On Friday, April 19th, as Americans held anxious vigil during the police pursuit of and violent confrontations with the Boston Marathon bombers, one state senator from Arkansas, Nate Bell, saw fit to post this on Twitter:
I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A
— Nate Bell (@NateBell4AR) April 19, 2013
On the senator's campaign Facebook page, 8000 reaction posts (many by outraged Arkansans) called
for Bell's head while a grand total of three posters-- surely sock puppets for Bell, his mom and his grandpa -- posted in his defense. To them, I offer the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
As a New Yorker, I ordinarily regard Bostonians as my arch rivals: the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins fans I love to hate come game time. But like my fellow fans who paid tribute to Boston with a rousing rendition of "Sweet Caroline" at Yankee Stadium, I, too, feel an urgent need as an American to show solidarity with my cousins in Beantown.
Senator Bell, your state should beg the Waltons to funnel a small fraction of their multi-billion dollar fortune into some remedial education just for you because your ignorance about your fellow Americans on the East Coast is appalling. The truth is, we eastern liberals believe in protecting our families, and we most certainly have the means to do so. Still, like all too many of your craven GOP partisans, you remain stubbornly impervious to facts and empirically-verifiable reality, let alone the best interests of the American people.
As a New Yorker, I ordinarily regard Bostonians as my arch rivals: the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins fans I love to hate come game time. But like my fellow fans who paid tribute to Boston with a rousing rendition of "Sweet Caroline" at Yankee Stadium, I, too, feel an urgent need as an American to show solidarity with my cousins in Beantown.
Senator Bell, your state should beg the Waltons to funnel a small fraction of their multi-billion dollar fortune into some remedial education just for you because your ignorance about your fellow Americans on the East Coast is appalling. The truth is, we eastern liberals believe in protecting our families, and we most certainly have the means to do so. Still, like all too many of your craven GOP partisans, you remain stubbornly impervious to facts and empirically-verifiable reality, let alone the best interests of the American people.
Compared to you and your constituents in Arkansas, we northeasterners pay out a whole lot more in Federal taxes than we ever get back in benefits and services. As a result, much of the means you have to pay to protect your family CAME FROM US. That's the first reason why you should either say “Thank you,” or kindly shut the hell up. We will gladly settle for the latter.
Many of
us eastern liberals actually do choose to own and keep guns in our homes. Some of us even hunt! We have woods and deer and everything out here! We just think it's overkill to keep semi-automatic weapons and high-volume magazines
in densely-populated,
urban areas, especially when a nice, loud shotgun blast can scare off an intruder even
better.
Others (indeed, most) among us would rather take our resources and pool them into a common fund (you know, tax revenues -- shhhhhh!).
You see, the large amount of money we raise when we pitch in together
enables us to employ a well-regulated professional police force outfitted with semi-automatic handguns,
assault rifles, armored trucks, k-9 units, cameras and even robots to protect us. It works very well. For more than 15 years now crime rates in New York
City and Boston have been at lows last seen in the 1960s.
We northeastern liberals also have this crazy habit of
taking note of things like facts and statistics. They show us that guns kept
the in the house expose women and children three times the risk of being shot
and killed by another family member, as compared to the negligible danger
of being shot by a stranger in a home invasion.
I’ll spare you any further discussion of statistics, as I wouldn’t want to make your head explode from all the, you know, *knowledge.* We'll leave that for the folks at Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston University, Boston College, U Mass, NYU, Columbia, Barnard, Baruch, Queens College, Brooklyn College…. Eh, never mind.
I’ll spare you any further discussion of statistics, as I wouldn’t want to make your head explode from all the, you know, *knowledge.* We'll leave that for the folks at Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston University, Boston College, U Mass, NYU, Columbia, Barnard, Baruch, Queens College, Brooklyn College…. Eh, never mind.
One of your three supporters made the colossally
ridiculous claim that it's "bullying" when American citizens criticize outrageous remarks made by an elected government official.
