Stu Rasmussen obituary
First openly transgender mayor in America who became the subject of protests and counterprotests and inspired a musical
OK, and small town America handles it all very well indeed:
Then, three weeks later, members of the Westboro Baptist Church, an aggressively homophobic hate group based in Topeka, Kansas, arrived in Silverton to “speak some words of truth to this 60-year-old pervert”. The locals were having none of it. Two hundred of them staged a counterprotest. Some of the men dressed in women’s clothes to show solidarity with Rasmussen. Others waved placards proclaiming “Not In Our Town”, “Stu Rocks” and “Jesus Loves Stu”. They drove the intruders out.
Thing is, I know the name of that town. Think I’m right in this, that’s where the Mack Fontana novels are set. Fire chief who ends up having detectoring adventures.
The mayor, a major character, is a tough blonde broad who ends up bedding, at one time or another, near all the male characters except the hero.
But what fun to find out that reality is so much more interesting than a mere novel?
Not Silverton, OR but “Staircase, WA” is where Mac Fontana hangs out, isn’t it?
Enjoyable books, any ways.
The novels sound less fictional, though.
I have heard that the Westboro Baptist Church is really just a legal scam. The men are protesters and the women are mostly lawyers. The idea is that they will rock up in a town and begin to protest something in a way that guarantees that they will be assaulted. Once assaulted the women bring civil actions against the perpetrators of the assault.
Obviously the transgenderism didn’t work, seeing as he died of prostate cancer.
Salamander – dunno if they’re a cult or a scam, or both, but we’ve heard far too much about God’s love (by which they usually mean you can safely ignore all the things God told you to do or not do, because wuv) and far too little about God’s judgement.
There was an Italian bloke who wrote a pretty good poem explaining all of this. It’s true that God’s infinite grace can extend even to dagoes, but he also detailed the nine concentric circles of damnation which await gluttons, sex perverts, and lawyers.
It’s not just the BBC, is it? Even The Times now mixes comment with reporting. The journalist is so puffed up with his enlightened sense of social justice that he is unable to let the phrase in inverted commas do its work without a steer.
Dunno. From what I have seen, “aggressively homophobic hate group” looks like accurate and impartial reporting.
BiNK – their own words allow you to take a resonable view of these people without further adornment. Everything about the label is normative and adds nothing to one’s understanding. Any decent journalist knows to avoid adverbs of degree in descriptions and “hate group” is a hollow term that can mean what you want it to and thus nothing.
I’ve never heard of this lot before and they sound rude and unpleasant. I should say they have no business interfering in the doings of another town and its choice of mayor.
” Any decent journalist knows to avoid adverbs of degree in descriptions ”
The frightening omicron variant?
We are literally on the brink of our third year living in a dystopia foretold by a century of fiction writers because of the massive overuse of journalistic adverbs of degree and you think …?
Literally?
You rather make my point for me and if you don’t believe that rotten journalism isn’t complicit in (or a driver of) the dystopia, then your outlook is sunnier than mine.
I think there is a distinction between the accurate “aggressively homophobic” and inaccurate exponential growths, terrifying mutants, overwhelmed hospitals, radicalised far-right anti-vaxxers etc.
I’ll concede, the churnalist is only right on the former for the wrong reasons!