Fred Phelps doesn't deserve your grave dancing: let's forgive and forget his hate
He might not have understood this most Christian of values. He might have even been gay. But we doth protest too much
Patrick Strudwick theguardian.com, Friday 21 March 2014
How to respond to the death of a monster? Dance? Rejoice? Sing (again) Ding Dong the Witch is Dead?
For Fred Phelps, the founder and patriarch of the Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for picketing funerals with banners subtly proclaiming GOD HATES FAGS, it is inevitable that one other idea has already been widely suggested: picket his funeral.
How deliciously ironic, you might think. How apt. How Old Testament. But an eye for an eye doesn’t just make us all blind, it makes us stupid, inhumane, sinking to his subterranean level.
It is also distinctly impractical – the remaining members of the church have previously stated that Westboro does not hold funerals for their own, excommunicated or not. Of course. Funerals give comfort, catharsis, dignity – a holy trinity of human compassion, antithetical to hate-mongers.
No, the most befitting response to Phelps’s death lies in his life. We know about the funeral picketing. It wasn’t only the soldiers he shamed, deeming them puppets of a “fag-enabling” country. It was anyone with even the faintest association with gay people. And with any prominent LGBT people – the Westboro members were attention-seeking trolls long before the internet even existed. Phelps first gained international coverage for his family cult by picketing Matthew Shepard’s funeral.
This was the gay student – 21 years old – tortured, murdered and strung up on a fence in a Wyoming field in 1998. The police officer who found him later said that the only parts of his face not covered in blood were two streaks where tears had washed it away. Yet Phelps held in his right hand a placard reading MATT IN HELL, complete with a photograph of Shepard with a pink triangle on his forehead – the sign used by the Nazis in concentration camps. In his left hand stood a banner: NO SPECIAL LAW FOR FAGS.
Fred Phelps did not recognize hate crimes as anything special because he was a walking hate criminal.
I spoke to Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of her son’s death and brought up the protest.
“Why would people go through their lives doing that?” she asked rhetorically, before offering a possible explanation.
“The depth of his hate speaks volumes. People who express that much hatred are unhappy with their own sexuality.”
I have always thought Fred Phelps was gay. Where else would such an inflamed, all-pervading obsession arise but from continually suppressed homoerotic fantasies? We hate what we can’t have. Freud identifies the defense mechanism “reaction formation” to denote those who so despise a part of their inner world that they outwardly campaign against it. Phelps is its utmost illustration.
Judy Shepard also said that the demonstration played a part in her commitment to championing gay rights. She has dedicated her life since to speaking in schools around America against hate. That is how we can react to the death of Fred Phelps. To use it as fuel. To see him not as a monster, far removed, but as a symptom of an ill against which we must always remain vigilant.
How, then, do we react to his family? In the last few months they have seemingly managed without him, having ostracized him for reasons still not fully explained. Some sources suggest a power struggle at the top of the church. It does not matter. Louis Theroux’s documentary dubbed the Phelpses, with not a small amount of accuracy, the “Most Hated Family in America”.
I wish, however, we could view them differently: as victims. Three years ago I tracked down Nathan Phelps, Fred’s estranged son, who ran away from the church at the strike of midnight on his 18th birthday. He told me about the violence and abuse Fred inflicted.
"I would see him beat my brothers and sisters and kick them as they lay on the floor. He would grab me, pull me toward him and then put his knee up so it would go in my stomach. He would do that over and over and over. … Then there was the mattock. It’s a two-headed farming tool, with a hole on one side and an axe head on the other. He used that to beat us. He also had leather boxing gloves with a bar running through. He would put those on to hit me round the face and body. He would strangle me. … As he beat us he would tell us that we were evil and deserved to die."
Nathan said, too, that their mother Margie, on one occasion, was trying to get away from Fred as he was beating her, started to fall down the stairs, reached out and ripped her arm out of its socket. Fred did not let her go to the hospital, Nathan said. Her body never properly healed.
The Phelps family is the freakishly hateful result of domestic abuse. To see them through any other prism is to dispense with our own humanity – however tempting. Theirs is a story far beyond the model of Stockholm syndrome. And so I suggest we stop hating them and fight them with something else, something they might possibly understand: a very Christian forgiveness. With love’s antithesis being indifference, forgiveness – that highest of virtues – is surely the real antidote to hate.
Oscar Wilde, always a jester about the solemnest of subjects, advised, “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” But I do not wish to annoy those who consider annoyance an art form. I wish that they would recover, get well, heal, lay to rest their leader’s twisted paranoia.
My ultimate wish, however, is that there would be, for a few revelatory moments, an afterlife, one in which Fred Phelps sees that there is no god, no hell, no damnation for we abominations, nor for anyone – not even him. And that he would see this void mirroring a life squandered on the pettiest of hates, sees that all along it was he who was the deviant, he who embodied humanity’s sickness. I wish too he would see Judy Shepherd, dignified, carrying on, and all the mothers of all those whose funerals he desecrated, unbowed and empathetic. And, finally, that he could see us, the opponents of hate, the inevitable victors in these bloody culture wars, looking back at him with pity, with forgiveness, with the humanity he never mustered, flags billowing, wedding bands glistening, emboldened, undeterred, marching, laughing, and with the grace forged on the ashes of bigotry, smiling in the face of perversity.
Great article, Byrnzie, and I tend to agree too. It's also the attitude most gay people I know seem to be adopting. Just a pathetic, hate-filled man more deserving of pity than opprobrium. What he deserves is not to have his death celebrated, but to simply be forgotten.
Louis Theroux just posted his thoughts on his Facebook page this morning - possibly the longest status update I've ever seen and so long I've got to split it in two here. He's got a different take on what fuelled Phelps' hate and bigotry, but it's an interesting read all the same.
Louis Theroux 2 hours ago "Pastor Fred Phelps is gone, called to glory if you believe the teachings of his hate-spewing ministry, the Westboro Baptist Church. To me it seems more likely that his remains are mouldering away somewhere, obeying the laws of physics and biology. Either way, it is a moment to pause and reflect on the man and his legacy.
