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August 22, 2005
We Get Letters Posted by Patrick at 10:56 PM *
From: REAL Republican
To: pnh@panix.com
Date: Aug 22, 2005 10:40 PM
Subject: ACLU Propoganda Hits TV- Anti-ACLU Movement Gains Steam
Making Light Staff,
In an effort to bring publicity to a movement that needs funding, support, and more members, I am bringing to you good news. The Stop the ACLU movement is gaining steam, with its major sites, www.stoptheaclu.org and www.stoptheaclu.com getting major recognition. Also, Stop the ACLU runs a major blog network, of which many blogs are a part of. I am attempting to contact as many major bloggers as possible to get the word out about one of the most recent developments on the Stop the ACLU Front, my Call to Action against a new ACLU TV series. My blog, REAL Teen, did a post calling for a massive email campaign to voice concerns over this new series, and we are making great strides to get this campaign up and running. My first post is at http://www.libertynewsforum.com/real/index.php/?p=81 and my update on the issue is at http://www.libertynewsforum.com/real/index.php/?p=92. We hope that you can either publish something in support of the Stop the ACLU movement on your site, or at least send us a response with your official comments on the ACLU and the Stop the ACLU movement. In light of reason developments, like the TV Series, which will attack the Patriot Act, the same act defending us against terror, in its first episode, we need to move as quickly as possible. I hope for a response as soon as possible.
I picture a dog barking at the base of a tree, while the fox sits in another tree...in quite another part of the forest, one the dog has never seen and indeed doubts the existence of.
I particularly liked "of which many blogs are a part of." It DOES make him sound like a real teen!
I for one am proud to see this REAL Teen speaking out and letting us know how many REAL Teens there are. Generic store-brand teens are never as tasty, and you know they're at least 50% soybean filling.
Relatively new lurker here, just chiming in: that letter's really... well, I suppose it really does speak for itself.
Also, I have to agree, that website's horrendous. Haphazard layout aside, my favorite bit is the heading "The only group combating the ACLU in all non-legal areas." Close behind, though, are the wide use of the word 'thru' in the About Us section and the lovely pyramid scheme reasoning on the front page.
I also got a laugh out of, "You may or may not know that the ACLU visits college campuses across America to recruit young impressionable minds to their evil agenda."
Overall, though, I think I'm a little too scared to look at the rest of the site.
REAL Teen:
"How are ACLU gentlemen.
All your blog are belong to us.
ACLU are on the way to destruction.
ACLU have no chance to survive make your time.
Ha Ha Ha Ha."
Or, is it a phish-hook for catching indignant liberals...?
I'm using a new browser, hadn't blocked pop-ups yet, and therefore, having clicked on the stoptheaclu.org link, I am now sharing my screen with an animated uke-playing hula doll espousing Childrens (sic) computer software cheap.
I have no right whatsoever to an opinion on this matter, so I haven't got one. But I cannot imagine a more effective demolition of a political position than this, simply to publish without comment the confused and semiliterate propaganda of its proponents.
while this is easy to ridicule, it is very scary. as the rabid right gets net.heavy, the 'noise machine' (good book that) will seriously muddy the water.
Miriam, Christians who quote from the Old Testament a lot are usually trawling it for soundbites which neither the New Testament's Jesus nor modern Jews would say. Kill homosexuals, subjugate women, beat your children, smite God's enemies, bomb the Olympics, that sort of stuff.
While there are a number of iffy quotes from Jesus and especially Paul in the NT, taking chunks of the OT literally and ignoring scholarly dicussions of them gives more scope for finding supposed justifications for hatred and fear.
There was a major infestation of these wingnuts a few months back on Blogcritics.org, a major music and culture group blog to which I used to contribute before the bad smell from the politics section became unbearable.
I'm not quite sure what Eric Olsen, the site's owner, was thinking when he suddenly recruited 50 Christo-Qutbist loons. A lot of ridiculous 'Stop the ACLU blogburst' boilerplate spam postings was the result.
Please verify my sketchy understanding of the word "blogburst," Tim. They posted boilerplate spam about how the ACLU was going to post boilerplate spam?
