Last week also offered an unusually large crop of really bad posts that, I believe, deserve a thread of their own. These are just bizarrely poor, people. Maybe we should take a vote on which one is the worst.
I had no interest in watching Noah until I read the linked review. Now I think I really need to see it.
I didn’t know people still wrote such viciously anti-Semitic posts. And I don’t care what made the self-hating Jew of the author become so vile. This is unacceptable irrespective of reasons.
Atheists who claim they are morally superior to religious people are idiots. Just like the religious people who claim that they are morally superior to atheists.
A completely ridiculous and disgusting reaction to an even more ridiculous and disgusting reaction to the death of Fred Phelps. Just look at the picture. It almost made me barf.
It is sad that nobody is telling this obviously disturbed person to take his or her obsessive and very unhealthy posts on the TV show Friends to a therapist.
I shouldn’t go for the really low-hanging fruit but here is something recent from Juan Cole: “So Obama denied the premises of Romney’s perspective. Russia, he said, is a narrow Eastern European issue, not a globe-straddling one. In this regard Obama is certainly correct. Romney and other hawks appear to want to resurrect the Cold War.” Oh, Lordy. Or if “Romney” is Putin’s nickname, then I apologize.
“One way of escaping the current American nightmare and of redefining the American Dream is to get rid of the bosses—such that workers can become their own bosses.” The quoted person is a college professor, in case you are wondering.
A completely ridiculous and offensive attempt to excuse the murder of a young woman. I literally couldn’t fall asleep for hours after I made the mistake of reading this garbage article.
From Shakesville: “Every person in this video is thin. There isn’t a fat person to be seen. This is because images of thin people are supposed to be aspirational for fat people, and because the weight loss industry is explicitly eliminationist: The stated objective is to get rid of fat people.” I’m starting to think she is writing all this to make fun of the idiots who giver her money.
And from the same blog, a really shocking post that seems, at first, to be about a horrifying case where a child rapist receives no punishment for his crime because he’s rich but that, at the end, is revealed to be all about using this tragic story to excuse another child abuser.
What’s worse, another blogger decided that this was a cute trend to join and also used the same raped child to excuse a child abuser. What’s wrong with people?
Feel free to share things that appalled and shocked you recently.
Clarissa's Blog 
Why are you so angry? Also, you seem to have willfully misunderstood each and every one of the pieces which you have linked to.
You seem an interesting person with interesting ideas, I would suggest that this is not a productive use of your time. I would love to see more commentary on WHY you are making the judgements above rather than just a stream of hateful hyperbole.
LikeLike
Has nobody ever informed you that offering unsolicited suggestions to strangers is something that only unhinged freaks do? Do you not realize how completely bizarre and out of place your comment sounds?
LikeLike
Yes indeed, why do individuals have the capacity for anger? It’s not right. Why not just accept everything and be critical of nothing? This proposition is not for babies. Why would a baby need a proposition? It’s for the as yet unborn.
But it seems you are here now.
LikeLike
This low tolerance for unpleasantness is creeping into professional areas as well. I recently subitted an article that analyzes two novels. One of the novels promotes an ideology I support while the other one is very anti-women and defends Franco’s ideology. It’s a brilliant novel but ideologically unacceptable to me.
The reviewers praised my analysis of the novel with which I agreed but expressed a vague discomfort with my analysis of the other novel. Apparently, literary criticism should not have any “negativity” that might hurt the tender psyches of some people.
LikeLike
Give it some time and people will get sick of their own vacuity. The pendulum will swing the other way, perhaps with unprecedented violence.
LikeLike
As I said, before if the entity that rapes babies would not fare well in the prison system, it is every responsible citizen’s duty to farewell him should they come across him.
LikeLike
I think the weight watchers video is more offensive not for leaving out the fat people but because the women represented don’t seem to do anything except exist and this is deemed incredible. This is why, when women try to achieve something that may be more significant than just existing, people pat them on the head and say, “But look! You existed! Here’s a boost to your self-esteem: You are incredible!”