I had form with “Gramps”, as his family and followers liked to call him. I made two documentaries about his church for the BBC: The Most Hated Family In America in 2006 and America’s Most Hated Family in Crisis in 2010. In all, I suppose I spent about a month with the members of the WBC, trying to figure out what induces them to dedicate their every spare moment – when they aren’t keeping down respectable jobs as lawyers, correctional officers, salesmen in their hometown of Topeka – to flying around the country standing as close as they are legally allowed to funeral-goers, and waving hate-filled placards with slogans like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”, “Fags Eat Poop”, and of course “God Hates Fags”.. They became notorious for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the WBC teachings, the soldiers were being punished for fighting for a nation doomed in the eyes of God for its tolerance of homosexuality.
Their main scriptural inspiration is the passage in Leviticus that mandates the death penalty for gay sex (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, it is an abomination”) though for some reason the adjacent verses that proscribe astrology in similar terms never seem to excite the WBC quite so much. Not to mention that Jesus Christ himself – something of an authority on Christian affairs, one would think - had literally nothing to say on the subject of gay sex or shouting at funerals and plenty to say about kindness and humility.
The WBC has tended to be a family affair, overwhelmingly made up of Gramps’ lineal descendants and their spouses. They live in suburban Topeka, in a collection of houses with their gardens all connected, which they call “Zion”. Gramps was the prime move behind the practices of the church. He founded it at a time and place when the idea of abominating sodomites was mainstream in American Christian circles. In some respects, it was the times that changed, becoming more tolerant of homosexuality, leaving the WBC behind in their dogged adherence to old-style fire-and-brimstone bible thumping. But it’s also the case homosexuality seems to have been an idee fixe with Pastor Phelps: it struck a nerve.
According to legend, the WBC inaugurated their anti-gay pickets when a local Topeka park – Gage Park, as I recall – became a cruising ground. The Phelps decided to make signs and demonstrate against the practice. This was in the eighties. The WBC doctrine evolved into a belief that the whole of America was fallen and damned in God’s eyes, as was anyone who fought under the American flag – or indeed who wasn’t a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. We are all either “fags” or “fag enablers”: you, me, Desmond Tutu, Princess Di, Donald Rumsfeld, Billy Graham – though possibly not Robert Mugabe, Gramps had a soft spot for him. An eternity in Hell is the fate of anyone who doesn’t get baptised into the WBC and spend their free time traveling the country waving hate-filled placards, at political events, at colleges, and places associated – even in the most tortuous way – with tolerance of homosexuality.
While I was with them, they had a regular local picket of a hardware store that sold Swedish vacuum cleaners. The Swedish government had imprisoned a pastor for homophobic preaching, and for the WBC that made the store a legitimate target for a ritualized biblical smackdown. For the newcomer, these pickets are bizarre not simply because of the venom of the signs, but also because of how they clash with the banality of the family interaction. For the Phelps, it’s another day at the office – there’s a water-cooler ambience of relaxed chit-chat. Meanwhile, everyone, even the youngest children, are carrying placards saying “Thank God for 9/11”, “Your Pastor is a Whore”, and “Fag Sweden”.
There is no question that over the years their caravan of religious bigotry has made life miserable for thousands of people, many of them vulnerable mourners hoping to pay tribute to recently departed loved ones. It boggles the mind to remember that among their proposed picketing targets was the funeral of some young Amish children who had been shot by a deranged gunman. In the tortured logic of the WBC, those Amish kids’ died because their parents weren’t out holding their own pickets denouncing homosexuality. In the end, the WBC only called off the event after they were promised airtime on a local radio station, effectively holding the community to ransom.
But the WBC also made life miserable for themselves and inflicted a distorted and poisonous view of the world on the youngest members of their own family, holding over their heads the threat that any deviation or failure of commitment (not going to a picket; socializing with outsiders) would result in a lifetime of banishment. Ex-members – of which there are quite a few – can have no contact with the church. They are cut loose and cast adrift.
Given their eagerness to court controversy, and their willingness to offend and make themselves into cartoon, it’s not surprising that there are misapprehensions about the WBC. Unlike hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the WBC never claim to hate gay people themselves, only that God does. I’m pretty sure there was at least one gay man in the congregation of the WBC. Even on the pickets, the Phelps could be civil. The hostility they expressed was a role that they enacted, dictated by a doctrine they had imbibed from their church leader and paterfamilias. You can find videos on YouTube of counter-demonstrators having cordial chats with Phelps picketers. I don’t doubt if you knocked on the door of the second generation Phelps and said you had some questions about Jesus, they’d let you in and maybe offer you a glass of water. Pastor Phelps was a different story: a hater by instinct.
I’m proud to say he took against me from the moment we met. I asked him how many children he had. He disliked this question. The interview was cut short. After that, we continued filming but I hardly saw Pastor Phelps. I had the feeling he was hiding from me. We eventually crossed paths again, though, in church one Sunday at the end of his sermon, preached on the subject of America’s coming tribulations. “You’re going to eat your babies!” he bellowed. One-on-one, Gramps still had the remnants of a folksy, plainspoken charm, but underneath was a bitter contempt for humanity in general and me specifically. I asked him how he could possibly know that the WBC members were the only people in the world bound for heaven. “I can’t talk to you, you’re just too dumb,” he said. It seemed I was a hell-bound sinner. Well, at least I was in good company."
[more...]
Post edited by wolfamongwolves on
93: Slane
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
"I’ve heard people speculate that Phelps had repressed gay leanings or that perhaps he was sexually assaulted when young leading to a lasting animosity to homosexuality. Personally I doubt it. I think there may be small clue to his mindset in his having attended West Point academy: I suspect he hated it there and had a lasting dislike of the military, which partly explains the picketing of funerals. But there may be no simple causal precursor to his behaviour. He was just an angry bigoted man who thrived on conflict. There are credible reports from his disaffected offspring (four of his 13 children left the church) that he was physically abusive to his wife Marge; that he was violent to his children and had an intermittent problem with pills. A lawyer, he won some civil rights cases and received an award from the NAACP. But Phelps liked going against the grain. Later on, he realized he could outrage even more people and create more turbulence by using a handful of Old Testament verses to justify the weird mission of waving homophobic placards at every opportunity.