How did you wind up on his mailing list, Patrick? Every so often, my wife gets junk snail-mail and e-mail from various wingnut outfits. We figured that her fate was sealed when she went on the web and bought me the George W. Bush Action Figure. (Whom I've been thinking of placing between my Creature from the Black Lagoon and my Outer Limits's Ebonite Inquisitor.)
Hmmmm... let me see if I understand the basic premise here...
Our founding fathers really, truly wanted to found a fundamentalist evangelical xtian nation run by a theocracy, and somehow got all confused -- or were corrupted by minions of the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- during the Revolution and wrote up that pesky Bill of Rights, which is promoted at every opportunity by the evil forces of the ACLU, so we need to get rid of the ACLU in order to get rid of the Bill of Rights so that we can get back to what our Founding Fathers really truly wanted.
And Mr. REAL teen is defending the USAPatriot Act, probably the most lothesome and hated piece of legislation since the Volstead Act. No small battles for those REAL teens. When they shoot, they shoot the moon. At least we can say he doesn't have an y self esteme ishues.
Having taken a proper gander at this piece of spam, I'm glad I re-upped with the ACLU (been a member now for over forty years, though my wallet's too full of other junk for me to be a card-carrying one).
Some months ago I got a call from a New York State congressman's office inviting me to a Bush fundraising event. I blogged about it here. The other day they called again. Somehow my "business" phone number got on their list awhile back, and presumably will be on it forever. These things happen all the time...
Metal Fatigue: Perhaps "spam" isn't the word, but there were a whole lot of postings on the same site with very similar content posted on the same day.
I don't know how many of them there are; "John Bambernek" and "Randy Kirk" (on Blogcritics) may or may not be sock puppets for the same guy.
The Gnurrs Crawl from the Woodwork Out.... I have no idea how I got put on the Concerned Women of America paper mailing list, years ago. One of the members even called me up one day, on one of their pressure group crusades, that militantly against homosexual males males as school teachers. (They seem not to have any interest in noticing that pederasty against boys and homosexuality in males aren't an identity relationships....) The woman calling was Very Concerned that homosexual males not be school teachers because they would then have access to little boys to rape. Pointing out that sexual predation on children and homosexuality are not the same thing, didn't really elicit cogitation in her.
However, I did get through to her it sounded like, when I said, "What about heterosexual males who rape little girls, aren't you worried about that? What's so much worse about little boys being raped than little girls being raped?"
"Gee, I never though about that," she said in that tone of voice used by people who seem to have their heads used more for hat racks that premeditated cogitation on topics outside the daily routine patterns of activity ("thought" might be too generous a term, as opposed to automatic conditioned response and procedure).
Note: Concerned Women of America is the offspring of one Bev(erly) LaHaye, wife of Tim(othy) LaHaye, yeah, -him-. One of the CWA newsletters which showed up in my mailbox had a column by her of how she had been giving up so much and had been getting discouraged spending her time in Washingon DC as a s/p/e/c/i/a/l i/n/t/e/r/e/s/t/ p/r/e/s/s/u/r/e/ g/r/o/u/p lobbyist and was away for months and months and months and month from her Family, but that then progress on her crusade suddenly started being made again and she was feeling again that it was worthwhile to be there in DC....
Yup, one of those hyporcrites, a person who stands up in public advocating a way of life for everyone else that the person themself does not follow--but justifies as being so self-abnegating and being a martyr and sacrificing their life for their values-=-which of course they are not living.
I'd expect that the Real Teen is heavily tied into one or more organizations like or affilitiated with Concerned Women of America, Eagle Forum, the Center for Military Readiness [the Schlafly protege's fake think tank which is a one note screed organization fed by federal money, bad cess to the ideologues in the government funding the screeder, founded on the idea of banning women from the US military--except as the typing pool--and from combat, etc., but somehow not caring in the -least- about the plight of civilian women caught in combat zones and hostile fire and crossfire who have been taught that the only survival skill and knowledge to be bestowed on women, is how to be a dependent on males--sounds like Taliban USA style to me...), etc.
The important thing is, it's not a death threat if it's in the form of a rebus. Similarly, they're not un-American if they present their views as interpretive dance, and I'm not calling them a couchload of pathetic dickwads if I put it in the form of a question, am I?
