The Buffalo Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2008

The Buffalo Beast has published its annual "50 Most Loathsome People in America" list.

21. Michelle Malkin
Charges: It's a remarkable achievement in unconscious projection that the author of a book called Unhinged could lose her fucking marbles over a patterned scarf in a donut ad, but that's what Michelle Malkin did when she sounded the nutbar clarion call and sicced her half-cocked league of masturbators on Rachel Ray and Dunkin Donuts for the flatly absurd notion that they were sending a message of solidarity with Palestinians. Right, Michelle -- you just can't sell donuts without joining the intifada these days. What did the nauseously spunky Ray do to incur the wrath of the Malkinoids? She wore a black and white scarf. A paisley scarf. A scarf that was clearly not a kaffiyeh, which, by the way, is just a hat that Arabs wear, not some universal symbol of jihad. In terms of completely false outrage, the only thing that rivaled this travesty of reason this year was the "lipstick on a pig" metaphor panic. But what puts this embarrassing sham over the top is that Dunkin Donuts actually apologized and pulled the ad, rather than try to explain to the fact-phobic horde that they were just blind, raging idiots with the collective brain-power of a lobotomized howler monkey.
Exhibit A: "If your neighbor's got an "Obama '08" bumper sticker or lawn sign, you might want to double-check your door locks at night."
Sentence: Deported to China for wearing red T-shirt.

The Buffalo Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2008 | Mirrored here

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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LB

>>3

Ah, as soon as I clicked on the article I knew people were going to complain about him putting Obama on there.

Disclosure: I voted for Obama.

But I really can’t deny what the article said about him.
Pipenta

Get your doughnuts from anywhere but Dunkin, Sean. Those are horrible doughnuts, and stale! Even the company knows it, they see themselves as a coffee and sandwich shop. But everything they offer is darn near inedible.

I find their “American Runs on Dunkin” campaign very amusing, what with all those little figures looking so athletic, so Olympian!

If there was any truth in advertising, the slogan would be “America SITS on Dunkin” and the logos would be a bunch of lardos on easy chairs and couch potatoes swigging buckets of corn syrup.
Johne Cook

Takuan, #47 – You keep referencing Mormonism and cannibalism. I don’t get the reference.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Osmond: the other white meat.
Clumpy

I don’t want to derail this, but anybody saying that Mormonism is more ridiculous than Scientology probably doesn’t understand that the only difference between a kooky out-of-mainstream religion and some really mainstream kookery is proximity. The superogation and indulgences, immaculate conception and Eucharist of the Catholic church has gone mainstream. And there’s really nothing crazier in Mormonism than, for example, evangelism (plus Mormonism solves the problems of grace vs. works and billions of “virtuous pagans” going to hell who lived before the time of Christ).

Many of the concerns people have with Mormonism are really concerns with Christianity in general (which is fair). Still, it gets more than its share of undeserved flak by virtue of the fact that it’s more recent.
minTphresh

talia @#8 FTMFW! wondering about that meself…
Takuan

see?
http://www.livescience.com/animals/060227_hungry_crickets.html
Takuan

yeah, but the catholics have gotten THEIR cannibalism down to symbolic at least.
Takuan

they try to cover it up
http://www.livescience.com/animals/cassanova_crickets_041222.html
mcfinnmccool

I am a Mormon. I can understand why there would be strong feelings against some in our leadership and members for things like prop. 8. But I am disappointed at the depths Xopher and Takuan have taken to mock us.
Takuan

well, the difference is you are unlikely to be beaten to death for eating people.
FoetusNail

“Go forth and amend your doctrine to not spend twenty million dollars denying human rights to others based on some jack-ass superstition and narrow minded bigotry” divinely ordained or not, they are the lord’s problem not yours. You either trust your lord to handle his own problems or you presume to handle the problems of an omniscient being. I mean does your god, who created everything, including gay people, and knows everything, including there were going to be gay people when he created everything, really need your help. Where in any book does it say handle this problem for me, which I created and did foresee. Or were gay people a shock?
Anonymous

How can Ann Coulter not be on this list?
rastronomicals

Posted under funny . . . yeah, right. Snarky, mean-spirited, holier-than-thou commentary of the sort that seemingly has taken over the web.