On Facebook, I was recently invited to some kind of group called “The whole woman” and there was a subtitle to it as well, something relating to exuberance and self-esteem. Consequently, I made a site called “the regressive woman: mutiliation and despair.” Nowadays, though, because people have lost touch with both irony and cynicism, which are modes of transcending extreme superficiality, I will be suspected to be a mad and mutilating woman. But it is clear why these readings come about. It’s because by just existing, we women deserve to be deemed marvellous and amazing survivors. We could even “survive” our first kiss, so long as it was not on an aircraft destined to plummet into the ocean never to be seen again.
Why work to create something tough or difficult to understand at first glance when you can just latch onto some motif of womanly wholeness and spriteliness out of thin air?
I survived some deeply troubling interactions with humans, and I know I can drop a few pounds as anything is possible at all, after interactions with humans.
LikeLike
I think you just helped me identify why all those motivational pictures on facebook and tumblr irk me so much. A lot of them contain a tremendous amount of praise for basically not stopping to breathe.
Maybe this is just me being stubborn, but if someone would praise me for existing (as opposed to doing and acomplishing), I would feel mocked. I mean continuing to exist is something billions of people manage to do with more or less great ease and praising me for doing it too suggests to me that this person thinks of me as an complete imbecile who is incapable of not swallowing his own tongue. It would make me feel pathetic and angry.
LikeLike
“if someone would praise me for existing (as opposed to doing and acomplishing), I would feel mocked”
– Same here. 🙂
This pathetic, saccharine, cat-obsessed fool that Facebook posters seem to worship is the most obnoxious person in the world.
LikeLike
“… cat-obsessed ..”
I love cats 😮
LikeLike
There is a distinct lack of seriousness in anything nowadays. People can’t seem to take anything in, in a deep way. Facebook is probably largely to blame for reducing attention spans. We all like happy memes and we dislike cruelty to animals and small children. We want the world to be a better place and not to be horrible. Horribleness is to be eschewed, but positive feelings should be liked and spread to show you care. It’s a kind of madness, but also in its way soothing, not to have to think to hard.
LikeLike
Did you see the comment from the weirdo today who tried chiding me for not being like those Facebook fools and not posting smiley trivialities? These people don’t consider it sufficient to blab on their Facebook pages. They need to colonize everybody else’s space, too. Because if something is “not nice” they begin to wither and die.
LikeLike
I didn’t see it, but perhaps I would like to, if only to obtain some relief from the mindless chatter through your sardonic wisdom.
LikeLike
This one: https://clarissasblog.com/2014/04/01/tuesday-bad-link-encyclopedia/#comment-138970
LikeLike
ta.
LikeLike
If one didn’t have concern trolls, who spoke randomly from the pits of their bellies, where would we be by now? Probably all seated on MH370. That’s where.
LikeLike
Yeah, Clarissa, I saw him. I liked the part where is said that he was doing it for your own good!
LikeLike
Strangely, these weirdos are always very dedicated to the noble goal of improving my life.
LikeLike
Otherwise they’d have to improve theirs.
LikeLike
I should also explain something about my parapraphs above. The contain some degree of irony and cynicism — so what I am saying may not be what you have been trained to think I am saying.
LikeLike
So Iike I was saying in the paragraphs above, person downvoting my comment, because you do not have a voice or a capacity to articulate anything, I jus’ wannid to say, you are the best person in the world! You are the one who knows. You know what you know, and that is a fact ma’am. You got it goin’ ya know? I know it too! We all know you jus’ know your stuff down pat. Good for you!!!
LikeLike
I agree that the logic tying the child rapist to the women who left her kids in the car is strained beyond the breaking point.
I am a little more inclined to give the homeless woman the benefit of a doubt because that’s what being at the bottom in the US often involves – no good choices, just awful ones that leave you on the losing end no matter what you choose. And she was at least trying to get a job, it’s not like she left them to go drinking and carousing.
What should she have done?
And the children are at least as likely to suffer harm in CPS as they were in the car.
LikeLike
I agree. The woman who left her children in the car absolutely needed intervention. But in her case, I think psychological counseling, home visits, a safe place to live, and a job might have resolved the issues. I don’t think 8 years in prison solves much of anything.
In general, I don’t much believe in prison though. I don’t really believe in the concept of punishment. I just don’t think punishment accomplishes anything. But I do think some people–for whatever reason– pose a threat to the social welfare and need to be kept away from the general population. In general, I think our prison system is deeply problematic and actually _causes_ crime more often than it prevents crime. So I think prison should be reserved only for very few cases.