Dear Bravenewfilms.com
I know some people are sending hate mail about the ACLU’s show, but I want to thank you for supporting our civil liberties. This sort of support is extremely commendable! Thank you for holding true American values close at heart.
-Jacob
When I receive creatively spelled mail from someone claiming to be a "real" teen I generally assume the author is not only a bit of a whore, but also a middle aged guy on a corporate payroll.
Also, the only time I get spam from people claiming to be "real teens," um... let's just say it's not the kind of mail I'd put on a blog. So Making Light gets a higher grade of vacuity than I do...
You just made me realize something, Christopher... It's been a long time since I got any spam about barnyard animals and Britney Spears. I wonder why that is. Then again, maybe I DON'T want to know.
You're a fellow FSMist? Hail, brother, in the name of His Holy Meatballs!
On a slightly more on-topic note, am I the only one who feels that the author of this e-mail should have his keyboard taken away until he has a better grasp of English grammar?
In light of reason developments, like the TV Series, which will attack the Patriot Act, the same act defending us against terror, in its first episode, we need to move as quickly as possible.
Under the Patriot Act, can I arrest and detain him indefinitely for crimes again the comma?
That's the one I particularly felt the need to diagram. Somehow the clauses felt, um, disordered. Or maybe disorderly. The last time I saw a sentence that bad that I was expected to read, it was in a "graduation writing test", in college, where I had the choice of four wrong answers to "fix" it.
Oh, CWA fills me with delight. They had this third-rank country singer as their president for a while, but she disagreed with the Focus on the Family position on judges, so they bagged her and she got hired here
Miriam: "why old testament? what the heck did we* do?"
Niall McAuley followed my train of thought pretty well. I was thinking of the Left Behind authors' school of Biblical study, or perhaps the school that influenced Pat Robertson when he announced the other day that Hugo Chavez should be assassinated.
Would they mind; would it help? Or is the USA getting to the stage where it's a valuable political point to portray your opponents as reliant on foreign lucre?
[yes, I know, http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/ is a similar organisation and on my own continent; but whilst the government dislikes it, it doesn't appear to have made that kind of enemy]
Christopher B. Wright: The ACLU has a show? Seriously? You'd think they'd mention it to their card-carrying members, but noooo...
Do you get the e-mail updates and newsletters from the ACLU? That's where I read about it. Forwarded it onto my mom who hasn't joined the ACLU because for years she thought you had to be a lawyer to join. (Don't ask.)
Shouldn't he have to be able to spell something correctly before he can declare war on it? Come to think of it, that might be a good rule for W to follow.
I was thinking of the Left Behind authors' school of Biblical study
I have not in fact read the books in question, but I was under the impression that they are based, to the extent that they are based on any biblical text, on Revelations, which is not in the Old Testament.
"You'd think they'd mention it to their card-carrying members, but noooo..."
You have to be a Grand Potentate of the Fifth Circle to even know about the ACLU TV show. Getting there requires you to burn a flag, disarm a redneck, shtup a goat of the same gender, and force local schools to accept Zoroastrians as students.
And even then you won't be able to watch the show, because you need a special TV that gets Channel 1 and runs on 173 volt, 666 Hz current produced by five-bladed windmills that produce horrible screaming noises when they spin.
* * *
Um, but seriously, I haven't heard of this show either. OTOH, I routinely toss out every ACLU mailing I get, except the first one in November, which I use to mail in my annual donation.
For all I know, those tossed mailers may have everything I needed to know about this show.
Using Whois, I looked up who owns the domain. It's a real estate agent named Dale Archdekin in Kansas. Nothing much about him on the net, but there's a lot of odd nutcases out there. We had a neo-nazi send us a review of A White Power CD.
The Left Behind books are fueled by premillenial dispensationalism, a wacky American heresy. The primary inspiration is the Book of Revelation, but it also relies heavily on re-interpreting other passages (particularly prophecies) from the Old and New Testament.
There is definitely a brand of Christian fundamentalism that focuses entirely on the King James Old Testament, ignoring both Jesus and rabbinical commentary. They may just have issues with shellfish, or they may be shooting for the 'doctrinal sweet spot'.
There is definitely a brand of Christian fundamentalism that focuses entirely on the King James Old Testament, ignoring both Jesus and rabbinical commentary.
