I should write about our Christmas with the kids in Las Vegas, but when I think of it I’m happy, and as with most things happy, words are slow to come and inadequate when they do. When I see right-wingers getting up to their old shenanigans, on the other hand, I see red and words flow freely.
Witness this, an outrage widely deplored on leftie blogs yesterday: Fox News Refers to the Westboro Baptist Church as a ‘Left-Wing Cult.’ The link is from Gawker, but everyone from Daily Kos to Salon had something to say about it.
In short, Fox News is trying to claim that the Westboro Baptist Church … the crazies who go around the country disrupting funerals by holding up “God Hates Fags” signs … is a left-wing operation. What do they call that? I know you are, but what am I? Something like that. Mitt Romney did a lot of it during the recent presidential campaign. Remember when he said it wasn’t him but Obama who had called for the auto companies to go bankrupt? You also see right-wingers trying to claim Hitler was a liberal based on the word “socialist” in the official name of the Nazi Party (in English, the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”). So really this is nothing new, but my golly if you were reading the blogs yesterday you’d have thought this was the first time the right-wingers had tried to blame Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church on liberals.
Ahem. I tried to tell everyone about this in June of 2005. You can get the full story by clicking the link, but here’s the short version: I was reading an online motorcycle forum when I saw a post about “war protesters” disrupting a military funeral. The way the guy wrote about it, it sounded as if these protesters were hippies from the Vietnam days, now picketing against the war in Iraq at the funeral of an Army sergeant who’d been killed by a roadside bomb. This didn’t ring true to me. There was plenty of opposition to the war in Iraq, from both left and right, but I’d never heard of anyone on our side disrupting a funeral. So I looked into it. It turned out the guy on the motorcycle forum was talking about the Westboro Baptist Church crazies who think every time an American soldier dies in action it’s a message from God telling Americans to stop tolerating homosexuality.
Last time I checked (and I can’t believe I need to spell this out), opposition to homosexuality was a right-wing conservative position. The Westboro Baptist Church is all about hating homosexuality. Therefore, they’re left-wingers. Got it? Good, you’re officially insane. Now go watch Fox News and leave the grownups alone.
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Let’s see if there’s anything pleasant in this bag, shall we? Oh, look, there is!
I went out to the air museum today to give a friend a private tour. We had a great time talking with some of the hangar docents, and I learned a few new facts to incorporate into my own tours. One of the fellows we talked with was a 90-year-old who piloted B-24s and B-17s in WWII (and went on to fly F-4s in Vietnam before he retired). There aren’t many of these guys left: they’re treasures, and I hung on every word he said.
I always bring my camera when I go to the air museum, even on days I’m working and leading walking tours, because I never know what’ll catch my eye and possibly inspire a blog post. Today I took only two photos. You can click on the thumbnails to see the full sized images on Flickr:
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Okay, just a bit about our holiday trip. We drove to Las Vegas on Sunday the 23rd and drove home to Tucson yesterday, Wednesday the 26th. Our daughter Polly went with us, so our little family was reunited for Christmas at our son’s house. We drove up in a car full of wrapped presents; drove home with more of the same, only unwrapped. Donna and I stayed at a hotel south of the Strip; Polly and our two dachshunds (good travelers both) with Gregory, Beth, Taylor (home from college for Christmas break), and Quentin.
I’ll write more about the food on my cooking blog, but Gregory smoked a pork shoulder all day Sunday for our arrival dinner that night; Donna and I prepared our traditional Christmas Eve seafood feast the next night; Christmas evening was clam chowder, a Woodford family tradition started by my father.
Happiness abounded … what can one say? There’s nothing like family, and we’re lucky we’re able to get together. Long may we enjoy these periodic reunions. Long may our kids and grandkids live close enough that we can drive to see them (and they us).