More than a dozen members of the Westboro Baptist Church showed up Friday afternoon outside a Rick Santorum campaign event here.
The picketers, who said they had come not to protest or support Santorum but rather to deliver their message, stood on the street outside the Great Overland Station, where the former Pennsylvania senator addressed a crowd of more than 200 people.
That may be true but let's face it, vermin are always attracted to the smell of shit.
Besides how much distance is there REALLY between the batshit crazy ideas of Rick Santorum and the batshit crazy idea of the Westboro Church crowd? I dare say that much at all.
i've been aware of fred phelps and his brood for a long time, but this is literally the first time i cannot tell if the dude in your pic is with them or parody protesting them! the "god hates the world" is so over the top -to me- that it ranks with "god hates corduroy skirts!" "god hates flags!"
ReplyDeleteis that young man with them or not?
and if the fred "god hates fags" clan peaks your curiousity, well, please watch this:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-most-hated-family-in-america/
"The Most Hated Family in America [2007]" by the very excellent BBC’s Louis Theroux.
wow, it appears louis has made a follow up with them!
ReplyDeletei have yet to see it, but imdb reveals the title: Louis Theroux: The Most Hated Family in America in Crisis (2011)
AND it seems this one is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticxD0GfewA
for part one, but just search: Louis Theroux: The Most Hated Family in America in Crisis (2011)
if you've made it thru the 2006/2007 first take of them w/louis you may also just google the second half. i'm about to watch it!
It is unfair to associate Santorum with the Westboro Church group.
ReplyDeleteThose hate mongers will show up at Obama campaign events too. That sort of guilt by association is something I'd expect from Hannity.
Nah, to me - it's not such a stretch to see the similarities in extremism touted by both Santorum and Westboro Baptists - it's differing levels of extremism - but essentially the same premise - forcing their extremism on American in the name of God and Jesus!
DeleteErasing the Constitutional protections upholding the Separation of Church and State is the ultimate goal - so Dominionism and Biblical Law rules!
I do agree this is akin to the hate espoused by Hannity/Fox/Palin, et al, though.
and by-the-by, if you -or any good-hearted human- can watch these without feeling a combo of nausea and deep interest, well then you have either a stronger stomach, or a more heavily callused heart than i have so far earned.
ReplyDeletebut even a toughened heart can be a curious one, or pump blood through a more curious mind!
so, i decided to re-watch the first one before jumping into the second -it's been a few years since i watched #1, and i just now learned from google that #2 was even made last year....
but if anyone reading this doubts that odd, self-contained religious leanings can lead humans to do evil -occasionally whilst sincerely believing they are doing good!- well, just watch these documentaries capturing the lives of the "westboro baptist church/ aka family of fred phelps" in action.
"game change" was brilliant! but it was a "contemporary-historical fiction/docu-drama" or whatever we can call dramatized stories of the very recent past.
what louis theroux has given us is a pair of genuine documentaries. ones which never sought to vilify or glorify these extreme human subjects, but rather to humanize them. they may have grown up with a very odd and hateful religious doctrine surrounding them -and they mostly seem to respect and accept all of those ideas- but some of them show great signs of instinctual kindness, then click over into "fred-text" versions of their indoctrination....
odd, maybe creepy, maybe frightening, but THIS is a part of american right now, it behooves us to learn more about it.....
They are one and the same. I hope they follow him everywhere (hint, hint).
ReplyDeletecome on...your phrase about vermin, related to a military funeral, doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteRead carefully, the vermin following shit refers to Westboro freaks following Santorum - and could not be more accurate certainly does "work" with the context of this post perfectly.
DeleteMore Santorum craziness: he wants to ban Teleprompters. He really does want to take us back to the Middles Ages.
ReplyDeleteIs he trying to put Sarah Palin out of business and cause FUX to not provide her with the only means they have to get a complete word salad sentence out of her with their completely scripted
Delete(by them) Q&A "interviews"? It's doubtful that she can refer to her blackberry or rely solely on the ear
piece to pull off the fake interviews
she does now!
The HBO movie “Game Change” may not be the whole story, but it is a true story about Sarah Palin and the power of ineptitude in American politics.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-game-change-20120311,0,5234811.story
Afghans mourn shooting victims
Anonymous 5:08. How is it unfair to associate one hate monger, Santorum, from another hate monger, Fred Phelps? Do they not both seek to control your life? Do not both of them tell you how to live your life, and find fault with it if it doesn't meet with the high exacting standards and rules that they expect you to live by (not them, they have a special exemption from god to do things like have an abortion (the Santorums) or litter the world with babies born out of wed-lock (the Palins)?
ReplyDeleteYES!!!! To the point - thanks for this comment!