There's a church of this persuasion in my area: the King James version is the Only Authorized Version; God is a Loving Father; the Ten Commandments are the laws you have to follow; you have to Accept Jesus as Your Personal Lord and Savior. (caps mine, but it's their emphasis)
Failure to go along with these in any way means you get to spend eternity someplace very warm. (Never mind salvation by faith, or doing good works: these people are for direct, personal salvation only.)
That there are some contradictions involved doesn't seem to slow them down.
You get your lifespan extended indefinitely due to steady medical science improvements, but consequently must deal first with global warming and then with the sun's expansion into a red giant. That can ruin a whole eon.
Using Whois, I looked up who owns the domain. It's a real estate agent named Dale A r c h d e k i n in Kansas. Nothing much about him on the net, but there's a lot of odd nutcases out there.
That's the owner of the stoptheaclu dot com domain. This person also owns the dot net. The dot org domain, also mentioned, is owned by one N e d d K a r e i v a of Chicago, who has left a much wider footprint. You can learn his opinions about gambling in Illinois, Terri Schiavo, mandatory seatbelt laws, and Scrabble tournaments with a little googling. (I don't mean to imply that he's an odd nutcase.)
Boy, does that look like an alias. Though given the quality (quantity?) of nutcase-ism present in the original missive, it may well be a personal choice as ratified by a local judge.
why old testament? what the heck did we* do?
Remember all the stuff about begating and smiting? You* failed to retain the services of a qualified editor. Wilfully, it would appear.
Stefan Jones: And even then you won't be able to watch the show, because you need a special TV that gets Channel 1 and runs on 173 volt, 666 Hz current produced by five-bladed windmills that produce horrible screaming noises when they spin.
Where do I get one? Are the horrible screaming noises the moans of the damned, or merely the sound of Dominionists trying to think critically?
I do need to toss the ACLU a few more bucks - they lost track of me during my recent nomadic ways and have yet to triangulate on my new digs in the Emerald City. Or Jet City. Or Rain City. (The body politic seems to have commitment issues w/r/t nicknames up here.)
I was thinking of the Left Behind authors' school of Biblical study...
I wasn't aware of their Biblical study school (of course not surprised here), but apparently, they--or at least, one of them--also offer(s) writing lessons. True. Just in case your lifetime dream was to be a really, really good writer, just like Jenkins and LaHaye.
"Are the horrible screaming noises the moans of the damned, or merely the sound of Dominionists trying to think critically?"
You know those big, loud, dumb movies where, when they want a scene to seem extra dramatic and portentous, they have people chanting in Latin along with the music? I figure it would sound like that, except the chanters would be dancing on hot coals.
pericat,
oh, they're blaming us for his run-on sentences. that's allright then.
i definitely own to displaying that part of my heritage/education from time to time, perhaps not now, but if i was really in the mood (i am not currently in the mood because i just had a few misadventures trying to fry frozen pierogies, also my right knee is suddenly gone all wonky), i'm sure i could bang out a doozy for you, through all the smoke.
Which reminds me of the blogads you sometimes see even on still reasonably sensible rightwing blogs for ACLU = Commies t-shirts, usually modelled by a somewhat vacant and artificial looking "hottie".
It's like one of those logic puzzles James T. Kirk used to blow up mainframes with: does not compute.
I've been wondering since this was first posted if you really meant to give them those live links?
I suspect Making Light may have enough blog weight to boost their Google rank noticeably, which is probably all they were after in the first place; given that, they don't care if you think they're a pack of morons. As Oscar Wilde said (at least in Monty Python) "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
When I receive creatively spelled mail from someone claiming to be a "real" teen I generally assume the author is not only a bit of a whore, but also a middle aged guy on a corporate payroll.
Ah, but he's not a "real" teen, he's a "REAL teen". All the difference in the world. I'm sure.
I also thought REAL might well be an acronym in which R=Republican, but I hadn't come up with possibilities for the rest of it. Yours seems quite likely, if it is an acronym.
Actually, since it's "REAL Republican," R probably wouldn't stand for Republican, because that would be redundant and a mistake as well, and we all know that Republicans are never in error or mistaken, or unnecessarily redundant as well.
