When my Republican aunt and uncle once came to visit me when I lived in Berkeley, my uncle was paranoid about driving in the East Bay at all, even though they'd only have to pass by Oakland(the source of his fear, guess why) on the highway, not through it or any of its neighborhoods. He said he was worried about accidentally ending up in "one of THOSE neighborhoods, you know what I mean." And I did, but not for the reason he presumed, which is that I'd been raised in the South, like my aunt, and therefore was okay to be honest about his fear of black people to.

The gist of this is that it's a Republican thing, perhaps. My uncle felt a commonality with Southerners because he presumed he could share his bigotry with them. And one might wonder if this is how the national GOP views the South. Then the South might wonder if it'd like to be thought of as something other than the go-to for political bigotry and its various uses. Or something other than the puppet of wealthy people who think of them as obedient sheep that will salivate whenever race-baiting is involved.

Southern liberals should make noise. But in the South, if you make enough noise from that side to be thought of as more than an amusing freak, you find there are people with fists and guns and the desire for you to shut up. If you think of it, culturally, as comparable to the problems of moderate Muslims being heard over the fundamentalists, the difficulty of being an active liberal in the South becomes clear.

Forgot to mention a minor point: my aunt and uncle live in Santa Cruz. In case someone thinks they were from the South. My aunt was, but a looong time ago. The uncle was born and raised in Chicago.

Here's the new meme: Jewish doctors want to kill your grandma.

We've seen this movie before and I am not interested in the American remake.

In Sixteen Candles, I mean. Whatever else happens with the drunk girl(who I believe was played by the same woman recently playing Ellen Tigh) and Anthony Michael Hall, she does drunkenly go down on him. He lets her. And he looks at the camera and says, "This...is gonna be good."

You can call that what you like, date rape or not. But it does occur. It's whatever else happened that's left ambiguous.

I almost found myself getting nostalgic for Hughes' films. But then watched HEATHERS instead and remembered what the reason was for it.

Because John Hughes films sucked.

Again, I go back to HEATHERS, part of whose purpose was an antidote to the Hughes teen film. Certainly at least till JD shows up after the cow-tipping, the target is totally the Hughes teen film. And believe me, they touch on the issue of date rape. In a way that only makes that in SIXTEEN CANDLES more obvious.(It's a shame Daniel Waters only had one good screenplay in him)

And by the way, I thought the same thing of his films when I was a teen as I do now, and resented being told these things spoke for "my generation." That's certainly what Hughes would have liked to think. They didn't. They were Andy Hardy for the 80s.

Maybe if I'd been as overprivileged as his protagonists I might have cared.

Well, maybe not the public mind. But I had a number of female friends at the time who told me about it being DONE to them, but how they couldn't go to the cops.

So there's that.

It took one page for me to give up.

"The blood of tyrants."

What do people like this man think Obama is? A "tyrant."

So what in heaven's name could he have possibly been trying to say, with that sign and his loaded gun, when it says it's "Time to refresh" said tree?

And a further question: why was he being interviewed by Matthews rather than the Secret Service, then?

Must be great to be a conservative. Threaten the president, carry a gun openly to his event, and get on TV and go home free. Do they get free ice cream too?

That's some "tyrant!"

I really, really hate to mention this but...others who aren't cons have used that quote. Abbie Hoffman in the Chicago 7 trial, for one, the context being that Jefferson was in favor of revolution.

Except of course this guy wants REACTION, not revolution. The context is very different. Also, Hoffman never threatened to kill anyone nor did he encourage others to, while this guy did.

But it needs to be mentioned. Both sides like to use the quote. But only one actually is armed when they say it.

But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This was one of those times.

But Matthews has spent plenty of time demonizing liberals when the political climate favored it.

She's just as responsible as she would be were she a man, and it's insulting to women to say otherwise. Your premise carries within it the idea that women are somehow perpetual juveniles, not capable of fully being responsible.

No, equality means equality.

Of course it doesn't. Alcoholic or no, he did stupid things and he's responsible for them. But he, pathetically, tried to blame it on that.

Well, guess what. The only difference here is that she didn't also add sexism and antisemitism into the mix. Otherwise? She's just as much to blame as he was.

If alcoholism is the crux and the excuse. Now you're left with the sickening thought you just defended, accidentally, Mel Gibson.

Rethink.