MetaChat - Death to Meh: an essay.

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01 February 2007

Death to Meh: an essay. In Boston, Time Warner deposited LED Moomins across town and the town was shut down for terrorism fears. I don't approve of the overreaction, but I think that the BoingBoing crowd is a bit harsh in their mockery of the genuine alarm of Bostonians.→[More:]

As the city closed down, PTSDs flared up, Muslims wondered if they would get a knock at their door, and little kids wondered if they would be blown up. Hipsters posted snark on blogs and made a snarky T-shirt. They defended the guerilla marketing of Time Warner, a company they usually hate, with their usual half-baked notions of free speech. They rightly condemned the police overreaction, but they didn't look at the philosophical underpinnings of the sort of the communication represented by these Moomins.

Free speech has consequences. The world is more than marketing, the world is more than snark. The right to speak does not relieve the speaker of the obligation to consider the meaning of their speech and to use it wisely.

In the Moomins' case, the traditional Situationist tactic of dropping oddnessess into the ordinary world as a form of street theatre backfired. There were more contexts than the shoddy artists hired by TW considered. In fact, Situationist tactics are designed for political purposes; they intervene publicly and naturally signify public things, such as Big Brother surveillance, or terrorist bombs, to any human observer (even a policeman). They don't communicate "go home and watch the Cartoon Network" very well. I suppose the marketers intended for people who recognised the Moomin to blog it to their friends. Or maybe they even intended the terrorism scare!

People get uncomfortable around the earnestness of terrified Boston and safety-conscious police, these days. The reaction to this is often the ironic shrug, the "meh." The t-shirt with the in-joke, which can't mean anything to the passerby unless it's explained. Click the next link in the RSS feed, move on, change the channel, talk to another friend. Meh.

People wrap the 'meh' around them these days because they are afraid that they will turn into a Jihadi otherwise - that ironic, alternative consumer culture will save them from the fact that there are truths and lies out there, and that there are right ways and wrong ways to live our lives, and that many people evangelise.

There are so many different life paths. You can be gay, or fundamentalist in your religion, or live many types of alternative lifestyles. But within them all is an authenticity that makes "meh" turn green and back out of the room.

This authenticity is the most beautiful thing in the world to me. I am in love iwth it. You can make a committment to a person, or a cause, or a faith, and keep that committment even if it becomes hard - even if it makes trouble in the context of the conflict-avoidance world we all live in today. That's true human struggle and excellence, I think.

Imagine an orchard of olive trees. They are very beautiful when they are fully grown, fractal in their gnarled shapes on the dry land, bearing a harvest every year. It took a family decades to get those trees to that state. Generations of a family living there in the same spot, tied to the needs of a much older and slower organic life form.

I try to be like that family in all aspects of my life. Raised on TV and the internet, this is difficult for me, but I make choices and try to stick to them. I take my knocks for my political work and keep it up even when I'm sick of it, because it's in the orchard. My Better Half wants to move city and I'll do it, even though I'm scared, because I made a committment to him. He's in the orchard.

Paulsc has his orchard. There he is, not just preaching for the couple to stay together but telling them how to do it. There he is again, sharing technical and business knowledge with an obvious depth, ease and humour that shows his years of practice. There he is, telling his story about his brother, and the details of their day, and the difficulties, and the way he profoundly changed his life to care for him. I can't think of another member of this community that I admire more. I would like to be like him some day.

In my head I hold the deepest respect for the devout and committed of all types. Even the ones that think I should be dead/in jail/in Hell. I give them my leaflet and I take theirs. I'll stand with the hollerers, thumpers of tub and street preachers until the day I die. I won't just grind my axe, I'll swing it, and I'll take my scars and come out stronger in the end.

If I try to shut up my enemies I'll do it with my own power, I won't try to make everyone else validate the up-shutting. I'll roll in the mud with the pigs, proudly. I'll look for the honesty; behind every snark, every 8 minute hollering phone call, every accusation, every call to the police. every chucked stink bomb is an actual disagreement, personal or political, that the riposteur is too chickenshit or stupid to elaborate.

And please don't take this post as a personal affront, MeChazens. I respect the heck out of almost all of you, and I don't think you fit the criteria of Meh-people. About once a week I write a post like this and delete it because I'm scared someone will be offended by it, but that's not what I mean at all. This has nothing to do with any website at all, just about the world in general.

post by: By the Grace of God at: 05:33 | 42 comments

And now I see that there's an ATHF thread 2 below this. Better save it before it gets deleted!

