Keith Balmer: The Gonzo Writer

America's Obesity: A Ticking Time Bomb

Last year Michelle Obama came under heavy scrutiny from conservatives due to her role in Let’s Move, the campaign that seeks to fight obesity by improving school lunch programs, increasing focus on physical education, and giving poor people better access to healthful foods.

I was angered by these attacks because, number one, Michelle Obama is as classy a first lady as we’ve ever had, and these attacks were personal. And number two, she wants us to eat better. So why would anybody have a problem with that?

Misogynist-extraordinaire Rush Limbaugh said, “she does not project the image that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.”

It felt like I was trapped in some sort of bizarre, alternate universe. Michelle Obama is in ridiculous shape. She looks GOOD! Meanwhile Rush Limbaugh is so chunky he has to jump on a trampoline in order to pull his pants up!

But it wasn’t just Rush. It was the A-list of Republican nutjobs. Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin all took turns in criticizing the First Lady.

Any efforts to battle obesity is portrayed as efforts to rein in the “freedom” of Americans. Trouble is, for all the healthcare problems in the United States, the obesity trend is a ticking time bomb unlike any other.

A third of all Americans are obese. Another third are overweight. Obesity-related diseases are responsible for over 100,000 deaths each year.

27 million Americans have heart disease.

25.8 million have diabetes.

20 million have gallbladder disease.

18 million have sleep apnea (including my morbidly obese uncle who, when he sleeps, scares the daylights out of me).

Obesity is the number two cause of preventable death in the U.S. (second only to tobacco use). America's average daily consumption is 3,830 calories per person (the global average is 2,800 per person). 

By 2020, it will cost America a whopping $344 billion a year to treat obesity-related diseases.

By 2020, obesity will reduce life expectancy by an average of 13 years!

If we built the Statue Of Liberty today in the image of the average American she would be bootylicious. And also, she would have cankles, thunder thighs, and a muffin top!

And when it comes to children, the news is even more depressing.

American children get half of their calories from fat and sugar. And their obesity rate has doubled in the last 20 years. For adolescents, it has tripled. A quarter of obese kids have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and other signs of heart disease. Adult onset diabetes can no longer be called adult onset diabetes because so many kids now have it.

And this is why I was so angry when moronic conservatives attacked the First Lady. They acted as if Michelle Obama was going to send armed guards into people’s homes and force them to eat broccoli.

If only . . .

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“So what are you saying Keith? You’re saying that people are overweight because they’re poor?”

“Yup. That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

“But that doesn’t make sense to me.”

No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince a dear friend of mine that obesity is directly related to a person’s wealth (or lack thereof).

She, like most Americans, think that people are fat because they lack discipline. In a lot of cases, this is true. But it is also true that in America, healthier foods cost more. Salads, fruits, and vegetables all cost more than a Big Mac. And if you’re struggling to feed a family of four, and you’re poor, you’re going to eat from that McDonald's dollar menu again, and again, and again.

This still didn’t make sense to my friend. So I tried again.

“Have you ever noticed that there are more fast food joints in poor neighborhoods than there are in well-to-do neighborhoods?”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean anything. Rich people eat fast food too.”

“Yes, they do. But only on occasion. Only every blue moon. Meanwhile, poor people have to eat fast food because it’s all they can afford.”

Here in Richmond, there used to be a chain of supermarkets called Community Pride. They were owned by a local black businessman named Johnny Johnson. But here’s the thing about Community Pride: they were only located in poor black neighborhoods.

I remember walking into these stores and sometimes the A/C was working, sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes all the lights wouldn’t be working. So, one aisle would be brightly lit, and the next aisle would make you think you were trapped in one of those Alien movies with Sigourney Weaver.

Now, compare that to the grocery stores on the other side of town. When you walk into those stores, you get blasted in the face by the cold air. The place is brightly lit. And there’s a zero percent chance you’ll get mugged in the produce section.

So when you combine the cheap fast food, and the supermarkets that aren’t up to par, you see a situation in which obesity affects those who earn less.

And speaking of cheap fast food, if there’s one thing that angers me the most, it’s how food marketers target children. Look at Ronald McDonald. Look at the cartoon characters you see on the cereal boxes. Look at the pro athletes you see in all the soda commercials.

A part of me dies every time my 14 year-old brother asks me to take him to McDonald's. No matter how often I try to change his mind, no matter how often I try to convince him that McDonald's food is infinitely unhealthy, his brain can’t comprehend what I’m saying. And it lets me know just how powerful their advertising really is.

And not only am I concerned about what he eats outside of school, I’m concerned about what he eats when he’s in school.

I think school lunches suck! And I think they need to take all of these soda machines out of these schools too! It’s bad enough that adults drink sodas (a.k.a. liquid diabetes), but it’s 50-times worse when our kids drink it. 

Every time a kid puts a dollar into a soda machine and pulls out a can of soda, he or she is ingesting nine teaspoons of sugar. And a 20 oz. bottle of soda is akin to drinking a cup of coffee with SEVENTEEN teaspoons of sugar!

The average consumption of soda has gone from a few bottles a year (100 years ago), to 200 bottles a year in the 1950s, to, and I hope you’re sitting down . . . 600 bottles a year in 2012!

In the 1980s soda became more popular in this country than water. And when you include other sugary drinks like Gatorade and Vitamin Water, the average person drinks a quart of sugar a day!

Here’s a fun fact that will impress your friends at your next dinner party (not really). If we taxed soda a penny per ounce, it would reduce consumption by 15 percent, raise 15 billion dollars a year, and reduce public health care costs by 5 billion a year.

And even if we didn’t do a soda and junk food tax, why don’t we use warning labels? We use them for cigarettes. Why not a warning label that says, “Hey kids. If you continue to eat twinkies and drink Pepsi, one day in 10 years, you’re going to look in the mirror and see the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man staring back at you!”

As America's waistline has expanded, the ripple effects have been shocking. Last year theweek.com published a story called "The 7 Things Americans Are Too Fat To Do."

Here's the top six.

1. Too Bulky For Buses – To accommodate heavier passengers, the Federal Transit Administration wants to “update the structural strength and distortion test procedures” for public buses.

2. Too Fat To Fight – A 2010 study reported that more than 27 percent of Americans aged 18-24 (over 9 million people) are too overweight to be in the military.

3. Too Plump For Planes – United requires passengers who cannot fit comfortably into one seat to purchase the adjoining one as well.

4. Too Extra Large For Emergency Vehicles – Multiple cities have had to modify their emergency vehicles to accommodate increasingly heavy patients. Fort Worth, Texas recently boosted its stretcher capacity from 500 pounds to 650 pounds.

5. Too Corpulent For Car Seats – A 2006 study reported that 280,000 children aged 1-6 were “heavier than the weight limits for their car seats.” One car seat manufacturer, Britax, makes a “husky” model that fits unusually big babies.

6. Too Massive For MRIs – In 2006, the journal Radiology reported that the number of scans that had failed due to overweight patients had doubled over the last 15 years.

In 1906, The Jungle from Upton Sinclair was published. It exposed the corruption and horror of turn-of-the-century meat production. Sinclair’s work spurred readers to demand a safer food system from their government. The result was the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, and eventually the creation of the Food and Drug Adminstration.

Might be time for someone to publish a sequel.

The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years, than in the last 10,000 years.

As Eric Schlosser said in an editorial for the Washington Post:

“America’s current system of food production is overly-centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly-reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies, and fossil fuels and is profoundly undemocratic."

So true.

Do you KFC lovers know exactly how those pieces of chicken ended up in that bucket you just bought? Well chickens are now raised and slaughtered in roughly half the time than they were 40 years ago. And now they’re twice as big and pumped with so many steroids that most of them can’t even walk.

Hey, pop quiz!

Did you know that cows are fed genetically modified corn (instead of grass)?

Did you know that it takes a hundred gallons of water and 300 pounds of topsoil to produce one hamburger?

Did you know that densely-stocked industrial farms, where food animals are steadily fed low doses of antibiotics, are ideal breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that move from animals to humans?

Did you know that we use 80% of our antibiotics on the animals we eat?

Did you know that scientists fear the misuse of antibiotics in poultry and livestock is a major contributor to our global antibiotic resistance dilemma?

Did you know the World Health Organization announced that we’re quickly heading towards a post antibiotic era, an era in which many common infections will no longer have a cure, and once again, will kill unabated?