A bully kicks someone when he or she is down. Do I really need to remind you that terrorists
attacked Boston, leaving 180 of its citizens and visitors injured, many with life-altering
amputations, and 4 residents dead, including two beloved daughters, a sweet
little boy and a respected police officer? Those are the wounds you so arrogantly doused with
salt.
Perhap, State Senator Nate Bell, you can explain to us “cowardly liberals” how packing heat can stop opportunistic terrorists with concealed bombs and homemade grenades. Perhaps you can explain how professional law
enforcement officers are supposed to tell the difference between armed
terrorists and idiot yahoos running through the street with AR-15s.
And when you answer the door with a semi-automatic firearm in your hand, you go right ahead and explain to SWAT teams, conducting house-to-house searches for armed and dangerous fugitives, that you’re just protecting your family. That should go well.
And when you answer the door with a semi-automatic firearm in your hand, you go right ahead and explain to SWAT teams, conducting house-to-house searches for armed and dangerous fugitives, that you’re just protecting your family. That should go well.
Perhaps you can explain to the family of MIT Campus Police Officer Sean Collier, who was ambushed
and shot repeatedly while sitting in his police cruiser, how you could have
done a better job than he did, despite the fact that he was armed with a semiautomatic
weapon. Same goes for the cop wounded in the gun fight between the terrorists and a team of twenty trained law enforcement
officers.
Of course if you weren't so busy flexing your Internet muscles behind the safety of a computer screen, you'd be out there catching bullets with your teeth and jumping on grenades to save your colleagues. Please proceed, Senator. Please proceed.
The Boston Marathon is the most perfect embodiment of participatory democracy in sports. Everyone is free to take part by running, walking, rolling in a wheelchair or by offering cups of water and cheering on the racers from the sidelines. Begun in 1897, only eleven years after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, the Boston Marathon is the occasion when all the denizens of Beantown throw their arms open to the rest of the world and put the best of America on display.
In light of all this, it could not be more obvious that the attack on the Boston Marathon -- on Patriots Day, no less -- was an attack on America itself. And while Boston police and residents were braving a hail of bullets, bombs and grenades, while the families of the injured held vigil at Boston hospitals, and while 4 Boston residents lied dead, all you could do was launch a self-serving, partisan barrage of insults against your fellow Americans.
Of course if you weren't so busy flexing your Internet muscles behind the safety of a computer screen, you'd be out there catching bullets with your teeth and jumping on grenades to save your colleagues. Please proceed, Senator. Please proceed.
The Boston Marathon is the most perfect embodiment of participatory democracy in sports. Everyone is free to take part by running, walking, rolling in a wheelchair or by offering cups of water and cheering on the racers from the sidelines. Begun in 1897, only eleven years after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, the Boston Marathon is the occasion when all the denizens of Beantown throw their arms open to the rest of the world and put the best of America on display.
In light of all this, it could not be more obvious that the attack on the Boston Marathon -- on Patriots Day, no less -- was an attack on America itself. And while Boston police and residents were braving a hail of bullets, bombs and grenades, while the families of the injured held vigil at Boston hospitals, and while 4 Boston residents lied dead, all you could do was launch a self-serving, partisan barrage of insults against your fellow Americans.
You'd have to be a colossal horse's posterior to insult the Bostonians under any circumstances, let alone ones such as these. They are, after all,
the sons and daughters of the Minute Men. You know, the folks who kicked the tails of the
British in the Revolutionary War. Compared to them, your Tea Party is nothing but a cheap replica.
You might also recall that, together with my forebears from New York, Bostonians kicked Arkansas’ Confederate hiney in the Civil War. As to the former, you can just say, “Thank you,” and in light of the latter, you can shut the hell up. We’ll gladly settle for the latter, or we'd be happy to refresh your memory any time.
You might also recall that, together with my forebears from New York, Bostonians kicked Arkansas’ Confederate hiney in the Civil War. As to the former, you can just say, “Thank you,” and in light of the latter, you can shut the hell up. We’ll gladly settle for the latter, or we'd be happy to refresh your memory any time.
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