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 05:38

meh.

*someone had to say it*

posted by seanyboy 01 February | 07:08

*THWACK!*

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 07:21

Thanks for the kind words, BTGOG, but my rep as a mensch is in serious doubt with other frequent flyers of this site. And that's fine, because they're entitled to same, as much as I to mine.

We all have our "Meh." moments, but I think your olive orchard simile is spot on for the most important people in our lives. But we're also creatures of limits, and needs of our own that must be met. So, most of us must sharply prune our choices of where to spend our energy, time and resources. One or two degrees of separation from ourselves, all most of us have left is "Meh."

And yet, I'm reminded of another view of olive orchard culture I heard from an old man, in Bethlehem, some years ago, which I left as a comment a while back on a friend's blog, and which I'll now self-quote here, in part:

"...Let me tell a personal story that illustrates the situation. I was in Bethlehem one Sunday afternoon, touring with a business friend, on the way up to Jerusalem for dinner with other friends. We stopped for tea, as it was time to drink something, in an Arab coffee shop not far from the main square. As we sat in the relative dark of the shop’s front room, I was making some comment about Bethlehem being a good example of side-by-side coexistence of Israelis and Arabs, and I asked my Israeli friend if he didn’t think, eventually, some similar accommodations could be made across the whole of Israel. He smiled and shook his head, and said, as our Arab waiter came to check our coffee, “Ask him.” nodding at our Arab waiter. So I put the question to him.

The old wrinkled man looked at me directly, cocked his head, and pointed out the door, towards a couple of olive trees across the street.

“Scarab shit,” he said, in thickly accented English “is what makes olive trees grow.”

“Please?” I said, thinking I’d missed something in the accent. My friend exchanged some quick words in Arabic, and repeated the old man’s comment to me in English, along with an explanation of what a scarab beetle was. They are pretty common around there, kind of like Japanese beetles are around Atlanta. Then, the old man nodded and continued.

“For thousands of years, people have come here, and killed one another. Scarab beetles turn the blood and the corpses into scarab shit. All around us, olive trees are growing, thanks to all the scarab shit.” he said slowly, and there wasn’t a hint of a twinkle in his old black eyes. “There are no olive trees in the desert, only because there is no scarab shit.”

I don’t know about that.

But I take his point. I wouldn’t bet on “peace” in the Middle East in our lifetime, unless one side or the other wipes out life in the region, including scarab beetles and olives trees, in some kind of WMD attack. Otherwise, it’s either just a slow devolution back into desert, or lots more olive trees. The beetles don’t much care I imagine, being willing to follow the trail of dead meat wherever it leads.

I know what’s happened in Bethlehem since I last stopped there for coffee, and it is a ghost town, even at Christmas….

First step towards returning to being a desert, I guess."

So that's me, in a "Meh." moment, as much as I'd like to see us all be able to lay down our suspicions and be good to one another. I've just seen too much of the results of hate in the world to think it possible. But maybe, "Meh." is better than eternal conflict.

It makes some sense, two or three degrees of separation out, if you look at it, that way.

posted by paulsc 01 February | 07:35

I agree with you mainly. The issue I have is the opposite of the "meh" is a impassioned unblinkable view which refuses to accept compromise or the validity of any different viewpoint.

I was at a party with some lefty types a couple of weeks ago and we got to talking about the Republican party. I put forward the position that the Republican party had the best of intentions that they were doing what they were doing for the good of the people.

One of them looked at me and simply said. "You're naive" and walked away. No discussion, no compromise. Just one blinkered view of the world that follows a set of pseudo-religious axioms.

I hate the cynicism of this generation (my generation) that has been bought up to consume and not create, that criticises everything, that treats every new amazing thing as if it were something they've seen before and got bored with. But I hate the people who are too passionate about things also.

And after typing that out, I realise that I'm repeating Yeats and I never even realised it...

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

*Fuck Yeats and his brilliance. I was sure I was saying something new there.*

posted by seanyboy 01 February | 07:40

paulsc: Thanks for your beautiful comment. I suppose I 'meh' too, I guess I am just embarrassed about it so I don't express it.

seanyboy: That's why I so powerfully wish I were dead sometimes, because I fear I am "the worst." But I can't change it, and fortunately I am too afraid to die, and too worried about hurting people I love.