I don’t mind being educated, but it seems like I can’t go through a f—ing surfing session these days without having some self-appointed expert detail all the ways in which I Am Wrong (and (S)He Is Right.

So f— you for “You” but this is mostly just shooting fish in a barrel, and it ain’t as clever as all that, not even the Obama part.

Sarah Palin Most Loathsome? Acknowledge her many sins, and it’s still hard to understand how she could possibly be the worst person in America. And as wrong as I think John McCain was for this country, and for this time, placing him number two shows that consistency was hardly the concern of the author.

Guess the joke’s on the person here who commented that everything looked nonpartisan. Funny how when a yahoo like Malkin or O’Reilly demonizes the left, they’re wackos, but the internet left reserves the right to return the favor at no cost to their perceived righteousness.

The web needs to move past this kind of crap.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Sense of humor – ur doin it rong.
Teller

#69 Takuan: Actually, in Catholic doctrine, it’s not symbolic. Transubstantiation is a substantive change.
Takuan

no,no, you see, they ARE actually demons, therefore this is not “demonizing” them. Glad I could clear that up.
Johne Cook

Crickets! Crickets? Crickets.

(crickets)
Takuan

(it’s mormon code, by blaming it on the insects they cover up the cannibalism and insatiable sexual appetites.)
mcfinnmccool

Ok, it was a good joke Takuan. I guess I am a little grumpy today and included you. Sorry.
Xopher

Oh, Takuan! I thought you were making that up!

I figured “OK, it’s not particularly more immoral than the lies the CJCLDS has been telling about gay people…might as well spread a meme about them.” I thought that was the point.

But Mormons actually ARE cannibalistic! And crop pests to boot!

You’ve made me very happy.

*parades in front of Mormon church holding sign that says “Mormons are Cannibalistic Crop Pests”*
Takuan

no need to apologize to me, I take a Abyssal view of these matters.
Takuan

next time they come to the door (yells over shoulder) “The crickets are back!”
I have no mouth and I must scream

Well in Michelle Malkin’s case you have to wonder if she really is running on all cylinders when in her wiki it says she was born to Filipino parents, while they were in the United States on student visas and that she opposes the legal axiom of jus soli which grants automatic U.S. citizenship to babies born to illegal aliens, tourists, and temporary workers. Nevermind that Geraldo Rivera the man that cracked open Capone’s was quoted in a Boston Globe interview saying “Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I’ve ever met in my life. She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people. Itâ€™s good sheâ€™s in D.C. and Iâ€™m in NY. Iâ€™d spit on her if I saw her.”
Takuan

does recur a lot.
Takuan

all anyone needs to know about her
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Internment
Waterlilygirl

The upside of Michelle Malkin acting all finger pointing is that they got rid of those horrible Rachel Ray commercials. I HATE RACHEL RAY… I love Dunkin Donuts. It’s was a dark time in my life having her as the spokeswoman of my daily coffee supplier.
Xopher

Wow, Geraldo says she’s vile.

And he knows vile, all right.
Jaan

#51 “The Beast”

A snarky web site full of people who think they’re better than anyone else, yet aren’t bight enough to keep thier site from crashing when more than 5 people want to visit.

Natural selection…nobody wants to read what you have to say and if they somehow decide that it’s a good idea, they still can’t.
Shazbot

Malkin should definitely go on that list, but I liked my initial assumption, that we were talking about Rachael Ray, better.

Chris Onstad, in the persona of Nice Pete, did what I imagine is a highly accurate description of her home life.
Clumpy

I was thrown off a bit by your use of the acronym “CJCLDS.” I’ve never quite seen it abbreviated that way before :).

I think we LDS are used to debating the founder stuff. Suffice it to say that I can’t debate the intention of a historical figure, though both plural marriage and exclusive priesthood have Biblical precedent (I won’t say that this PROVES that both things are necessary at any particular time but only that they’re not necessarily incompatible with Christianity. Suffice it to say that the Old Testament makes it clear that unpleasant things often come down by way of commandment).

