Gotta love a quick-draw with a comeback

[serai]

Heeheehee. Found this over at FW, and damn near choked on m'sammich!


First, check out this...geez, I'm not sure which adjective to use - ill-informed? blinkered? moronic? just plain wanky? - whatever...article on how Brokeback Mountain is raping the image of the Marlboro Man.

Go ahead. I'll wait....

...

...


Back now? OK, now take a look at this blogger's brilliant graphic comeback over here.


Now that's wit, in my opinion. All I want to know is why the hell can't I think of things like that?


P.S. Feel free to spread this around. I'm sure a lot of people will find it worthwhile!

Comments

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

y'know what I noticed about that long-winded, semi-intellectual lecture about the evils of BBM? At the end, the guy was pushing his frigging books. 19.95 for an autographed copy. Three copies for 49.95. Frackin' hypocrite, it really pisses me off that they don't mind raking in the money by preying on people's prejudices and fears. Guess it's okay to sell his brand of propaganda. After all, God is on his side.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

And don't you love pompously how he frowns upon the "murderous, bigoted neighbors" who committed the "gruesome hate crime"? I'll bet if anyone pointed out the hypocrisy in that statement, he'd profess to have no idea what they're talking about. He clearly sees it as a difference of kind, not degree.

Asshole.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Asshole

Word. It always amazes me how people who profess to be Christians, whose leadier told them that
Love thy neighbor as thyself" is second only to the first commandment have no problem hating people who dare to live differently than they do. And when you're calling someone evil, that's hate, in my book.

[samena.livejournal.com]

Exactly! This guy says: "[...] the complete and utter acceptance of homosexuality as equivalent in every way to heterosexuality. If and when that day comes, America will have totally abandoned its core biblical principles – as well as the Author of those principles. [...] and this nation – like the traditional cowboy characters corrupted in "Brokeback Mountain" – will have stumbled down a sad, self-destructive and ultimately disastrous road."

I thought that love and equality are good biblical principles? So how can they lead to destruction and disaster? I'm sure God is all FOR love and equality, and he would not agree with the preposterous nonsense this guy is spouting in his name.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Hate is wrong. Hurting others is wrong. Taking advantage of someone weaker, smaller, younger than yourself is wrong. We are here to learn and love each other as best we can, not to control each other or tell each other what's right and wrong. A lot of us have a long way to go to learn how to love and let be. I have a long way to go, because I find it impossible to love people who spout such cruel, hate-mongering things. I don't want to try to understand him, because he's hurting other people with his beliefs and the little bit of power he has. People like him do so much harm. I know he's causing me harm because he makes me angry and resentful, and that hurts me a lot more than it hurts him.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Well, see, that's the thing about Fundamentalists, or at least the kind that get airplay. They really have no interest whatsoever in anything Jesus said. They're all about the Old Testament prophets and Paul. That's why all the hell and brimstone and bloodthirstiness come from. I mean, I know Jesus had a temper and tended to fly off the handle sometimes, but he never said word one about hurting anybody.

And that seems to be all these guys can talk about - either hurting people they don't like, or paranoia about people they don't know or understand for some reason hurting them. (See the War On Christmas for an example of that.) I'm a complete pagan, have a distant but cordial relationship with Jesus, and no interest at all (other than intellectual) in the religion that's perverted his teachings, but honestly? If these people didn't go around trying to tell everyone what to do, I wouldn't give them a second thought! And neither would the vast majority of the rest of the world! But no, they have to feel persecuted or they can't be happy. Brings back memories of the ol' days in the Coliseum, I guess.

I have a very interesting documentary made in the 80's by an Englishman named Anthony Thomas, about the rise of fundamentalism in America. It's an excellent film which raises all sorts of interesting questions. He's not strident or rude at all; he's clearly trying to understand what's going on in the most polite way, but he just can't get with their program.

In this doc, he interviews a youngish preacher in Dallas who was hounded out of his church and pretty much any other church because he kept preaching out of the Gospels, the words of Jesus himself. That meant that he was preaching that people should be tolerant, loving, forgiving, kind. That they should live modestly, not acquire wealth, give charitably in ways that really mean something, spend real effort trying to help people who need it (instead of just throwing money at them). That Christians have a duty to the destitute, the infirm, the lonely, the imprisoned, those who sin. He was terribly frustrated by this incredibly two-faced attitude of so many Christians, who use Jesus as a hood ornament while ignoring practically everything he ever said.