The members of the WBC like being attacked for their activities. They thrive on the presence of counter-demonstrators: the patriotic bikers who would sometimes turn up and rev their engines to drown out the Phelps songs at military funerals and also the students who turned out in droves to sing and register their dissent when the WBC held pickets near their campus. For the WBC, this meant they were getting a reaction and they would quote bible verses to the effect that being hated by the world was a sign of godliness.
In some ways I think the counter-demonstrators feed into the church’s world view. The WBC and their enemies exist in a feedback loop, with the church taking strength from the idea that they are having an impact. The church enjoys the image of itself as an indefatigable and godly remnant, hopelessly outnumbered, facing the hoards of a hostile world and valiantly sticking to their message in the face of violence and abuse. Indifference was a harder reaction for them to deal with, although they faced plenty of that as well without being much deterred.
It has been reported that Pastor Phelps had been “excommunicated” from his own church before he died (probably this doesn’t mean much more than being prevented from preaching; I doubt he was out wandering the streets). In 2010 I heard a similar rumour. Then, the word was that Gramps was panicking about a multi-million dollar lawsuit brought against the church by the family of a dead soldier whose funeral they had picketed. (The WBC ended up winning the case on appeal.) The rest of the church viewed Gramps’ failure of nerve as evidence of lack of faith in God’s plan and they put him on the naughty pew for a time-out.
The truth is, despite being its founder and main preacher, Gramps has been a marginal figure within the WBC for some years. When I made my documentaries the dominant force was Fred’s daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, a gifted organizer who could sling religious obloquy while holding four separate placards and wearing a bandana with a message of religious hate – in a different context it would have been impressive. In fact, underneath her programming, and despite all the pain she inflicted in the name of her religion, Shirley is basically a kind person.
But my sense is that Shirley has been pushed aside by an axis of WBC men, among them her brothers, Tim and Jonathan, and also the WBC convert Steve Drain, with Steve possibly in the driving seat. This is speculation on my part; but it struck me when I spent time among the WBC members that Steve was the most likely to take over the church. Steve had originally come to the WBC to make a documentary (called “Hatemongers”) and ended up moving in, bringing his wife and two daughters from Florida. It was striking that he too called Pastor Phelps “Gramps”. He had disconnected from his own parents and found a surrogate family. Steve is an intelligent man but arrogant. In personality, he is closer to Pastor Phelps than any of Gramps’ natural children. The ones I met all have the slight air of being survivors of an abusive upbringing.
Where the WBC goes from here is anybody’s guess. I haven’t been following the doings of the WBC as closely in recent years. Evidently they have been attracting some new members from outside the family. A few years ago there was news that a US marine and his family had been baptized into the church. Just as striking was the report that a British man had moved to Topeka from England, joined the church and married Jael Phelps. A few weeks ago I found a photo on Twitter of Jael at a picket holding a tiny baby. In its abundant procreation, the family has no shortage of future recruits.
With Gramps’ death I don’t expect huge changes. The church has always operated according to the dynamics of a large family rather than a cult. Cults don’t typically excommunicate their “charismatic leaders”. Families do: they put their aging parents in a granny annex and take away the keys to the car. Maybe, like other families, the bereavement will bring them together. In another context, that might be a comforting thought. In this case one rather wishes that they the second generation Phelps would continue to feud and fragment – and perhaps in the process moderate their way of thinking and get in touch with some of the apostate children they no longer see or communicate with.
The more chilling thought is a backward looking one, of how one man and his hateful cast of mind caused so much pain and managed to poison the well of his family for generations – in such a way that that his legacy of causing upset and provoking conflict is likely to continue. His offspring and their offspring have been raised to believe that abuse is kindness and that Christian charity dictates that one should hurl invective at vulnerable people. The natural bonds of family have been braided into this twisted thinking so that children who love their parents and siblings can’t separate those feelings from their sense of obligation to the church and its creed. And when they leave they also take with them the nagging guilt and fear that haven’t just lost a family, they have lost their only chance of salvation. All of this can be traced back to one man.
Gramps is dead, inanimate matter now. Of that I have no doubt. But if there were a hell, he would be there."
Post edited by wolfamongwolves on
93: Slane
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
I think forgiving and forgetting is incredibly overrated when it comes to evil people. I see absolutely nothing wrong with never forgetting or forgiving that nasty old fuck - better to remember and hold a grudge ahput the shit he did so that we know what to watch out for, especially since he died, but all of his fucking crazy ass followers didn't, and we don't even know if they are as disciplined or restrained as he was. These folks could have a qhole ahit load of damage up their sleeves. Someone is going to take Phelp's place folks, and that someone might be really full of beans and out to prove something. I don't believe in turning a blind eye on people like this at all! I believe in fighting in fighting against them. Forgive and forget evil people who publicly preach against human rights and promote hate?? Not a chance! Where did this vague concept of "protesting wrongs just fuels the cause of what you're protesting" mindset spring from anyway?? To me that is just a fancy way to promote apathy.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Well said, PJ...my husband said the same thing the other night when we were discussing him, about someone else there and probably frothing to take his place.
He, and his actions, aren't worthy of forgiveness (or forgetting). Doesn't mean my feelings for him and his "church" will be a stone of anger to lug on my back - I wouldn't allow it - but forgiveness? Nope.
Great article, Byrnzie, and I tend to agree too. It's also the attitude most gay people I know seem to be adopting. Just a pathetic, hate-filled man more deserving of pity than opprobrium. What he deserves is not to have his death celebrated, but to simply be forgotten.
Couldn't agree more. He thrived on seeking attention desperately. The greatest kick in the face would be a quiet and forgetful fate. (Don't have time to read the link, I will later).
