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News & ArtsTuesday, August 25, 2009
At Large Liberal Pussy
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Sitting on your butt fasting in support of the public option? What? Scream and yell! Wave a gun around! Threaten the president's life! Don't just sit there refusing to eat, you big liberal pussy. They're never gonna put you on cable news and tell us you speak for all real Americans everywhere so long as you're sitting there on Santa Monica Boulevard refusing to eat like sort of Gandhi foreigner or whatever.
1
Dan, the Seattle PI is saying that Ed Murray has talked to them about running for mayor. Apparently there's a poll that is going out to see if he has a chance.
Look what you did!! And yeah, I think we should all blame you; only you!!! :)
Look what you did!! And yeah, I think we should all blame you; only you!!! :)
2
I encourage this. Obesity is a huge health problem costing millions and millions of dollars. More fasting, less obese people. They're saving healthcare dollars already. That and have you seen the arm flubber on some of the people protesting against healthcare reform? This is a good thing.
3
Really. Let's have a civil war and just kill each other over health care. And no cheating and using emergency rooms.
4
you don't get on TV when you're a liberal protestor, dan. scream, march, fast: doesn't matter a whit.
8
They should do like PETA and get naked in front of a hospital hurling paint and feces at people. PETA could teach them a thing or two about gaining media attention.
9
That's what you get for believing that anything that happens in southern California is in any way relevant to the rest of the world. Oh God, you're turning into a Californian already! Ack!
10
Passive, Gandhi-like protests only work when they actually get in the way big-time. (Envision a two-million-person sit-down protest on the streets of Washington D.C.!)
This sitting in a chair, with a shade umbrella and doubtless sipping a Starbuck's venti triple skinny latte is just lazy bullshit. Leave that to the birthers.
This sitting in a chair, with a shade umbrella and doubtless sipping a Starbuck's venti triple skinny latte is just lazy bullshit. Leave that to the birthers.
11
Dan, welcome to L.A. It's where I grew up. There's no greater metro area that is so well insulated from what's around it and wouldn't know what to do if it became dependent on other things than greater L.A.
If this is the West L.A./Santa Monica part of Santa Monica Blvd., it's better you have lifeless protesters than violent Deadheads fried beyond hope.
If this is the West L.A./Santa Monica part of Santa Monica Blvd., it's better you have lifeless protesters than violent Deadheads fried beyond hope.
13
Well, they got your attention. Perhaps their numbers will grow, and the LA Times will pick up the story. It's better than whimpering into their lattes and bitching to their social circle, isn't it?
14
Every time I feel like a public option, or even single payer national health care, I go to another First World nation, one of the top industrialized nations.
God, we are so pitifully behind the times.
We make Lithuania look advanced.
God, we are so pitifully behind the times.
We make Lithuania look advanced.
16
Some symbolic protests are less focused on results than a secular version of the religious practice of "bearing witness."
Hard to throw rocks when you live the glass house of blogging.
Hard to throw rocks when you live the glass house of blogging.
18
@10,
Or if you've built up a cult of personality as Gandhi did.
Hey, maybe Dan should start fasting.
Or if you've built up a cult of personality as Gandhi did.
Hey, maybe Dan should start fasting.
19
@ 2,
Personally, I think if we keep riling up the elderly and flubberous at these townhall meetings, there's a good chance their bloodpressure will go dangerously high....to the point they'll no longer be around to protest socialized medicine....or be a burden on Medicare/Medicaid.
Personally, I think if we keep riling up the elderly and flubberous at these townhall meetings, there's a good chance their bloodpressure will go dangerously high....to the point they'll no longer be around to protest socialized medicine....or be a burden on Medicare/Medicaid.
20
I was with him till the third sentence. Again Savage do you know how dangerous that line is in these type of political climate? Leave the idiocy for your little skits on HBO okay.
21
20:
You could use some reading comprehension skills. It's a sarky comparison between GOP tea-bagger wearing their guns to town hall meetings and a certain anti-Obama Baptist ministers from Arizona (haven't you heard he's preaching to his congregation to pray for Obama to die) and most liberals.
You could use some reading comprehension skills. It's a sarky comparison between GOP tea-bagger wearing their guns to town hall meetings and a certain anti-Obama Baptist ministers from Arizona (haven't you heard he's preaching to his congregation to pray for Obama to die) and most liberals.
22
21 I just checked the other post, so I hope thats what he was referring to. I still think that he shouldn't be repeating the stupidity coming out of that man's mouth, due to the gravity of it. And let me remind you that there have been also "intellectual" supremacist who have said similar things to what that hick in AZ said.
23
22:
You really ought to invest some time into educating yourself on the person who is Dan Savage (not the columnist and writer, but the human being behind the public persona), if your going to keep obsessing over him and continue vilifying him. If you did, you would get that your statement @ 20 makes little sense, and it makes you sound paranoid and rather idiotic.
You really ought to invest some time into educating yourself on the person who is Dan Savage (not the columnist and writer, but the human being behind the public persona), if your going to keep obsessing over him and continue vilifying him. If you did, you would get that your statement @ 20 makes little sense, and it makes you sound paranoid and rather idiotic.
24
23 Dan Savage is no saint, he's not even that well adjusted in my humble opinion. He has said some pretty hateful things himself so excuse me if I take with caution anything he writes, especially when he doesn't clarifies it. Unlike you I'm not one of his psycho fans who applauds everything he writes and says without first scrutinizing it.