Maybe it stands for "Registered-as-a-concientious-
objector-just-in-case."
marilee, i thought it was best to fry them in butter? usually you don't deep fry in butter, cause of the expense & the low smoking point....
it's been awhile since i made pierogies from scratch, so i don't remember what my recipe says, but these pierogies-in-a-box said specifically not to deep fry them.
Thanks, Julia for linking to my post about Yechiel Eckstein & his Jewish mission to the evangelicals, which has a passage about Sandy Rios. Should anyone want to peer into her twisted brain a bit take a look at this from my post (a quotation from a NYT article):
"Throughout this conversation, Rios was clearly eager to join in. And as soon as there was a pause in the discussion, she did. ‘’You know,'’ she said, ‘’the truth is, Christians do want to convert Jews.'’
Eckstein and Mamo exchanged glances. ‘’Not by some bait-and-switch trick,'’ she said. ‘’But we believe it’s part of God’s plan.'’ Eckstein winced the way he had when Pastor Munsey called him a born-again Christian.
‘’Anyway,'’ Rios said, ‘’we love Jews, notwithstanding their rudeness and hatred for us.'’"
Eckstein canned her just about immediately I'd say.
Tom (Womack): the problem with Liberty (formerly the National Council for Civil Liberties) here in the UK is that about twenty years ago the organization was hijacked for use as a career ladder by a group of very bright proto-Blairistas, many of whom subsequently made it into parliament and even junior ministerial positions. It is the kiss of death for a campaigning civil liberties organization to operate a revolving door with a party of government: prior to 1997 the damage wasn't obvious on the outside, but when the NCCL's national executive came out supporting the illiberal agenda of Jack Straw when he was Home Secretary, the writing was on the wall.
(There's a lesson here for American supporters of the ACLU -- do not allow your organization to become aligned with the Democrats, now matter how tempting the short-term bemefits may seem, because if the Democrats end up as the party of government again the ACLU will become seen as a convenient promotion ladder for activists at the expense of its ability to criticize the governing party.)
If you want to do something useful in the UK, a good start might be to look at Danny O'Brien's goal of setting up a British equivalent of the EFF. Then work outward from there.
I usually buy the Mrs. T's Pierogies and they can now go directly into the frying pan or the deep fryer. I don't use a deep fryer, I just step away from the stove when I put them in with tongs. (And then the cleaning lady gets to deal with the flung oil.)
The old Mrs. T's said you had to boil them first for anything.
While I fry them I mash some avocado, mix in a bit of salt, and use that as a dip.
Ha-ha! Having been pretty involved with the ACLU here in Hawaii, I think I can assure you that the Democratic Party will not touch the ACLU with a ten-foot pole. They might wave said pole threateningly at us, to prove they are "middle-of-the-road" and not affiliated with dangerous un-American concepts such as liberty. After all, this is the country where a presidential candidate could be denounced as "a card-carrying member of the ACLU."
Mainly though, I would say the Democrats, like the Republicans, just don't get the whole idea. Rights? U.S. Constitution? [blank stare] You mean the ACLU is not a government agency of some kind? [dazed confusion]
I know the guy whose idea it was. He was objecting to the way certain Christian homophobes selectively used Leviticus to bolster their hatred, and photoshopped a photo of a guy with a "God Hates Fags" into "God Hates Shrimp." A friend of his created the website, including the wicked bumper stickers. (My favorite: "When Jesus Died, He was wearing a crown of thorns, not a lobster bib")
pericat:Dale A r c h d e k i n
Boy, does that look like an alias. Though given the quality (quantity?) of nutcase-ism present in the original missive, it may well be a personal choice as ratified by a local judge.
I can tell you that is not an alias. I am his son. I am an artist/designer living on the east coast, in a city, with artist/designer friends some gay some not. Most of us have not seen the inside of a church since the last wedding we attended. Everyone I know voted against the current president, and a lot of us said we were moving to Canada after the results (that never happened though)
Sadly folks, he believes all of those things found on that site. It is truly amazing, people with that type of mentality honestly see things differently. I have noticed this fundamental difference between he and I on a number of occasions. Something trivial can happen,and his perception of that event will be the polar opposite of my own. All family grievences aside, those thoughts and feelings he expresses on that site are unfortunatly true to his person. The REALLY scary part is there are millions of americans who agree.
Just my $.02
Dale (III)