Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Tragedy + Time = Offensive Memes

Speaking of big dumb idiots, the GOP party chair for Columbiana, Ohio remarked that-huh? Oh, in the last post. I called Trump a big dumb idiot. I know I'm not the first, it just bears repeating. Where was I? Right, Dave Johnson, Columbiana Republican country chair who posted this on his Facebook page yesterday:
I'm not sure what's more offensive: the
sentiment or the shitty layout and font choice.
The Internet: "preserving all the
stupid shit you say, since 1992."
Yup, a joke about California's deadliest wildfire in which at least seventy-nine people are dead, hundreds more are unaccounted for and eleven thousand homes have been destroyed. If you look closely at the upper left photo, you'll see people in cars fleeing the devastating fires, and in the lower center you'll see one of the many brave firefighters who are even now risking their lives to get the blazes under control. But hey, it's hilarious because California. Johnson deleted the post, but since this is the internet we all know about it.

"For the record, I have never met this 
man before and he does not represent me."
-God (I)
He defended himself to Cleveland.com, an Ohio news site, saying:

"Look, that's a meme. And it's how I feel about liberals, but did I mean that God is going to punish everyone who lives in California? No. It's a figure of speech, and I probably shouldn't have done it. But I did, and it doesn't change how I feel about what's happened in California."

-Dave Johnson, (R), 
self-appointed 
spokesman for God

A figure of speech about how funny he thinks it is that dozens have died and thousands more have had their lives ruined? That's how he feels about Californians? Doesn't that make him, and I don't want arm chair diagnose here, but doesn't that make him a sociopath?
You know what? I do want to arm-chair diagnose
him and yes, this totally makes him a sociopath.
Look, I'm not the arbiter of what is and
isn't funny, but generally speaking if  houses
are still on fire, it's too soon to make jokes.
"Now to the extent that that meme would have offended or hurt someone in California, yes, that's not the intent, and I don't think that's what it says. But you know, it's in the eyes of the beholder, and so if it offended anyone that had a loss of life, then I'm sorry. That was not my intent, and anybody who knows me knows better."

-Dave Johnson's conditional
apology to anyone too
sensitive to take a joke

If Dennis Miller has taught us anything it's
that conservatives are, by nature, unfunny.
Well cool, where to begin. So yes, it's absolutely the intent of that meme to offend and hurt, but it's also supposed to make conservatives feel like God is a Republican-which is gross and divisive not to mention bullshit. Like, no one ever suggests that a hurricane hitting the Carolinas is because God hates Republicans and, not for nothing, Butte County, where the largest of the current fires is, is a red county. So not only is Dave Johnson's stupid meme both offensive and wrong, it's also not funny.

And as for his suggestion that he can just say whatever hateful horseshit that comes to mind because people who really know him think he's swell, I think he's forgetting that he's some county party official from Ohio who would have remained safely anonymous had he not sent out his dumb meme. Instead he's now that asshole who joked about people killed by a natural disaster. So like, bravo Dave. You're famous.
"I didn't say I want liberals to die in a fire,
I just said that it'd be funny if they did."

-Noted sociopath, 
David Johnson

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