Continuing to be cynical and filled with hate towards a guy who thrived on negative attention? Exactly what he's looking for, in life and I wouldn't doubt, in death.
Energy is everywhere. And energy concentrated with negativity toward never being forgotten is still negative energy that still serves him and still has an effect on those who are filled with said energy… in a completely unhealthy way. Let it go.
93: Slane
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
Fred Phelps, Sr.'s son, Nate Phelps, initially announced to the world this past weekend that his estranged father was near death. Now following the death of his father, Nate, who is also estranged from the Westboro Baptist Church and now serves on the board of Recovering From Religion, has released a statement.
See what Nate Phelps has to say:
Fred Phelps is now the past. The present and the future are for the living. Unfortunately, Fred’s ideas have not died with him, but live on, not just among the members of Westboro Baptist Church, but among the many communities and small minds that refuse to recognize the equality and humanity of our brothers and sisters on this small planet we share. I will mourn his passing, not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been. I deeply mourn the grief and pain felt by my family members denied their right to visit him in his final days. They deserved the right to finally have closure to decades of rejection, and that was stolen from them.
Even more, I mourn the ongoing injustices against the LGBT community, the unfortunate target of his 23 year campaign of hate. His life impacted many outside the walls of the WBC compound, uniting us across all spectrums of orientation and belief as we realized our strength lies in our commonalities, and not our differences. How many times have communities risen up together in a united wall against the harassment of my family? Differences have been set aside for that cause, tremendous and loving joint efforts mobilized within hours… and because of that, I ask this of everyone — let his death mean something. Let every mention of his name and of his church be a constant reminder of the tremendous good we are all capable of doing in our communities.
The lessons of my father were not unique to him, nor will this be the last we hear of his words, which are echoed from pulpits as close as other churches in Topeka, Kansas, where WBC headquarters remain, and as far away as Uganda. Let’s end the support of hateful and divisive teachings describing the LGBT community as “less than”, “sinful”, or “abnormal.” Embrace the LGBT community as our equals, our true brothers and sisters, by promoting equal rights for everyone, without exception. My father was a man of action, and I implore us all to embrace that small portion of his faulty legacy by doing the same.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Fred Phelps, Sr.'s son, Nate Phelps, initially announced to the world this past weekend that his estranged father was near death. Now following the death of his father, Nate, who is also estranged from the Westboro Baptist Church and now serves on the board of Recovering From Religion, has released a statement.
See what Nate Phelps has to say:
Fred Phelps is now the past. The present and the future are for the living. Unfortunately, Fred’s ideas have not died with him, but live on, not just among the members of Westboro Baptist Church, but among the many communities and small minds that refuse to recognize the equality and humanity of our brothers and sisters on this small planet we share. I will mourn his passing, not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been. I deeply mourn the grief and pain felt by my family members denied their right to visit him in his final days. They deserved the right to finally have closure to decades of rejection, and that was stolen from them.
Even more, I mourn the ongoing injustices against the LGBT community, the unfortunate target of his 23 year campaign of hate. His life impacted many outside the walls of the WBC compound, uniting us across all spectrums of orientation and belief as we realized our strength lies in our commonalities, and not our differences. How many times have communities risen up together in a united wall against the harassment of my family? Differences have been set aside for that cause, tremendous and loving joint efforts mobilized within hours… and because of that, I ask this of everyone — let his death mean something. Let every mention of his name and of his church be a constant reminder of the tremendous good we are all capable of doing in our communities.
The lessons of my father were not unique to him, nor will this be the last we hear of his words, which are echoed from pulpits as close as other churches in Topeka, Kansas, where WBC headquarters remain, and as far away as Uganda. Let’s end the support of hateful and divisive teachings describing the LGBT community as “less than”, “sinful”, or “abnormal.” Embrace the LGBT community as our equals, our true brothers and sisters, by promoting equal rights for everyone, without exception. My father was a man of action, and I implore us all to embrace that small portion of his faulty legacy by doing the same.
93: Slane
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
Sounds like the message they were trying to send with that sign was kind of lost on the Westboro folks, lol.
... Totally lost. ... Enough time has passed since the old buzzard croaked and took the express Down Elevator to have an obese Hitler sit on his face for eternity... let's get back to making the funny signs about them secretly wanting man-ass.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!
the current head has been quoted as saying they dont "worship" the dead. Now I know according to the book he rose again but didnt Jesus die? SO it can be argued that any "christian" worships the dead.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Sounds like the message they were trying to send with that sign was kind of lost on the Westboro folks, lol.
Nah, they knew exactly what the sign meant and what it was trying to accomplish.
Don't give them too much credit. These people don't strike me as the swiftest lot by any stretch of the imagination.
Quite to the contrary, they are far from stupid.
What makes you say that? I just assume that any smart or clever moves they ever made were simply recommended by their lawyer.
Almost all of the adults are college educated. They are very clever and know exactly what they are doing and what they want to accomplish. Go ahead and publicly slander them...the ones that are trained in law will sue you for everything you are worth.
Bright eyed kid: "Wow Typo Man, you're the best!"
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
Sounds like the message they were trying to send with that sign was kind of lost on the Westboro folks, lol.
Nah, they knew exactly what the sign meant and what it was trying to accomplish.
Don't give them too much credit. These people don't strike me as the swiftest lot by any stretch of the imagination.
Quite to the contrary, they are far from stupid.
The close-minded lot we typically see holding their signs hardly portray a cutting edge think tank. Granted, there are some individuals within the conglomeration that might score well on a test designed to measure their intelligence... but when referencing this particular lot as a whole... it's not too far out of line to describe as 'simple'.
Sounds like the message they were trying to send with that sign was kind of lost on the Westboro folks, lol.
Nah, they knew exactly what the sign meant and what it was trying to accomplish.
Don't give them too much credit. These people don't strike me as the swiftest lot by any stretch of the imagination.
Quite to the contrary, they are far from stupid.
