
Bill Maher reminds Americans that maybe they are not the snowflakes they imagine themselves to be.
Americans, please wash hands before criticizing Obama
"New Rule: Now that we've answered his call to wash our hands, President Obama must continue to tell us how to live. Last week, when America was faced with the pan-global swine flu omega death plague, the President went on TV and told people to wash their hands, and experts tell us this made a big difference, which augurs well for next month's 'National Wipe Your Butt Day.' Next week, in a fireside chat, he'll tell us not to put a fork in the toaster.
It's sad that the leader of the free world had to call a live press conference to tell his nation of clueless nitwits that employees must wash hands before returning to work. If that's not the 'Forrest Gump-ification' of America, I don't know what is. Feeling wet, America? Why not try new, 'Coming in from the Rain'?
You may think I'm blowing this out of proportion, but this plea from Obama - you know, the "Audacity of Soap' - was the first specific thing a President has asked the American people to actually do in decades. Unless you count 'go shopping.' Hopefully it will open the door to other, slightly weightier suggestions from the President.
So please, Mr. President, tell us to turn the lights off when we leave the room. Tell us not to buy crap we don't need and can't afford. Tell us to lay off the Ring Dings and Cheese Nips, and think twice before dating a stranger we meet on craigslist. For God's sake, tell people to read a newspaper. Not just to save the newspaper industry - though Lord knows I'd miss my Daily Jumble - but because having a public that actually knows something is our best defense against ever again electing a President who knows nothing...
...During the campaign, Obama suggested that one simple thing Americans could do to help with fuel-efficiency was check their car's tire pressure. And Republicans freaked, because to them, every suggestion for the common good is a direct attack on their personal liberty, and it's unpatriotic to interfere with anyone's God-given right to be big, dumb and selfish.
When the President suggests things that will help the greater good, that's not a slight against your fragile manhood. I know, you're a rugged individualist. But you're not - you're just a schmuck.
Going back to Reagan, all of our leaders have predictably and reliably told us that government is always the problem, never you my precious, perfect American citizen. You are always perfect just the way you are, like a precious little snowflake. A beautiful, precious, 350-pound, pig-ignorant snowflake."
Maybe it's time for all of us to stop pretending. That's why I trust the likes of Bill Maher, Larry the Cable Guy, and Mark Twain more than so many in political office.
Because they pretends less. And that is the example, and not the examples in Congress, we all need to be following, these days.
2 comments:
I was just glad to see him actually criticize Obama. Of course, he followed it up with 20 more paragraphs slamming anything and anybody conservative, but it's a start.
Totally, foutsc. Though I do think that conservatives and liberals deserve the hit on this one. The bullshit that constantly permeates policy discussions of either A) I will only do this if a law is passed (with the implicit reason because I'm just too lazy or irresponsible to do it of my own accord; something I am quite guilty of myself, often, but which I do not have to desire nor the hutzpah to defend as somehow noble, when I do) or B) If there is no law, therefore I have no responsibility (another means for me to weasel out of some responsibility) gets tiresome and self-reinforcing.
People have got to learn to be responsible for the big stuff themselves. Period. And when they don't, government should only step in in limited cases where the stakes are genuinely too high to not warrant an intervention and then only as little as they can possibly manage and still be responsible for important priorities that are not better left to free markets, free minds, and free peoples.
I am tired of the rationalizations for limiting freedom in the lives of liberal democratic peoples (and all peoples, really). And this one feeds a lot of the activist effort to do just that.
And there is no one ideology or party or group who is guilty of it. It is all of us.
We should all get much more honest about that. And more honest about the only way forward with any integrity to independent conscience and action: individual responsibility.
The truth is that Bill hides behind ideology in this piece the way that most people hide behind ideology. To avoid dealing with the implications of calling out the whole lot of us, even when we all deserve it. No matter race, color, creed, gender, or party registration.
Time we got more honest about how the world really works, I think, foutsc. And this is a big reason why our lenses are so distorted, I think.
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