Glenn Beck poisoned my breakfast.
So occassionally a few members of my family (since my family is huge and most of them cant stand eachother) get together on sunday mornings and eat a meal at my grammas house.
This sunday breakfast included:
me and my kids, most of you probably have a pretty good idea of me
my parents, the LIMBAUGHS! - yes, of the rush clan.. and theyre mormons
gramma - think rabbit from winnie the pooh, tiny old nervous and watches nothing but fox news and pat robertson. but boy is she cute and sweet. seriously, my grammas awesome. i will punch you if you say otherwise.
my oldest sister, well call her courtney and her husband jason - courtney is a hair stylists for dallas's super super rich. think big big texas hair, oil money housewives. last i hear her cuts were up to $175 a pop. jason is career airforce, thai, wierd, pretty and keeps his balls tucked away safely in courtneys purse. courtney is beyond description. but she spent jr high through high school in mental institutions and drug rehabs and totally got cheated out of an education, is bisexual, bipolar, racist, loud, completely off the wall, and also generous beyond belief.
breakfast is nice. after were all done courtney starts to tell us the fucked up new thing she just heard from glenn beck. something about how obama's best friend forever is a "communistic, socialistic, black power revolutionary" and he wrote the stimulus bill and now all the stimulus money is going to islamic fundamentalists groups and theyre driving around the country in buses presumably brainwashing people. its true too, she saw the buses in dallas. obama's objective is to destroy capitalism and hes giving all his "communistic, socialistic" friends the power to write legislation (apparently). and theyre all affliated with reverend wright.
at this point i politely leave the table and do the dishes. it does me no good to argue with these people. they all think this way. and since im the youngest of 7 im not in fact a 26 year old grow up but still an 8 year old little girl and noone needs my 2 cents. so im cleaning the kitchen, cringing and taking it all in. i make my kids go away and play somewhere so they dont get poisoned by this nonsense.
my parents are of course agreeing with her and telling her more bizarriaties they got from god knows where, im sure a mixture of their religion and limbaughness and their love of fox news.
then the conversation delved into the apocalypse. im not sure if everyone is aware of this or not, but mormons believe that the mayans were the people of the book of mormon and that they were actually disciples of christ. sooo... now the conversation turns to the mayan calendar and 2012 and my parents think that according the mayan calendar it is actually not 2009 but probably really more like 2011 and that the apocalypse is only a year away. eminent! obama and his "communistic, socialistic, black power" henchmen are really some of the horseman.
so... i know my family is completely bat shit insane. and i know they are certainly leaning more to the extreme side. but, im sharing this as a personal illustration of how dangerous media sponsored lies manipulation and misinformation can be. this is actually what some people are hearing when they hear glenn beck and the lot make inflammatory baseless statements. and then go out and share it with their families and friends because they are scared. and how scary the world must be when you don't think a television network that plays to your conservative mindset would ever lie to you or mislead you. they believe glenn beck is a journalist and bound to principles of journalistic integrity. and is only warning them of things to come so they can do what they can to make a difference. not lying to their eager minds for profit and ratings.
my heart hurts.
13 Comments
gwiz665The only cure for ignorance is knowledge. If stupidity is not challenged, it will remain so forever, engendering stupidity to anything it touches. You cut out cancer.
I'm all out of metaphors.
blankfistCapital letters at the beginning of sentences and proper punctuation are your friends.
peggedbea^ it may be your friend.
but it is my sworn enemy.
JiggaJonsonThe worst part about this peggedbea is that even after 2012 and after 2013 you'll be hearing idiotic apocalypse myths. One thing I find religions have in common is this idea that the end of the world is imminent. So fill up the collection plate now! You may not have a chance in 2012!!!
MycroftHomlzSounds as bad as my future mother in law... The conversation started by talking about Michael Vick.
Dad-in-law(DIL): "I think Vick has paid his debt to society. I think it is disgusting what he did, but you shouldn't prevent a man from working if he has already paid the price for his crime."
me:"I had to think about a bit, but I agree. He has really toed the line. I think he is a horrible human for doing that to dogs, but I agree."