What makes you say that? I just assume that any smart or clever moves they ever made were simply recommended by their lawyer.
Almost all of the adults are college educated. They are very clever and know exactly what they are doing and what they want to accomplish. Go ahead and publicly slander them...the ones that are trained in law will sue you for everything you are worth.
Huh? That's not how it works.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Sounds like the message they were trying to send with that sign was kind of lost on the Westboro folks, lol.
Nah, they knew exactly what the sign meant and what it was trying to accomplish.
Don't give them too much credit. These people don't strike me as the swiftest lot by any stretch of the imagination.
Quite to the contrary, they are far from stupid.
What makes you say that? I just assume that any smart or clever moves they ever made were simply recommended by their lawyer.
Almost all of the adults are college educated. They are very clever and know exactly what they are doing and what they want to accomplish. Go ahead and publicly slander them...the ones that are trained in law will sue you for everything you are worth.
"Fags eat feces. That's a fact!" "You've raised your brat for the Devil!" "Shut up!"
These are hardly the words of a sophisticated and enriched people.
In fairness to many of them... the indoctrination they receive as children would be very challenging to overcome.
Regarding college educations: Some of the smartest people I know don't have paper certificates certifying them as intelligent. Some of the dumbest people I know flaunt paper certificates as proof of their intelligence. I am not saying college educations are worthless. I believe colleges are very worthwhile places; but if one can get a college education with multiple degrees and then act like these people... I'd be one to say they never learned much and place them in the 2nd category of the people I described.
Do some of the dumbest people you speak of have law degrees?
Eleven of Fred Phelps' 13 children have law degrees..."They have a very well-respected law firm in Topeka," Sherman says. "People in town said, 'Well, we don't like them, but if we want to win a case, we'll go to them.' "
...The protests are in themselves a source of some income, according to Potok. Over the years the Phelpses have filed lawsuits against communities that try to stop them from demonstrating.
"And as a general matter they have won," he says. "They know their First Amendment rights very well, and they've been very good at defending them."
When they win, they often receive tens of thousands of dollars in court fees. And their winning streak is likely to continue, now that the Supreme Court has decided that Westboro's right to free speech trumps the right of families to bury their loved ones undisturbed.
I'm not sure why "assuming" anything about this family, in which many do, is any justification of anything.
Do some of the dumbest people you speak of have law degrees?
Eleven of Fred Phelps' 13 children have law degrees..."They have a very well-respected law firm in Topeka," Sherman says. "People in town said, 'Well, we don't like them, but if we want to win a case, we'll go to them.' "
...The protests are in themselves a source of some income, according to Potok. Over the years the Phelpses have filed lawsuits against communities that try to stop them from demonstrating.
"And as a general matter they have won," he says. "They know their First Amendment rights very well, and they've been very good at defending them."
When they win, they often receive tens of thousands of dollars in court fees. And their winning streak is likely to continue, now that the Supreme Court has decided that Westboro's right to free speech trumps the right of families to bury their loved ones undisturbed.
I'm not sure why "assuming" anything about this family makes it valid.
Thanks. That's what I was trying to say.
Just because you think they are pieces of shit and absolute scumbags, that doesn't mean they are stupid. The fact that they are cunning and manipulative makes it much worse.
Bright eyed kid: "Wow Typo Man, you're the best!"
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
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should we thank god for dead fred phelps??
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/fred-phelps-westboro-baptist-church-dead-forgive-forget
Fred Phelps doesn't deserve your grave dancing: let's forgive and forget his hate
He might not have understood this most Christian of values. He might have even been gay. But we doth protest too much
Patrick Strudwick
theguardian.com, Friday 21 March 2014
How to respond to the death of a monster? Dance? Rejoice? Sing (again) Ding Dong the Witch is Dead?
For Fred Phelps, the founder and patriarch of the Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for picketing funerals with banners subtly proclaiming GOD HATES FAGS, it is inevitable that one other idea has already been widely suggested: picket his funeral.
How deliciously ironic, you might think. How apt. How Old Testament. But an eye for an eye doesn’t just make us all blind, it makes us stupid, inhumane, sinking to his subterranean level.
It is also distinctly impractical – the remaining members of the church have previously stated that Westboro does not hold funerals for their own, excommunicated or not. Of course. Funerals give comfort, catharsis, dignity – a holy trinity of human compassion, antithetical to hate-mongers.
No, the most befitting response to Phelps’s death lies in his life. We know about the funeral picketing. It wasn’t only the soldiers he shamed, deeming them puppets of a “fag-enabling” country. It was anyone with even the faintest association with gay people. And with any prominent LGBT people – the Westboro members were attention-seeking trolls long before the internet even existed. Phelps first gained international coverage for his family cult by picketing Matthew Shepard’s funeral.
This was the gay student – 21 years old – tortured, murdered and strung up on a fence in a Wyoming field in 1998. The police officer who found him later said that the only parts of his face not covered in blood were two streaks where tears had washed it away. Yet Phelps held in his right hand a placard reading MATT IN HELL, complete with a photograph of Shepard with a pink triangle on his forehead – the sign used by the Nazis in concentration camps. In his left hand stood a banner: NO SPECIAL LAW FOR FAGS.
Fred Phelps did not recognize hate crimes as anything special because he was a walking hate criminal.
I spoke to Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of her son’s death and brought up the protest.
“Why would people go through their lives doing that?” she asked rhetorically, before offering a possible explanation.
“The depth of his hate speaks volumes. People who express that much hatred are unhappy with their own sexuality.”
I have always thought Fred Phelps was gay. Where else would such an inflamed, all-pervading obsession arise but from continually suppressed homoerotic fantasies? We hate what we can’t have. Freud identifies the defense mechanism “reaction formation” to denote those who so despise a part of their inner world that they outwardly campaign against it. Phelps is its utmost illustration.
Judy Shepard also said that the demonstration played a part in her commitment to championing gay rights. She has dedicated her life since to speaking in schools around America against hate. That is how we can react to the death of Fred Phelps. To use it as fuel. To see him not as a monster, far removed, but as a symptom of an ill against which we must always remain vigilant.