Did you know that 1 in 6 Americans get sick from food-borne illnesses every year, and that the top 10 pathogens associated with food costs the US economy 8.1 billion a year? 

Did you know that migrant workers from Mexico and Central America, who work these physically demanding and often dangerous jobs at these industrial farms, are paid 50% less (when adjusted for inflation) than they were 30 years ago? 

Did you know that while small farmers make less than $20,000 a year, wealthy farmers receive handouts from our government? From 1995 to 2009, about 250 billion in federal subsidies was given directly to farmers – 75% of which went to the wealthiest. 

Did you know that 13 states passed “veggie-libel” laws in the 90s? These laws intimidate critics of industrial food by threatening them with lawsuits.

Did you know that corporate powerhouse Monsanto has blocked labeling of genetically modified foods, while the meat packing industry has prevented the labeling of milk and meat from cloned animals?

Did you know that there are videos you can watch that show how calves are beaten with pickaxes, how pigs are buried alive by bulldozers, and how baby chicks are tossed into meat grinders?

And finally, did you know that Minnesota, Iowa, and Florida are passing laws that would charge people with misdemeanors if they are caught videotaping animal cruelty at factory farms?

Speaking of farms, I grew up on one in North Carolina. My grandfather had chickens and pigs. When I was a kid I would feed them and play with them. On occasion my grandfather would decide that one of the chickens had to go (and by go, I mean eaten).

He would grab a chicken, hold it down, and chop its head off with an ax. The chicken would then run around with no head for about five minutes. Every time that chicken came in my direction, I would run and scream like I was Icabod Crane being chased by the Headless Horseman. 

And then my grandfather would place the headless chicken into a pot of boiling water so that he could pluck the feathers off. And then he would remove its internal organs. A few hours later, voila! Dinnertime.

And I remember the first (and only time) I saw a deer strung up after it had been killed. My mother’s boyfriend, who was a deer hunter back in those days, took a blade, sliced the deer from its stomach to its neck. And the deer’s internal organs fell out of its body and landed with a loud splat.

My mother’s boyfriend (and a few of his friends) would spend all day on that deer. And by the time daylight turned to dusk, voila! Dinnertime.

I was a carnivore because it was all I had ever known. I didn’t debate whether or not I should eat meat. I just ate it. But that all changed last year.

Last September I decided to become a vegan. I did so because I believe it’s the single most powerful step any one individual can take toward the preservation of this planet. It takes about one-twentieth the resources to feed a vegan that it takes to feed a non-vegetarian. Intensive animal agriculture is not sustainable. It’s the number one cause of global warming. It pollutes the air, the water, the soil, and it’s among our greatest contributors to deforestation, desertification, and species extinction.

I became a vegan because I’m still that little kid who enjoyed playing with animals. I’ve come to believe that the process of turning compassionate children who identify with animals, into desensitized adults who participate, directly and indirectly, in the violence of animals, is what keeps us from being the compassionate adults that we are meant to be.

And here’s the crazy thing about meat. I don’t miss it. At all.

Meat is like the girlfriend who I caught cheating on me. I’ve kicked meat to the curb. I told meat “get your shit and get out!”

And I’ve moved on. 

I remember an ex coworker of mine named Jackie. She was the healthiest eater I had ever met. She shopped at the Farmer’s Market and she didn’t eat meat. But her husband was a hard-core carnivore. And she would tell me how she tried to explain to him how unhealthy his food was. But he would never listen. Instead, he would always say this:

“Jackie, I’m going to say grace, and pray over this food, and it’s going to be alright.”

When she told me this my first thought was, “Wow! That doesn’t make any sense!” 

That’s like me saying, “I’m going to shoot this heroin in my arm, but before I do, I’m going to pray over this needle.”

I imagine most Americans are the same way. Yeah, they may have heard about mad cow, pink slime, the beef that's washed in ammonia, the mercury in the fish, the E. coli outbreaks, the salmonella outbreaks, and the listeria in the deli meats. They heard it all, and they’ve decided to tune it out.

Everything’s going to be alright. Just as long as they say grace.

If only . . .

Trayvon And Obama: Racism 101

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Trayvon Martin saga is that racism is dead.

What? You mean you didn’t get the memo?

Yes, racism has gone the way of the dinosaur, the elephant bird, and Lindsay Lohan’s career.

It’s extinct baby!

Now before you start to get all excited, I should warn you that the people who are saying racism is dead are all conservatives, which means the exact opposite is true.

The conservative movement denies racism exists. They think it’s all in our minds. And when liberals came out and accused Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, of racism, some on the right felt it was necessary to defend Zimmerman and smear Trayvon.

Conservative websites showed pictures of the 17 year old posturing for the camera and giving the finger. They said he was the aggressor based on nothing but the fact that he had been suspended from school. Geraldo Rivera said wearing a hoodie made Trayvon “look like a wannabe gangsta.”

(Pretty ironic coming from a guy who, with that mustache, looks a bank robber in a 1930s black-and-white film!)

This is all coming from people who are terrified of young black men anyway, people who think that if a white person shoots a black guy, then it was probably justified. 

In a recent piece, conservative columnist Roger L. Simon said that “racism is all the Democrats have. The rest of the liberal/leftist ideology is disintegrating all around them, as fragile and illusory as the welfare state.”

Simon said that since so many murders involve killers and victims of the same race, there are very few racist murderers. Or as he clumsily puts it, “by way of comparison, traffic deaths for the same year were 33,963. Obviously, you have a much better chance of being killed by a Porsche then by a racist.”

So, yay?

(Someone should tell Simon about the three black men who were killed, and the two who were wounded recently in Tulsa, Oklahoma, not by a Porsche but by a couple of crazy rednecks.)

Don’t tell me George Zimmerman isn't racist. He profiled someone (based on race) and then followed him. This is a racist act.

Racism is not a matter of bad behavior by outlawed racists. It is embedded in American attitudes and institutions. Even though overt discrimination is illegal, you can still see institutional and racial bias in many places: the length of prison sentences for blacks who commit the same crimes as whites, DWB (Driving While Black), the likelihood a black person will get the death penalty for killing someone who is Caucasian.

There have been experiments of sending similar resumes with white names and more black-sounding names, and the white names get called back more frequently (Susan and Elisabeth, yes. Shaniqua and LaKeisha, HELL NO!); there have been experiments that test people’s perceptions based on skin color, and the negative associations come up black; There’s even a bias against darker-skinned black people whom some whites find more terrifying than lighter-skinned black people.

(Which I guess makes me and Wesley Snipes the two scariest people in America!)

The worst racism isn’t from the degenerates who are making up stuff about Trayvon Martin. The worst are those who say Martin would still be alive if he had identified himself, and stated what he was doing in that neighborhood. If you think this way, if you think it is ok to stop black folks who are minding their own goddamn business, so that they can justify their presence, then you are a racist.

And if you think exploiting the racial prejudices of low-IQ voters is a good thing, then you probably work at Fox “News.”

Oh yes. Good old Fox “News”, a network that has more boobs than the Victoria Secret Fashion Show. For example: the appropriately-named Dick Morris said that President Obama “intervened” in the Trayvon Martin case cause he wants to rekindle the sense of black victimization.

Two things: Number one, Fox “News” presents this bullshit narrative that says that black people who are upset about inequality should be seen as dangerous. Because as we all know, black people are never supposed to be angry about anything. Ever. At Fox “News” the Trayvon story became “what will these angry black people marching in hoodies do?” Not yes, they have a right to be angry.

And number two, hey Dick, the president didn't call a press conference to talk about Trayvon Martin. He “intervened” only when he was asked a question by a reporter. What was he supposed to do? Not answer the fucking question?

When Barack Obama was elected president, the media fell in love with the word “post-racial.” They wanted us to believe that because America had elected its first African American president that we had moved past racism.

Keep dreaming.

We progressives laugh when the right calls Obama "liberal" and a "socialist." Child please! Obama talks left and governs right. Conservatives bash him even though he's done more for the right than many Republicans.

(Gee, I wonder why they hate him so much?)

What angers me is that no president in the history of this country has been more disrespected than Barack Hussein Obama. And so much of this Obama hatred is racially-charged.

For example ...

1. Even though he's not a Muslim, they still call him a Muslim. Why? Because they can’t call him a nigger! That's what they REALLY want to call him, but they can't. So they use Muslim as an substitute. I agree with what NPR analyst Cokie Roberts said last year: “A fifth of Americans believe Obama’s a Muslim because it’s unacceptable to say ‘I don’t like him cause he’s black.’

