It always happens at big family occasions. That attention seeking kid, tugging on people’s dresses, staging endless demonstrations of its new dance routine or electrocution toy, having tantrums when the presents are being handed out, throwing food at the table and then screeching fit to bring the house down when somebody drags it off to the naughty corner.
What do we do? Well if we’re incompetent parents (and most of us are at times) we watch that routine and clap at the end, we let it have dessert before dinner, we rush to comfort it or punish it or at any rate shut the damn thing up before our ears burst. We PAY ATTENTION.
But every parenting (and animal handling) manual says that what we should really do is praise good behaviour and refuse to notice bad behaviour. Every time Russell Brand or Louis Theroux or Fox News interview the WBC, they’re feeding them. So why not give WBC a media blackout for (next) Christmas and a happy New Year. Turn our collective backs. Let them howl and screech, and good luck to them. If they turn up at funerals, quietly escort them to a safe distance and leave them there.
The best thing that could possibly happen to these people is when we all say “Westboro Baptist Church? Who the fuck are they? Oh, forget it, let’s watch another Two and a Half Men re-run instead!”
Sorry, Rose, gotta go…..
Two and a Half Men just started…
What were you sayin’…….!
[Insert ROSE laughing here]. Or would that be LMFOA Rose?
To be sure, not to piss anyone off, carolynpageabc, i knew you were kidding too! It was a HILARIOUS response!!! Two and a half men is an insanely ridiculous show! Of course you were kidding. Your response was funny!
just wanted to make sure you weren’t miffed. If in doubt, I’m ALWAYS kidding!
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Always kidding too! Too much noise (and seriousness) in my head to be serious OUTSIDE my head. Humor is a glorious drug!
you and me should do something funny one day!
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ha ha!! now if only you could do that with all my posts, I’d shut up!
I do hope you ‘got my underlying point’, my dear Rose….!
I was ‘ignoring’…….
The best thing to do under these circumstances…!
I’d never ignore you, my wonderful woman….
of course – I was joking
I know you wouldn’t!
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I agree! They get too much attention. We can’t really stop them from their right to free speech, but we can ignore it! p.s. I didn’t even watch the clip! lol
well done lala. Actually it was a whole lot of people turning their backs on the stupid old westboro – a nice tactic, I thought.
WBC is not worthy much of my time and effort.
Nah. Although at first I thought they were so absurd they must be a parody.
Huh? Frankly, i have no idea what these people are doing? God loves gay people? I’m assuming that’s “yes”. But what do i know?
The idea that one would have any idea what the maker of the universe prefers, in terms of human sexual choices, is ludicrous in the extreme. Similar to being convinced that he hates carrots.
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Exactly! Sensationalism dies when it doesn’t get attention – and that’s what those ass heads thrive on: attention.
You do wonder where they get their money from. If I did that much swanning about, I’d need a permanent draft from bill gates.
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Their business model is pretty apparent. They get their funding from lawsuits – the Phelps family has a bunch of lawyers in its midst (including their clan leader – a defrocked attorney).
They use their shock tactics to goad people into attacking them or local government to legally infringe on their rights and then they sue for multiple millions. Even winning a small percentage of the time, they’ve stayed in “business” by abusing the legal system (in my opinion).
I had a run-in with them on their website back in 2000ish. Made it on their shit list – I was kinda proud of that.
wow, yep, that’s a badge of honour. As would be punching one – though that’s a bit civically incorrect.
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These nutjobs are so far from the faith they claim to practice it is ludicrous! They give people of the faith a bad image that hold no malice towards gays, Muslims or any other person that does not meet the criteria for acceptable. Then again like you said we are as much to blame as they are.
When I say WE I mean society. We feed the beast by posting the latest crap these gibbering idiots spew ( twitter, blogs, Facebook, YouTube) and the media eats them up with a spoon for ratings sake. (Your post being the exception in this case) Westboro is nothing more than an ignored child. The more they act up and misbehave the more attention they get and negative attention is better than none at all.