I'm sorry about my fellow leftists. I'd probably have said to you that the leadership is quite cynical but that the rank and file Republicans probably do believe that they are doing the best, and then I'd tell you that intentions of the Republicans aren't the problem - the system they perpetuate is the problem. Being a leftist is not about good and evil, it's about which systems work and which don't work (right and wrong). Bill Gates tries to do good even though his work to earn his wealth reinforced a destructive system.

I'm just having a lousy day. I'm trying so hard to be a better person and it doesn't work sometimes.

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 07:50

I'm trying so hard to be a better person and it doesn't work sometimes.

There's a human condition I can completely agree and identify with.

I don't think you're the worse at all. I believe in strong political discourse. Your political allegiances worry me because I know so many SWP people and despite the fact that I share many core beliefs with these SWP people I find them very hard to deal with. The fact that you said "I give them my leaflet and I take theirs." tells me that despite affiliations, you're not the same as them at all. You're not a P- (who constantly leaflets me and seems incapable of doing anything except pushing his own ideology), and you're more like an A- (who tolerates my belittling comments about her Hugo Chavez poster with humour, passion, flexibility, intelligence & integrity)

posted by seanyboy 01 February | 08:06

I guess I'm a little confused by this - not the main idea, but the connection to the Boston thing. I don't really understand what passionate political response you would expect from people about this.

Everybody seems mostly amused by it; some people think Boston police are silly, some think the marketeers are stupid. I pretty much agree with both to some degree... But beyond that I can't imagine really having any kind of "position" on it. So... I guess that does make me "meh." But I can't really imagine what else to be on this particular event.

Also "Mooninites" not "Moomins"! :) Mygothlaundry and matildaben will be kicking your butt for slandering their beloved Moomins!

posted by taz 01 February | 08:09

seanyboy, fyi I am in the SWP and I am *really* into it. :) *looks at houseful of books, papers and leaflets* Your SWP acquaintances are epically stupid for sneering at you or treating you like an idiot at that party. That is pseudo-religious.

I spend a huge amount of time pushing my ideology, although this is done mostly by actions and not words. I've learned this the hard way. These are very quiet actions and involve listening and boosting the confidence of new activists and reaching across cultural and ethnic and community lines, every day. Trying to encourage people who have been intimidated by racists and police to speak up about it. Trying to negotiate with various groups to put an event together that we can all get behind. This is what I've been doing, and learning from, these past years.

What has it done. Well I can think of a few individuals; a woman, married to an accused terrorist, whose kids were taken away and had mental health complications, got her kids back and on the track to healing; a young law student found her voice and is transformed by the public eye into a terrifying beauty. I helped these two good things happen and I'm glad of it.

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 08:17

taz, I actually don't think there should have been a passionate political response to the Boston thing - I just got rankled by the t-shirt, which seems to mock the reaction of fear by the Boston police and public. I think that the appropriate response would be 1) eye-rolling at the increasing stupidity of guerilla marketing 2) some tweaks to the Boston police response and 3) some sympathy for the reactions of Boston police and public.

Sorry about the Moomin-misappropriation!

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 08:23

I have to admit that I thought the t-shirt was funny... I mean it's the whole element of the absurd: the idea of anti-terrorist forces battling mooninites is funny, and it seems to me that this kind of laughter is actually very healing, or at least healthy, in an atmosphere that has been so charged and tense as a result of the political exploitation of the specter of terrorism.

posted by taz 01 February | 08:41

It is funny, taz. Maybe I'm just peering out of a dark tunnel today.

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 08:43

I kind of agree with BTGOG. I've never been big on the faux-jaded thing and while it might have been an overreaction, terrorist incidents do happen. And screwing everybody's commute like that must've been a major pain in the butt.

posted by jonmc 01 February | 08:48

I bought two t-shirts.

Look, I totally agree that we shouldn't mock the fear of the ordinary people, who were responding to a serious bomb threat, as far as they knew. But I do think that eye-rolling at the person/people who identified these as dangerous devices is appropriate, as you yourself said in your post:

They rightly condemned the police overreaction

We can achieve good things in the world without having to be sympathetic at all times to all people; in fact, a touch of ridicule on occasion can send just the right message. My commitment is to levity.

posted by chrismear 01 February | 08:51

This authenticity is the most beautiful thing in the world to me.

