Bent Corner

Last week I read a letter submitted to Hagerstown’s premier newspaper of record, The Herald-Mail. The letter’s author was pointing out what a great man the late Jerry Falwell was and he stated that the reason some people didn’t like Falwell was because he was conservative.

Something like that.

I didn’t like Falwell. It wasn’t because he was conservative. It was because he was a dick. I think he was a bully who picked on gay people.

I decided to write my own letter pointing out why some people (like me) didn’t like Falwell.

Today my letter was published. In the letter, I wrote that Falwell was a “bigoted idiot”. They changed it to read “bigoted fool”. This bugs me because I don’t use words like “fool”. It reminds me of Mr. T’s famous catch phrase “I pity the fool“.

This isn’t the first time The Herald-Mail has altered my words. It will though be the last. Every time they publish one of my letters, they change words. A word here, a word there. It’s annoying.

No more. I have a blog. Why do I need to write letters to the newspaper? If I want to call Falwell an idiot, I can. I can call him much worse.

The Rev. Falwell’s ‘flaw’ wasn’t his Christianity

To the editor:

I wanted to respond to John Miller’s recent letter proclaiming the many supposed virtues of the now-deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell.

People are speaking ill of him not because of his conservative views. They are speaking ill of him because he was a bigoted fool idiot.

He said that God had created AIDS to punish gay people and the societies that tolerate gay people. He said that if you were not a born-again Christian, you were a failure as a human being.

He also blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on pagans, abortionists, feminists, gay people and members of the ACLU. He also said that gay people were satanic beasts and that when they are finally all annihilated that there will be a celebration in heaven.

Who in their right mind not only believes these things, but actually says them aloud for others to hear? The fact is that Falwell gave Christianity a bad name.

He made Christians look bad. Who knows how many people Falwell kept away from Christianity with his intolerant and narrow-minded views?

Real Christians, the people who actually follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, don’t go around blaming pagans or the ACLU when things go wrong. Real Christians don’t talk about celebrating if a whole group of people were to be exterminated.

Rick Rottman
Hagerstown

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Cindy Sheehan has quit the anti-war movement. She posted a resignation letter on Daily Kos renouncing her position as “the face of the American anti-war movement”. She blamed this decision on negative criticism made by members of Democratic Underground, a liberal website dedicated to progressive ideals. Some of the members of Democratic Underground were participating in a discussion on a forum referring to Sheehan as an “attention whore”.

Evidently she took exception to this.

I think it’s strange that she would respond to the charge that she’s an attention whore by going out of her way to bring yet even more attention to herself. Worse, she chose to issue this ridiculous resignation letter on Memorial Day. It’s the one day a year that is supposed to be about honoring those in the military that have paid the ultimate sacrifice. People like her son, Casey.

Casey didn’t “die for nothing” as Cindy Sheehan likes to say. He died going to the aid of his fellow soldiers. This is from the blog BLACKFIVE:

Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment were ambushed with RPGs and pinned down and dying. While fighting off an attack himself, the Commander of the 2/5th, LTC Volesky, called for help. A Quick Reaction Force (QRF) was formed of volunteers - their mission was to go out and rescue the American troops.

Casey Sheehan’s Sergeant asked for volunteers. Sheehan had just returned from Mass. After Sheehan volunteered once, the Sergeant asked Sheehan again if he wanted to go on the mission. According to many reports (and according to his own mother), Casey responded, “Where my Chief goes, I go.”

The QRF was launched. Not long after entering the Mahdi area, the QRF was channeled onto a dead-end street where the roofs were lined with snipers, RPGs, and even some militia throwing burning tires onto the vehicles. The Mahdi blocked the exit and let loose with everything they had.

Sheehan’s vehicle was hit with multiple RPGs and automatic-weapons fire.

Specialist Casey Sheehan and Corporal Forest J. Jostes were killed.

Casey was killed doing a truly heroic thing. He deserves to be honored. What he doesn’t deserve is to have his mother go around telling everyone that her son died for nothing.