2. Joe Wilson, that asshole Congressman from South Carolina, called the president a liar to his face (I have NEVER seen a congressman do that). Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a.k.a. Cruella De Vil, wagged her finger in the president's face as if she was talking to a disobedient child (I've never seen that before either).

3. John Boehner, the Weeper of the House, once rejected Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress (In the history of this country, the Speaker of the House has NEVER done that).

4. The birthers: For those who have been living under a rock, these are the mouthbreathers who still wont shut the fuck up about Obama’s birth certificate.

5. Donald Trump, the overweight, toupe-wearing, con-artist born with a silver foot in his mouth, demanded to see the president’s birth certificate. And after Obama produced his long-form birth certificate, Trump then demanded to see his grades from college!

Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He then went on to Harvard Law School where he graduated in 1991 magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. It's sad we live in a country where the president has to prove something to a bankrupt, thrice-divorced, reality tv “star.”

6. Newt Gingrich calls him the “Food Stamp President". Nothing racist about that!

7. Just the other day Michele Bachmann used the term “tar baby” to attack Obama’s energy policy. Nothing racist about that!

8. The president has been portrayed as a shoeshine man, an Islamic terrorist and a chimp. The image of his altered face has been shown on a product called Obama Waffles (in the manner of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben). Marilyn Davenport, an elected official in the Republican Party of Orange County, Calif., circulated an email depicting Obama and his parents as chimps. New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino circulated an email of Barack Obama as a pimp.

9. Parents of school-aged children kept their kids at home because they didn’t want their kids to hear the president wish them well on a new school year. Yup, nothing racist about that either!

10. And let’s not forget the media darlings known as the Tea Party. They claim they are a grassroots movement who hate excessive government spending. But they didn’t seem to have a problem with George W. Bush wasting money on two unfunded wars and on tax cuts for people who were already obscenely wealthy.

No. It was the resentment towards our first black president that led to the creation of the Tea Party.  Whenever they had their rallies (which I referred to as the Million Klan March), the racism was so thick you could cut it with a knife. These are the most offensive signs I’ve seen at Tea Party rallies:

“The Zoo Has A Lion, And The White House Has A Lyin’ African.”

“Obama-nomics; Monkey See, Monkey Do.”

“The American Taxpayers Are The Jews For Obama’s Ovens.”

“Go Back To Kenya”

The most shocking thing about these signs is not that they were racist, it’s that they were spelled correctly! 

                    President Shaft. He's one bad mutha, SHUT YO' MOUTH!

Recently, a popular conservative columnist named John Derbyshire wrote the definitive account of how racism is passed like a virus from generation to generation. In his piece called "The Talk" (which is his own version of "the talk" black parents give to their kids), he writes a list of all the lessons he taught his children about scary black people. 

1. Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

2. Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

3. If planning a trip to the beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.

4. Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

5. If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

6. Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

7. Before voting for a black politician, scruitinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

8. Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

9. If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

10. The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; Forty percent of blacks have IQs that low.

11. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white, five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations.

Ok. I got three things to say about Derbyshire's spectacularly racist column.

Number one, swamped with blacks is now the new name of my funk band!

Number two, I just had "the talk" with my 14 year old brother and I told him to avoid people with the last name Derbyshire.

And number three, have you ever been to middle America John Derbyshire? Have you seen the meth heads, skin heads, inbreds, and social outcasts that live there? And guess what? These people aren't black.

And how exactly would you even know if a beach has too many black folks? Is there a number you call? Does the Ku Klux Klan have a hotline?

It seems as if you pulled the "facts" in your column, not from some thinktank, but from your own ass! Like when you say "A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us." Where does that five percent number come from because it sure sounds like a bullshit number.

A lot of people are upset by what you wrote. But I'm not. I'm glad you wrote it. This is racism 101. This is how a lot of conservatives think. This explains why poor people vote for a Republican Party that doesn't give a damn about them. And this explains why the NRA has been so wildly successful. Underneath all that gun-toting swagger is, in the words of Public Enemy, a fear of a black planet. 

Race is the background noise to so much of our political dialogue. When we're talking about taxes, the size of government, our justice system, public schools, food stamps, welfare, we are talking about race. And there is nothing more difficult to talk about in this country than race.

The problem I have is when I talk about racism, some white people get offended. They think by me saying America is a racist country, that I am in fact calling them a racist. Then they tell me that I could not have possibly been the victim of racism because racism doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing we would never say to another type of victim. We would never tell a person who was a victim of child molestation - "Stop lying! Child molestation doesn't exist!"

This "what are these black folks talking about, there's no such thing as racism" narrative is not new. In the 1960s, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, back when black America marched (and died) to end legalized segregation, there were polls that were conducted. And according to these polls, 66 percent of whites thought that blacks were treated the same as whites, thought they had the same access to a good education, and the same access to a good job.

In retrospect, we know that was ridiculous. But that was the prevailing mindset amongst white Americans not just in the 60s, but in the 1950s, the 1940s, the 1930s, the 1920s, etc. If white America didn't see racism when it was blatant, how are they supposed to see it now?

In a recent article in the New York Times, Brent Staples said this: "Very few Americans make a conscious decision to subscribe to racist views. But the toxic connotations that the culture has associated with blackness have been embedded in thought, language, and social convention for hundreds of years. This makes it easy for people to see the world through a profoundly bigoted lens without being aware that they are doing so."

And we have our mainstream media to thank for that. It is the media who, when presenting the news, frames it differently based on the color of one's skin.

When whites gather because they are unhappy with the government, they are exercising their constitutional rights. But when blacks gather they are asking for a handout.

When a single white girl becomes an unwed mother she is viewed as a role model (Bristol Palin). But when a single black girl becomes an unwed mother she is demonized.

When a white guy has a gun he is a patriot. But when a black guy has a gun he is a thug.

When a white person gets a scholarship it is deserved. But when a black person gets a scholarship it's affirmative action.

When a white person is searched (airport), it's violating their rights. But when a black person is searched (police), it is always justified.

You people who say racism doesn't exist are the same people who've never seen a woman clutch her purse when you pass her on the street, never seen somebody lock their car doors when they see you, never seen an empty taxi pass you for the white couple on the next block, never had the police pull you over because you were driving a nice car, and never had a security guard follow you around in a department store.

You tell me to stop living in the past and to "get over it." You know what? I would love to "get over it." But I can't because your racism won't let me.

The Dark Side Of Facebook

"People want to go online and check out their friends, so why not build a website that offers that? Friends, pictures, profiles, whatever you can visit, browse around, maybe it's someone you just met at a party. Eduardo, I'm not talking about a dating site, I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online." - Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network

If you were to ask me what is the biggest success story of the 2000s, I would say Facebook. What Mark Zuckerberg has created is nothing short of a global phenomenon. It is by far, the most popular social networking site on the planet. Facebook has 135 million unique visitors a month. 600 million people have Facebook accounts, and that number includes a whopping 41% of Americans.

If you're not on it, the response you'll get from family, friends, and coworkers is, "Really? Why not?"

It's where people go to find out who is pregnant, who is getting married, who is getting a divorce, who is graduating, who just bought a new car, who just bought a new house, who is going to the club, who is going to work, who is going to church, who is going on vacation, who just got back from vacation, who wants to go on vacation, who is joining a gym, who is trying out a new diet, who is giving up on their diet because chocolate cake is awesome, who has a doctor's appointment, who hates their teacher, who hates Obama, who hates their job, who is looking for a new job, who is looking for a new love, and on, and on, and on . . .

"You called me a bitch on the internet, Mark. On the internet. As if every thought that tumbles through your head was so clever it would be a crime for it not to be shared. The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink. And you published that Erica Albright was a bitch, right before you made some ignorant crack about my family's name, my bra size, and then rated women based on their hotness."  - Erica Albright (Rooney Mara)

"Keith, sign up with Facebook. It's cool. You'll hook up with people you haven't seen in years."

"Ok. I'll try it out."

Four years ago, my cousin Rufus sold me on the idea of Facebook. In the beginning, I liked it a lot. I received friend requests from people I hadn't seen or heard from since 1994 (the year I graduated high school).

I was like, "OH! That's Carla. She's married! And WOW! She has A LOT of kids!"

"And there's Peanut. She is still so tiny. And, ummm, ok. She does NOT like to be called Peanut anymore!"

"And is that Tammy? I didn't recognize her without the braces and those funny-looking glasses. She looks GOOD!"

