Introducing The Stageleft Moral Capital Accumulator!
There are certain trollish arguments whose recurrence is as inevitable as taxes and as wearying as ABBA. One of the weakest is the response you receive when you’ve just published a thoughtful and even handed piece on Israeli settlement or Conservative funding for Arts, and some commenter with single digit IQ ripostes with:
Oh YAH? Well, HOW COME you didn’t complain like THAT about (Hamas/teh GAYS/teh MOOSLIMS/Stalin/Obama/any of the other usual buttons) HUH? EH? WHY? CRICKETS!!!)
…and so on.
Now, the time we spend blogging here at the Bunker is admittedly finite. Try as we might, we cannot address ALL the world’s ills in EVERY post. However, many of our more primitive readers seem to feel that our failure to repeatedly express our disapproval of horrors like traditional cliteroidectomy somehow:
- represents our tacit approval of the practice, and
- eliminates our moral authority to comment on any other issue.
We could, of course, point out yet again that a failure to condemn (a) does not imply approval of (a), and nor does it mitigate criticism of (b). We are, however, innovators at heart. And so the Bunker Research Bureau is pleased to introduce the Stageleft Moral Authority Accumulator. That was it. Just there. Between the words “Accumulator”, and “That”. There’s another one.
Allow us to explain.
You probably haven’t paid much attention to those little dots that separate one sentence from another in this post – the periods. Except they’re no longer simple punctuation marks. They’re tiny chunks of Moral Authority. Look closely: 
They’re cleverly confected microdots, each one of which expresses the Bunker’s disapproval such evils as genital mutilation, Soviet Gulags, and Islamist beheadings – all those things we’re accused of not paying enough attention to. Each apparent period now contains the following explicit message:
The Bunker hereby formally and unequivocally declares its opposition to genital mutilation: terrorist beheadings: bombings; theocracies; undemocractic forms of government; shooting rockets at civilians; car bombings; torture; use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; arresting or shooting people who are watching or participating in demonstrations; the persecution of homosexuals, lesbians, transgender, transexual, bisexual or queer individuals by any state or religion, including Christians or Muslims; the mocking of families of political candidates or incumbents; PETA; deliberate lies by journalists or bloggers or any political stripe; the destruction of Israel; anti-semitism (the REAL kind); calling women “cunts”; use of children or women (or anyone) as human shields; the Chinese Cultural Revolution; the Cambodian Killing Fields; the Soviet Gulags; the Holocaust; Holocaust denial; political assassination; serial killers; rape; mocking those afflicted by Down’s Syndrome; censorship of political perspectives of any stripe; government ripoffs committed by any poltical party, including the Liberals; attempts to force anyone to wear or not wear specific articles of clothing; the suppression of religious belief (including Christians); sex with children;Â post-natal abortion; stealing money; CRTC limitations of the political scope of media service (yay Fox, yay Al Jazeera); dictatorships; and Christmas cake.
On the average, each Bunker post contains thirty-one apparent periods, and thus, henceforth, thirty-one explicit denunciations of all the things we’re criticized for not denouncing enough. With an average of 1.852 posts per day over the last year, that will give us 20,593 denunciations per year – an incredible reservoir of moral capital, a Himalayan peak of righteousness from which we should be ethically unassailable.
We are of course prepared to share the moral bounty with our friends. We will be pleased to ship you your own Moral Capital Accumulator, or prepare a customized edition for your specific blog or comments.
The price? Well, how CAN you put a price on indisputable moral rectitude? We’ll talk.
HAHAHAHAHA! Priceless.
I definitely need one of those. Whenever I do a post critical of the Catholic church (whether it’s about contraception, pedophile priests, or forcing 9-year-old girls to give birth to twins), I can count on someone showing up in the comments to ask if I favour Sharia law, stonings and genital mutilation. Presumably because there’s nothing in the post that explicitly states that I don’t favour such things.
A Moral Capital Accumulator would be most helpful.
Love it.
Can you come up with a conversational version as well? You know, for when you’re denounced for not denouncing in oral arguments?
JJ: Given some of the attention you attract from the foetishists, I think I’d have to recommend the full colon accumulator (:), Smart, sassy, and symmetrical, it packs double the moral punch. A bit pricier, but we call it Ramjet Rectitude. Can you AFFORD TO BE WITHOUT IT?
skdadl: we have a prototype in the works involving barcodes and a tattoo, but that’s all I can say at this point. A hint: don’t get your tongue pierced just yet.
I Love It!
I have to admit I don’t get many complaints like that anymore, and when I do I tell them to fuck off and go bite someone else’s ankles. I apply the principle of freedom of the press belonging to those who own one to my blog.
But nobody knows how to bring them out like JJ, she’s far too kind to those fools. Full colons are a good start, but I’m thinking ellipsis for her, lots more real estate in there.
Geez Louise, if you love Mohammed so much, maybe you should make like a nine year old girl and marry him.
(Singling out of Christmas via cake?)
An ELLIPSIS! Excellent. Lotta work, though, an ellipsis. I’m thinking if we try a semi colon first – it’s got just that tiny edge over the full colon to give you that moral boost in a pinch.
Sooey, I understand that leaves us open to charges of Christophobia. However, loathing of Christmas cake may, in the end, be the force that draws us all together, irrespective of race, creed, colour, sexual orientation, or class.
Think about it, with ellipsis you can categorize, On one you can have Reproductive rights and the myriad disclaimers required for all the SHE’s and the SHE wanna bee’s in the world. On another you can have General religious silliness (e.g.: gay marriage will destroy the Earth, and abortion is such a terrible waste of potential children to abuse). And the third, I think can be for political issues, but Steve needs a special place there, because… he’s needy… he likes to be special so why not afford him the opportunity.
If we produced, say, a dozen or so themed microdots (political, religious, social, linguistic, cultural, gender-focused), suitable for deployment as periods, ellipses, OR the dots on a “i”, we could mix and match them for sale as singles or discounted in lots of three to specific bloggers, depending on their specific needs. That could work. Storage space is not a big issue.
Hilarious. Well done.
Hey, it’s my tag team buddy! Wasn’t THAT a thrilling weekend?
It was. It never ceases to amaze me that people can see a conspiracy based on nothing more than “I don’t like the result.”
Brillig! I swiped it.
http://thestar.blogs.com/broadsides/2009/07/disclaimer.html
Oh, bravo!!
Now, think of what you can put in the space provided by the shaft of the exclamation mark. When will you address that gap? Huh? Huh?