Joseph Smith was actually something of a radical in his time for treating black people as actual human beings (a source below with a caveat). The Book of Mormon mentions black skin twice, once mentioning that a subsect of the population was cut off to separate them from Nephi’s people. But the cursing referred to is NOT the black skin but the being cut off from the Lord’s presence of the previous verse (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/2_ne/5/21#21). The second mention of black skin that a keyword search brings up that “[the Lord] denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female”, hardly a notion for somebody attempting racist propaganda. Furthermore, the abundance of “Lamanite” (read: dark-skinned) heros and prophets later in the book show that skin became less of a division between those people later on, particularly when nearly all of the “white”-skinned people had rejected God.

Further source: http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/response/history/black_mormons.html (Note that this is obviously an LDS apologetic site though it’s well-sourced).

I’ll wrap up this obnoxious scholarly rebuttal pretty soon :). Suffice it to say that I understand the criticism of my religion based on their support for Prop 8 and rejection of homosexual activity as a sin. If you disagree with my church on these grounds then you’re likely to see it as a blind organization reinforcing a backward system of conservative hypocrisy.

But I think it’s important to recognize that it’s intellectually consistent, provided that you subscribe to the other tenets of the religion’s foundation (you can’t, as you said, discount the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and still prescribe to the other tenets of the religion). Read: The Church has made no comment about the origin of homosexuality, allowing people who have an attraction to the same sex to participate in every service of the religion (and certainly not holding them as inherently wicked). However, they hold that actual sex with a member of the same sex is wrong. (The same severity is held to things like extramarital or premarital sex.) Again, this comes down to whether you believe that the doctrine involved is divinely-inspired or not (much like the prohibitions on coffee and alcohol or Sunday worship services, or tithing, or any of the other myriad things people could take objection to). But the LDS Church is a great deal more open-minded and compassionate than most other Christian churches, especially evangelicals, born-agains and Baptists.

You have every right to disagree or even condemn my religion for its hand in the recent legislation (and Church members trying to downplay its role are kidding themselves), but hate doesn’t even come into the equation for most LDS.
Cowicide

Did somebody say ween?

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2004/02/weens_unrelease.html
Dillo

Ooooh, Sarah Palin as #1. Not a bad pick.
I do love the closing sentence they wrote on her:
“In the end, Palin had the beneficial effect of splitting her party between her admirers and people who can read.”
Xopher

An interesting, if idiotic, take on the phenomenon of “slashdotting” (as we used to call it), Jaan. Not too “bight.”
ill lich

BTW– someone should point out to Madam Malkin that on the most recent episode of “60 Minutes” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Admiral Mullen) is shown wearing a keffiyeh.
ill lich

On “Joe the Plumber”:

“In a lot of ways, Samuel Wurzelbacher really does represent the average American â€”basing economic opinions on unrealistic expectations of personal future success, blaming his failure to meet those expectations on minorities and old people, complaining about deadbeats getting his taxes when he isnâ€™t actually paying his taxes, and advertising his own rudimentary historical and mathematical ignorance by warning of creeping socialism in a country whose highest income tax rate has dropped by half in thirty years.”

Wow, scathing AND 100% accurate. The truth hurts indeed.
minTphresh

xopher, how dare u! why, jaan is as bight as a 2&1/2watt bulb. and he knows librul snark when he reads it!
Takuan

just correct your book so it says: “Leave other people alone.”
Anonymous

They already listed themselves in a previous iteration. And Coulter, O’Reilly, and anyone else you think is missing. Really, check out the previous ones, they’re all great.

And seriously, all the right does is attack the left, so stfu.
grimc

I think she also coined the phrase, “Terrorist fist jab”. That alone should have propelled her to the top 10.
FoetusNail

I really must amend my comment, which was written rather hurriedly. Gay people are not a “problem”, unless of course one is an intolerant bigot, which they are, and as goes the man, so goes his god. The masks we apply to god, if one believes in such things, are but a reflection of our desires.
Takuan

The Donners were people in pathetic extremity. They didn’t do it for fun or ideology and deserve the same decency of respect as any humans taken by circumstance beyond endurance. Not like those who eat their brothers for power or profit.
ackpht

As a Californian, I am disappointed by the Mormons. More than disappointed, actually.
IMSA12

As a weenie liberal, I was put off by some of the people the authors included on this list, despite the fact that most of what they wrote is true. However, I soon realized that this was a very well written, equal-opportunity broadside that will rattle anybody who thinks they know it all…like me.