The man who raped his three year old daughter represents such a case to me. If he has so little empathy and so little sense of boundaries, that he would do that to his own (very young) daughter, then he poses a severe threat to children. So he needs to be shut away where he can’t commit his crime again or harm anyone else. He certainly should never ever allowed to see his daughter again (unless at 18, SHE wants to see her father…)
LikeLike
There was that horrible case when a man left an adopted child in the car and the child died. I have no idea how it’s possible to forget a kid in a car and just leave for 8 hours.
LikeLike
The homeless woman’s case should be discussed but really not in this context. I was absolutely shocked by how these two cases were just causally brought together to make some stupid point.
LikeLike
Contemporary leftists are stupid. Amazingly to say, the basic thing they are lacking is a political analysis. That lack is pretty consistent. What they do have together is a moral analysis …of sorts. It’s not a good one since it is divorced from how politics works in real life.
LikeLike
“these weirdos are always very dedicated to the noble goal of improving my life”
And yet you insist on making it hard for them…..
LikeLike
I almost sent a link to that strange Friends post. That’s gotta be one of the weirder things I’ve ever seen – she really doesn’t seem to understand the difference between characters in sitcoms and real life….
LikeLike
Any chance you’d elaborate on “completely ridiculous and disgusting”? I’m deeply curious as to what’s barfworthy about the capacity to show compassion for other people in circumstances when one’s natural instincts might lead us more toward hostility and unkindness.
LikeLike
There is nothing wrong about experiencing negative emotions or expressing them. This saccharine, mellifluous, fake and hypocritical pretense at compassion is disgusting.
LikeLike
Thanks, but I’m still not feeling very enlightened. I didn’t claim that there is something wrong about experiencing negative emotions or expressing them, so I’m not sure how that’s central to the argument.
I’d certainly agree that it can be good to express negative emotions – repressing them is undoubtedly unhealthy, and acting like they aren’t there can be incompatible with honest dialogue. But it’s not a good strategy to always instantly verbalise every negative feeling you ever experience, either. Sometimes, something might make you angry or afraid or disgusted, and your natural inclination might be to lash out in some way, or to get defensive and spiteful – in a way that you’d regret later and wish you’d been more controlled. Sometimes making the conscious decision to put aside your instinctive negative reaction and bring some positivity to the situation instead can be healthy and make the world nicer for everyone. Not always, but sometimes, and it’s often commendable when it occurs.
As for your criticism of the compassion on display, I just don’t accept at all that those people with the “sorry for your loss” banner were offering a “pretense” at compassion. I don’t think it was fake or hypocritical. I think they were addressing a family who’d recently suffered the loss of someone close to them, someone who’d been a central part of their lives for decades, and expressed sympathy for that loss. I don’t know why they’d bother doing that to make some pretense; I think they were just showing what kindness looks like.
LikeLike
Phelps bullied and victimized many people over the years. To express sorrow for his death is incredibly hurtful to everybody who was damaged by his activities. Their suffering is negated for the sake of “positivity” and “niceness.”
Sometimes, we have to take sides, even if the sacred cow of positivity has to be sacrificed for two seconds.
The “loss” of Phelps means he won’t bully any more people. Are we really sorry about that?
LikeLike
Also, it seems you didn’t do your research. You fell for the public line that WBC actually believes/d the things they say/do. They might but it’s irrelevant to the larger truth that they are basically a lawsuit shakedown machine. Their goal was to provoke people into attacking them so they could sue them. This is fairly widely known (google WBC and income or lawsuit) They probably also recorded attacks against themselves for fundraising (and old evangelist trick).
Not feeling any sadness that a grifter who tried to make many people miserable for his personal enrichment died is a sign of mental health.
LikeLike
Yeah, there’s a pretty strong chance the WBC aren’t really sincere in much of what they do, or at least it’s not as central to their identity as it might seem on the surface. Provoking people to anger (i.e. making them experience and express negative emotions in a way that doesn’t help anyone) is definitely a core part of how they operate.
But for all that, I still don’t think any positivity or goodness is added by the gloating over Fred Phelps’s death that some people seem inclined to. He might not deserve much mourning, but it’s still a shame that any conscious human life could have gone so long, so full of hate and bitterness, and never really found any redemption or resolution, even at the end.
