I’m Sooooo Confused

Okay. We all know I’m not too bright. Indeed, Dumb As A Brick springs to mind. And we’re not talking a high quality class o’ brick here, Buckeroo. Not one of those snotty red ones with pressed corners. No. We’re talking cinder block. The kind that have big empty spaces in the forehead.

That being the case, I get confused. A lot. With extra stupidity and a large side of dim. In fact, you may consider what follows today as an official SOS, Mayday, and Oh-Heck-&-Halitosis we just took a low yield nuke up the left nostril. Which is all to say that I’ve say that I’ve listed some things below which really, Really, REALLY confuse me and I’m hoping someone out there—some wise and informative soul—will explain ‘em to me.

So, put your thinking caps on, assume a learned expression, and please send me your answers ASAP. Or, failing ASAP, then just generally SAP. People say that a lot about me. He’s the biggest SAP I know, they say. Nice to know that I’m outstanding in my field…

Anyway, here goes:


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In the news recently there have been a number of disturbing stories about environmental/animal rights terrorism. There have been multiple fire-bombings of the offices and even the homes of individuals whom activists have judged unworthy of life. A neuroscientist at UCLA who uses animals in his work had his car blown up (it was a matter of only luck that he wasn’t in it at time). Last year, another scientist AND her family were attacked in her own home by SIX masked animal rights activists. Meanwhile, the FBI has officially listed Daniel Andreas on its most wanted list. Andreas allegedly firebombed the offices of companies and organizations that he felt were anti-Earthish.

But, the people responsible for these things are just a few extremists, right? Just a few crackpots? The bad apples which spoil the barrel of quite legitimate animal rights activists? Responsible organizations, like, say, People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) would never, ever, dream of doing such things, would they?

Right?

Well, then, how to explain another story, also in the news, but somehow not receiving a lot of attention? Everyone knows about how the Obama family got a new puppy. Less know is that Vice President Biden’s family also got a dog. They bought a little German Shepard pup from a legitimate and humane breeder by the name of Linda Brown.

Now, remember, the People Who Know Best have been telling us for years that if we’re going to buy a dog, we should only buy from a Breeder. They aren’t like those nasty “puppy mills” that used to supply pet stores. So we should all give kudos to the Bidens and we should all be happy, right?

Wrong. PETA decided that the Bidens should have gotten their new dog from a shelter. Much more humane, you see. BUT, Biden is vice president of the United States. He has all these Secret Service agents around him. Hard to get through a wall of Secret Service agents. They have guns. They shoot back.

So who does PETA go after instead?

You got it, Linda Brown.

She was PERSONALLY singled out for abuse in the organization’s advertising campaigns. Her business was repeated inspected by state authorities (apparently acting on PETA’s allegations that she was running a puppy mill) and, while she was ultimately cleared, she was out some $4000 in legal fees.

She is quoted in the press as saying that she will never, ever again sell a dog to anyone famous.

Now, all of this leads one to uncomfortable places. If there is a difference between the animal rights extremists and PETA, then why has PETA attempted to ruin the life of an innocent person? How far is it removed from the firebombs of the fanatics? How close is it to the masked thugs who invaded the home of a woman and beat up her husband?

And most of all, how do we bring ourselves to believe that this organization is benign? How do we convince ourselves that it doesn’t have, at its heart, cruelty rather than kindness? That its activists are not motivated by a love of the earth, by rather overt sadism? Who delight in making other humans suffer in the name of a good cause?


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Next thing that confuses me…

There has been quite a bit of furor of late regarding the Obama recovery plan. I don’t know whether it’s a good one or not (I can’t balance my check-book, much less understand how to keep the national economy running) but it has been interesting watching the debate itself. Most (but not all) liberals and progressives are for the plan. Most (but not all) conservatives and libertarians are against it.

