And Then I Turned Lowell Off
Most folks around here know I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for WingNuttery, I suppose I built up certain immunities from years of listening to people like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and our local WingNut Lowell Green – yesterday though I hit the wall and turned Lowell off before I heaved my radio out the window.
Lowell has been having a field day of late with the public transit strike and the Israeli invasion of Gaza, in case you’re wondering he thinks the transit union is holding the city hostage to the point of a near humanitarian crisis and should be busted, and he’s positively gleeful over the invasion.
What got the radio turned off yesterday was the beginnings of another stupid -ing Israeli/Palestinian analogy from one of his callers that began:
If your neighnbour started throwing rocks over the fence at your children for no reason, and nothing you said or did seemed to make them stop………..
I don’t know how the story ended, I couldn’t listen anymore, and the radio got turned off – are people really that completely -ing stupid?
Lets try another analogy.
Lets say your grandfather lived on a fairly large chunk of property, and one day the feds, the province, and the city came along and took the biggest portion of the property from you, evicted you from the house your grandfather had lived in, and told you to make due with the mud slough on the back 40…. and gave what they took to a bunch of other folks who they said deserved it more.
You see these people said they needed your land and your property because they had been mistreated and discriminated against in the past, by many people, in many places, and wanted a place of their own; so the city, the province, and the feds said that was fair and gave them most of your place — the city, the province, and the feds were also of course interested in stopping these people from doing things like blowing up hotels and mounting terrorist attacks and such…. but lets not talk about that part of it ‘eh?
Then lets say that these other folks damed up the creek that flowed into your little slough and severely restricted your water supply, began cutting your electricity, started refusing to let people come to visit you, told the milkman to f-ck off every time he showed up with a delivery, wouldn’t let the ambulance through when Aunt Mary got sick, wouldn’t let you leave the slough, and every time you or one of your kids walked towards the road the result was a strip search at the point of a gun.
Lets further say that when you complained about your situation, and when others looked at your situation and said things like, ‘hey, that’s not fair. Why are these new folks allowed to treat them like that?‘, the new folks replied (with a sigh) ‘People have always hated us because of who we are‘, and the city, and the province, said ‘Why do you hate these people? You see, this is why we had to give them those other peoples land and property – people like you have always hated them‘.
Lets further say that in your frustration and anger you threw big clods of sludge at the new people…. I mean, you gotta be pretty p*ssed, you are living in a slough on the back 40 while these new people have your land, they have your house, they are restricting your water and electricity, Aunt Mary died because they prevented the ambulance from getting through, your kids want milk on their cereal and you are really tired of seeing them strip searched at the point of a gun every time they head towards the road…. you and your family are poor, hungry, and sick, and you got sludge, what are the chances that you’re not gonna throw it?
At this point the new folks, protesting greatly that they are the injured party, decide that the only thing they can do is build a fence to protect themselves – so they do. They get their guns and walk to the edge of the slough, and then they walk even further, and they start building their fence, a windy, twisty fence, that they had to bulldoze your woodshed down to make, and manages to make it’s way between you and your outhouse.
– and when you, and others, complain about this the leader of the feds stands up and say ‘Anyone who complains about what the new people are doing are a bunch of racists, and bigots, and hate mongers‘.
In the end, the new folks get an army together and invade that bit of the mud slough you have left.
And that my friends, is a far more accurate analogy than any of the dumb -ing ones that idiots like Lowell Green and his crew spout.
Sounds about right to me.
Lots of people seem to forget that the PLO, Fatah and Hamas are modelling their actions on Haganah.
Analogy is part of the coping mechanism in those brains, SL.
How else are you going to talk easily about mortar fire killing almost 10 people, and the reaction it’s brought of nearly 600 people dying, the bombings, the maimed, the injured, those with shattered futures and lives, children with no mother and father, fathers with no son, mothers with no daughter?
By saying “imagine your neighbour threw rocks at you“.
Yeah, let’s imagine THAT, because imagining the reality (that we wouldn’t have to imagine if journalists covered Israel/Palestine in more even handed terms, and were allowed in Gaza this time) is just too hard. The issue gets too complicated. Black and white no longer appear to be the only colours in the world. Brain cells sputter, fizzle, flick-off.
Which brings me to what appears a root of much of this kind of “imagining.” It’s unfair to expect everyone to have the same level of analytical thinking, and overall intelligence, as you SL. Conservatives by nature aren’t unthinking, but right-wing talk-radio call-in guests (and the hosts who amplify them) are.
I worked in the newsroom of CFRA 30+ years ago. LG was a sphincter then and it seems he hasn’t changed with the passage of time. Even his wife couldn’t stand him. Why would you even listen to that goof?
I prefer Lowell’s anology because fewer people die from it. Your analogy is pretty much the same one Hitler used to great effect in the thirties about Germans living in Eastern Europe and it also underpins the irredentism almost everybody in the blood-soaked Balkans uses against almost everybody else to keep their neighbours bitter and in danger. But I acknowledge that rooting for the violent redress of putative historical injustices of long ago in faraway lands from a position of safety and security helps us get in touch with our inner freedom fighters.
Just reading the second half of your second paragraph, it almost seems like the Israelis have invaded Ottawa to stop the bus strike. I know that’s not what you meant.
Old people listen to Lowell. They are the ones who long for the days when Canada flew the Red Ensign flag. They’re hardcore English Canadians who complain about foreigners coming to Canada. You know? The Irish and Scottish. They complain about drivers speeding on the Queensway (Hwy 417) while they drive 80km/h in the passing lane. They still complain about the metric system!
When is CFRA going to get rid of Lowell Nessman?
“If your neighnbour started throwing rocks over the fence at your children for no reason, and nothing you said or did seemed to make them stop……….”
Well I wouldn’t go out and get a shotgun and blast away the whole family and then go looking for all their friends and relatives and blast them away knowing no one would do anything about it.
As to Lowell, there are no polite words that can be used to describe him.
Both analogies are on the button, the SL one just goes further back in time. So who started it? Want to go back to the Roman times? Or to the time of the rise of Islam? To the Balfour Declaration? To the formation of Israel? The Six Day War? At the kitchen table, you get that bickering about so and so started it first. Is it even a revelant question anymore?
Due to the sheer numbers of Moslems, time is against Israel. Short of removing all the Jews from that area of the world and plunking them down somewhere in Siberia, some would think there is no solution. Whenever gods are involved, there is no reason. So for at least another decade or two, we shall continue to blabber away on blogs about this dangerous problem. I would like to be optimistic and think that eventually, by 2035 at the latest, the politicians will get a grip and somehow manage to arrange a settlement before nukes are set off and without Jewish removal. Is that too much to wish for?
Careful Canuckguy, some of my (distant) relatives live in Siberia. Who are you to take their land away from them to give to another people?
Throbbin, there is lots of empty space in Siberia, surely the local yokels wouldn’t mind.