Tell that to the soldiers he volunteered to help that tragic day. Tell that to their families.

Memorial Day should be about Casey Sheehan and people like him, not Cindy Sheehan. She’s has 364 days a year to bring attention to herself. Memorial Day ain’t one of them.

It’s not as though I believe she is actually going away. I would be very surprised if this was the last any of us ever heard from Cindy Sheehan. I think she likes attention too much to just walk away.

Heidi MacDonald from The Beat has been kind enough to post a portion of the weekly question and answer session between comic book website Newsarama and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada.

She saved me from having to go and read the sickening love fest passing as comics journalism over at Newsarama.

Quesada weighs (no pun intended) in on the recent controversy over the creepy HEROES FOR HIRE #13 cover that I wrote about here.

When I refer to “controversy”, I am referring to why Marvel Comics would stoop to putting porn on the cover of a comic book intended for 9 year olds.

I don’t care all that much for Joe Quesada. This is a prime example of why:

This one I can answer to. First, I think people are reading way too much into that cover than was ever intended. I heard terms such as “tentacle rape” being thrown around when that in no way is what’s happening, nor does it happen in the book. Those tentacles are the arms of the Brood who appears in the issue and is a major story point, the Brood have tentacles, sorry about that.

Secondly, the concept for that cover, soup to nuts came from a female artist. Thirdly, not being a deep follower of manga, I have no idea what recurring theme people are referring to or concerned with. While I appreciate the sentiment and the feelings that some may have about this, I honestly feel that there is way too much being read into this cover.

Also, HFH is a book that features two strong, lead female protagonist who kick major ass; somehow folks have forgotten to focus on that.

Reading too much into it, huh Joe? Why is the tentacle — you call it an arm — secreting some kind of mystery white goo on the woman’s breasts? The woman with her hands chained above her head to a stone pillar. What is that white goo supposed to be?

Also, just how old is Joe Quesada? When was the last time you heard someone use the phrase, “Soup to Nuts”? Talk about old-man speak.

Rosie O’Donnell is leaving the TV show The View even earlier then she had originally planned. Friday was her last show. A show as fate would have it, I actually watched. It seems that her decision to leave the show early is a direct result of her recent verbal kung-fu with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. An argument that Hasselbeck seems to have won. Not just because O’Donnell is quiting the show early, but because I’ve read the transcript.

This from the Los Angeles Times:

But in the last several days, the two have tussled over a rhetorical comment O’Donnell made about the number of civilian deaths in Iraq that appeared to equate U.S. military actions with terrorism.

On Monday’s show, O’Donnell complained that conservative critics had twisted what she said by claiming that she called the troops “terrorists.” She asked Hasselbeck if she thought O’Donnell believed the soldiers were terrorists. Rather than answer, Hasselbeck urged her to clarify what she had meant, at which point O’Donnell reiterated her support for the troops.

On Wednesday, O’Donnell initially appeared reluctant to be dragged into the debate again.

“Because here’s how it gets spun in the media: ‘Rosie, big fat lesbian loud Rosie, attacks innocent pure Christian Elisabeth,’ ” she said.

Hasselbeck called that “unfair,” adding: “I just don’t understand why it’s my fault if people spin words that you put out there or phrases that suggest things. And I gave you an opportunity two days ago to clarify the statement that got you in trouble on all those things.”

“That got me in trouble?” O’Donnell repeated sarcastically. “As a friend, you gave me the opportunity. That was very sweet of you. I was asking if you, who actually knows me, do you believe I think our troops are terrorists, Elisabeth?”

Hasselbeck hesitated.

“Do you believe that, yes or no?” O’Donnell pressed.

Hasselbeck raised her finger in the air. “Excuse me. Let me speak.”

“You’re going to doublespeak,” O’Donnell said. “It’s just a yes or a no.”

“I am not a double speaker, and I don’t put suggestions out there that lead people to think things and then not answer my own question, OK?” Hasselbeck shot back. “I don’t believe that you believe troops are terrorists. I have said that before. But when you say something like 650,000 Iraqis are dead, we invaded them … ”

“It’s true!” O’Donnell responded.