It can be. But the flipside to 'meh' is people who are too earnest, too committed, who can only view the world through their particular ism or belief. These people scare me, too. Serious shit happens in this world and the world should be taken seriously, but the key to survival is to not take ourselves too seriously and realize that even on our best days, we're basically just groping our way through life. One of my favorite musicians wrote this line "I don't have a clue, I don't trust those who do..."

Seems like a plan to me.

posted by jonmc 01 February | 08:53

I understand what paulsc is saying about extremism and the tenacity of group allegiances. But of course, there is a middle ground between the tepid world of 'meh' and centuries of violence. There is a way of living which can embrace and respect authenticity and strong belief, and create philosophical frameworks which reject total moral relativism at the same times as they reject total moral absolutism.

I'm not sure 'meh' culture is better, because it's callous. It can be argued that indifference is just as dangerous as passionate extremism. As Sacha Baron-Cohen points out with regard to the Borat character, it's the indifference that allows radically cruel ideas to survive and proliferate. At the risk of Godwinning, the Holocaust did not result from ideologues turning the entire German public into rabid Jew-hating Nazis; all they needed was a population in which 90% of people just didn't care that much.

As regards the t-shirt and the snarking on MeFi and elsewhere, I can't agree with taz that this sort of laughter is healing; it's actually pretty distancing and demeaning. I live an hour from Boston, and no one was really laughing yesterday until the real story got out. The subways and trains were halted, and the bridges exiting the city were shut down. Business systems and people's complicated daily schedules were disrupted. It was sad to watch -- an edgy public reacting in calm and contained but tense fashion, a police and bomb-squad force going about their business in a very professional, non-hysterical, and responsible way, while a very small minority of theoretically grown-up, cartoon-watching computer addicts paraded their superior knowledge of pop culture archly in the face of real concern.

Now, if it were some large swath of the population of Boston generating and enjoying the joke, that would be a wonderful and healing response to it. Grover's Corners, NJ, has a "War of the Worlds" festival each year; they're proud of the silly notoriety of that event now that years have past. But right now it's just a few people relatively unaffected by the fears mocking others whose day became a scary hassle and who don't give a rat's ass about a cartoon or viral marketing.

PTSD is an important point. On the Eastern Seaboard, there are a lot of people who very clearly remember the deep shock and terror of 9-11 and the days of grief and dread that followed. I don't think Boston overreacted to this at all; the reaction was proper, proportional,civilised, and smoothly executed.

One vast irony: Time-Warner paid a certain amount of money to get this project done, and it looks like the City of Boston will be fining them a million dollars to pay for the security effort yesterday. Now let's just try to estimate the enormous publicity value they've recieved, gratis, from the world media as a result of this event.

Bargain for Time Warner.

posted by Miko 01 February | 09:11

years have past

er, passed. They've passed.

posted by Miko 01 February | 09:14

You thought I was saying that the fear and inconvenience was funny? Not at all.

posted by taz 01 February | 09:21

No, I didn't think that. I just don't think that the laughter and poking fun you've seen is of the healing variety. That's not the tone I'm perceiving here; Bostonians aren't generating the jokes themselves in black humor fashion (which I agree is healthy). The t-shirts and the tone of the internet discussions have been more mocking than healing.

posted by Miko 01 February | 09:24

hmm... maybe so. I feel very angry about terrorist fears nurtured, prodded, and leveraged to push political agendas, so some laughter and refusal to bow under that seems good to me. But maybe the internet really is just laughing at the people of Boston. I hate to think so.

posted by taz 01 February | 09:31

Maybe I'm just peering out of a dark tunnel today

Is it totally messed up that I read that as you were peeing out of a dark tunnel?

(This is a beautiful thread, whether or not there is peeing in it.)

posted by bunnyfire 01 February | 09:44

(This is a beautiful thread,

Yeah, I'm rather lost as to what's being discussed, but excited to see BtGoG get her long-wind on.)

posted by danostuporstar 01 February | 09:47

The meh thing bothers me sometimes. You may recall I did that post taking the piss out of the far-out stuff that folk on MeFi weren't surprised by. The constant attempts at appearing jaded and world-weary are, well, wearying.