"And is this a friend request from Darnell? I thought he was in jail?"

It was exhilarating.

But then after friending these people, I slowly came to the realization that I have absolutely nothing in common with them. It disappointed me, which was odd because why would I expect to have anything in common with these people.

These people are married. I'm not. These people have kids. I don't. These people share their personal business. I won't. 

Being on Facebook is like being at a high school reunion that never ever ends.

And I HATED high school.

"We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the internet!" - Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake)

What is it about Facebook that gets under my skin?

I'm glad you asked.

Here's a list of the things I absolutely hate about Facebook.  

1. "Poking." Number one, why would Facebook create "poking"? And number two, why would anybody "poke" someone else? I hate logging on and seeing that somebody has "poked" me.

It serves no purpose, it's annoying as hell, and I'm getting angry just thinking about it!

2. People who say things on Facebook that they aren't man enough (or woman enough) to say to somebody's face. These people have a little something I like to call, "internet courage." You also see this on Twitter and on various message boards. Hey tough guy, if you wanna say bitchy things about somebody at your job, or at your school, as they say in those Bud Light commercials, "MAN UP!" and say it to that person's face!

3. Chats. I hate instant messaging. I really do. If I wanted to have a conversation with you, I would pick up a phone and call you. Now could you please stop chatting with me? A cute girl from high school just "poked" me and I'm trying to enjoy the moment! 

4. Overeager frienders. I went to the profile page of a friend of mine and was astonished to know she has over 1200 "friends." She is literally "friending" everybody she meets!

If you're adding random strangers to your list of friends so you can appear to be more popular than you really are, then guess what? You're not popular. You're pathetic.

5. Crazy stalker people. This goes out to the people who spend an unnerving amount of time on other people's profile pages, memorizing all the banal drivel that they read. For instance, if I'm out on a date with you and out of the blue you say, "Guess what Keith? My favorite team is the Yankees, my favorite rapper is Biggie Smalls, and I LOVE watching reruns of Scrubs! Isn't that ironic?"

No. That's not ironic. That is creepy.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to use the restroom (and hopefully there's a window in there so I can crawl out of it!). 

6. People who update their status every 10 minutes. We all know people who fit into this category, people who think that every thought that pops in their head needs to be shared.

If you're one of these people who post 35 times a day on your Facebook page, here's an idea:

TURN OFF THE DAMN COMPUTER AND TRY HAVING AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION WITH A HUMAN BEING!

7. There is a "like" button, but there's no "hate" button. For instance, a friend of mine said this a couple of years ago about Sarah Palin:

"I would love for Sarah Palin to be president. She reminds me so much of me."

When I saw this comment, I became angry. I didn't want to "like" her comment. I wanted to "hate" her comment. But because I couldn't, I was forced to come up with this:

"Honey, Sarah Palin can't name one magazine she reads. Can't name any Supreme Court cases other than Roe vs. Wade. She thinks the Vice-President is in charge of the Senate. She thinks being governor of Alaska counts as foreign policy experience. And she thought Africa was a country. She has proven herself to be a total moron. And if she reminds you of you, then what does that say about you?"

8. Political discussions. There is not a more spectacular waste of time, than engaging in a political discussion on Facebook.

Why?

Because most people don't know a damn thing about politics. But they like to think that they do. And on Facebook, everybody wants to appear smarter than they really are. So what do they do? They repeat talking points they heard from somebody else. Or they make shit up. Or, when that doesn't work, they resort to insults and name-calling. 

If you want intelligent political discussions, I suggest you go somewhere other than Facebook!

In fact, I remember the day I cracked this joke:

"George W. Bush was such an inspirational president, he inspired 70 million Americans to vote for a black guy with a Muslim name."

Dear Lord, why did I say that?

I had random "friends" who didn't even know each other, arguing back and forth. They left over 50 comments on my page! And worst of all was when my very black, very liberal aunt began arguing with my very white, very conservative buddy. It was HORRIFYING!

Let's just say I learned my lesson.

9. Children on Facebook. Facebook says that no one under 13 can have an account. Sorry Zuckerberg, but that ain't true.

My 7 year old nephew has a Facebook page.

Facebook is NOT for children. Giving your child their own account and leaving them unsupervised is just plain stupid. And dangerous. A kid might come home one day from school and post this to his or her account:

"No one's home but me." 

You NEVER EVER wanna see a kid post that to his or her account!

10. Relationship Status. Facebook is used as a way of telling friends what's going on in your love life. If a person breaks up with somebody, and changes their status from "in a relationship", to "single", I get a notification.

Why would I care if someone I have no real relationship with is single? That's information I could do without.

If Facebook really wanted to make things interesting, they should allow users to write their own relationship status. For example, I would type this:

"NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS!"

Or . . .

"Married, But Only When My Wife's In Town!"

Or . . .

"Sometimes I'm Single, Sometimes It's Really Fucking Complicated!"

And to the douchebags who break up with their girlfriends on Facebook: If you aren't mature enough to look her in her eyes and tell her it's over, then you were never mature enough to be with her in the first place!

11. "Tagging". People "tag" me in their photos all the time. And I absolutely hate it. Why? Because they NEVER ask for my permission. So when I log in, the very first thing I see is a picture of me drunk off my ass at some bar.

This new phenomenon has totally affected how I behave when I go out. Now when I go to a bar, I avoid taking pictures because I don't want them to end up on Facebook.

When my friends pull out their camera phones and go all TMZ on my ass, I turn into Lindsay Lohan on the Sunset Strip:

"PLEASE! NO PICTURES! NO PICTURES!" 

12. People who constantly take pictures of themselves standing in front of a bathroom mirror. I can describe how this makes me feel with just one three-letter word:

UGH!

"I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing . . . . Did I adequately answer your condescending question?" - Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg)

When I think of Facebook, my first thought isn't "cool social media site." My first thought is 1984, the famous George Orwell novel. In 1984, Big Brother is the name given to the mysterious dictator who controls the totalitarian state with an iron fist. Everyone is under surveillance and they are constantly reminded of this by the phrase "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!"

And I'm also reminded of a scene near the end of The Dark Knight. In order to find the Joker, Batman uses a signal tracking device which allows him to spy on every citizen in Gotham. He looks at one big-ass TV screen and he can see what everybody is saying, . . . and doing.

How is Facebook any different? It's not. People have said this before, and I believe it to be true:

Facebook is the new Big Brother!

       (Zuckerberg wants your personal info and he wants it NOW!)

Facebook has cloaked itself as "social media", when in reality, it's a highly sophisticated data mining operation, collecting everything they can from their members: from who their friends are, where they shop, what's their religious background, what's their political beliefs, etc, etc, etc, ....

Trust me, there is nothing more Orwellian than getting people to voluntarily report on themselves, their friends, their activities, and their thoughts.

And Facebook doesn't offer real privacy, only the illusion of real privacy. For example, all the items you "like" must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don't want them linked and made public, Facebook says, "OK. But we'll still allow advertisers to target you based on what you "like."

Facebook has announced they will give third-party developers and external websites the ability to access users' home addresses and cellphone numbers, even in the face of criticism from privacy experts, users, and members of Congress.

Privacy experts warn that users personal information could be targeted by spam, scams, and identity thieves. Malicious and rogue apps spreading phising scams are not uncommon on the social network. Number one, scammers can impersonate you if they have your phone number. Number two, people never thought when they were posting their personal information that it would be accessible to anyone but friends.

This is why people should NEVER put their personal information on Facebook. If your home address and cellphone number is on Facebook, TAKE IT OFF NOW!

For your address, enter this: 1601 S. California Ave: Palo Alto, CA 94304. And for your phone number simply enter: (650) 853-1300.

This is the home address and phone number for Facebook.

And you can't be mad at Facebook for making money off of your personal information. They can only share what YOU put on there!

But I'm not telling you guys what you don't already know. What's weird is that most of you don't care. Facebook collects your personal data and shares it with people who you don't know. And yet, most of you don't object.

Why?

Because you have convinced yourself that you would rather have Facebook, than to have your own privacy.

A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie but he's too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. He comes up with an idea for a high end place that doesn't make you feel like a pervert. He gets a $40,000 bank loan, borrows another $40,000 from his in-laws, opens a store, and calls it Victoria's Secret. Makes a half million dollars his first year. He starts a catalog, opens three more stores and after five years he sells the company to Leslie Wexner and the Limited for four million dollars. Happy ending, right? Except two years later, the company's worth 500 million dollars and Roy Raymond jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh-highs. - Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake)

Where do I stand on Facebook? I liked it at first, but the novelty has worn off. I only post jokes and I'm only on the site for about 10 minutes a week. I "friended" a lot of people from my past, but most of these old acquaintances were never my friends in the first place.

