Monday, November 26, 2007

Who says bumper stickers are meaningless?

Remember that ridiculous post about liberal bumper stickers that came courtesy of Atomic Trousers? The one that then inspired an even more ridiculous alteration of the "Coexist" sticker by Tom McMahon (and my response)? Well, it keeps getting more and more interesting/ridiculous as the days pass.

Right-wing radio host Charlie Sykes featured the bumper sticker post on his own site, calling it "brilliant" and letting the self-congratulatory back-patting from the right side of the blogosphere roll on in. But then the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee chimed in, and Sykes didn't like the sound of what they were saying.

Here's his response to their letter (with the original letter included at the bottom of the post).

Plaisted has a very decent response to all of this, calling Sykes and his ilk on the hypocrisy inherent in them playing the role of victim on the one hand and preaching about the perils of false victimhood on the other.

I don't know if McMahon replaced the Star of David with the Nazi swastika with the intention of comparing Judaism to Nazism. I really doubt it. Still, the fact remains that it was a wildly insensitive thing to do, and warrants, at the very least, an apology. They can leave the altered bumper sticker up if they so desire because it is their right to do so. But for heaven's sake, take some responsibility for your actions and mistakes once in a while, will you? There's a difference between censorship and thoughtfulness that these folks seem to be missing outright.

2 comments:

ellie said...

Guys like Sykes love to whip simplistic angry fools into a frenzy.
They don't care that there are people out there who will not only take him seriously, but who are happy to beat the shit out of anybody different after getting a good dose of us or them hate worked up.
Sykes does it to get attentnion and ratings, I rather doubt he even belives most of the crap he spouts. Too bad the rednecks who love to be angry and beat ass on anybody different don't see it that way.
For a few bucks barking heads are willing turn the entire country and world into a battle zone.

Display Name said...

Maybe the next episode of Sykes' Three 1/2 Hour Hate will describe the nuances of his philosophy on how the world's religions should get along. Or maybe he'll find something else less complicated to whine about.

The Lost Albatross