DeleteFormer McCain Strategist Steve Schmidt On Game Change: Notion Of Palin Being President Frightens Me
ReplyDelete“I think it was very accurate,” Schmidt acknowledged. “For all of us in the campaign, it really rang true. It gave you a little bit of PTSD at times. It did for me.But, look, I think it’s a story of when cynicism and idealism collide. When you have to do things necessary to win, to try to get in office to do the great things you want to do for the country and I think it showed a process of vetting that was debilitated by secrecy, that was compartmentalized, that failed, that led to a result that was reckless for the country and I think when you look back at that race, you see this person who is just so phenomenally talented at so many levels, an ability to connect but also someone who had a lot of flaws as someone running, you know, to be in the national command authority who clearly wasn’t prepared.”
“When a result happens that puts someone who is not prepared to be president on the ticket, that’s a bad result,” Schmidt added. “I think the notion of Sarah Palin being President of the United States is something that frightens me, frankly. And I played a part in that. And played a part in that because we were fueled by ambition to win. And I think that ambition to win, to victory is what drives people in politics. It is a chess match in a lot of ways, but that result in how we got there is something that troubles me a lot.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-mccain-strategist-steve-schmidt-on-game-change-notion-of-palin-being-president-frightens-me/
So, was Santorum's adoring eldest daughter Elizabeth there as well? There is something creepy about the way she looks at her dad... just sayin'... but does she think he's that brilliant?
ReplyDeleteWait a minute people...you are all missing the funniest part. Lil Ricky spoke to a WHOLE 200 people....200 people only Baaawwwaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnother good point - quite the crowd - think he can take the Presidency with that amazing level of supporters?
DeleteI'm not really sure what the inbred sister humps were doing at a Santorum rally. Usually the presence of the WBC miscreants is to cause maximum insult. The whole goddamned Phelps klan are nothing more than shakedown artists. Their sole intent is to be so odious and offensive that they provoke someone into responding badly, which is then captured on film. Next comes the WBC lawsuit which will invariably be settled out of court. So, there appearance at a Santorum rally is rather out of character for them.
ReplyDeleteThese assholes tried this routine at my church in Santa Fe. We were coached for weeks as to how to respond - or rather, how to NOT respond to them. Word must have gotten out, because in the end, they sent only one or two people who were gone within an hour. I never even got to see them.
I do not condone violence, but I am surprised that some enraged family member of a deceased soldier hasn't blown a gasket seeing these shitheads protest at a military funeral of a fallen family member and driven a car into a crowd of WBC protestors.
How much do you want to bet that when Fred Phelps dies, THOUSANDS will show up at his funeral, not to protest, but to cheer? If he ever has a headstone, it will be regularly festooned with shit, and at least a couple of the turds will be mine.
I'd go to celebrate his death, with protesters, too! I liked the story of the reaction one town had when they came to protest a fallen veteran - townspeople made a protective ring around the mourners so the protesters were pushed as far back from the ceremony as possible! The Westboro Baptist protestors apparently had some car trouble - and NO ONE in town would help them get their hatemobile fixed! I can't remember where it was - but that was a very creative way to deal with them! They are so hateful that when Phelps their leader dies - the members will probably picket and protest his funeral ceremony too!
DeleteThere was a gay bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan that actually used the occasion of a Fred Phelps speech to raise money for a gay themed cause - from the belly of the beast, as it were.
DeletePhelps had decided to protest the /aut/ BAR, and the owners decided to make Phelps’ hate mongering raise money for “the Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project (WRAP), a local gay advocacy group and community center, for every minute that Phelps picketed the bar. In this way, [bar owner Keith] Orr explained, the longer Phelps stayed to spew hate, the more money he would raise for WRAP. [Orr and his partner] kicked off the drive by pledging $1 per minute.”
Phelps’ shithead posse numbered but four adults and two children. I don’t remember if Fred was there or not. With each passing minute a cheer would go up in the /aut/ BAR. More spewed hatred, more cheers. The cheers grew and grew before the inbred Phelps buffoons figured out what was happening. Upon realizing they had been unknowingly raising money for those whom the hate above all others, they beat a hasty retreat.
Local gay communities should do this everywhere these miscreants show up. As /aut/ BAR owner Keith Orr explained, “I didn’t want to give Phelps what he wanted. [Meaning a counter-demonstration.] But just ignoring him seemed wrong.”
Bravo.
Sorry, forgot the link:
Deletehttp://www.autbar.com/fred_phelps_press_release.htm
I agree that the kid in the left foreground is engaging in satire.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification, Gryph. I thought they were out there to welcome their new pastor.
ReplyDeleteThey are. President Rickie Rich would be Pastor in Chief before he would ever be Commander-in-Chief. And Westboro would love it.
Delete