Pink or Grey? Neither, Thanks

A bunch of right-wingers are all atwitter about a silly essay written by a guy named Bill Whittle, in which he divides the world into tribes of steely, competent Greys and weak, evil Pinks. Please, don't read it because I link to it. It really isn't well written, and it's a waste of your time. But, if you've already read it because one of your right-wing friends has forwarded it to you with a breathless "This is wonderful" or "Prepare to read someone who speaks the truth", then here are my comments, which I prepared as an email to an acquaintance who wondered why I think it is chest-thumping, lying, illogical garbage.

Okay, as for the chest-thumping macho thing, I'll just pull a few quotations as illustration. I don't think they'll require any further commentary. If you want it, let me know . . .

- "Now please pay attention to this, because I’m not going to state it again, and if you don’t hear it now much mischief will follow"

- "Now, with that said – have we all heard that loud and clear?"

- "I hate those sons of bitches with all of my heart."

- "If such a thing is not self-evident to you, please get off my property. Right now. I should tell you I own a gun and I know how to use it."

- "(And anyone who even thinks about selling short Reykjavik as a symbol for those eight years of steadfast resolution should see my gun warning, above)."

S______ - that's only going through about half of his bombastic piece of crap - there's more, but I think you get the idea.

More importantly, I suspect, you want to know where he lies. Well, first off the whole thing is intellectually dishonest. He's either stupid or he's intentionally creating a false division of the world into two camps. But that's a little deeper of a criticism than I owe you for this one - you want some examples of where he tells actual, provable lies. Fair enough.

- "My Tribe doesn’t make excuses." - Lie. That is exactly what he is doing for President Bush in much of this piece. When he calls Bush "grey" at the very same time the Bush administration is spreading provable lies about what happened in the run-up to Katrina, all in a pathetic attempt to make excuses for his own failures, that's a lie.

- "My Tribe does not believe that a single Man can cause, prevent or steer Hurricanes." - This is a lie because it completely misrepresents what anybody is saying about the hurricane. No commentators are claiming that a single man can cause, prevent or steer a hurricane. His attempt to distinguish his tribe from another is based on a lie in this instance.

- "my Tribe does not and has never made someone else responsible for their own safety, and that of their loved ones." Complete and utter bullshit. If he's counting on the police tonight, or the military, he's counting on someone else. If tries to dodge that reliance by claiming that those people are members of his tribe, then remind him that he relied on Bill Clinton for 8 years as Commander in Chief.

- "$500 million would be less than 10% of every outspoken celebrities' combined wealth. That money could take every poor person in LA county and put them into much nicer apartments than the one I live in. They could, at a stroke, shame the President, the Congress, and the evil NeoCon warmongers by putting every displaced person in New Orleans in a Marriott for a year." No. That's simply not true. In Los Angeles county alone, in 2002, before Bush's failed economy put even more people into poverty, there were 1,683,869 people in poverty. http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/saipe/saipe.cgi. I refuse to believe he's living in an apartment for less than $300 in LA. Does he honestly think that dividing $500 million among the god-knows-how-many displaced persons would truly get them into a Marriott for a year? He's either stupid or misleading us on purpose. (And, while we're on this point, how about Halliburton giving us 10%? Or Cheney? Or that over-privileged windbag, Barbara Bush?)

- "And in Louisiana last week the governor cried and the mayor blamed everyone but himself, and half the country bought every single stinking Pink lie about global warming and missing National Guard units and blamed the sheepdogs while the wolves raped and pillaged and looted everything in sight." No, that's simply not true. The "wolves" did not rape and pillage and loot everything in sight. There are no confirmed rapes, or pillages, for that matter, and, even if there were some, it was not everything in sight. He's lying about he scope of the lawlessness. Why? To downgrade his fellow man.

Had enough? There are more, but, really, factual mistatement are hardly the bulk of this jerk's problems. The problem is that his logic is totally off.

For example, what's with the pink and grey crap? Is he intentionally alluding to the Confederacy when he uses grey as "his" color? There's no other real reason to choose that color, is there? But there is a group of dimwits who are ready and willing to attack the blacks of New Orleans, and grey is a loaded choice for that a bunch of them.

And why pink? He's not trying to call those who disagree with him homosexuals, is he? Oh, no, he wouldn't do that, would he? Of course that's what he's trying to do, and he can kiss my pink ass.

But, S_____, the real problem is that people cannot be divided as he tries to do. Guess what? Some of those brave people he lauds on 9-11 were liberals, and were alert to race issues, and would not have supported the war in Iraq distracting us from hunting down bin Laden. They were, in every sense of the definition he makes up, pink. But they had courage, and they were willing to do the right thing.

And his grey examples are guilty of weakness and cowardice. Regardless of whether you believe he went AWOL, Bush clearly and inarguably used his daddy's status to send someone else off to Viet Nam in his place.

This guy's "rah, rah, we're better than them" psychosis is contemptible. His verbal sleight of hand, through which he claims that everyone who knows how to build a building, or who is decent, or who knows how to give or follow an order is on his side, is transparent nonsense.

In all seriousness, it is pathetic to read his posturing on paper about how good he and his fellow white people are. His supposition about how "his tribe" would survive in the Superdome is laughable - they'd be fucking each other over like an Enron board orgy, and we all know it. His repeated threat to go get his penis substitute gun is just embarassing.

I've spent too much time on this guy. I hope this suffices to give you a flavor of what I think of his essay.