Mock Mood III...

...SULTANIC SMACK-AROUND!

Oh, goody.
There I was --minding my own business, munching on some Nutter-Butters and sorting through all the [male bovine excretant] that has been thrown against the wall of this here little whine and cheez party during the two-week absence in which I was out there in the real world, working a real job, doing my small, [shinola]-eating share of all the nitty, gritty, real work that has to be done to keep our slowly recessing economy from recessing any faster under the Bush Economic Plan of Making His Friends and the Other People Who Own Him Even Richer While Everyone Else Struggles to Keep Their Heads Above the Ever-rising Poverty Line-- when I came across this little tidbit:

"...everyone who wasn't a Jew was an anti Semite. And I'm not talking about making some jokes on a blog in bad taste..." --Cap'n (Bligh).

In case you're wondering, he's, uh, "not talking about" me. I know this because much of his post --which is rather cumbersomely titled "Mock Mood, the Holocaust denier, wiper outer of Israel, overall a heckofaguy"-- was addressing my "But what about this 'I never heard him deny the Holocaust' question," which was actually a statement I made in the original "Mock Mood."

*ahem* First of all, regarding his "in bad taste" editorialization, let me just say this: "Hello, my name is Killre. Nice to meet you, Cap'n. Please refer yourself to the big word at the top of the page-- the one I'm pointing at right now with my middle finger. Yeah, that one, up there."

Secondly... My, oh, my, how convenient it must be for ol' Cappy that real anti-Semitism exists, so he can falsely fling it around, labeling and libeling anyone who metaphorically turns hard, harsh lighting upon his face in the mirror and illustrates and illuminates the hard, harsh truth that he is not the matinee idol he'd like to think he is, the Uncle Samuel. It is as convenient as real, honest-to-[Intelligent Designer] racism is for Barry Bonds, who can blithely claim that, because he is black, all his critics must be racists-- and need never confront the bald fact that the reason people don't like him is because he is a world-class [sphincter].

A small, modern-day parable, if I may...
Let's say I work in an office... Yes, I realize I'm caustic and abrasive and to say I'm scruffy-looking and rough around the edges of social grace would be kind and, despite my performance on standardized tests, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer and --horror of horrors!-- I don't play golf and, on top of everything else, I probably eat too many Skittles... but bear with me. Yea, bear with me, please, oh, please, great and all-knowing Cap'n, spare me a few moments of the precious time you spend hacking away at that keyboard, trying to drown out all the other voices...

Let's say I work in an office. Let's say I have a co-worker named Dan. Let's say Dan is mostly an okay guy --or would be, outside the office-- but he's a pain in the [donkey] to work with. Let's say I don't like the way he does his job. Let's say I think he's sloppy and cavalier and condescending and I generally don't like the way he operates. Let's say I am very openly critical of Dan.

Well, guess what: If Dan is Jewish, my criticisms of him doesn't make me an anti-Semite-- it just makes me a disgruntled co-worker. Perhaps more important: my criticisms are not therefore made automatically, completely invalid.

Likewise --in the real world, now-- I am not automatically anti-Semitic or unpatriotic if I am critical of Israel, or of U.S. foreign policy --past or present-- regarding Israel and/or its neighbors.

In the original "Mock Mood," I stated that I had never actually heard Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Ahh... My Dean of Jihad) outright deny the Holocaust. Cap'n responded with the following quotes, attributed to Mock-mood:

"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred..."

"...the myth of the genocide of the Jews..."

Fair enough. But then I never claimed he didn't say it.
My main point was too many people seized upon the denial and knee-jerk reacted to it and stopped listening altogether to anything else Ahmadinejad had to say. For instance:

"If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel?"

If you have burned the Jews. Like Cap'n said, "...everyone who wasn't a Jew was an anti Semite." Ahmadinejad correctly points out that, in the case of the Holocaust, it was white Protestant Christians --not Muslims-- who "burned the Jews."

Of course Cap'n, that wry little beau, poo-pooed the very idea of giving the Jews a new home, sixty year ago, on any of our land:

"...the humor of displacing the lost tribes of Native Americans for the Lost Tribe of Abraham is a real knee slapper."

Have you been to the American West? Not the Left Coast, mind you, but the real West? There's a whole hell of a lot of empty land out there not doing anything. There was even more of it, doing even less, sixty years ago. Granted, there are reasons why nobody wants it, but no-one would have had to have been pushed aside. Not even Native Americans (as if we cared about that anyway, sixty years ago).

Besides --and more importantly-- I don't hear anybody belly-laughing about the Palestinian situation. Viewed objectively, is displacing millions of them really a better solution? Because that's what we did. (I say "we," as in, "the Western Powers --in particular, Great Britain and the United States." Cap'n prefers to call it, "UN 242," because it's much more official-sounding than, "the Western Powers-- particularly Great Britain and the United States.")

Ahmadinejad asks the same question:

"...if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for [it]?"

Cap'n would have us believe the displacement of the Palestinians is perfectly justified, because the Jews really, really, really wanted that land-- like, a whole bunch, and for, like, a really long time:

"...the Jews have been trying to get back into Israel..."

(Actually, the Jews have been trying to get back into Palestine.)

"...the Jews have been trying to get back into Israel ever since they got kicked out by the Romans in 70 AD. Yeah, kind of a long time ago, but stick with me here."

No, I won't stick with you. 70 A.D. was a long, long, long time ago. Too long, in fact. One has to draw a line somewhere.

Don't get me wrong: I understand that the Jews want Palestine, and why. It is, after all, their Holy Land, and throughout some six millennia (or more), it has been the only kingdom/nation-state they've ever had. I get that. And I'm not in favor of taking it away from them now, as Ahmadinejad and tens upon tens upon tens of millions of others in the Muslim world would like to do. It behooves us, however, to understand that the Muslim desire to push the Jews out of Israel/Palestine is every bit as strong (stronger, perhaps) and, frankly, every bit as valid as is the Judeo-Christian desire to not let that happen.

It also behooves us to recognize that we --the United States-- are not always and have not always been the matinee idols we'd like to think we are.

Sincerely,
Lecher Christian.

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In a tangentially related matter, the United States Congress-ups have finally shifted the weight of their fat, lazy, milquetoast [Posterities] and started thinking about maybe standing up and talking about thinking about considering the possibility of maybe doing something, sort of. They have been talking about thinking about considering the possibility of symbolically wagging their collective index finger and intoning a (sort of) heartfelt, "Shame, shame, shame," to a precursor of the current Turkish government for that precursor's genocidal acts, committed against ethnic Armenians, over ninety years ago. (Whew! That's a long time in committee.)

When his handlers dragged George W. Bush away from his game of Risk and explained to him (in one-syllable words) the strategic importance of our alliance with Turkey (the country, sir, not the bird) and how much passage of the Armenian Resolution would [pee] them off, it was enough to make The Smirking Marionette kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

My two cents (which is only worth one cent in Canada)...

It's no-body's business but the Turks.

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P.S.... Bud "Is Tan? ...Bull!" Selig must go.