And I never post anything personal on Facebook. Because really, who gives a shit? Nobody cares if I hate my job. Nobody cares if I hate my girlfriend. We don't care about other people's personal problems. We only care about our personal problems. 

And if there's a form of social media that I'm really addicted to, it's Twitter. At first glance, most people would assume that Facebook and Twitter are two sides of the same coin.

And they would be wrong.

On Twitter, you can follow anybody who interests you (from celebrities, to journalists, to politicians). And you don't get annoying invites to play Farmville and Mafia Wars.

George Packer of the New Yorker famously said that Twitter is crack for information addicts.

He's right. Twitter is the best news-breaking platform on the planet. But here's something that most people who criticize Twitter fail to realize.

There's a 100% chance that you will have more in common with the strangers who follow you on Twitter, than you will with the friends who follow you on Facebook. 

Facebook is for the people you went to high school with. Twitter is for the people you wished you went to high school with.

Someone once referred to Facebook as ego masturbation. I couldn't help but laugh. I mean, let's be honest. Facebook has devalued the art of true friendship. Friendship is picking up a phone. It's not leaving a wall post on somebody's profile page.

And Facebook reveals some very unflattering things about ourselves. We need constant attention, and Facebook is the digital equivalent of standing at the end of a diving board while screaming "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"

If you're thinking of signing up, understand that in order to do so, you must be willing to put up with narcissism, nefarious apps, and creepy ads that are suspiciously tailored to your "likes."

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and sign up! Stand on that diving board. Look down at everyone below you and scream "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" 

And jump.

But don't be surprised when you find out that Facebook is more shallow than a kiddie pool.

The Kid With The Skittles, The Guy With The Gun

 

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around looking about. Now he’s coming towards me. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male … something’s wrong with him … Yup, he’s coming to check me out. He’s got something in his hands. I don’t know what his deal is … These assholes, they always get away.”

“Shit, he’s running.”

“Are you following him?”

“Yep.”

“Ok. We don’t need you to do that!”

Several minutes later, George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain armed with a semiautomatic handgun, got into a fight with Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old high school junior armed with a bag of skittles and iced tea.

There were cries for help from what sure sounded like a young boy. And then the sound of a single gunshot pierced the night air.

In the 17^th Century, English common law held that people whose lives were threatened in a public place could use deadly force to defend themselves only after retreating as far as possible. It was up to the king and his men to keep the peace, and everyone else was supposed to stand aside. There was only one exception: If someone broke into your house, you could kill him without retreating. This was called the Castle Doctrine after the old saying that a man’s house is his castle.

In 1987, thanks to the tireless efforts of the NRA, then-Governor Bob Martinez signed Florida’s concealed-carry provision into law. It liberated the restrictions that prevented Floridians from obtaining concealed weapons permits. And in 2005, thanks to the tireless efforts of the NRA (and ALEC), Florida’s then-Governor Jeb Bush passed the first ever “Stand Your Ground” law which greatly expanded the Americanized version of the Castle Doctrine. It gave a person the unquestionable right to use deadly force for self-defense. Deadly force is now justified if a person believes they are gravely threatened in their home, or any other place "they feel they have a right to be."

Thanks to this crazy law, drug dealers are killing each other over turf and claiming self-defense. Thanks to this crazy law, the burden of proof falls on the prosecution (they have to disprove the claim of self-defense). And thanks to this crazy law, Sanford police chief Bill Lee and State Attorney Norm Wolfinger gave George Zimmerman his gun back and told him to go home after he killed Trayvon Martin.

All because he said he acted in self-defense.

Despite the existence of this heinous law, Bill Lee’s lame excuse that “Stand Your Ground” forbade him from detaining Zimmerman, who defied orders from the 911 dispatchers to stay in his car, is nonsense.

There is nothing in that law that prevented Lee from arresting Zimmerman.

When I think of this horrific tragedy there are certain names that come to mind:

Emmitt Till, the 14 year old from Chicago who in 1955 was murdered down in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Amadou Diallo, the African immigrant who in 1999 was fired upon an incredible 41 times by the NYPD. He was hit 19 times and the only weapon he had in his hand was his wallet.

In 2006, Sean Bell was leaving his bachelor party when he made the fatal mistake of thinking some undercover NYPD cops were carjackers. As he fled in his car from the cops (who did not identify themselves), he was shot and killed, just hours before his wedding.

What do Till, Diallo, and Bell have in common? Their killers never went to prison. They were all indicted, they all went to trial, and they all walked off scot-free. And when you combine these high-profile acquittals with the fact that out of 3500 reported lynchings in the post-Civil War South, less than one percent of the killers were convicted, it goes to show that America has always had a history of devaluing the lives of black men.

Which brings us back to Trayvon Martin. When I think of the fact that the Sanford police did not test Zimmerman for drugs and alcohol that night, the word “incompetent” comes to mind. When I think of the fact that one of the witnesses, a teacher, told a cop she heard a child scream, and that the cop corrected her and told her it was Zimmerman screaming, the word “corrupt” comes to mind. When I think of the fact that the Sanford police put Trayvon in the morgue for three days as a John Doe, and that they didn’t try to contact his family, even though they confiscated the boy's cell phone, the word “callous” comes to mind. And when I think of the fact that the Sanford police still has not arrested Zimmerman, despite the 911 tapes, the eyewitness accounts, and the national uproar, the words “racist” and "injustice" comes to mind.

If this had been a black 26 year old who had shot and killed a 17 year-old white kid, NONE OF THE ABOVE WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. Can anybody name me one instance in which a black man shot somebody of another race, and the police gave him his gun and sent him home?

Zimmerman told the police that Trayvon attacked him from behind, climbed on top of him, and slammed his head onto the sidewalk. But, as New York Times columnist Charles Blow stated: “To believe Zimmerman’s scenario, you have to believe that Trayvon, an unarmed boy, a boy so thin that people called him Slim, a boy whose mother said he had not had a fight since he was a preschooler, chose that night and that man to attack. You have to believe that Trayvon chose to attack a man who outweighed him by 100 pounds and who, according to the Sanford police, was wearing his gun in his holster. You have to believe that Trayvon chose to attack even though he was less than a hundred yards from the safety of the home where he was staying.”

Zimmerman’s story contradicts what Trayvon’s girlfriend told ABC News. She was on the phone with him moments before he was killed. She said she heard Trayvon ask “what are you following me for?” This was followed by Zimmerman asking “what are you doing here?” Then she heard Martin being pushed to the ground.

Zimmerman allegedly has a broken nose. But strangely enough, he didn’t go to a hospital that night. There are no records to suggest he sought medical attention. Just today, the Sanford police released the video of Zimmerman at the police station. Not only does it appear that he did NOT suffer a broken nose, he doesn't appear to have a damn scratch on him!

This is what bothers me about Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. It is, inherently, ridiculous. He ignored orders to stay in his car. This makes him the aggressor. And if you are the aggressor, then you can’t turn around and claim self-defense. If you start a fight, then you don’t have the same right to self-defense as if you had been attacked out of nowhere.

And can somebody please explain to me why in the hell did George Zimmerman have a right to stand his ground, but Trayvon Martin didn’t?

This is why I’m in favor of gun control. The Stand Your Ground law in Florida (and in 23 other states) have turned Americans into a bunch of vigilantes, a bunch of Dirty Harrys. Isn’t it ironic that in these same states, women are seeing their rights to an abortion be severely restricted? I got an idea. Let’s do this. Let’s pass a law that makes all gun buyers wait 48 hours after applying to buy a gun. During that time, they must be forced to look at the ultrasound of a bullet inside a human body, and then they must be forced to listen to the heartbeat of a person dying from a gunshot wound.

Most gun owners fall into two categories:

The hero: These are the guys who’ve seen too many Michael Bay movies. These are the guys in the theatre who cheer loudly when the bad guy gets shot in the face. These are the guys who buy a gun in case they run into a damsel in distress, and like Jason Bourne, they get to save the day.

The tough guy: These are the guys who are ex-military or they’re avid hunters. These are the guys who have enough guns in their basements to invade a small country. These are the guys who hate "the gubmint", who think the Second Amendment is the most important amendment, and who desperately want to project a don’t-fuck-with-me image.