I won’t be lumped in with Loathsome #43(You); none of these qualities describe me. I also think that putting Palin at the top of this list is a bit off. After all, what other American provided so much entertainment and laffs during the campaign, AND contributed so much to the glorious implosion of the McCain candidacy?! Stewart and Colbert might have come close, but that’s their job.
failix

Now this made my day! I have to admit it’s full of truth even if I was disappointed to find Olberman, Caliendo, and Edwards on the list…but nice anyway!
Xopher

Clumpy 83: you can’t, as you said, discount the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and still [subscribe] to the other tenets of the religion

I did not say that. I said it’s harder. I not only think you can, I think you should.

The Church has made no comment about the origin of homosexuality, allowing people who have an attraction to the same sex to participate in every service of the religion (and certainly not holding them as inherently wicked). However, they hold that actual sex with a member of the same sex is wrong.

So you believe in a cruel God who condemns some people (gays with a sex drive) to either misery or sin, while others get to be happy and blessed. Imagine my relief.

(The same severity is held to things like extramarital or premarital sex.)

Which I think is stupid too, but as long as your church not only doesn’t offer the sacrament of marriage to partners of the same sex (and yeah, I mean the whole Sealed-in-the-Temple hoo-hah with the Garments and the whole deal), you don’t get to claim that these things are comparable. People who engage in premarital sex can get married; people who engage in extramarital sex can go back to their spouses or get divorced (? do Mormons do divorce?) and remarried. Only gays are condemned to lifelong celibacy (Misery #1) or marriage to a person who’s absolutely wrong for them (Misery #2).

Opposing same-sex CIVIL marriage for non-Mormons is just right outside the realm of what a church has any business doing (and the CJCLDS really ought to lose its tax-exempt status for doing it, but I doubt they will). Telling LIES in that process sure sounds like “bearing false witness against thy neighbor” to me. Don’t YOU feel that that’s an immoral thing that your church ought not to be doing? Do you intend to object in any way? (I personally think you should withhold your tithe and place it in an escrow account until they decide to cease and desist, and promise that they will, but that’s just me.)

But the LDS Church is a great deal more open-minded and compassionate than most other Christian churches, especially evangelicals, born-agains and Baptists.

And a great deal LESS open-minded and compassionate than lots of others (and btw you’re mistaken to tar Baptists so broadly, though most of them probably are pretty narrow), like the Episcopal Church.

You have every right to disagree or even condemn my religion for its hand in the recent legislation (and Church members trying to downplay its role are kidding themselves), but hate doesn’t even come into the equation for most LDS.

Sorry, I don’t buy it. When an organization to which you belong becomes a hate organization, you can a) resign from it, b) object strenuously, write letters, withhold tithes etc, or c) “go along to get along.” Only with a) and b) are you clean of the hate being practiced by the organization as a whole; with c) you are complicit in it. Of course, a) involves excommunication and b) is likely to lead to it, since authoritarians don’t like the underlings telling them what to do. I’m sure the average LDS doesn’t want to think about this at all, but I sure haven’t heard calls for the president’s resignation, or any kind of grass-roots-Mormon outcry against the egregious crimes the Church committed in California. Sounds like “most LDS” are going along.

Avram 87: Wasn’t confusing them, but didn’t know that history. I was basing my opinion of Smith’s racism on the black-skin-cursing in the BoM. So Smith was a power-hungry womanizer and YOUNG was the explicitly racist one. I’ll refine my attack; thank you.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  A friend of mine had a Mormon brother and a black boyfriend. Right after the church changed their honkies only policy, she went to visit her brother with boyfriend in tow. They ended up going to an event with most of the brother’s congregation. They all assumed that he was their new token black member and kept coming up to shake his hand, essentially welcoming him to the human race. He thought that it was hysterically funny and played along.
BennyMcBenBen

My work blocked this site and labeled it as “Pornography/Humor and Jokes.” Can you put NSFW on these kinds of links in the future? Thanks.
Ryan Waddell

A bit annoying that they resort to attacks on people’s looks in many of the charges. Somebody being ugly hardly makes them loathsome. Also, I somehow doubt that just about ANY regular reader of the Buffalo Beast (presumably, the intended audience of this article) is adequately described by the “You” of #43.

