Gun Hugging Drama Queens
Via WBEN
Tuesday afternoon, Buffalo’s gun-hugging right wing lost. its. shit. You know what this means – angry, tweenish drama queendom and a segment on knee-jerk freak-out radio.
Evidently, all the immigrants had been demonized, all the poors had been denigrated, all the liberals had been insulted, the notion of people having health care had been called a socialist trainwreck, all the health care bills had been repealed, Cuomo had been called a monster dictator, and climate change had been sufficiently denied, and science rejected for the day.
And so, it inevitably turned to guns. It was alleged that the Erie County Fair was hateful of the 1st and 2nd Amendments, refusing to let a local he-man gun-hugging club to distribute free bumper stickers; that lie got halfway around the world before the truth had a chance to get its pants on.
The “Second Amendment ain’t about Duck Hunting”, no. It also “ain’t about overthrowin’ the gubmint, neither”. Also, “SCOPE”:
And some people need to be part of the equation.
Of course, this became a BREAKING NEWS ZOMG topic on right wing drama queen radio station WBEN during its new afternoon drive show. As it turns out, there was no controversy.
Instead, the Erie County Fair has a standing policy against allowing any exhibitors from handing out free stickers, because kids take them and stick them every which place, and the Fair has to clean them up. Furthermore, if SCOPE and the gun-huggers had simply called the Fair’s administration, they’d have discovered that their signs weren’t being excluded.
The Shooters Committee on Political Education (SCOPE) is claiming that they are being shut out of the fair because of a political bias against their pro-gun stance.
Fair Spokeswoman Lou Ann Delaney says that’s not the reason they’re being shut out.
“The first time that I was aware of them contacting the Fair was this morning, to hand out stickers” Delaney said. “We don’t allow any stickers to be given out by any organization because kids put them where they shouldn’t put them.”
Delaney also says that the process for allowing vendors at the Fair starts in January, and SCOPE was very late in attempting to be included.
SCOPE president Stephen Aldstadt doesn’t see that to be the case.
“It seems more like they have taken a particular political position on that particular issue and they are not welcome of dissenting views” Aldstadt said.
Delaney once again disagrees with Scope, saying that the Fair is not at all taking one side of a political issue. “The Erie County Sheriff’s Department is doing several times throughout the fair Gun Safety on different stages. We just have to have certain policies in place, and that’s for our guest’s benefit.”
The Erie County Fair is neither run nor funded by any governmental entity.
Erie County Agricultural Society is a private not-for-profit membership corporation, which annually produces the Erie County Fair. The Society is the oldest civic organization in western New York, established in 1819. The Society does not receive funding from New York State or from the County of Erie.
As a private entity and private event, the fair’s organizers could, if they wanted to, reject and exclude any group, message, sign, or sticker they feel like for any reason whatsoever. It also means there’s no 2nd Amendment issue, nor any 1st Amendment free speech issue, either. Imagine these constitutional scholars attempting to infringe the fair’s right to allow whatever things or people it wants at its event. It would seem as if what they perceive to be their rights trump everyone else’s actual rights.
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear stickers shall not be infringed.
Nice strategy: Act like a bunch of pushy assholes, and then when someone says “Sorry, you can’t be pushy assholes here”, burst into a fit of man-tears and scream “First Amendment! First Amendment!”. At a PRIVATE organization, no less. Odd, since these folks often claim to be all about Teh Private. (Which they aren’t, of course. ‘Private’ is just a nice little buzz-word to be discarded when inconvenient.)
And doesn’t Rus Thompson get tired of being so stupidly ENRAGED all the time? I find anger exhausting. Why is it like a drug to some people?
This is merely the Marxist/Trotskyite theory of permanent revolution.
And you have you’re PHD there Alan!!
Let’s say, hypothetically, I had a Ph.D. (which is how it’s punctuated – it stands for philosophiae doctor), which I don’t. If I did, it would mean I was quite learned in a particular subject. Now, I don’t frankly think that you were meaning to be genuinely complementary there, as I think you were insinuating that I am a Communist, Marxist, or Trotskyite (I wonder if you know the difference). HAHAHAHA! Can you imagine that? Calling a liberal a communist! That is one of the funniest and most original things I ever have seen.
Now, I could respond to you in a similar vein. I could write that you’re just a semi-illiterate proto-fascist who is so fucking stupid that you don’t know “your” from “you’re” – that you don’t know the contraction “you are” from the possessive “your”. I could then tell you to stick it up your smelly, fistulated asshole.
But I won’t.