Mother-in-Law:"Really. You Really think that?"
DIL:"Yeah I do. I am conflicted about it, but he did his time."
MIL:"What I dont understand is how a man like that has to do two years in prison for killing dogs, and doctors who preform abortions get to walk the street."
Fiance:"Abortion are not illegal."
Me:"Wow, this is great Kung Pao chicken."
Talk about throwing a fucking molotov on the conversation. That woman hates me.
enochsounds like your sister and my mom should get together and go bowling.
and for those of you who think its just so easy to point out the inconsistencies and out-right bullshit to our loved ones...we cant,because in their eyes we are 8 yrs old.
ah...and fuck capitalization and complete sentences,those are for pussies.
DraxSometimes I think it's like 2000 came and went.. and we didn't need to run to any bomb shelters, the internet didn't explode and kill anyone, and jesus didn't show up in a Ferrari and ask everyone on his buddy list to hop in for a joy ride to some place better. And now there's this nice handful of people who are disappointing that everything still caries on like normal (more or less), so now they're like...
>: \
"Goddamit.. the world's gonna end if I have to do it myself!!"
...After all, better that then be wrong about something I guess.
How's the saying go? Do prophecies imitate life, or does life imitate prophecies? ..something like that.
rottenseedpeggedpee, this kind of conversation is normal with conservatives. And not necessarily backwoods bumpkins, but our friends and our family...people you and I would like to think have a spark of thought and skepticism elusively peeking out from the crevices of their minds.
You are very right not to argue with them. While the stuff that is fed to them, many times, lacks fact, they will stand by it. And since it's damn near impossible to disprove that something is or that something exists, you're already starting to fight a losing battle when you decide to enter the conversation with a dissenting point of view. Not to mention that they heard it on "that gosh darn gee golly color TV", which makes anything YOU say irrelevant.
You were right to avoid conflict. Just imagine if you had to deal with it at work too
griefer_queaferi love the description of your brother in law!!
inflatablevaginaBea, while not the same conversation I had some similar conversations with my dad. He isn't religious but he is Republican. To a fault. He votes straight Republican because he thinks they represent his old, poor, and disabled vet status.. which of course they don't. So imagine my surprise when the subject of evolution comes up one day. My dad, non-religious, believes in creationism. WTF? His reply to why evolution couldn't be possible, "There's too many gaps in the theory."
To try to speak to him on terrorism, global warming or another current events is futile. I have not learned to change the subject. For some reason the only thing that makes sense to me in the moment is to argue with him with FACTS.
This of course makes no difference.
Moral is: How did we turn out so awesome???
peggedbea^ luckily most of my family stands convinced of evolution.
only the mormons desent, but their idea of creation is sooooooo adorable ill just let slide.
im also amazed at how they completely support the roos fascination with dinosaurs and buy him scientific books on dinosaurs and even went to the tar pits with us when we were in LA. i wonder if it even clicks in them that all these things are apparently "lying" to my son.... ? or maybe they know that i would in fact stop being 8 and have their heads for filling my kid with that bullshit.
peggedbeamaybe, but my sister would never stoop to a white trash game like bowling....
maybe they should just go to some classy joint drink too much wine and make everyone look at and touch her husbands great ass.....
my sister is fucking awesome!
>> ^enoch:
sounds like your sister and my mom should get together and go bowling.
MrFiskYeah, my mom is a Glenn Beck groupie, too. It is infuriating to get his books for Christmas, let me tell you. I read one, though, to better understand, and I discovered that Beck is a anti-logical, mediocre comedian. His book was laid out like a kid's book; the only thing missing was pop-ups. Seriously, we're talking about 3-4 paragraphs a page, lots of pictures, jokes and graphs, and a universal aversion to science and/or logic.
So, here's what I did to counteract some of his batshit, paranoid, psychological political scalawagging. I turned my mom onto a recent Larry Flynt article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-sense-2009_b_264706.html
I'm funny like that.
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