I love that Brett Favre and Dina Lohan made the list, though.
Clumpy

Takuan, are you some kind of cryptic Zen master or do you just not make a heck of a lot of sense?
Takuan

they put porn together with humour and jokes? What kind of sick bastards do you work for?
Frank W

@ #9 Frank W: That was last year’s, silly. D*** Cheney’s gone down to six. Sarah Palin and John McCain won this one. The Fifty Most Loathsome are a blast, again.
5000!

I get why the picture accompanying the entry is of Rachel Ray, but from a user experience standpoint it’s totally confusing.
ridl

I’ll resist the very strong urge to wallpaper this thread with snips from the list, but I have to at least repeat Lieberman’s sentence for those who won’t rtfa:

awakes to find himself in the body of an impoverished Iraqi living in a small apartment with 12 family members and no electricity. Shocked by this inexplicable turn of events, he stumbles outside and cries to God, looking up just in time for the white phosphorous to hit him in the face.
Xopher

I keep forgetting Monson’s name. Are there calls for his resignation within the Church? If not, why not start them, Clumpy and McFinnMcCool, you and other non-hating Mormons?

Do you really think that preaching hatred and lies on California television is an appropriate use for your hard-earned tithe dollars? If not, speak out. If so, don’t tell me you don’t hate gays.

If you don’t think it’s right but do nothing, remember that you stood by while injustice was done, and that you helped fund it.
Takuan

do it
http://buffalobeast.com/134/50mostloathsome2008.html
jccalhoun

Michelle Malkin is just about the only person who can make Ann Coulter look reasonable. It is almost as if her entire purpose is to say things so outrageous that other radical right-wingers look sane in comparison.
Stefan Jones

Darn. The site has been boingboinged.
Teller

I find Malkin attractive. The angrier the better. This is my disease.

Pretty good list, though. Think Madoff easily could’ve been swapped with McCain.
Xopher

Do NOT get me started on the Donner party. The godsdamned Reeds were hiding food from the others, the fat scumbags.

Btw, someone set up a “poll” thread on a gay website I frequent, asking “who do you dislike more, Hamas or the Mormons?” (They meant the Mormon Church, though the denizens of that site aren’t as careful in their habits of thought as we get here.*)

You’ll be happy to know that Hamas is leading, though a substantial minority said they were equivalent (more, actually, than chose the Mormons outright). I picked Hamas, of course, and commented that the Mormons haven’t killed as many people, and that they don’t paint targets on their own churches.

___
*Yes. Really. Be very afraid.
StRevAlex

Finally!
PixelFish

Xoph: re: calls for Monson’s resignation – The LDS church doesn’t work that way. They believe if God wants Monson out of the way, he’ll strike him dead. You have to swear to support the Prophet and the Council of the Twelve before you can get your temple recommend, and actively going against what they teach is grounds for excommunication and potential and social shunning. The LDS church isn’t really built to have a groundswell of people to call for Monson’s resignation. (Also, most of ‘em have been brainwashed since youth.)

What’s REALLY funny/sad is that Monson is considered to be the nice, soft, cuddly prophet compared to the guy who currently stands to inherit his place should he keel over. Boyd K. Packer (yes, make the joke–you know you want to) is mightily famous for his anti-masturbation screed, known as the “little factory” talk.

Casual Causalty: If you think Hinckley would have been any different than Monson on this topic, you are dead wrong. The man was slightly cannier than his successor in terms of PR, but their views are pretty much one and the same. He would and did speak out about homosexuality–he would have just done it without actually invoking Prop 8, had he been leader, and the masses would have got the message anyway. There’s a reason why Utah is so consistently Republican outside of SLC. Hinckley only looks good if you compare him to Ezra Taft Benson, two presidents before him, who was a John Bircher and fortunately too senile to do much by the time HE got to the prophet’s chair.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  social shunning
  
  We non-Mormons keep trying to get them to shun us. If I join the church, then commit a heinous sin, will they stop coming to the door?
Talia

hahaha. this is awesome.

RE Frank Caliendo:

“Exhibit A: His TBS vehicle, “Frank TV,” is the least amusing thing to appear on television since the morning of September 11, 2001.”