I don’t have a Ph.D., but I do have a J.D. As such, I can’t call myself “doctor”, but I don’t have to. I’ve seen creatures with more intelligence than you lying on their backs at the bottom of ponds. I’m not a communist or a Trotskyite or a Marxist, but I’ve done something unique – I’ve actually read enough about all of those things to know why I’m not.
You? You’re just an idiot.
“If he but blench, I know my course”, and morons almost always blench when ensnared in that most devious of traps. Does your foot hurt little, I mean tiny man? Methinks that thing called Bedenko doth protest too much. Care to engage in some metaphorical Shakespearean banter you irrelevant moron? I didn’t think so.
To the many unwitting sheeple on this site, this is apparently a private site also and Mr. Bedenko a co-owner as I know for a fact that Alan Bedenko has censored at least one writer that effectively used free speech to expose him. Alan Bedenko is the least tolerant free speech advocate on the planet.
Back to that protesting too much, Alan, you have a remarkable and deep knowledge of all of the many permutations of Communism. Hmmm……
Incidentally, your PHD is not real, so I may as well call it PHUD. You wouldn’t make a pimple on a doctor or lawyer’s ass.
I don’t have a Ph.D. You should learn that repeating words isn’t the same as being literate.
Incidentally, greetings to Jim Ostrowski’s brother’s girlfriend or whatever.
Maybe she meant PHD – Pot Head Doper?
Wait, are we to expect fair and balanced reporting from WBEN? Is this the twilight zone? They cant even report a traffic accident without blaming O-baahma.
And you wonder why I booted WBEN off my car radio in favor of 680 News….
Wanna have some fun tonight? Put on some classical music, turn on the TV but turn off the sound. Then watch Fox commentators. It’s hilarious. Seeing the veins in their temples bulge and pulse, the fists pounding, the always angry persona…all to the soundtrack of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto.
what was most interesting on WBEN were the callers after the interviews who were giddy over their impression that the fair backed down and allowed the signs. The fair had never denied the signs, but the Rus Thompson’s who are perennially mad just made that assumption. And I like my guns, but these fools make us all look like Wingnecks.
John: It’s your duty to counteract said “fools”. And do so as many times as possible so THEIR view of events do not become conventional wisdom.
It’s safe bet that, if these folks were promoting whatever current peeve is tops on the list of the loony left, this column would be treating the Fair like Chris Collins.
It’s also a safe bet that you have no take.
Break out The Manual Buzzer.
Nah, probably not.
I see. The First Amendment is fine, for YOU. But not for anyone else.
Got it.
You schmuck.
The First Amendment is fine for everybody.
Luckily in this case, the Erie County Fair could censor the living fuck out of anything or anyone for any reason (or no reason at all), and there’d be no First Amendment issue because the fair is a private entity.
And that’s your 1st Amendment lesson for today!
The issue here is the hypocrisy of the complaint, and the derogation of people who don’t deserve it.
AFA the county fair being private, what poppycock. It’s put on by the county, which is, the last anybody checked, a government entity.
DUH.
Reading comprehension and civics, two more areas for improvement at public schools in erie county
Unbelievable, the proud ignorance of some of my fellow Americans. So those few years it was called “America’s Fair”, the fair must have been an arm of the federal government. And The Buffalo News contains the word “Buffalo”, therefore it must be operated by the
City of Buffalo and Byron Brown dictates what is published.
I’ll re-print what I wrote in the original post, because you were too lazy to read it or too dim to comprehend it.
No hypocrisy, no “derogation of people who don’t deserve it”. If Artvoice decided to delete this entire article & thread, I would be powerless to stop it, and it certainly wouldn’t be a 1st amendment i
infringement because Artvoice is a private entity. Like the Erie County Fair, which will, in any event, let the gun-huggers hug their guns and sell their signs and bumper stickers.
“I’ll re-print what I wrote in the original post, because you were too lazy to read it or too dim to comprehend it. ”
Why sugar-coat it Alan?
So you feel that people who advocate for their constitutional rights are worthy of being denigrated?
Should be pretty simple to prove your point Mr. Hirsh. Go to the fair and list for us those “others” who are being allowed to pass out free stickers. Also ask around and tell us what other vendors there are there despite missing the January application deadline?
Or…just keep stating untruths because you like it better than objective fact.
I cannot think of a bigger group of whiners than gun nuts. It all comes down to somebody wants to take away some of their precious toys and boys want their toys. If only they could become this angry and organized about the forces causing jobs in their communities to move overseas.
“It would seem as if what they perceive to be their rights trump everyone else’s actual rights.”
Disturbing, yes. Shocking, no.