How, then, do we react to his family? In the last few months they have seemingly managed without him, having ostracized him for reasons still not fully explained. Some sources suggest a power struggle at the top of the church. It does not matter. Louis Theroux’s documentary dubbed the Phelpses, with not a small amount of accuracy, the “Most Hated Family in America”.
I wish, however, we could view them differently: as victims. Three years ago I tracked down Nathan Phelps, Fred’s estranged son, who ran away from the church at the strike of midnight on his 18th birthday. He told me about the violence and abuse Fred inflicted.
"I would see him beat my brothers and sisters and kick them as they lay on the floor. He would grab me, pull me toward him and then put his knee up so it would go in my stomach. He would do that over and over and over. … Then there was the mattock. It’s a two-headed farming tool, with a hole on one side and an axe head on the other. He used that to beat us. He also had leather boxing gloves with a bar running through. He would put those on to hit me round the face and body. He would strangle me. … As he beat us he would tell us that we were evil and deserved to die."
Nathan said, too, that their mother Margie, on one occasion, was trying to get away from Fred as he was beating her, started to fall down the stairs, reached out and ripped her arm out of its socket. Fred did not let her go to the hospital, Nathan said. Her body never properly healed.
The Phelps family is the freakishly hateful result of domestic abuse. To see them through any other prism is to dispense with our own humanity – however tempting. Theirs is a story far beyond the model of Stockholm syndrome. And so I suggest we stop hating them and fight them with something else, something they might possibly understand: a very Christian forgiveness. With love’s antithesis being indifference, forgiveness – that highest of virtues – is surely the real antidote to hate.
Oscar Wilde, always a jester about the solemnest of subjects, advised, “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” But I do not wish to annoy those who consider annoyance an art form. I wish that they would recover, get well, heal, lay to rest their leader’s twisted paranoia.
My ultimate wish, however, is that there would be, for a few revelatory moments, an afterlife, one in which Fred Phelps sees that there is no god, no hell, no damnation for we abominations, nor for anyone – not even him. And that he would see this void mirroring a life squandered on the pettiest of hates, sees that all along it was he who was the deviant, he who embodied humanity’s sickness. I wish too he would see Judy Shepherd, dignified, carrying on, and all the mothers of all those whose funerals he desecrated, unbowed and empathetic. And, finally, that he could see us, the opponents of hate, the inevitable victors in these bloody culture wars, looking back at him with pity, with forgiveness, with the humanity he never mustered, flags billowing, wedding bands glistening, emboldened, undeterred, marching, laughing, and with the grace forged on the ashes of bigotry, smiling in the face of perversity.
Louis Theroux just posted his thoughts on his Facebook page this morning - possibly the longest status update I've ever seen and so long I've got to split it in two here. He's got a different take on what fuelled Phelps' hate and bigotry, but it's an interesting read all the same.
Louis Theroux
2 hours ago
"Pastor Fred Phelps is gone, called to glory if you believe the teachings of his hate-spewing ministry, the Westboro Baptist Church. To me it seems more likely that his remains are mouldering away somewhere, obeying the laws of physics and biology. Either way, it is a moment to pause and reflect on the man and his legacy.
I had form with “Gramps”, as his family and followers liked to call him. I made two documentaries about his church for the BBC: The Most Hated Family In America in 2006 and America’s Most Hated Family in Crisis in 2010. In all, I suppose I spent about a month with the members of the WBC, trying to figure out what induces them to dedicate their every spare moment – when they aren’t keeping down respectable jobs as lawyers, correctional officers, salesmen in their hometown of Topeka – to flying around the country standing as close as they are legally allowed to funeral-goers, and waving hate-filled placards with slogans like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”, “Fags Eat Poop”, and of course “God Hates Fags”.. They became notorious for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the WBC teachings, the soldiers were being punished for fighting for a nation doomed in the eyes of God for its tolerance of homosexuality.
Their main scriptural inspiration is the passage in Leviticus that mandates the death penalty for gay sex (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, it is an abomination”) though for some reason the adjacent verses that proscribe astrology in similar terms never seem to excite the WBC quite so much. Not to mention that Jesus Christ himself – something of an authority on Christian affairs, one would think - had literally nothing to say on the subject of gay sex or shouting at funerals and plenty to say about kindness and humility.
The WBC has tended to be a family affair, overwhelmingly made up of Gramps’ lineal descendants and their spouses. They live in suburban Topeka, in a collection of houses with their gardens all connected, which they call “Zion”. Gramps was the prime move behind the practices of the church. He founded it at a time and place when the idea of abominating sodomites was mainstream in American Christian circles. In some respects, it was the times that changed, becoming more tolerant of homosexuality, leaving the WBC behind in their dogged adherence to old-style fire-and-brimstone bible thumping. But it’s also the case homosexuality seems to have been an idee fixe with Pastor Phelps: it struck a nerve.
According to legend, the WBC inaugurated their anti-gay pickets when a local Topeka park – Gage Park, as I recall – became a cruising ground. The Phelps decided to make signs and demonstrate against the practice. This was in the eighties. The WBC doctrine evolved into a belief that the whole of America was fallen and damned in God’s eyes, as was anyone who fought under the American flag – or indeed who wasn’t a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. We are all either “fags” or “fag enablers”: you, me, Desmond Tutu, Princess Di, Donald Rumsfeld, Billy Graham – though possibly not Robert Mugabe, Gramps had a soft spot for him. An eternity in Hell is the fate of anyone who doesn’t get baptised into the WBC and spend their free time traveling the country waving hate-filled placards, at political events, at colleges, and places associated – even in the most tortuous way – with tolerance of homosexuality.