LikeLike
“it’s still a shame that any conscious human life could have gone so long, so full of hate and bitterness, and never really found any redemption or resolution, even at the end.”
zzzzzz… snrklehgh!!! huh? sorry I dozed off a little amid the droning ladies garden club self righteousness.
Mmmkay…. I’ll be polite for a change and play along.
My sincere belief; “Yes, it’s sad that an undoubtedly smart person decided to devote their life to a cheap scam and preying like a ghoul on other peoples’ mourning and sullying the name of sincere christians. It’s very, very good that he’s no longer doing so.”
Would you have been sad when Stalin died? Kim Il Sung? Pol Pot? It’s the same principle, just a different scale.
LikeLike
It’s precisely this kind of saccharine niceness that I dislike. It’s also the reason I avoid Facebook: everybody there becomes like this and champions positivity above all.
LikeLike
Maybe I should rename this into an anti-positivity blog.
LikeLike
musteryou: “Contemporary leftists are stupid. Amazingly to say, the basic thing they are lacking is a political analysis. That lack is pretty consistent. What they do have together is a moral analysis …of sorts. It’s not a good one since it is divorced from how politics works in real life.”
This is basically brilliant (the lack of sound political analysis is confusing and hard to see through the confusion but then blindingly obvious once it’s pointed out, thank you about a million times [no hyperbole]).
I would also say they don’t have a moral analysis either, they (especially feminists but other leftists too) have elaborate and byzantine codes of etiquette. I’m constantly amazed at just how much they seem obsessed with rules of conduct at imaginary garden parties.
LikeLike
“I would also say they don’t have a moral analysis either, they (especially feminists but other leftists too) have elaborate and byzantine codes of etiquette.”
– Exactly! See my response to writerJames on this thread. I’m choking on all this politeness and endless attempts to ensure that no feelings are hurt.
LikeLike
Yes, Cliff — you can’t gain much benefit from liaising with contemporary feminists, because supposing you do not evince a feminine moral superiority in their eyes, they will pull you down faster than your worst enemy. You have to maintain an extreme femininity, whilst also proclaiming your victimhood. Otherewise they start taking stabs at you. It’s better and healthier to sit around with those who will state plainly that they disagree with you than to have one of these slippery monsters cuddle up and then attack.
LikeLike
“You have to maintain an extreme femininity, whilst also proclaiming your victimhood. Otherewise they start taking stabs at you.”
– Makes sense. If you dare not to be a victim, we’ll make one of you. And then feel very sorry for you.
LikeLike
They want you to be a highly sensitive Joan of Arc, burned with some steak, because they want to use the emotional blackmail of feminine martyrdom to change the political structure.
LikeLike
If I had the slightest hope this could change political structure, Id gladly fake martyrdom. But I know it will only reinforce the structure.
LikeLike
In fact if we consider who the martyrdom is really supposed to serve, it is those women who have not been able to break free from the patriarchal paradigm enough not to have lived fairly miserable lives. It justifies their existence for them. That is why they demand the sacrifice and get extremely vindictive if it isn’t forthcoming.
LikeLike
“The aim is surely to actually engage in conversation … your own narrative here which bears little resemblance to reality … I’m sincerely sorry for you if this is honestly the world that you live in.”
Good Lord, Clarissa, you must have the patience of a saint to endure such a stream of self-congratulatory, self-righteous delusional drivel. I am only amazed that this person failed to request that you “check your privilege.” These are the people who want to save the world. It is like a campaign for social betterment and moral improvement on crack cocaine and methamphetamines.
LikeLike
I honestly think this mode of addressing others belongs to the early days of the Internet, especially the late nineties. The condescending, “You will obey my will as there is only One True Way” has outlived its rhetorical effectiveness. Thankfully.
LikeLike
“I am only amazed that this person failed to request that you “check your privilege.” ”
– Me, too! That must have been an oversight. 🙂
LikeLike
Seems to me like the whole point of that “Sorry for your loss” is to make the people holding it feel they’re better people than the Phelps clan. Which, y’know, isn’t that high a hurdle.
LikeLike
// I didn’t know people still wrote such viciously anti-Semitic posts.
A post on the same subject by Israeli ultra-Left blogger:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1396615738
LikeLike