But, you know, in a world where politicians and the powerful treat all of us with contempt I can see how everything starts to look Meh-shaped. It's pretty hard to feel outraged if you know that that your outrage will probably never lead anywhere constructive.

I was trying to think of a time when people might have laughed at Londoners and all I could think of was when we got the Olympics. Fair enough I suppose.

posted by dodgygeezer 01 February | 09:49

It's pretty hard to feel outraged if you know that that your outrage will probably never lead anywhere constructive.

This is why I've plunged a lot of my energy into local efforts, and part of why the localism movement is taking off. You can make change, and see change, on a local scale, even within a very impenetrable federal system.

taz, I totally agree with what you say about terrorist fears being a political tool, but what happened yesterday was pretty apolitical. Pols may try to make hay of it after the fact, but yesterday it was just a city responding as it is supposed to to an actual concerning incident.

posted by Miko 01 February | 09:58

That's not what Moomins look like!
≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by matildaben 01 February | 10:14

Oh, I agree. And looking at it from law enforcement's point of view the incident is really nightmarish, for several reasons: 1) there are probably going to be joke take-offs of this, with people planting similar items 2) actual real live terrorists may decide to do something similar, except the real thing, 3) they have to take it seriously, 4) which means they're pretty much forced into a lose-lose situation; if they don't treat it as a real threat and it is one, tragedy. If they do treat it as real, mockery.

So. The actual events and what they mean specifically for different people/groups, and the intrinsic humor of it are just separate things for me.

posted by taz 01 February | 10:16

(that was for miko. I got terrorized by moomins in the meantime.)

posted by taz 01 February | 10:16

I fear the blasé and the blinkered faithful. I am not sure what "a well lived life" is but I think it involves open eyed wonder and compassion.

posted by arse_hat 01 February | 10:21

Count me in as unblinkered faithful, without a clue.

posted by By the Grace of God 01 February | 10:27

This thread is painful to me, because it basically articulates what I couldn't when I stopped being friends with two people after they shrugged and laughed at the WTC strikes.

posted by gaspode 01 February | 10:30

I heard a story on NPR yesterday about a recently sworn in 18-year old mayor, who ran as a write-in and defeated the incumbent by 2 votes. It's refreshing how anti-meh this man is.

posted by muddgirl 01 February | 10:41

My jade is not faux. My jade is genuine nephrite, precipitated from the copious needless suffering of earnest generations beyond reckoning.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 01 February | 11:57

The "meh" response here is totally valid. The police completely overreacted in this case and everything that happened in Boston is 90% their fault. It is right and proper to mock them, while at the same time feeling sympathetic to the people who were inconvenienced. For one thing officials in Boston are calling this a "hoax," which it is decidedly not. No one meant for the mooninite throw thingies to look like bombs and in fact they do not look like bombs at all. Calling it a hoax is misleading and is just an attempt by the city to cover their asses after a giant fuck up.

How the situation should have been handled. The police get a call about a potential bomb. They treat it seriously and go investigate, without shutting the entire city down. They look at the object and say, "that doesn't look like a bomb, because bombs usually don't advertise themselves with neon lights, but lets check it out," which they precede to do without shutting the entire fucking city down. Once they have determined that it is not a bomb, they can find out who placed it there, perhaps fine them for graffiti or something and then get them to take the other moominitie thingies down, once again, all without shutting the entire city down.

Sorry that you got outraged at hipsters and cartoon nerds for finding this funny, but your anger is misplaced. And quite frankly the whole situation is hilarious.

posted by afu 01 February | 12:59

I blame Bush.

posted by mischief 01 February | 13:19

I'm siding with afu, here. This could have been handled much better, I think. I too hate how they're calling it a hoax. "Guys, thats just fake grafitti, it's a hoax!" Er... what? Now, if someone intended for it to look like a bomb, then yeah, it's a hoax. But that isn't the case.

She said officials determined it was not explosive, and was similar to the package found Wednesday morning beneath Interstate 93 at the Sullivan Square T station on the Orange Line. Mieth described the object at the T station as "a sophisticated electronic device."

Sophisticated? It's a circuitboard with LED's on it. By that logic, my reading light and bicycle headlight are also "sophisticated devices." Sweet!

