We all say stupid things from time to time. Fortunately, for most people (and most of the time), the only people who hear these things are friends and family—who are generally forgiving—or maybe a bartender, who really doesn’t give a crap. There are exceptions.

Take, for example, Ariana Grande. For those who don’t know the name, she was last month’s teen pop sensation. She and her contemporaries (Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, et al) are all super-grateful that Amy Winehouse is dead and Adele is busy being a mom, so that leaves a vacuum into which the minimally talented can slip.

Last week, Grande and some friends were in a donut shop in Lake Elsinore, California. A store camera caught her licking some of the donuts that had been left out and then saying, “I hate Americans. I hate America.”

Not surprisingly, Grande caught 12 kinds of heck for that statement, but I’m actually here to defend her. It’s not her fault. Grande, who appears to weigh somewhere between 60 and 62 pounds, probably doubled her caloric intake for the week with that licking incident and then there was all that sugar! Let’s just be glad that she was nowhere near the Bay Area and that the current mayor of San Francisco has an armed bodyguard.

•A few years ago, I wrote something about one of the morning talk-show hosts suggesting that he (and others) occasionally pandered to the racist elements in their audiences. He got all upset and said that I had called him a racist. (I hadn’t.) I went on his show to clear things up, merely pointing out that an entertainer should know his audience and it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that there is a much higher percentage of racists in Rush Limbaugh’s audience than in the audience that listens to NPR. That doesn’t mean that Rush Limbaugh is a racist or that everybody who listens to him is racist.

I thought that would clear it up, but I kept listening to his show and, months later, he would refer back to it and refer to me as a “big, fat slob.” Over and over again.

Well, I still listen to his show when I’m out driving in the morning. Sometimes I even agree with him. He recently had a thing about a Georgetown University professor who wants to get rid of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replace them with a generic “Parents Day.” That professor needs to be smacked around, first by his mother, then by his father, and then jointly in what would be a Parents’ Smackdown.

Unfortunately, a couple weeks ago, the local host was trying to defend the indefensible—Southern redneck racists who love the Stars and Bars—by equating the way some black people use the N-word to the way some white people look at the racist symbol of the Old South. He said something to the effect of “Try it this way: Every time you’re going to use the N-word, substitute the term ‘Confederate flag.'”

It sounded like fun, so I gave it a try. First there was the Kanye West song:

“I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger; But she ain’t messin’ with no broke (Confederate flag).”

Being more of a vintage R&B guy myself, I went back to Curtis Mayfield’s groundbreaking movie soundtrack to “Superfly.” In the song “Pusherman,” he sings:

“I’m your mama, I’m your daddy, I’m that (Confederate flag) in the alley…”

And who can forget the classic comedy album that was so popular, it actually spent four weeks atop the Billboard R&B Albums chart in 1974? Featuring the hilarious bit, “Wino Dealing With Dracula,” we all loved Richard Pryor’s album, “That (Confederate flag)’s Crazy.”

It didn’t work. I have no sympathy for ignorant knuckle-draggers who lament the fact that they couldn’t live in a time where human beings owned other human beings and where the ancestors of today’s rednecks committed torture, rape, and even murder—all in the name of commerce. I’m glad I lived long enough to see that despicable Confederate rag relegated to the dustbin of history, but I hate the fact that it took our country 150 years to start making that move.

•And finally, there’s Bristol Palin, the former paid spokesperson for an abstinence campaign whose pregnancy out of wedlock did wonders for her mother’s Family Values platform in 2008.

Well now, Bristol finds herself pregnant again, with no baby-daddy in the picture. She issued a defiant statement that I found inadvertently hilarious.

She started her statement with “None of us are perfect.” You can say that again. Since “none” is singular, that sentence should be “None of us is perfect.” (If you’re unsure, just substitute the word “one” for “none” to make sure you’re doing it right.)

She then said that she “would be completely crucified” after announcing her second pregnancy. It amazes me that self-proclaimed Christians use the word “crucify” so casually. If the atheistic John Lennon wants to use it in “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” that’s fine. However, for a Christian, it should mean only one thing and be used sparingly and accordingly.

Palin ended her rant with, “I don’t need a lecture.” No, you don’t. You need contraception. Or perhaps a dictionary in which to look up the definition of “celibacy.”

This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.

17 replies on “Danehy”

  1. Sometimes I think people like Dylann Roof should be sentenced to watching an hour or two of reruns of Dukes of Hazzard. They’d be begging for a quick, painless execution.

  2. Funny line about the “vacuum” and the “minimally talented”.
    Not buying your assertion about NPR listeners being less racist than right wing talk radio.
    Your crew practices that soft racism of low expectations. Just stay on the Dem plantation and the
    government will take care of you.
    As for the Northern Virginia battle flag, good riddance.
    It is a side show however.
    We should be calling out Big Pharma on these psychotropic drugs. ( which don’t seem to mix well with guns)
    Columbine, Connecticut, Denver, and Jared Loughner in Tucson. Still very little mention of these drugs.
    Speaking of stupid remarks, I remember you and Fitz and Dupnik all making ridiculous charges about
    right wingers being responsible for the Safeway shootings before all the facts were gathered.
    On the crucifixion topic.
    The Pope while doing his “communism is better than capitalism” tour last week accepted a crucifix placed on a hammer and sickle from the Bolivian Prez. Nice. Maybe we can mount one on a swastika for a fine Christmas gift next.
    You might want to hold someone accountable who has a little more clout than Bristol Palin.