We have become a nation of insecure and reckless sociopaths. We have become a nation desensitized to violence. So many people embrace fear and the belief that the next threat is just around the corner, and that they need a gun so that they can “stand their ground.”

It’s no surprise that we’re the most violent country on Earth.

The unfathomable actions of the Sanford police has sparked protests all across the country. President Obama sent the Department of Justice down to Sanford to investigate.  The Sanford police chief, after receiving a vote of no confidence from the city commission, voluntarily stepped down. And last Friday, when he was asked about the case, the president said this:

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. And you know, I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that we’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

The shooting of Trayvon made me sad. The actions of the police made me mad. And the (unsurprising) actions of some of those on the right have made me look around and wonder if I’m living in the Twilight Zone.

As ThinkProgress has reported, the smear campaign is in full effect.

Michelle Malkin promoted a photo (reportedly from Trayvon’s Facebook page) that shows him in saggy pants flipping the bird. But there’s one problem: the person in that photo was not Trayvon Martin.

The Sanford police (in an effort to cover their own ass) leaked irrelevant, negative information about Trayvon to the Orlando Sentinel (his suspensions, his being caught with an empty marijuana bag).

And on Fox “News”, Geraldo Rivera blasted Trayvon for having the audacity to wear a hoodie, saying that he “dressed like a wannabe gangsta.”

Someone should tell Geraldo that the Unabomber wore a hoodie. Someone should tell Geraldo that blaming the hoodie makes as much sense as blaming the miniskirt after a girl has been raped. And finally, someone should ask Geraldo who has done more harm to America? The black guys in the hoodies? Or the white guys in the hoods?

After a storm of criticism, Geraldo offered the worst apology I have ever heard:

“I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.”

Good grief! He’s a pretentious prick even when he’s saying he’s sorry!

Perhaps I need to invest in a line of hoodies for the urban black man, a line of hoodies with a smiley face and the words “Please Don’t Shoot! I’m Just Cold.”

Here’s what I don’t understand. Why is this a partisan issue? Why has the right promoted Zimmerman as some sort of cause celebre? Why are they trying to smear an unarmed black kid who was shot and killed? This isn’t left vs. right. It’s right vs. wrong!

Zimmerman has a history of domestic abuse. He was arrested for having a physical altercation with a police officer. He has called 911 46 times in the eight years since he moved into the Twin Lakes neighborhood he shot Trayvon in. Incredibly, he once called 911 on a black kid who was "7-9 years old." I view him as an insecure loser who carried a gun because he wanted to feel important. He wanted to be a cop. But he was severely lacking in the physical, educational, and intellectual departments. His friends say he's so depressed he's having trouble sleeping. I suspect that he's not depressed about Trayvon. He's depressed because his life is over. My fearless prediction is that justice will be served. Zimmerman will be arrested, and he will be found guilty. And I believe that when the dust settles, a few people in the Sanford Police Department will be out of a job.

This is what my heart believes. But my head tells me to remember I live in a country where the killers of Emmett Till, Amadou Diallo, and Sean Bell were acquitted, and that I should take nothing for granted.

Trayvon could’ve been any black man in America: bus driver, movie star, corporate CEO. How do I explain to my 14 year-old brother that he can be killed just by walking down the street? How do I explain that he will be racially profiled for the rest of his life? How do I explain to him that because he was born black, he was born a suspect?

The Martin family will never get their Trayvon back. They’ll never be able to hug him again, kiss him on his cheeks again. They’ll never see him graduate from high school, never see him get married, never see him become a father. Their family has changed forever. Perhaps America can change as well. Perhaps, the next time we see a black man in a hoodie, we will wave hello to him, instead of reaching for our gun.

We at least owe Trayvon Martin that much.

 

I'm Sick Of Rush Limbaugh

hate (v.) – to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; to detest

I fucking hate Rush Limbaugh.

Is that subtle enough for you?

I hate him so much I even came up with a bunch of derogatory nicknames for him: The Slander In Chief, Jabba The Hut, Oxymoron (he loves oxycontin and he’s a moron), Boss Hog, Meatloaf, Porky’s Revenge, Doofus McDumbass, Donald Plump, Chunky Brewster, Flush Limbaugh, and of course, my personal favorite, Fat Bastard.

And for anybody who thinks I’m being too hard on him, give me a break. Limbaugh played that hideously offensive “Barack the Magic Negro” song. He called President Obama “Hitler.” He called Michelle Obama “uppity” and insinuated that she was fat. He called veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars “phony soldiers” if they disagreed with him. He said feminism is for “unattractive women.” He said that if poor kids want to eat they should go “dumpster diving.” He said Obama and “environmentalist wackos” blew up the BP oil rig. During the health care debate, he called Nancy Pelosi “mullah Nancy bin Pelosi”. In 2004 he said that “babes enjoy being sexually harassed.” He said the Democrats gave Sherrod Brown his Ohio senate seat because he was black (Senator Brown is actually white). He viciously mocked Michael J. Fox’s parkinson’s disease. When her father was president, he once said Chelsea Clinton looked like a dog. And 30 years ago he told a black caller to “take the bone out of your nose.”

This evil, misogynistic, and racist bully has earned my hate.

Not only do I have an extreme dislike for him, but when I find out that somebody is a fan of Limbaugh, I avoid that person as if they have the Ebola virus. I can be around people who I disagree with. I have friends who are Republicans. But if a person is a fan of Rush Limbaugh, it means that person shares his ugly views on race, women, immigration, and gays. And if I engage in a political discussion with a Limbaugh fan, there's a 95 percent chance that I'm going to hit that person in the head with my shoe.

A few weeks ago Rush Limbaugh sparked a national furor when he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.” He called her that after Fluke testified on Capitol Hill about the need for Georgetown to provide affordable contraception.

“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps!”

And because Rush didn’t get enough attention on the first day he called her a slut, he then proceeded to attack her for two additional days.

“Have you ever thought about not having sex Ms. Fluke? Have you ever thought about not having sex so much?”

“I will buy all the women at Georgetown all the aspirin they want to put between their knees.”

“If we are going to pay for your contraception, then we want something for it. We want you to post the video online so we can watch.”

Limbaugh also said that a line of men are lined up around the corner to have sex with her, and that one day she won’t even be able to walk because she has had so much sex. During this three-day span, Limbaugh attacked Fluke an astonishing 46 times.

Limbaugh’s remarks aroused a public campaign to pressure advertisers to stop running ads during his show. Over 50 advertisers have departed including Ford, Geico, Allstate, Capital One, Carbonite, Citrix, The Girl Scouts of Oregon (???), ProFlowers, Sleep Train, GM, Toyota, Prudential, State Farm, McDonalds, Subway, and Capitol One.

AOL, who also dropped Limbaugh said, “Our core values is that we act with integrity. We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values.”

In the illustrious words of Arnold from Diff’rent Strokes – “What choo talkin’ bout AOL?” You guys advertised on his show for years. And now you’re offended? Did you not know who Rush Limbaugh was?

Democrats put him on blast, while Republicans, especially those running for president, refused to criticize him. Rick Santorum said, “an entertainer can be absurd.” And frontrunner Mitt Romney said “that’s not the language I would have used.”

Sooooo what does that mean Mitt? You would’ve called her a whore?

I loved what Eugene Robinson said in a recent column for the Washington Post:

“So let’s get this straight. These guys want us to believe they’re ready to face down Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Eun, the Taliban, and what’s left of al-Qaeda. Yet they’re so afraid of a talk-radio buffoon that they ignore or excuse an eruption of venom that some of Limbaugh’s advertisers find inexcusable.”

This is because they have put this lunatic on a pedestal all these years. They’ve encouraged Americans to regard his garbage not just as the rantings of a psychotic radio host, but as the message of the Republican Party.

Let’s look at how they’ve kissed this man’s ass for the last 20 years:

After being shredded on-air by Limbaugh over the tax hike he signed, George H.W. Bush invited him to the White House in June 1992, and made a show of carrying his bags to the Lincoln Bedroom. When the GOP won the House in 1994, the party’s 73 freshmen members invited him to their orientation dinner, where they honored him as a “majority maker.” He hosted (presidential candidate) Bob Dole on his show in 1996. He was one of George W. Bush’s loudest cheerleaders. And when he stepped over the line repeatedly in recent years, Republicans have been hesitant to take issue with him. And when they do, they often end up apologizing to him publicly (see Steele, Michael).