HARSH :P

I’d “boo” him putting Obama on there, but the rest of it is spot on (although in my own defense, pretty much nothing under the “you” one applies to me :D).

ah, deliciously scathing fury.
Superfluous Moniker

Thought I’d post mirror to entire article, one on the front page is only the first 10 or so…
http://www.buffalobeast.com.nyud.net/134/50mostloathsome2008-full.html
Pantograph

Wow, I own and occasionally wear one of those scarves and I’ve photographed public buildings in the past. I must be a terrorist. Where do I go to turn myself in?
Troglodyte

Very well written and fairly non-partisan. I like it!
Cupcake Faerie

The BoingBoing?! They can’t handle the BoingBoing!
buddy66

Buffalo Beast is temporarily overwhelmed probably, in part, because of the first paragraph of the Malkin bit that Mark posted. It is an absolutely outstanding example of bilious contempt at its best! Masterful stuff. I can’t wait…
UglyDeafMuslimPunkGurl

I have a huge desire to strangle Michelle Malkin with my keffiyeh. and I say that as an American, not as a Muslim.
Frank W

Yup, it’s bOINGed. But I did happen to see it already.

â€œ#2: Dick Cheney.
Charges: Worst President Ever.â€

Loved it.
Xopher

Clumpy 68 Still, [Mormonism] gets more than its share of undeserved flak by virtue of the fact that it’s more recent.

While I have some level of sympathy for that (Wicca gets lots of flak for being even more recent), Mormonism is also getting well-deserved flak for being founded by a blatantly obvious charlatan who made up the Book of Mormon as he went along to justify his various desires and prejudices. He wanted to have sex with more than one woman, so (given the times) he made it “God’s will” that men should be able to marry multiple wives. He was a racist, so he made up stories explaining dark skins as punishment on entire peoples for being evil in the sight of God, thus justifying treating people of color as intrinsically wicked. (I think he’d spin in his grave if he knew the CJCLDS was letting blacks serve as priests, a reform for which I have to give them credit, though of course they delayed it much too long.)

Now, my religion was founded (in its earliest version) by Gerald Gardner, a similar kind of charlatan. He wanted to be tied up naked and have his pasty English buttocks whipped by young naked women, so he invented a religion where that’s a “ritual purification.” When his High Priestess Doreen Valiente got too uppity (and too old), he “suddenly found” an “ancient text” which decreed that the High Priestess had to be young (i.e. easy for GG to control) and beautiful (which I think Doreen was to the end of her days, but amazingly GG’s standards of beauty were the ones this ancient document decreedâ€”which proves he was ordained to find it, right?). This didn’t work, and most of us consider DV a much more important Ancestor than GG.

In my tradition, we’ve abandoned the “binding and scourging” (actually we never heard of it, since we weren’t trained Gardnerian), don’t always meet skyclad (naked), and also reject GG’s notion that initiation can only be cross-gender (which he decreed so he could rub nekkid bods with every young woman who wanted to be a priestess). He also made up the number of “nine million women” being “burned at the stake” during the “burning times,” just to make it bigger than the Holocaust (nice guy, huh?), and neglected to consider what percentage of the population of Europe that would have been in the 14th Century. He was a sexist, misogynist, homophobic pig, as well as a liar and a conman.

My point: abandon your founder’s bonehead notions and the things he put in to get laid, and you have a better religion than if you kept them. We were lucky because Wicca isn’t a book-based religion, and while there are a few “hard-Gards” who won’t do anything they don’t read out of a Gardnerian Book of Shadows, most of us go “every one to his [sic] own way,” and that’s the way we like it. Gerald Gardner put together some good structures, and we use them to this day, while ignoring his basely-motivated bullshit.

Mormons are in a harder place (and I’m not without sympathy). Any objective person evaluating the circumstances under which the BoM was written would be forced to conclude that Joseph Smith was a charlatan, a madman, or both. Any objective examination of its content would lead to the conclusion that much of it couldn’t possibly have happened, and comparisons with modern scientific knowledge (the ancestry of American indigenous peoples, for example) disposes of much of the rest. But it’s hard, when you have a holy book, to say “this part is just a story, but this other part tells us good things to do, good ways to live.” But that doesn’t mean that the parts that are nonsense somehow aren’t nonsense, or that other people have to refrain from saying so.