And he made a point of saying that it's a very deliberate thing, this ignoring of their Savior's words. It makes possible the life that people in this country hanker after, and which is so opposed to the life Jesus said people should lead. Wanting money, fame, power, indulgence - every one of those are things Jesus preached against directly. So following his words would strip the fat cats who run those churches of practically everything they've got, and reduce them to being just like everyon else. (You know, when you think about it, Jesus was quite a communist.)

It's disheartening listening to him talk, and yet I felt great admiration for the guy. I don't hold with his religion, but damn, he was being honest. Refusing to play the game so many of these people do, and wanting to be a real Christian, behaving as Jesus said people should. (One of the main reasons I gave up Christianity in my teens was that it eventually became clear just how hard it would be to follow Jesus's words, and I fucking well refuse to be a hypocrite when it comes to shit like that. If I can't live it, I ain't gonna pretend to.)

*sigh* Why can't people just be honest about this stuff?

[samena.livejournal.com]

OK, strong opinions ahead:

Is this guy for real?! What age does this moron think we're living in?? "Another self-destructive product"?? "Twisted and perverse"?? And the way he talks about love, and the absurd comparisons he makes there. Unbe-fucking-lievavble! And the worst thing of all is: he thinks he's totally justified in uttering this ridiculous nonsense.

What he says about Jake Gyllenhaal feeling uncomfortable and homophobic is a filthy, fabricated lie! I've read many interviews in which Jake said he and Heath were very down-to-earth about it all, and proud of the film they made. A homophobe wouldn't want to appear in a movie like this one in the first place. The last two paragraphs of the article are pure discrimination! What an utter bigoted asshole this man is! Shame on him!! [/rant]

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Boy, does he miss the point. If Jack and Ennis could have married each other and lived happily ever after without being afraid of the neighbors, neither would have married a woman they eventually ended up leaving, and so that broader scope of ruined lives he talks about wouldn't have existed.

So that argument is out the window.

*shakes head*

No logic, no sense, no sensibility.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure about that. I don't really hold with the idea that one attraction closes the door to anything else, at least for everybody. Heath has said in interviews that he doesn't think Ennis is gay, that what's going on is not that he loves men, but that he loves this guy. He never thought about a guy like that before, and never did again. It was always just Jack, which to me makes the story more interesting and complex. It's one thing to have a "sexual identity" (a modern notion invented by Freud) and deal with the troubles that can bring, but quite another to wrestle one's whole life with a deep and abiding passion that goes against everything else one is. Clearly Jack has much less trouble with the idea than Ennis does, and so is closer to being gay in the way we think of it, but Ennis is in a different place, I think.

And remember that traumatic sight of the corpse Ennis was forced to look at when he was a kid. He was clearly still freaked out about it years later. I don't know if, even had things been less dangerous, Ennis would happily go off with Jack. I think it would always be difficult and painful for him, and being the kind of guy he was, I doubt he'd ever make peace with his love for Jack, or be truly happy about it.

Man, talk about star-crossed! These two are gonna be ensconced firmly next to Romeo and Juliet for the bitterness of their fate.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I don't think you have to be "gay" to marry where you love. In a society which accepted gays and gay marriage, Ennis would have been less likely to see a lynching, and having a strong attraction to Jack -- one which kept recurring -- he could have contemplated marriage to the person he obviously loved. And I think there would have been less of a feeling of "gotta marry a girl", too. The odds that neither man would have attached himself to a women and hurt her go up if they have a legitimate way to attach themselves to each other without condemnation.

Yeah, some people are going to be unfaithful, regardless -- or are built for angst and would find it where they find it -- but in the same way, there are people who could and would settle happily with their first great love and never look back. The article which I was arguing against thinks that making homosexuality more of a bane and a shame will somehow preserve and save the lives and happiness of the people on the periphery of a homosexual affair, and I think that notion is going at the problem exactly backwards.

[celandine-g.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with Rabidsamfan. The "evil" that destroyed so many lives in BBM would never have happened at all had it not been for the original "evil" of a homophobic society that kept these two men from being with each other.

And as for "logic," people like this writer don't need it, don't want it, and wouldn't recognize it if it landed on them like a ton of bricks. This article is a case in point I suppose.