His ardent fans, the Republican establishment, and the conservative intellectuals who appear on Fox “News” have been defending him from this fallout. They say Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, and Bill Maher have also said hateful things about conservative women, and that there was no public outcry.

Yes, Olbermann’s attack on Michelle Malkin was bad. Schultz did call Laura Ingram a right-wing “slut” (although he wasn’t attacking her in a sexual manner). And Maher did call Sarah Palin a “cunt”, which is a word I despise. But, when Maher is attacking Palin, he’s attacking her lack of intelligence, not her gender. Bill Maher is anti-stupid, not anti-woman.

And there are legitimate reasons why Rush is in more hot water.

First, he picked on a private citizen, a soft-spoken young woman no one had ever heard of. At least those guys on the left attacked famous people who could fight back. Second, his attack made no sense. His request of a porn video was absolutely creepy. His implication that having more sex makes birth control cost more is ridiculous. And his implication that “he” and other taxpayers were expected to fund her sex life is untrue. Lastly, he made a legitimate issue about a woman's right to affordable healthcare into some kind of sick and twisted sex thing. The real issue is the right of women to contribute to society in ways other than bearing children, like getting an education and having a career.

After the fallout, Limbaugh offered the most tepid apology I’ve ever heard.

“My choice of words was not the best.”

This is how the game is played now. You say something horribly offensive, and then you apologize, not for what you said, but for how you said it.

And what is equally amazing is that Rush Limbaugh has no clue how birth control works.

This dummy thinks taking birth control every day correlates with the amount of sex a woman is having. Taking birth control is not the same thing as taking Viagra. Just because a woman takes birth control everyday doesn’t mean she’s having sex everyday. And the price for almost all female prescription contraception is the same no matter how much or how little sex, since it's prescribed by time span, not occurrence. And also, birth control can also be taken for medical reasons (polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, anemia, acne, etc).

Scenario #1: I’m a woman. I don’t have insurance. I walk into a pharmacy and ask for birth control. They hand it to me free of charge. I’m sent on my way.

This is FALSE! And yet, this seems to be what a lot of people think this fight is over.

Scenario #2: I am a woman. I have insurance, which I pay for. I suffer from polycystic ovarian syndrome, and as a result, my menstrual cycle is irregular. I need to take birth control to regulate it. I walk into a pharmacy, prescription in hand, only to find my insurance won’t cover it, even though I need it for medical reasons.

Scenario #3: I am a man. I have insurance, which I pay for. Sometimes my rocket won’t launch. I want to have some sexytime with my lover, but I can’t and I’m embarrassed by it. So I go to a pharmacy, prescription in hand. I pay a small co-pay, and I’m sent on my way (blue pill in hand).

This is what the fight is for!

What this ugly episode shows us is how private insurers are leeches. This goes beyond a woman’s right to choose. This goes directly to the fact that 50 million Americans are uninsured. And those of us who are insured are at the mercy of bureaucrats and ideologues. When it comes to our health, we are truly a third world country.

Here’s how Ms. Fluke put it in her testimony: “In 65 percent of cases, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they need these prescriptions and whether they’re lying about their symptoms. For my friend and 20 percent of women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription, despite verification of her illness from her doctor.” 

And because of this, Sandra Fluke’s friend lost one of her ovaries.

There is no need for employers and clergy and insurance leeches to be involved in our health care. In every other civilized country, medical care is a right, not a privilege.

As for Limbaugh, I find this to be absolutely stunning. This guy has been trashing minorities (especially African Americans) for decades, and not once have I heard of a single advertiser even threaten to pull an ad. And no matter how racist, vile, or offensive the comment, Rush has NEVER (at least to my knowledge) apologized. Limbaugh has called Barack and Michelle Obama everything short of the N-word.

And what did I hear?

Crickets.

When “Barack The Magic Negro” hit the airwaves, sponsors didn’t bat an eye. When he called the president “a little black man-child”, and referred to the First Lady as “uppity”, those advertisers backed up the Brinks truck to Limbaugh's bank account and made it rain like Lil Wayne at a strip club!

30 years ago his vulgarity was shocking. But now, hundreds of imitators, Fox “News”, and most of the Republican Party has jumped on the bandwagon. They are all beneath contempt. But I’m most upset by the rest of us, whatever our politics, for keeping silent while these insane people hijacked America. Why did the New York Times repeat the hoaxes started by (the late) Andrew Breitbart? Why does “the lamestream media” publish fawning articles on the likes of Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Limbaugh? Why do honest people appear on Fox “News”? Just because demagoguery has proven to be lucrative, doesn’t mean we have to pretend that the demagogues are engaging us in an honest conversation.

And in the last two months, we’ve seen Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood, the attack on the contraception part of the Affordable Healthcare Act, the all-male Darrell Issa panel, transvaginal ultrasounds, more and more anti-abortion legislation, the Blunt Amendment, Republicans refusal to renew the Violence Against Women Act, Foster Friess' offensive joke, Rick Santorum's offensive campaign for president, and Rush Limbaugh. America has gone batshit crazy and this assault on women is terrifying!

Don’t these assholes have wives, mothers, and daughters? How can they look them in the face?

And to all the women who still support the GOP, who defend Limbaugh and the other misogynists – what do they have to do before you wake up and smell the coffee?

Call you a slut?

Make your daughter go through a transvaginal ultrasound after she’s been raped?

This party you support, this party you think will bring you closer to God, closer to the Constitution, this party that will save you from Obama doesn’t even pretend to hide it’s disdain for you. And you still don’t get it. You still don’t care. You still think they’re talking about other women. Well, they’re not. They’re talking about you because they don’t give a flying fuck about you. The Republicans got y’all fighting their battles. They are playing y’all like a cheap violin. So keep holding up those signs for Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich while the GOP strips you of your dignity.

And to all the women out there who are the real foot soldiers, who are fighting against the sexually repressed nutjobs who wanna return this country to the 18^th Century, to all the women out there who are mad as hell and who are not going to take it anymore, I salute you.

And to Rush Limbaugh, the undisputed King of Fright-Wing Radio, I salute you too. The only difference is I’m giving you the one-finger salute.

Care to guess which finger?

50 Reasons America Is A Dumb Country

I have always believed that America is a dumb country. And now I get to prove it. This is my collection of bizarre facts and mini-rants. This is funny, but in a sad way.

Read on

1. 24 percent of Americans can’t name the country we fought in the Revolutionary War.

2. Two-thirds of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe vs. Wade

3. Half of all Americans don’t know how many U.S. Senators each state has. 

4. 29 percent of Americans don’t know who the Vice President is. 

5. 40 percent of Americans don’t know the three branches of our federal government. 

6. 58 percent don’t know who the Taliban is, even though our soldiers have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for TEN FUCKING YEARS!

7. 18 percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the Earth!

8. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69 percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks on 9/11. Eight years later, 34 percent STILL BELIEVE THIS SHIT!

9. Harold Camping, a 90-year old phony preacher with a ministry worth 80 million dollars, convinced a bunch of intellectually-challenged people that the world was going to end on May 21st at 6pm. His followers spent months warning the world that the rapture was coming. They gave away their earthly belongings and drained their savings accounts. That day came, and it went, and no rapture. On May 21st at 7pm I posted this to my twitter account: 

"I'm cracking rapture jokes like there's no tomorrow!"

10. Millions of people watch reality TV. This amazes me. I HATE REALITY TV. I hate every one of those damn Basketball Wives. I hate the Real Housewives. I hate the Duggars. I hate Kate Gosselin. I hate The Apprentice. I hate the Bachelor. I hate the Bachelorette. I hate all of them. I don't give a flying fuck about these people. This is trainwreck TV at its worst. I love great scripted television (i.e. Justified, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Parks and Rec, Community). But I cannot stand reality TV. I think Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts summed it up perfectly in a recent column when he said: 

“There is something predatory in searching out these troubled people, these drunks and narcissists, these self-centered, superficial plastic surgery junkies, these screechers and whiners and perpetual adolescents with daddy, esteem, or anger management issues, and pay them to let us watch them implode.”

11. Speaking of reality TV, chew on this: Americans have turned Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi of Jersey Shore into millionaires.

I rest my case.

                                           Looks like we got ourselves a "situation!"

In a related story, "The Situation" has inspired me to change my name. From now on, I will only answer to Keith "The Extenuating Circumstance" Balmer.