McFinnMcCool 70: I am a Mormon. I can understand why there would be strong feelings against some in our leadership and members for things like prop. 8. But I am disappointed at the depths Xopher…[has] taken to mock us.

I regret offending you, I really do. The trouble is, the CJCLDS has become a hate organization. And as it’s a hierarchy, the actions of its highest leader are the actions of the organization as a whole. It needs to be, at least, drastically reformed. Ideally, this would take the form of being less top-down authoritarian, and more community-based. While forming communities is something Mormons are honestly pretty damn good at, breaking out of the kind of “chain of command” authority structures they’ve built up is not. I don’t see it as likely to reform that way in the foreseeable future, or even to abandon its staunch and very active homophobic bigotry in my lifetime.

Therefore I, as a gay man and even, absent that, a decent human being, have a duty to combat the CJCLDS to the extent possible, and by whatever means fit within my ethics. Telling outright lies about the CJCLDS or Mormonism does not, as I said earlier, and this distinguishes my ethics from those of the asshole at the top of your church hierarchy, and therefore of your church as an organization. Telling the truth does. I used to refrain out of respect; the false witness the CJCLDS bore against its gay neighbors in California to pass Propostition H8 really took the gloves off.

As I said above, I’m truly sorry you’re offended. But as I’m not going to stop attacking the CJCLDS, I encourage you to form a schism of Mormons who reject the current church’s sexism and homophobia, and maybe even its authoritarian structure, and who consider the BoM a useful book but not a valid historical document or an absolute authority on living in modern times (a glass of wine occasionally is good for most people, and masturbation is REALLY important for male sexual health), and I certainly will not attack that more modern churchâ€”just as I would find it unjust to be attacked for the excesses of hard-Gards, I would not be so unfair to your new schism.

The current CJCLDS, however, is fair game. The goal is to force them to reform, of course, but as that’s unlikely the goal must be for them to be destroyed. I wish I could think of a better way (within law and ethics) than mockery, but I can’t, so mockery is what I will employ.
nerak

damn, i would have liked to have distracted myself at work by reading this… guess ill wait until tomorrow while in class… :D
RationalPragmatist

This is the best thing I have seen online in a long, long time. It is honest, and painfully honest/insightful. I loved #43. What can you expect from the citizens of an exhausted, failing empire?
theredballoon

standby, i’m working on a coral mirror…
Slicklines

They forgot to list Buffalo Beast, who should have been number one. Honestly, mix a tiny wad of sophomoric cleverness with bitter cynicism that was old in granddaddy’s day and what do you get? People who end up sounding exactly like the people they are so pissed off about. Same old same old. Tired rants from impotent a$$hats. Pass.
theredballoon

And mirrored
Shrdlu

Sean Hannity is number three? Wow. Not tooting my own horn, but that means I’ve done work for the top three on the list this past year. Actually considered putting subliminal messages in Hannity’s Freedom Concert: An Evening of Patriotism & Inspiration t-shirts, but thought better of it. But don’t judge me: I’m going to donate all payments to Planned Parenthood or the ACLU.
Slicklines

Mark @79

Sort of the whole point, yes? In three minutes I can sound exactly like these guys only not as funny. In three minutes 99.9999% of the web can sound exactly like these guys only not as funny. Who knows what might be accomplished in ten minutes? Fifty percent as funny? But what’s the point? As a few others here have deftly pointed out, the world is full of people being smugly self-righteous.

I never claimed to be in competition with this list. I only suggested there was a growing sense of lameness in playing such a tired game. I still think there is. I hardly suspected everyone would agree.
Nelson.C

I think there’s a secret, undeclared war of oneupmanship between Malkin and Coulter, each one trying to out-do the other in sheer lunacy.
All Jelly No Toast

@ Sicklines:

Don’t hate the Beast because they’re funny and angry.

The anger is deserved, the articles are always pretty well on point, well written and researched, and the humor frankly allows them to sell enough magazines to stay in business.

Oh, also:

SUBSCRIBE TO THE BEAST. It’s $2 an issue, and keeps hungry Buffalonian uberjournalists well fed.
zyodei

Hahahahahaha! You know who owns Dunkin Donuts? As well as Baskin Robbins, and about 8 million other lesser known companies

The FUCKING CARLYLE GROUP!