“Let me finish!” Hasselbeck said.

“You don’t like facts!” O’Donnell retorted.

Hasselbeck’s tone grew angrier: “I am all about facts. You know that. You tell me not to use facts because you want me to go only on emotion. Guess what? I like facts.”

As the tone grew more heated, Behar and guest co-host Sherri Shepherd fidgeted uncomfortably and finally pretended to get up from the table to break the tension.

But the two kept at it, and the producers switched to a split screen to showcase their back-and-forth.

O’Donnell said she was hurt that Hasselbeck didn’t defend her.

“I am certainly not going to be the person for you to explain your thoughts,” Hasselbeck retorted, pointing her finger at her co-host. “They’re your thoughts. Defend your own insinuations! Defend your own thoughts!”

“Frankly, every time I defend them, it’s poor little Elisabeth that I’m picking on,” O’Donnell responded. “That’s why I’m not going to fight with you anymore, because it’s absurd. So for three weeks, you can say all the Republican crap that you want. I’m not going to do it.”

“It’s much easier to fight someone like Donald Trump, isn’t it?” Hasselbeck spat, alluding to O’Donnell’s much-publicized feud with the real estate magnet. “Because he’s obnoxious.”

The audience oohed in surprise and O’Donnell looked shocked.

“I think it’s sad because I don’t understand how there can be such hurt feelings when all I did was say, ‘Look, why don’t you tell everybody what you said?’ ” Hasselbeck continued. “I did that as a friend.”

“Every day since September I have told you that I support the troops,” O’Donnell shot back. “I asked you if you believed what the Republican pundits were saying. You said nothing, and that’s cowardly.”

“No, no, no!” Hasselbeck said furiously. “You will not call me a coward, because No. 1, I sit here every single day, open my heart and tell people exactly what I believe.”

“So do I!” O’Donnell said.

“Do not call me a coward, Rosie.”

“It was cowardly.”

“It was not cowardly, it was honest.”

Behar broke in: “Is there no commercial in this show?”

Hasselbeck continued: “I’ll tell you what’s cowardly. Asking a rhetorical question that you never answer yourself. That is cowardly.”

Behar had had enough. “Who is directing this show?” she said. “Let’s go to commercial!”

Even though my personal politics are much more aligned with O’Donnell then Hasselbeck, I cannot stand her. I think Rosie O’Donnell’s loud, obnoxious, rude, uninformed, and a bully. Granted, she does a lot for various charities, but I would argue that the only reason people know this is because Rosie O’Donnell is constantly bragging about it.

Modest she ain’t.

Take any issue that Rosie is for and I believe she actually does more harm then good. The last thing you want Rosie doing is screaming and yelling about a cause you believe in. I literally cringe when I hear her speak up against the Iraq war.

An 11 year old boy killed a giant will hog estimated to weigh over 1,000 pounds. It measured over 9 feet in length.

“It feels really good,” Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s a good accomplishment. I probably won’t ever kill anything else that big.” Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

I think it’s a shame that something like this had to be killed. What makes this especially bad is that it was killed for some kid’s amusement. For the perverse pleasure in killing something. Couldn’t he just play video games? Instead he has to pump eight 50 cal bullets into a truly rare animal and then chase it for three hours to finish it off.

It’s both sadistic and cruel.

Todd Cochrane over at Geek News Central has been writing some rather snarky things about Feedburner. Todd doesn’t like Feedburner. I get that. No one is saying he has to like Feedburner. Just because I like Feedburner doesn’t mean everyone has to. What I don’t understand is his paranoid rhetoric.

For instance, it’s hard to take him serious when he proclaims that Feedburner is “evil”. In fact, not only does he announce that Feedburner is evil, he says they are pure evil. As though it’s evil hasn’t been diluted or watered down. We are lead to believe that Feedburner is 100% evil. Like Satan’s left armpit or fat-free mayonnaise.

