A tractor pulls a pickup truck out of the mud.
Should children be exposed to the sounds of sodomy? That’s the (presumably rhetorical) question that an Irish anti-gay group asks in this pamphlet urging voters to oppose adoption for homosexual couples. Won’t somebody please think of the children while he’s railing hot twinks? And sure, people have a right to do things that we find unpleasant, but we shouldn’t have to confront any evidence of it. Today is Friday, and one man’s hot action is another’s clarion call.1 Won’t you try something a little different with me?
The cast of Rent
First, the good news: America’s financial industry has doubled as a share of the economy over the last fifty years. The bad news is that it’s grown so large as to create a drain on the larger system, at least according to this piece in the Washington Post. Since 1985, financial services have grown six times faster than the overall economy, partly because that industry compensates its workers so much better. The Post argues that for the last three decades, Wall Street has drawn talent away from more concretely productive sectors, to the detriment of the middle class. Instead of inventing new products and business models that make everyone better off, the country’s talent has been inventing new derivatives that make rich people even richer.
A homeless person in the Wall Street subway station
Meanwhile, in other concentrations of power, John Boehner has begun to retaliate against the 25 House conservatives who voted against him for Speaker. Representatives Daniel Webster and Richard Nugent, both from Florida, were removed from the Rules Committee Tuesday. Rep. Ted Yoho, also of Florida, likened their removal to something that would happen “in a communist country.” Steve King (R-IA) accused Boehner of using intimidation tactics, but the Speaker replied using a technique utterly foreign to bullying jerks: bland and passive language. Quote:
“We had a situation yesterday where we had to constitute the Rules Committee because of some of the activities on the floor. Two of our members weren’t put back on the committee immediately. We’re going to have a family conversation … about bringing our team together. And I expect those conversations for the next couple of days will continue and we’ll come to a decision about how we go forward.”
He then returned to butchering a hog.
Meanwhile, your girlfriend is probably reading some book called “The Midwife’s Promise.” Probably I like this kind of Onion article much more than the average reader, but man. Contemporary literary fiction is vulnerable to satire. If you prefer your satire of prose forms less nuanced and more absurd, there’s also Clickhole’s Youngest child ever? Jonah is just three years old.
Meanwhile, in things that should have been satire but weren’t, Frederick County, Maryland Council Member Kirby Delauter used Facebook to threatened to sue a local reporter who used his name in a news story without his permission. This man oversees the operation of a county. He is an elected official in the United States of America, and he is apparently unaware that it is legal for the newspaper to write about public figures without asking. Or he was, until the Frederick News-Post gently corrected him with an editorial titled Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter.
Take that, local zealots who would make the press subordinate to political power. In unrelated news, the two gunmen who attacked French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were killed in a hostage situation today, and two of their associates were killed along with five of their hostages in a separate showdown at a Paris supermarket. The pen is mightier than the sword, provided it enjoys the protection of an even bigger sword. When I was a kid, certain bullies would occasionally make it clear that they would not punch me in the face if I would not speak. That’s not how the real world works, I would think smugly to myself. Because what did I know?
This was going to be a link to a song called “Sounds of Sodomy” by a band called Mad Farmer, but it was awful. That kind of drumming is what music critics describe as “anemic.” So here’s this instead:
Sooner or later, at least one of them will come out. Also, great idea to put 90 seconds of dialogue at the beginning of the video for your single. Teenage girls will love that.