25
24:
Wrong! And, out of line.
First, your not humble at all.
Second, who said anything about Savage being a saint?
Third, have you actually ever spoken to the man? Or, do you base your opinion of your fellow human purely upon what you read here?
Careful, your hateful bile is going to eat your pretty teeth, and it puts a nice big spotlight on your prejudices.
Your forgiven for calling me a name.
Wrong! And, out of line.
First, your not humble at all.
Second, who said anything about Savage being a saint?
Third, have you actually ever spoken to the man? Or, do you base your opinion of your fellow human purely upon what you read here?
Careful, your hateful bile is going to eat your pretty teeth, and it puts a nice big spotlight on your prejudices.
Your forgiven for calling me a name.
26
Truly fasting for a cause (i.e. nothing but water) is actually grueling, though it's usually ignored until the protester is good and suffering for it. In the US (or in any first world nation) a hunger striker must abstain from food for ten to twenty days under a DNR advance directive before they are regarded as serious protestors.
A hunger strike is an expression of the willingness to commit suicide in protest of the status quo. It is far from cowardly (wussy or pussy) behavior. It takes three days to enter ketosis (digestion of body fat after glucose supplies are exhausted) and around twenty days to begin starvation, when the fasters' bodies will start mining muscle tissue, vital organs and bone marrow to stay alive. Some protestors have lived for fifty days or more before starving to death. It is, in its bleak reality, one of the more prolonged and torturous ways to die, thus it is quite brave to endeavor such a strike.
Allowing such a protester to die is regarded as bad form in the international sector, and is embarrassing to any administration under which it happens. This is the threat self-sacrificial protestors present.
Someone needs to confirm that these guys have, in fact, reflected on these potential consequences of such a strike, and are consciously committed to fasting until death. Getting them to read and sign the DNR directive will help. If not, they're still not any more liberal pussies than the rest of us (who continue to dine and otherwise continue our daily lives regardless of healthcare reform). To the contrary, they were, as are many contemporary-era fasters just misinformed as to the sacrificial nature of a hunger strike; temporary fasts, full-liquid-diet fasts or other nutritionally supplemented fasts are acceptable methods to attain spiritual transcendence, but for political protests, they are just silly.
Once these guys are truly committed to fast until change or death, someone then needs to put them on a bus to Pennsylvania Avenue NW in DC before they pass out. Their protest will be much more difficult to ignore, once there.
Just as effective a protest would be achieved by having terminally ill folk who are currently being denied treatment by the current system chain themselves (ideally wearing nought but hospital gowns) to Capitol Hill, not with the intent of dying for the cause, but to make visible to our representatives the consequences of the current system. While self sacrifice wouldn't be the intent, bonus coverage points would still go to those who do go critical while protesting.
More...
A hunger strike is an expression of the willingness to commit suicide in protest of the status quo. It is far from cowardly (wussy or pussy) behavior. It takes three days to enter ketosis (digestion of body fat after glucose supplies are exhausted) and around twenty days to begin starvation, when the fasters' bodies will start mining muscle tissue, vital organs and bone marrow to stay alive. Some protestors have lived for fifty days or more before starving to death. It is, in its bleak reality, one of the more prolonged and torturous ways to die, thus it is quite brave to endeavor such a strike.
Allowing such a protester to die is regarded as bad form in the international sector, and is embarrassing to any administration under which it happens. This is the threat self-sacrificial protestors present.
Someone needs to confirm that these guys have, in fact, reflected on these potential consequences of such a strike, and are consciously committed to fasting until death. Getting them to read and sign the DNR directive will help. If not, they're still not any more liberal pussies than the rest of us (who continue to dine and otherwise continue our daily lives regardless of healthcare reform). To the contrary, they were, as are many contemporary-era fasters just misinformed as to the sacrificial nature of a hunger strike; temporary fasts, full-liquid-diet fasts or other nutritionally supplemented fasts are acceptable methods to attain spiritual transcendence, but for political protests, they are just silly.
Once these guys are truly committed to fast until change or death, someone then needs to put them on a bus to Pennsylvania Avenue NW in DC before they pass out. Their protest will be much more difficult to ignore, once there.
Just as effective a protest would be achieved by having terminally ill folk who are currently being denied treatment by the current system chain themselves (ideally wearing nought but hospital gowns) to Capitol Hill, not with the intent of dying for the cause, but to make visible to our representatives the consequences of the current system. While self sacrifice wouldn't be the intent, bonus coverage points would still go to those who do go critical while protesting.
27
It's absolutionist activism. They are just doing this to feel better about themselves when health care reform fails.
29
What's up with the bicycle? I would think they would be too tired to go bike riding during a fast. Also, wouldn't burning these extra calories lead to them dying more quickly, thus decreasing the suspense and drama of the fast?
30
@18
Or if you have militants in your shadow whom the government will have to deal with if they don't deal with you, making you instantly the preferred choice, like Gandhi did.
I am not, for the record, advocating violence of any kind, nor militancy. It is a time-honored truth, though, that governments respond to demands for reform when they are faced with real consequences for failing to do so, never before.
Or if you have militants in your shadow whom the government will have to deal with if they don't deal with you, making you instantly the preferred choice, like Gandhi did.
I am not, for the record, advocating violence of any kind, nor militancy. It is a time-honored truth, though, that governments respond to demands for reform when they are faced with real consequences for failing to do so, never before.
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