While I was with them, they had a regular local picket of a hardware store that sold Swedish vacuum cleaners. The Swedish government had imprisoned a pastor for homophobic preaching, and for the WBC that made the store a legitimate target for a ritualized biblical smackdown. For the newcomer, these pickets are bizarre not simply because of the venom of the signs, but also because of how they clash with the banality of the family interaction. For the Phelps, it’s another day at the office – there’s a water-cooler ambience of relaxed chit-chat. Meanwhile, everyone, even the youngest children, are carrying placards saying “Thank God for 9/11”, “Your Pastor is a Whore”, and “Fag Sweden”.
There is no question that over the years their caravan of religious bigotry has made life miserable for thousands of people, many of them vulnerable mourners hoping to pay tribute to recently departed loved ones. It boggles the mind to remember that among their proposed picketing targets was the funeral of some young Amish children who had been shot by a deranged gunman. In the tortured logic of the WBC, those Amish kids’ died because their parents weren’t out holding their own pickets denouncing homosexuality. In the end, the WBC only called off the event after they were promised airtime on a local radio station, effectively holding the community to ransom.
But the WBC also made life miserable for themselves and inflicted a distorted and poisonous view of the world on the youngest members of their own family, holding over their heads the threat that any deviation or failure of commitment (not going to a picket; socializing with outsiders) would result in a lifetime of banishment. Ex-members – of which there are quite a few – can have no contact with the church. They are cut loose and cast adrift.
Given their eagerness to court controversy, and their willingness to offend and make themselves into cartoon, it’s not surprising that there are misapprehensions about the WBC. Unlike hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the WBC never claim to hate gay people themselves, only that God does. I’m pretty sure there was at least one gay man in the congregation of the WBC. Even on the pickets, the Phelps could be civil. The hostility they expressed was a role that they enacted, dictated by a doctrine they had imbibed from their church leader and paterfamilias. You can find videos on YouTube of counter-demonstrators having cordial chats with Phelps picketers. I don’t doubt if you knocked on the door of the second generation Phelps and said you had some questions about Jesus, they’d let you in and maybe offer you a glass of water. Pastor Phelps was a different story: a hater by instinct.
I’m proud to say he took against me from the moment we met. I asked him how many children he had. He disliked this question. The interview was cut short. After that, we continued filming but I hardly saw Pastor Phelps. I had the feeling he was hiding from me. We eventually crossed paths again, though, in church one Sunday at the end of his sermon, preached on the subject of America’s coming tribulations. “You’re going to eat your babies!” he bellowed. One-on-one, Gramps still had the remnants of a folksy, plainspoken charm, but underneath was a bitter contempt for humanity in general and me specifically. I asked him how he could possibly know that the WBC members were the only people in the world bound for heaven. “I can’t talk to you, you’re just too dumb,” he said. It seemed I was a hell-bound sinner. Well, at least I was in good company."
[more...]
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
"I’ve heard people speculate that Phelps had repressed gay leanings or that perhaps he was sexually assaulted when young leading to a lasting animosity to homosexuality. Personally I doubt it. I think there may be small clue to his mindset in his having attended West Point academy: I suspect he hated it there and had a lasting dislike of the military, which partly explains the picketing of funerals. But there may be no simple causal precursor to his behaviour. He was just an angry bigoted man who thrived on conflict. There are credible reports from his disaffected offspring (four of his 13 children left the church) that he was physically abusive to his wife Marge; that he was violent to his children and had an intermittent problem with pills. A lawyer, he won some civil rights cases and received an award from the NAACP. But Phelps liked going against the grain. Later on, he realized he could outrage even more people and create more turbulence by using a handful of Old Testament verses to justify the weird mission of waving homophobic placards at every opportunity.
The members of the WBC like being attacked for their activities. They thrive on the presence of counter-demonstrators: the patriotic bikers who would sometimes turn up and rev their engines to drown out the Phelps songs at military funerals and also the students who turned out in droves to sing and register their dissent when the WBC held pickets near their campus. For the WBC, this meant they were getting a reaction and they would quote bible verses to the effect that being hated by the world was a sign of godliness.
In some ways I think the counter-demonstrators feed into the church’s world view. The WBC and their enemies exist in a feedback loop, with the church taking strength from the idea that they are having an impact. The church enjoys the image of itself as an indefatigable and godly remnant, hopelessly outnumbered, facing the hoards of a hostile world and valiantly sticking to their message in the face of violence and abuse. Indifference was a harder reaction for them to deal with, although they faced plenty of that as well without being much deterred.
It has been reported that Pastor Phelps had been “excommunicated” from his own church before he died (probably this doesn’t mean much more than being prevented from preaching; I doubt he was out wandering the streets). In 2010 I heard a similar rumour. Then, the word was that Gramps was panicking about a multi-million dollar lawsuit brought against the church by the family of a dead soldier whose funeral they had picketed. (The WBC ended up winning the case on appeal.) The rest of the church viewed Gramps’ failure of nerve as evidence of lack of faith in God’s plan and they put him on the naughty pew for a time-out.
The truth is, despite being its founder and main preacher, Gramps has been a marginal figure within the WBC for some years. When I made my documentaries the dominant force was Fred’s daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, a gifted organizer who could sling religious obloquy while holding four separate placards and wearing a bandana with a message of religious hate – in a different context it would have been impressive. In fact, underneath her programming, and despite all the pain she inflicted in the name of her religion, Shirley is basically a kind person.
But my sense is that Shirley has been pushed aside by an axis of WBC men, among them her brothers, Tim and Jonathan, and also the WBC convert Steve Drain, with Steve possibly in the driving seat. This is speculation on my part; but it struck me when I spent time among the WBC members that Steve was the most likely to take over the church. Steve had originally come to the WBC to make a documentary (called “Hatemongers”) and ended up moving in, bringing his wife and two daughters from Florida. It was striking that he too called Pastor Phelps “Gramps”. He had disconnected from his own parents and found a surrogate family. Steve is an intelligent man but arrogant. In personality, he is closer to Pastor Phelps than any of Gramps’ natural children. The ones I met all have the slight air of being survivors of an abusive upbringing.
