"Hello, there Deepak - or Patel - or whatever your name is!" 
Posted on 08/20/2007 5:56:43 PM PDT by sionnsar
Heroes are meant to be imitated.
Nicole Richie's admirers look like chopsticks with hair, while David Beckham's fans strut around in cleats looking for the perfect plastic lady to bear the children they will then name after the places in which they were conceived (in these parts: Cowgirl's Inc., Lynnwood, Peso's, etc.).
As a kid, I went through a brief phase of trying to be Hello Kitty. I tried to sculpt my hair into strange, high pigtails and copped a blank stare, arms hanging at sides, head always turned to the side. My classmates found it creepy, so I dropped it after, like, two days.
But in some cases, it seems, supporters cannot only emulate an idol's behavior or lifestyle, but can also genetically resemble their hero.
So. I'm sorry to report that President Bush's most loyal supporters look just like him: White, male, middle-aged and slightly stupid (sorry guys, I calls 'em like I sees 'em).
Yes, just as white, middle-aged men everywhere were recovering from Karl Rove's rapping and dancing routine, an AP-Ipsos poll delivered yet another blow to the already culturally maligned group when it revealed that they are more likely to be supporters of Bush than, well, almost anyone else.
If you're conservative, an evangelical Christian, white and in your 40s, you could be a Bushie. Live in a rural area? Married? From the South or the West part of the U.S.? Go to a church at least once a week? Then you're more likely to support both the president and whatever it is he thinks he's doing in Iraq.
Perhaps you hadn't realized this until now. Go ahead. Take a moment. You may start shrieking like a schoolgirl at the sheer horror of it all. It's OK -- no one will hold it against you. I felt the same when I found out that I agreed with a couple of things Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich said recently. Such are these times of chaos and madness.
I promise that if I ever see the dark day when I agree with that boney GOP mouthpiece whose name I won't mention -- you know, the blond broad who looks like a D.C. prostitute -- I'll start cutting and snorting lines of Drano crystals. Back to the July poll... .
I couldn't wrest a full set of results from the tightly clenched fists of the folks at The Associated Press' polling department (I tried), but fortunately, the AP story breaking down the results was a hoot on its own. It quoted a Columbia University poli-sci prof, Robert Shapiro, who says, "Bush's strongest Republican supporters probably won't abandon him unless there is a major scandal."
Oh. A major scandal. COME ON.
I say this not to Mr. Shapiro, who I'm sure is correct in his estimation of Bush backers. The all-capped exasperation is aimed at the fact that he's probably spot on.
These guys remain supportive despite the fact that Bush's administration is stinkier than hot garbage. He rewarded crony after crony with positions in his administration (Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, Treasury Secretary John Snow, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester Crawford, William Steiger, special assistant at the Department of Health and Human Services, etc.).
The few decent people who found a job with Bush ended up resigning -- I had high hopes for you, Colin Powell, but oh, how you were used.
Bush continues to keep Attorney General Alberto Gonzales employed, despite clear evidence that the guy is lying about the reasons behind the firing of the U.S. attorneys who weren't deemed Bush loyalists, about just what he was doing at former AG John Ashcroft's bedside the night he (according to other sources) was trying to force the ailing Ashcroft into approving the president's warrantless surveillance program and about the fact that he knew about FBI violations of civil liberties under the Patriot Act.
Oh, yes, and then there's that matter of Bush's asinine "war on terror."
About the only thing Bush hasn't done (as far as we know) is have a fling with an intern. If only.
He also didn't trade nuclear technology to the Red Chinese for campaign donations, or am I quibbling?
Guessing from the name & sketch half-Iranian, so she's got at least half a good chance at being otherwise.
As opposed to leftists who are totally stupid.
A newspaper runs a website that tells people who look at it that they are stupid.
I don’t know quite what to say to that.
So let me get this straight if you have a job, a family, a sense of decency, a sense of honor, a knowledge of current events, and a sound moral code you might be a Bushie. Sounds pretty good to me I think I’ll stay.
You may start shrieking like a schoolgirl at the sheer horror of it all.
"Hello, there Deepak - or Patel - or whatever your name is!"
“White, male, middle-aged and slightly stupid”
The USA has a history of letting these types fly Figher Jets. /s off.
This is a joke, right?This nitwit can’t actually have a job on the editorial board of a major American newspaper, can he? I mean I wouldn’t less this jerk scribble columns for a highschool rag much less one for a big-city paper. If this is the mental state of people writing for lib papers (and I don’t doubt that it is), then god help this country.
Danger? Lock 'em up, don't play on MySpace pages
Thanks to shows like NBC's "To Catch a Predator" -- that sick bit of voyeurism they cast as a "news show," parents all over the U.S. have been freaking out about MySpace and networking sites like it.
Adding fuel to the fire were Wednesday's headlines letting already paranoid parents know that, "MySpace: 29,000 Sex Offenders Were Registered on Site" (AdvertisingAge.com) and "MySpace: 29,000 sex offenders have profiles" (MSNBC.com). Unfortunately for MySpace, that's more than four times the 7,000 registered sex offenders it claimed to have on its site in May. And those are just the ones who used a real name for their accounts.