Earlier Wednesday, the state police bomb squad was called and detonated the package in Sullivan Square just before 10 a.m. Officials said it contained an electronic circuit board with some components that were "consistent with an improvised explosive device," but they said it had no explosives. They determined that the device was not dangerous, but destroyed it as a precaution.

"some components that were 'consistent with an improvised explosive device.'"
Wiki says:

An IED typically consists of an explosive charge (potentially assisted by a "booster" charge), a detonator, and an initiation system, which is a mechanism that initiates the electrical charge that sets off the device. IEDs are extremely diverse in design, and may contain many types of initiators, detonators, and explosive loads...IEDs are triggered by various methods, including remote control, infra-red or magnetic triggers, pressure-sensitive bars or trip wires.

Ok so we can sum this up by saying that IEDs typically include:
1. An explosive charge
2. A Detonator
3. An initiation system

The article said "it had no explosives," so we can rule out 1 & 2.
We are left with #3, which can be described as "electronics." Many IED's use cellphones, for example.

Thus:
"Officials said it contained an electronic circuit board with some components that were "consistent with an improvised explosive device," but they said it had no explosives."

Minus all the extraneous bullshit equals

"It was a circuit board with a power source and LEDs."

Also, thanks for clarifying that it was an electronic circuit board (as opposed to, y'know... a non-electronic one), and good job attempting to tie it to explosive devices by virtue of the fact that it had electronic components.

I never realized it before, but I've been typing on a potential IED this entire time.

Scuse me while I call the bomb squad (on another potential IED, no less).

posted by CitrusFreak12 01 February | 14:11

How sad; all we've done is manage to invite the snarking here.

posted by Miko 01 February | 14:34

I can't really comment on the Boston situation in particular, but I did want to say that I love your orchard analogy, BTGoG. Here in California the analogy is often to redwoods, which I see often enough to have a visceral sense of how their communities work, how the smaller trees grow up and fuse together or split apart, so so so slowly but with so much strength and integrity. How they form communities without seeming to communicate, just by being there for each other. Someone once said to me, "Imagine how much wisdom is held by a redwood tree," and I think of that every time I walk through the woods outside the city.

Your post also reminded me of one of my major complaints about college, that no one took advantage of the wonderful amazing array of things to do! There were concerts, lectures, art exhibits, plays, workshops, museums, historical walks -- and everyone just shrugged and said they had too much work, or acted like getting excited about the amazing opportunities available to them was decidedly naive. That was the first time I consciously noticed people deciding that "critical and indifferent" equaled "sophisticated," and it was actually sad to me to watch kids deciding to live their adult lives that way.

Which is not to say I'm always great at enthusiastically, openly, compassionately living the life I want, but I do share your frustration at those who believe such a life would be naive or childish.

posted by occhiblu 01 February | 14:52

(Well, "childish" in a bad way. I think it is kinda childish in the good way.)

posted by occhiblu 01 February | 14:53

I apologize for my snarking.
I'm not in the best of moods today and didn't even realize I was doing it.

::sigh::

Please ignore my comments.

posted by CitrusFreak12 01 February | 14:56

Actually, CF, I don't think you have much to apologize for; maybe for being a little too forceful. I think you're right on with your take on the Boston situation.

It took me a minute, but I finally realized what the police reaction to these "devices" reminded me of. I'm sure everyone here has read one or more account of a school mindlessly enforcing a "zero-tolerance" policy against weapons or drugs, to the point of ridiculousness or idiocy. That's what the official reaction to these things was: based on policies or procedures that were developed ahead of time to help in the event of a real problem, but executed with no regard for logic, common sense or sense or proportion. While I surely sympathize with those who were inconvenience or frightened by this, I think pointing fingers at those "in charge" and laughing is in no way inappropriate.

posted by deadcowdan 01 February | 15:27

My brain hasn't been running on full power today but I knew there was a quote my brain was desperately grasping for.

It was from Noam Chomsky talking about what the correct response to 9/11 should be:

What was the right way for Britain to deal with IRA bombs in London? One choice would have been to send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances, places like Boston.

That quote has always amused me so I'm always glad for any opportunity to give it another airing.

posted by dodgygeezer 01 February | 16:55

OMG! WMD's!!

posted by PlanetKyoto 02 February | 04:31

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