Evil is a strong word that has absolutely nothing to do with what Feedburner has to offer.

Speaking of not taking him serious, today he had this to say:

I am blown away when I talk to bloggers and podcasters when they say they need FeedBurner. When I ask why, they say because they need a RSS feed. When I point out to them that their blog is already creating a fully functional RSS feed many are dumbfounded.

I just don’t believe that. Not that he was blown away. I just don’t believe that he spoke to bloggers and podcasters who thought they needed Feedburner because their blogs didn’t already have an RSS feed. One of the first steps when signing up with Feedburner is when Feedburner analyzes your blog and identifies any existing feeds. Feedburner then shows you these existing feeds and has you select one to use to syndicate your blog through Feedburner.

This is something Todd would know if he had ever actually tried the free syndication service known as Feedburner. The one he hates so much.

The one he thinks is pure evil.

I might believe that a podcaster or a blogger didn’t know their website already had an RSS feed before signing up with Feedburner. Maybe. They would certainly know they already had an RSS feed during the sign up process. I just cannot believe they would not know this until Todd told them.

Unless they were really, really stupid.

Roscoe Bartlett
2412 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C.
20515-2006
Dear Roscoe Bartlett –

I’m writing this letter in regards to comments you made shortly after your historic vote last March against the continued funding of our troops in Iraq.

You stated that you were against a time table for withdrawal. Wouldn’t you agree that our military has already accomplished everything they were asked to do? They have:

• Ensured that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.
• Removed Saddam Hussein from power.
• Allowed Iraq to become a democratic and free country.

Our troops have successfully done their job. Now it’s time for you to do yours. You need to work towards bringing them home. Their mission has been accomplished.

You stated back in March that another reason you voted NO was because one-fifth of the spending bill was pork. Expenditures unrelated to our national defense. As though the continued occupation of Iraq has anything to do with the defense of our nation. Now that the Democrats have caved and removed any type of timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, voting YES on the supplemental spending bill should be fairly easy for you to do - unless you really are a fiscal conservative. All that pork is still firmly attached to the bill.

Rick Rottman

Hagerstown, Maryland

When I first read about the cover illustration for HEROES FOR HIRE #13, I thought it was creepy, excessive, and overly sexualized. Especially considering that it’s rated T+. What’ that mean? This is from the Marvel Comics website:

9+ years old Appropriate for most readers, parents are advised they may want to read before or with younger children.

I wouldn’t expect to find a comic book meant for nine year old children to feature an illustration of scantly clad women chained to a stone pillar while a tentacle creature gropes them.

At first, I didn’t spend too much time studying it. It’s way too pervy for my taste. I then read this post over at Written World. Sure enough, the cover is even worse then I originally thought.

What is that white goo dripping on the bare breasts of the woman on the cover of a Marvel Comics funny book intended for nine year olds?

That question is of course only rhetorical. I don’t really want to know what that white goo is supposed to be. Believe me, I really don’t want to know. What I would like to know is how something like this gets the OK at the House Of Ideas. That is what they used to call Marvel Comics, right? The House of Ideas?

I remember when comic books couldn’t even show red blood. They colored it to look brownish. It looked sort of like something else. Something that was not blood. Now they are showing white goo on the breasts of women. Women who are chained to a stone pillar. Women being molested by a tentacle creature.

Rudy Giuliani should have been spending less time flying around the country giving paid speeches on the 9-11 terror attacks and spent more time actually learning more about them. Including the reasons we were attacked.

This following is a partial transcript from the recent Republican South Carolina Presidential debate.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East — I think Reagan was right.

We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, “I am glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.” They have already now since that time — (bell rings) — have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don’t think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were — if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

Congressmen Ron Paul is correct. Bin Laden didn’t attack the United States because of our love of apple pie and baseball. He didn’t attack us because we love Jesus.

Rudy Giuliani has made a lot of money off of 9-11. You would think he would try to learn a thing or two about it. Instead he comes off looking like an idiot.

Congressman Ron Paul was right. The so-called “America’s Mayor” was wrong.