Stranger Danger! Lock up your kids! Oh, wait, you already have? Maybe that's why they're online 24/7. But I digress. Those 29,000 profiles were deleted. You might've heard that over this past year, investigators found 100 incidents of adults preying on underage kids on the site. Sounds like a lot, but given that there are 180 million profiles on the site, it's really not. Regardless, law enforcement officials are seeking new rules for use of community/social networking sites.
In theory, enforcing age-authentication on these sites seems like a good idea -- it'll keep too-young kids off the site. But subjecting all adult users to a potential public records search (that's where this is going) is far too invasive. It's misguided to go after the Web sites like this, and it's far more reasonable to expect parents to keep tabs on their children's online activities.
Everyone -- kids especially -- needs to know that predators aren't just digital bogeymen. They're on the streets more than they are online, and we've all seen the gut-wrenching stories reported in the news of children snatched from their homes or on their way to school. Of course, it's understandable why parents worry about their kids being preyed upon, especially after hearing that, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, when compared with non-sex offenders released from state prisons, sex offenders were four times more likely to re-offend (and get arrested for it).
But here's the thing: There are about 600,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., and fewer than 5 percent were on MySpace. Besides, not all sex offenders are the same, meaning that not all of them touch children, or anyone, for that matter. In some cases, streakers, flashers and public urinators must register as sex offenders, as do teenage boys who've had any sort of sexual contact with teen girls, as is the case for Genarlow Wilson, the Georgia teen who, at the age of 17, received consensual oral sex from a 15 year-old girl. He's now three years into his 10-year prison sentence. The state Supreme Court is now considering his case.
It's important to realize that being online is a trippy version of being outside. In the age of information technology, it doesn't really matter if you are out there. It's your info that counts, and -- once freakin' more, with feeling -- parents have to drill that into the heads of their little cyberactive darlings before letting them touch a keyboard. It's not easy, I know. I don't have children, but I'll never forget the sick feeling I got when I did a search on my kid sister's name online and found that she'd posted her full name, age (11), home address and phone number on a Spice Girls fan site. All that was missing was, "I'm home alone between 2 and 5 p.m." Had I talked to her about it before? Hell yeah, and I did again and again.
The expectation that cyberspace is meant to be this sanitized, supersafe place where nothing bad can ever happen is the candy-coated delusion of the simpleminded. In a sense, you're just as vulnerable to most threats online just as you are, well, offline, and demanding that they weed out child molesters, murderers, scam artists or fans of Clay Aiken -- I know, not a criminal element, but a personal point of revulsion nonetheless -- is flat out unreasonable. It's like holding a nightclub or a coffee shop responsible for allowing a creep with a criminal record in.
Yup, that's life, and it can be terrifying, be it online or in the "real" world. Just learn to deal with it.
If you’re conservative, an evangelical Christian, white and in your 40s, you could be a Bushie. Live in a rural area? Married? From the South or the West part of the U.S.? Go to a church at least once a week? Then you’re more likely to support both the president and whatever it is he thinks he’s doing in Iraq.
And these things are bad?
She left out law-abiding, tax paying, and backbone of America.
Just remember, you would be shot for saying what you said about the President in most other countries.
I resent that remark. I was flying fighters way before I was middle-aged. :)
I do. Say:
I do not want to live in Seattle.
I want to move to Washington and turn it into a red state.
I want to move to Washington and turn it into a red state.
I want to move to Washington and turn it into a red state.
I want to move to Washington and turn it into a red state.
...
(Oops. Reflexively attempting to use leftist diminished-mind-control techniques. Doesn't work with FReepers. Sorry...)
Maybe someone will ping her to this thread.
Fighters or Fighers? (Thank you for your service!)
Ma’am... I’m sure your native Teheran would just love to host such a charming and outspoken lady. Been home lately?
D. Parvaz's Iranian passport.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter D. Parvaz was born in Iran but hasn't lived there since childhood. In September 2006, she returned to visit for the first time in 22 years. She found a country very different from the one she remembered -- and very different from the one Americans expect.
D. Parvaz will write about the labeling of Iran's revolutionary guards as a terrorist group.
D Parvaz - dparvaz@seattlepi.com
“That’s me, except for the M.B.A. from Harvard.”
My father and grandfather, Exeter and Harvard graduates from Scarsdale, conservative to the core. Yeah, they were slightly stupid.
Talk about a surprise! Read the comments. There are actually more than a few readers who took this sophomoric halfwit to task.
Horsey is a brilliant cartoonist...I don't agree with him 95% of the time...but he has a magnificent way of catching a person's essence. I've never seen D. Parvaz...but he has captured the hands-on-the-hips cold-eyes I'm-right-you're-wrong look of the Seattle P-I.
LOL!! She was probably so flattered to be caricatured by a Pulitzer Prize-winning guy that she couldn't see the truth he drew!
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