  4. Tom, the historic, beloved by many, Confederate flag you are insulting is not the Stars and Bars. It is the Confederate Battle Flag, not one of the three Confederate govt. flags used in the WBTS.
    Many Southerners bravely fought and died, against huge odds, for the battle flag that symbolized independence from the Union. None of the Southern soldiers or the Northern soldier were fighting for or against slavery.
    The South believed they were fighting a second American revolution. The Declaration of Independence of the 13 Colonies begins, “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ..”
    The heavy, abusive tax and tariffs by North on the South, plus the North was occupying the South, led to war. The South wanted to leave the North, and the North didn’t want them to do it. After all, the Union derived 75% of its revenues from 4 Southern states: Virginia, Georgia, N and S Carolina. Lincoln said ugly things about blacks. He had no good regard for them, but he hoped freeing them would leave what farms and plantations the North had not burned to the ground without workers and the South would starve. A shrewd plan. Although most of the slaves stayed with their owners.
    Lincoln’s Emancipation Proc. did NOT free slaves in the North or in the Southern border states that did not leave the union.
    I urge you to read WBTS history. Shelby Foote has written a respected trilogy titled The Civil War. It is considered the Civil War Iliad. He moer than 20 years writing it.
    You are an intelligent man, you will learn a lot if you can suspend your prejudices, and you may want to temper your attacks on the Confederacy. I ask you to please see Shelby Foote on YouTube speaking about Gettysburg, Gen. Lee’s biggest battle error. In this video, Foote states what the Battle Flag really stands for and how disgusting it is that wild, racist, rednecks have stolen the flag for their own bigotry and hate. I will try to email it to you if I can find your email address. The video also has interesting comments about William Faulkner.
    Respectfully,
    Barbara Duvall

  5. Amen(the Vince of Darkness). We have been trained to ignore the obvious as it just simply can’t be. When we see exactly what the problem is.

  6. Barbara Duvall apparently has never read the articles of secession for each of the seceding states. She makes it sound like the southern states slave based economy was downright reasonable and the slaves didn’t even mind being slaves because most of them stayed with their owners! Talk about revisionist claptrap. I’ve read Shelby Foote’s trilogy and I hate to break the news to you but Mr. Foote is no historian. He’s just a novelist. He has no formal training as a historian. I don’t even think he has a college degree other than honorary. While I admire his work, he is certainly no authority on the Civil War and his trilogy glosses over what the south really was, and is strongly sympathetic towards the slave holding states. No historian worth his degree would write such a slanted “history”.

  7. Kentop, I have read the articles of secession of several states. Yes, I know slavery was a part of life back then, I am not ignoring it and I am certainly not condoning it. I faced it straight on in Oct. last year when I went to S. Carolina for the first time to where my ancestors lived during the Civil War. There is a family museum there I knew about but had never seen, dedicated to Alamo defenders James Butler Bonham and William Barrett Travis, both from that little town, and both slave owners, at least Travis was and Bonham’s father owned probably 100 slaves. I wanted to meet some of my current Bonham relatives. The Bonhams there were all black, no white Bonhams lived there. The blacks’ ancestors had been slaves on Bonham plantations. They stayed with the Bonham families and took their name after emancipation. The only change was that they were free and they were then paid for their work. They are not threatened or concerned about Confederate flags. So you see, things worked out for the best in the end.
    The North generally did not likes blacks and Union soldiers would not fight with them and would not have them in their units. The North didn’t know what to do with them if they weren’t slaves, but the South depended on them. Because blacks were not depended on or wanted in the North, I have read that former slaves who left the South didn’t usually stay in the North, they went on to Canada. Many returned to the South. The South did have blacks in their predominately white units.
    Slavery was only a part of the war, and you are stuck on it, as are suddenly a so many other people. This is 150 year old history, and if you don’t like it, go read some other history. You can’t change it!!! So why complain about it? I am proud of my Southern ancestors and so are millions of other people proud of theirs. No one is threatened by Southern history, so let is be! In trying to be what you think it trendy and politically correct, you are missing the point here and I realize nothing anyone can say to you will enlighten you.

    Union General Grant owned slaves, conveniently said to belong to his wife, not to him. Thomas Jefferson owned many slaves. Slavery is not the issues here. The attempts to attack history to promote fading careers such as Jesse Jackson and fading groups such as the NAACP, is causing problems where none should exist. They want media face time.
    This is stiring up bad feelings. Don’t tell me that when blacks see the Battle Flag they are frightened. They are in no danger from that flag. But to try to stir up trouble where none exists is the problem. It seems blacks would be proud of all they have achieved and be proud of their ancestors.

    Unfortunately, slavery still exists in many places in the world. That is where attention should be placed to end existing slavery.

    Mr. Foote and other historians state that no soldier was fighting for slavery, neither north or south. Most of the Southern soldiers did not own slaves. The North was abusively taxing the South, the North was invading and occupying the South. If you read Foote’s trilogy of The Civil War, you would know that Foote said the South fought the North”because they were down here and they are going to have me to fight.” The South had taken all the abuse they could stand.

    You say Foote was not a historian. Fortunately, he was a novelist. I have never met a history teacher who was as interesting and insightful as Foote, or as successful in researching and telling the stories of history. After Foote spent about 25 years researching, living and breathing Confederate history, I would consider him historian and novelist, the best.
    I realize you are just looking for something to complain about, to find fault with, you cannot relax and accept history for what it is and learn from it, and leave it in the past. You and other complainers need to grow up and move on.

  15. I make an innocent ,harmless joke and get 37 dislikes. I love it. All people have to do is see my name and they hit dislike without even reading what I said.

  16. 13…It’s because people know reading what you write is a waste of time. It’s like swating a fly.
    Dont have to look at it to know its useless and annoying.

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