Where the WBC goes from here is anybody’s guess. I haven’t been following the doings of the WBC as closely in recent years. Evidently they have been attracting some new members from outside the family. A few years ago there was news that a US marine and his family had been baptized into the church. Just as striking was the report that a British man had moved to Topeka from England, joined the church and married Jael Phelps. A few weeks ago I found a photo on Twitter of Jael at a picket holding a tiny baby. In its abundant procreation, the family has no shortage of future recruits.
With Gramps’ death I don’t expect huge changes. The church has always operated according to the dynamics of a large family rather than a cult. Cults don’t typically excommunicate their “charismatic leaders”. Families do: they put their aging parents in a granny annex and take away the keys to the car. Maybe, like other families, the bereavement will bring them together. In another context, that might be a comforting thought. In this case one rather wishes that they the second generation Phelps would continue to feud and fragment – and perhaps in the process moderate their way of thinking and get in touch with some of the apostate children they no longer see or communicate with.
The more chilling thought is a backward looking one, of how one man and his hateful cast of mind caused so much pain and managed to poison the well of his family for generations – in such a way that that his legacy of causing upset and provoking conflict is likely to continue. His offspring and their offspring have been raised to believe that abuse is kindness and that Christian charity dictates that one should hurl invective at vulnerable people. The natural bonds of family have been braided into this twisted thinking so that children who love their parents and siblings can’t separate those feelings from their sense of obligation to the church and its creed. And when they leave they also take with them the nagging guilt and fear that haven’t just lost a family, they have lost their only chance of salvation. All of this can be traced back to one man.
Gramps is dead, inanimate matter now. Of that I have no doubt. But if there were a hell, he would be there."
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
He, and his actions, aren't worthy of forgiveness (or forgetting). Doesn't mean my feelings for him and his "church" will be a stone of anger to lug on my back - I wouldn't allow it - but forgiveness? Nope.
Continuing to be cynical and filled with hate towards a guy who thrived on negative attention? Exactly what he's looking for, in life and I wouldn't doubt, in death.
Energy is everywhere. And energy concentrated with negativity toward never being forgotten is still negative energy that still serves him and still has an effect on those who are filled with said energy… in a completely unhealthy way. Let it go.
Telling a cynical community such as this one to let go of the negativity?
What the hell am I thinking… :fp:
http://m.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/atheist-nate-phelps-on-his-father-i-mourn-the-man-he-could-have-been/2014/03/21/647e9156-b121-11e3-b8b3-44b1d1cd4c1f_story.html?tid=sm_fb
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
http://instinctmagazine.com/post/fred-phelps-srs-estranged-son-releases-powerful-statement-following-death
Fred Phelps, Sr.'s son, Nate Phelps, initially announced to the world this past weekend that his estranged father was near death. Now following the death of his father, Nate, who is also estranged from the Westboro Baptist Church and now serves on the board of Recovering From Religion, has released a statement.
See what Nate Phelps has to say:
Fred Phelps is now the past. The present and the future are for the living. Unfortunately, Fred’s ideas have not died with him, but live on, not just among the members of Westboro Baptist Church, but among the many communities and small minds that refuse to recognize the equality and humanity of our brothers and sisters on this small planet we share. I will mourn his passing, not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been. I deeply mourn the grief and pain felt by my family members denied their right to visit him in his final days. They deserved the right to finally have closure to decades of rejection, and that was stolen from them.
Even more, I mourn the ongoing injustices against the LGBT community, the unfortunate target of his 23 year campaign of hate. His life impacted many outside the walls of the WBC compound, uniting us across all spectrums of orientation and belief as we realized our strength lies in our commonalities, and not our differences. How many times have communities risen up together in a united wall against the harassment of my family? Differences have been set aside for that cause, tremendous and loving joint efforts mobilized within hours… and because of that, I ask this of everyone — let his death mean something. Let every mention of his name and of his church be a constant reminder of the tremendous good we are all capable of doing in our communities.
The lessons of my father were not unique to him, nor will this be the last we hear of his words, which are echoed from pulpits as close as other churches in Topeka, Kansas, where WBC headquarters remain, and as far away as Uganda. Let’s end the support of hateful and divisive teachings describing the LGBT community as “less than”, “sinful”, or “abnormal.” Embrace the LGBT community as our equals, our true brothers and sisters, by promoting equal rights for everyone, without exception. My father was a man of action, and I implore us all to embrace that small portion of his faulty legacy by doing the same.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/god-hates-fags-westboro-baptist-churchs-first-protest-since-death-of-founder-fred-phelps-marked-by-perfect-counterdemonstration-9210773.html
96: Cork, Dublin
00: Dublin
06: London, Dublin
07: London, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
09: Manchester, London
10: Dublin, Belfast, London & Berlin
11: San José
12: Isle of Wight, Copenhagen, Ed in Manchester & London x2
Well done, folks!
Show these people how civil people with opposing socio-political views can behave.
Hail, Hail!!!
Totally lost.
...
Enough time has passed since the old buzzard croaked and took the express Down Elevator to have an obese Hitler sit on his face for eternity... let's get back to making the funny signs about them secretly wanting man-ass.
Hail, Hail!!!
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
That's not how it works.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134198937/a-peek-inside-the-westboro-baptist-church
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"
"Fags eat feces. That's a fact!"
"You've raised your brat for the Devil!"
"Shut up!"
These are hardly the words of a sophisticated and enriched people.
In fairness to many of them... the indoctrination they receive as children would be very challenging to overcome.
Regarding college educations:
Some of the smartest people I know don't have paper certificates certifying them as intelligent. Some of the dumbest people I know flaunt paper certificates as proof of their intelligence. I am not saying college educations are worthless. I believe colleges are very worthwhile places; but if one can get a college education with multiple degrees and then act like these people... I'd be one to say they never learned much and place them in the 2nd category of the people I described.
Thanks. That's what I was trying to say.
Just because you think they are pieces of shit and absolute scumbags, that doesn't mean they are stupid. The fact that they are cunning and manipulative makes it much worse.
Typo Man: "Thanks kidz, but remembir, stay in skool!"