Unfortunately the US has the bills of rights and the constitution, which everyone uses liberally as a blanket protection to justify everything they do that pisses people off. Unfortunately we cannot punish the mentally inferior without screwing the people in fact the documents were meant to defend.
Times like this I almost miss the Wild West mentality where you could drags these idiots out and kick the crap out of them.
Yeah, me too (miss the Wild West, that is). Of course, if I was dictator of the world I’d have them put in the stocks and throw stuff at them – eggs, teddybears, that kind of thing. I think by giving evil media-time, we increase it. But what can you do, evil is interesting.
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How their 15 minutes of fame hasn’t ended yet is beyond me.
Yeah, quite.
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Acknowledging them does indeed fuel them, but I can see why people would want to protest their ugly ways. I, for one, ignore them, and I hope that most people can see them for the bigots they are.
I can see why you’d want to protest too. But they clearly feed off publicity.
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I don’t know–as evil as they are, I wonder if maybe the best way to treat them is to just laugh at them for what buffoons they are. I didn’t want to go to their website, of course, and give them the benefit of someone clicking on their site, but if you google them it tells you that their main website is godhatesf**s (I don’t mind spelling out the word, I just don’t want people searching for that phrase and finding that here, you know), and that statement is the first sentence on their site, followed by “God hates f**-enablers”. So, I guess, if I think Elton John’s “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues” is a great song, that makes me a “f**-enabler.” Now I know why God has kept me from winning the lottery.
What really baffles me, though, is their logic in protesting military funerals because dead servicemen represent America’s support of gayness. I mean, I could start a church which protests funerals of soldiers because the U.S. spawned Taylor Swift (I’d probably garner a large following); it would make as much or as little sense as what they do. The main thing I don’t like about them, and totally disagree with the courts about, is that they don’t belong in the vicinity of a funeral or interment. Those should be private ceremonies for people who loved the deceased. The wack-jobs should be allowed to protest in the same town, but not within earshot of what should be a private ceremony.
There I go with the long comments again. So much for ignoring these people. You’re right, though, Rose, they are so totally wacky that most people ignore them.
Yeah it baffled me, but I believe they picket funerals because they think if the person died, it’s an indication of god’s judgement on him and/or America. The wages of sin are death. Obviously these people are quite psychotic. But yeah, laughter probably works too. Indignation, probably not – they just think it’s evildoers getting cranky.
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Your point is SPOT on. I’m tired of the shananigans of ‘the rich and famous’.
Absolutely, they’re so boring when you come down to it. Just because you like to watch a movie with so and so in it doesn’t mean you want to know what he eats for breakfast.
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anything for PR
yeah..maybe I should go be a pain in the arse at some public event, to promote my book! Hey, that’s actually an idea!
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Or stick with Westboro church.:)
it’s a thought! Wrong country. But still…
Fabulous!
thank you James.
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I’m an atheist who gladly would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the counter demonstrators against the Westboro Baptist Church. You don’t have to be Christian to have morals.
It probably helps not to be. Christian, that is.
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I love a good joke as much as the next guy, but these people need to pack it in. It’s not funny anymore! At least, I assume this was all meant as a tasteless joke. Otherwise, it’d be downright terrifying!
That’s what I thought originally but no, they’re serious. There are a lot of scarily serious people around!
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Did you see yesterday’s news about WBC’s new neighbour? Definitely worth looking up and enjoying.
No – I will! thanks.
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Morons. Did I really see ‘God hates…’ in a poster??? Yeah, Morons.
Morons – yeah totally. I mean, the idea that someone thinks they know what god likes and doesn’t like is just ludicrous. Here’s this Creator of the Universe, and some bigoted little uneducated creep in the backwoods of the USA thinks they’ve got the lowdown on his opinion of certain forms of human sexuality? Just ludicrous.
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