12. But wait, there's more! America has turned Kim Kardashian, an incredibly boring, incredibly spoiled woman with zero talent, and whose only claim to fame was a sextape, into one of the most talked about women in the country. The media made this big deal out of her stupid wedding to NBA "star" Kris Humphries. One of the announcers on Good Morning America went so far as to call her wedding "America's Royal Wedding".

America's Royal Wedding?

More like America's Royal-Pain-In-The-Ass Wedding!

Seventy two days later this phony celebrity ended her phony marriage, but not before she collected a cool $17 million.

I'm getting angry just thinking about this. Let's just move on.

13. The average American watches seven hours of TV a day!

14. According to a 2006 study, young people aged 15-24 spend on average 7 minutes a day reading. You know what this means? It means the only "book" young people have any interest in reading is Facebook!

15. 53 percent of Americans favor same sex marriage. This means 47 percent of Americans are assholes!

16. According to a study from Oxygen Media, 25% of women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than win a Nobel Prize.

17. Our economy may be in the toilet, but America is the worldwide leader in vampire-related products! (USA! USA! USA!).

18. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it's necessary to know the location of countries in which important news is being made.

19. More than a third of Americans consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language.

20. 49 percent of Americans don’t know what country dropped the atom bomb.

21. In 2003, the Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad investigated Americans' knowledge of world affairs. The task force concluded: "America's ignorance of the outside world is so great as to constitute a threat to national security."

22. I have a sneaky suspicion that the people who put "Support The Troops" bumper stickers on their cars are the same people who can't find Iraq and Afghanistan on a map.

23. Speaking of war, isn’t it ironic that war is the only thing America is still any good at? The rest of the world has passed us in every single category. But when it comes to dropping bombs on brown-skinned people to get our hands on their oil, America is still number one. (USA! USA! USA!)

24. We live in a country that blames teachers for our failing students. Are there bad teachers out there? Absolutely. But they're the minority, not the majority. Blaming teachers because our schools are failing is like blaming the fire department because your house caught on fire. The problem is not teachers, the problem is poverty. Our kids are failing because our communities are failing.

25. I hate people who say “I’m not a racist but …”

If someone says this to you, brace yourself, because you’re about to hear some of the most racist shit imaginable. And also, I hate racist people. Hey racist, your car is Japanese. Your beer is German. Your wine is Spanish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Colombian. Your tea is Chinese. Your watch is Swiss. Your fashion is French. Your shirt is Indian. Your shoes are Thai. Your radio is Korean. And your vodka is Russian. 

SO SIT DOWN AND SHUT YOUR UGLY RACIST MOUTH!

26. I hate grown men who wear their pants hanging off their ass. It's the dumbest fashion trend of all-time. Nothing says I don't have a job and I lack the motivation to get one more than the grown ass man walking down the street with his pants hanging down to his knees.

27. I hate gossipy teenaged girls who sit behind me at the movie theatre and talk throughout the whole movie. The next time this happens, I'm going to turn to them and say, "Would you and your BFF please shut the hell up? OMG! You two are like, sooooo annoying!"

28. Speaking of terrible movie theatre etiquette, if you can’t find a babysitter, KEEP YOUR ASS AT HOME! I don’t want to pay $20 for a movie ticket and popcorn just so I can experience what a crying baby sounds like in surround sound. And plus, your crying baby is making it hard to hear what those teenage girls are gossiping about!

29. I hate radio stations that play the same 10 songs over, and over, and over, and over! I swear, if I hear one more Katy Perry song I am going to jump in front of a bus!

30. I hate MTV. Once upon a time, I loved it. They played videos, they aired interesting, socially-conscious programming that tackled tough topics like AIDS, poverty, and racism. Hell, the first three seasons of The Real World were awesome. But now, MTV is a steaming pile of cow manure that has given birth to horrific shows like Sixteen and Pregnant, and My Sweet Sixteen. And the VMAs, once the coolest award show of the year, is now a crass piece of garbage.

31. I hate the word “nigger”. Thirty years ago Richard Pryor famously gave up saying the n-word. And I've reached that point in my life as well. I hate that black people have turned an ugly insult into a term of endearment. I can’t think of another group of people who greet each other with a derogatory word. I have gay friends and I have never heard them greet each other by saying “What up my faggot?” 

32. I hate BET. Judging by the number of scantily-clad women they show in all the hip hop videos, I’m guessing the “B” in BET stands for “Bootylicious.” Good old BET, an unwatchable network that inspires young black men to be rappers, and young black women to be video hos.

33. I hate that being born black in America means I was born a suspect. Years ago Chris Rock nailed it when he said: "If you're black, America is like the uncle who paid for you to go to college, but molested you."

34. I hate that our government has spent more time investigating the cheats and abusers in baseball than the cheats and abusers on Wall Street.

35. I hate Toddlers and Tiaras. I think that everybody involved with that show should be arrested for child abuse.

36. I hate that college football and college basketball players aren’t paid. The NCAA, the power conferences (the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Pac 10, etc), and the colleges themselves make billions of dollars from the only acceptable form of free labor in America: student athletes. Actually, there’s no such thing as a “student athlete” because most of these kids aren’t there for an education. That’s why their graduation rates are in the toilet. The NCAA can sell video games with a player’s likeness, and the schools can sell jerseys with the player’s number on it, and yet that athlete won’t get a single penny. And that’s not right!

37. I hate that instead of teaching our kids about safe sex, we teach them abstinence. If you teach your kids to practice abstinence, if you tell them to wait until they're married before they have sex, trust me, they will wait - until you leave them home alone for the weekend.

38. I hate people who say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” That makes no sense whatsoever. That’s like me saying “I didn’t rape that girl, my penis did!”

39. I hate that Republicans have declared war on a woman’s body. These morons believe life begins not at conception, but at 2 am when the bartender yells "LAST CALL!" And not only are these people anti-abortion, they're anti-birth control. This is ridiculous. Birth control prevents abortion!

And you know what's funny?

These same politicians who desperately want control over a woman’s body, are the same losers who couldn’t get laid if their lives depended on it!

40. Only half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity. (Or, as Bill Maher succinctly put it, “half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first!”)

41. The top 1 percent has seen their incomes rise by 281 percent in the last 30 years. During that same time span, the wages of the average American has flatlined.

Thanks to Reaganomics and other GOP shenanigans, the rich is getting richer, while the poor is getting poorer. It’s caviar for the wealthy, cat food for everybody else. While the rich are in their mansions eating a fancy feast, millions of Americans are thisclose to eating from a can of Fancy Feast!

But don't tell that to those broke-ass Republican voters. They don't want the rich to pay more in taxes because they think that one day God will bless them and then they'll be rich!

42. The highest rated news channel in America, Fox “News”, is also the most dishonest news channel in America. Fox "News" is to good journalism what Vin Diesel is to good acting!

43. Millions of Americans still think our president is a Muslim Socialist who wasn't born in the United States.

44. I don’t understand people who spend days waiting in line for concert tickets, movie tickets, or the release of some shiny new gadget. It just seems like a big waste of time. Seriously, if you spent three days waiting in line for an iPad, you’re an iFool!

45. 66 percent of Americans don’t believe in evolution. I believe in evolution, but every time Rush Limbaugh opens his mouth, I start to have doubts.

46. A study by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five family members of The Simpsons, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms. (“D’oh!”)

47. I hate that in this country, it’s easier for a sick person to get a gun than it is for a sick person to get health insurance.

48. I hate that marijuana is illegal. C'mon America. Didn't we learn anything from the prohibition of alcohol? Legalize and tax it so that we can open up a new revenue stream, and so that we can stop putting more people in our already overcrowded prisons. Let me be, ahem, blunt with you. Marijuana is your friend. It'll pick you up when you're feeling down. And if you guys are wondering why it took me six years to finish college, it's because I got high, because I got high, because I got hiiiiiigh!

49. In their desperate effort to defeat Barack Obama, the GOP has trotted out more clowns than the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum.

Conservative voters think these people are qualified to be President of the United States? Are you fucking kidding me? I wouldn't trust these people to run a lemonade stand!

And Mitt Romney, the only "sane" one of the bunch, is the least authentic presidential candidate I've ever seen. Conservatives hate him, he flip-flops constantly, he made his fortune by firing people, he's a tax-dodger, he baptized his dead father-in-law, and he belongs to a religion that believes in "magic underwear."

50. And finally, the people in this video scare me to death! These stupid people are going to procreate and one day have a bunch of stupid children (if they haven't already).

People who are this moronic should not be allowed to vote.