Now there’s a real hotbed of radicalism and pro-Palestinian sentiment, right there. My god.

Actually, it’s basically a investment fund for all the money stolen through the CIA and military industrial complex, and is owned largely by the Bushes and Bin Ladens.

BTW, if the fact that they’ll trash your health aren’t enough, this is more than enough reason to NEVER shop at either of those two chains.
edgore

@Talia

I see what you did there…
Clumpy

Mormonism is “just a nose behind Scientology”? This guy might want to do a bit of reading.
Endymian

Cute, but sickeningly pretentious.
Takuan

mirror boinged. Pooh.
wrathofthekitty

brilliant!
emmagoldman

Why isnt Gwyenth Paltry on this list?
billstewart

To: BennyMcBenBen #26, the article is SFW, though there may be a couple of rude words in it. Some work censorware is hyper-sensitive to criticisms of the right wing; ours used to dislike BoingBoing entirely.
Casual_Casualty

@Clumpy- I think the article hit it spot on by singling out Monson. Although they used a below the belt reference in regards to the Scientology quip, I think they were spot on in their analysis of Monson. As a Native of Utah, that is not LDS, I know that most LDS members are actually very nice people (in the same vein that most conservatives are nice people, just not the loudest ann coulter types that can make the whole look like a joke).
Honestly, when Hinkley was the “prophet”, I rather respected mormons. I think Hinkley held to the notion that members were bright people that could discern politics on their own based on their beliefs, without the assistance of the church telling them what to do. I think the whole issue of Prop 8 can be likened to the LDS belief of the “War in Heaven”. Jesus believed that people should have “free agency”, Satan believed they should not. Monson, needs to let religion and politics remain seperate, and trust that members are capable of making their own decisions; as all adults are, regardless of if you “agree” with them. There is an LDS zine I have come to admire called The Mormon Worker. I think they are continuing where Hinkley left off; while being able to ignore Monson’s hate altogether. Check it out if you are interested.

@Takuan – I laughed, but really I thought you were referencing the Donner Party
shahryarrakeen

big fan of the beast. It’s more relevant than Huffington Post while more accessible than Counterpunch.
Talia

@edgore ;)
Avram / Moderator

Xopher @78, are you sure you’re not confusing Joseph Smith with Brigham Young? Smith ordained black priests, and didn’t seem to have anything against black people. After Smith was killed, Young took over, and suddenly all sorts of rulings started to turn up denying full rights to black Mormons.
twoeightnine

You killed the Beast!
Sean Grimm

The entire Dunkin Donuts kaffiyeh thing was by far my favorite 2008 debacle. I’d boycott DD for caving in and not having any backbone in the matter but, really where the heck else am I going to get my donuts from?
FoetusNail

Hear, hear Buddy. Great stuff! Can’t wait to see the rest.
All Jelly No Toast

For those who keep referring to the Beast as internet/web journalism:

they actually print the magazine. You can pick it up all over town in Buffalo, NY.

Subscribe!
Takuan

sigh… one more time: “Leave other peole alone.” As in: do not harass, persecute, attack, murder, lie about and generally screw with the lives of people who want nothing to do with your little cult.
Go forth and amend your doctrine to not spend twenty million dollars denying human rights to others based on some jack-ass superstition and narrow minded bigotry. Is that clear?
Takuan

a la South Park: dum dum dum, dum dum….
Mark Frauenfelder

Slicklines@34: “They forgot to list Buffalo Beast, who should have been number one. Honestly, mix a tiny wad of sophomoric cleverness with bitter cynicism that was old in granddaddy’s day and what do you get? People who end up sounding exactly like the people they are so pissed off about. Same old same old. Tired rants from impotent a$$hats. Pass.”

Slicklines, what you wrote here reads *exactly* like the writing in the Buffalo Beast, just not as funny.
Xopher

Clumpy 41: Mormonism is “just a nose behind Scientology”? This guy might want to do a bit of reading.

I’m not sure what you mean here. You mean he should actually read the Book of Mormon, and discover that Mormonism is actually FAR more ridiculous than Scientology? It’s not as obvious that it’s a scam today (though it clearly was at the beginning), and I’d say they’re parallel in terms of actual evil, but Mormonism is clearly more ridiculous.
Takuan

well, except for the cannibalism of course.