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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Sunday, November 17, 2002
Offward, Christian Soldiers One of the major local news stories for the past few weeks has been the murder of Eddie 'Gwen' Araujo, a pre-op transsexual teenager. Whether because of media self-censorship or prosecutors withholding information, the details of Gwen's murder are unclear, but it seems that she was tortured, strangled, and killed by three men, now under arrest, after having sex with one or more of them who later discovered she was a physical male. The murder has caused unusual attention for a local High School's production of 'The Laramie Project', a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard. And the publicity brought out the followers of prominent nut job and publicity hound Fred Phelps.
In a world of spin and PR there's something almost refreshing about the unabashed nuttiness of the Phelps clan. There were 8 hate picketers at the play, and their slogans pretty clearly weren't market tested on focus groups, unless the testing consisted of checking to see what made people angriest. Along with the classic 'God hates fags", there were such winners as 'God hates America', 'God sent the sniper', 'No tears for queers', and the crowd pleasing 'Thank God for 9/11'.
The openness does have certain consequences. The local newspaper described the picketers as 'Phelps' son, daughter, daughter-in-law and five grandchildren'. In other words, after years of publicity and millions of web page views, Phelps turned out a grand total of 0 non-family supporters in an urban region of several million.
Phelps was planning to continue with pickets at several 'queer-friendly pseudo churches'. |