But, most interesting of all has been the “Tea Parties.” Certain groups of conservatives and libertarians are presenting their opposition to government intervention into the economy as resistance to tyranny, and so they link their protests to the Boston Tea Party of the Revolution. As you’ve doubtlessly heard, they state that their goal is to “teabag the White House”—this, of course, to the great benefit of late night talk show hosts and The Daily Show. Always nice to be handed a punch line on, as it were, a silver platter.

Okay, but what is far more curious is that “the Tea Party” begins to look more and more like a political organization, perhaps even an alternative to the GOP. That’s fine…political activism is an American right . . . but where things get hinky is in the Party’s relationship with Fox News, which has (more or less) openly sponsored the movement. Indeed, despite repeated (and heated) corporate statements to the contrary, there is some speculation that Fox basically created the Tea Party in all its baggy wonder.

Oh, and Fox News itself has become famous (some would say infamous) for its ultra-nationalist, ultra-Americanist, super-patriotic commentators, weeping over the fate of the nation, and launching into barely coherent rants about crypto-communism in the Oval Office.

But . . . Fox News is owned by Fox Broadcasting…which is owned by Fox Entertainment…which is owned by News Corporation . . . which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Now, Murdoch is (at least according to the Wikipedia entry I just scammed) now an American citizen. But, he was born Australia and spent of his career there and then in Britain where he was associated with right-wing political organizations. He only moved his company HQ to the United States in 2004.

So, here we have the Tea Party, an organization presenting itself as the defender of American values and American liberty, that is (in effect) controlled and created by an Australian multi-billionaire who has spent most of his life anywhere but America.

And nobody seems to mind.

Which confuses me.

I mean, suppose that someone from some other country, say, China or Egypt, were to move to the US, buy a TV station, and began preaching Liberalism…

Can you imagine…even begin to imagine!…the pure hell sh*tstorm that would follow?


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Last thing that confuses me…two apparently unrelated stories.

First story: like most everyone else with access to YouTube I was stunned by the performance of Susan Boyle, the Scot who appeared rumpled and plain on a TV talent show and then proceeded to blow-away the place. Like most everyone else, I found her story inspiring and her talent amazing. And, maybe, the thing I loved most about the whole affair was the sight of the program’s smirking judges getting plastered to the wall.

However, here’s the kinky thing. Since then, I’ve started to pick up jeers in the news and on the ‘net. A number of self-described critics are saying that Boyle is some kind of fraud. Those Who Know Best have begun to say that she was not as poor, as lonely, as disadvantaged as we thought… merely ALMOST as poor, lonely and disadvantaged. Therefore, they say, we should reject her. They say she is a fake Horatio Alger story, manufactured for the sake of ratings, and that we should not consider her “real.”

How profound and insightful of them, I’m sure.

Second story: In the news today I see that two men in Michigan have been arrested for (prepare yourself) burning a six year old child with a blow torch. The report, as I have seen it, is that the two men were brothers. One of them was the child’s father. For reasons not revealed, they allegedly took the torch to the child … for amusement? As a punishment? For simple cruelty’s sake? We do not know.

The men are in jail. The child is in protective custody.

And here’s what confuses me.

Given the second story . . . given its horror … given what it may say about us as a society, why does the first story exist at all?

That is, considering the enormity of the problems facing us, all the places where we might expend our energy to protect the innocent, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry…

Why is it that Those Who Know Best, secure in their corporate offices and tenured positions, have chosen instead to slander a powerless woman . . . whose only crime has been to pursue the personal expression and personal success which, or so they tell us, are legitimate goals for us all?


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So those are some of the things that confuse me.

For all I know, they confuse you, too. But I’m hoping they don’t. I’m hoping that you’ve got some great answers. And you won’t mind sharing ‘em. Soon. By return email. Right now.

Cause, otherwise, I might just start suspecting that maybe . . . just maybe …a whole lot of people who are telling me that they’re morally superior and devoted to all things good and wonderful and American … are, in fact . . .

As full of sh*t as a Xmas Turkey.

And nobody wants me to think that.

Do they?

Onward and upward.



~Michael Jay Tucker














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