November 12, 2004

Fuck the South Wanna see a meme that won't make Dems look any better? It's still worth a chuckle. (Aside from language, SFW).

Of course, for balance, here's some Fuck the North sentiment (though not as eloquently stated as the FPP link). The real Fuck The North is, well, a little bit less convincing. My own personal belief? We Northerners should focus on fucking the South using a combination of mood music, expensive dinners and alcohol. After all, a liberal is a better lay.

posted by js 19 years ago
  • Hoppin' horny toads! At least South Jersey is O.K., I think, with our beautiful tree frogs and all...
  • Word, js, word.
  • FUCKTHESOUTH.COM Registrant: Jonathan Swift - - - - FUCKTHENORTH.COM Registrant: Domains by Proxy, Inc. Comedy!
  • For a similarly angry but in my opinion more thoughtful take on the subject, see Dan Savage's Better Dead than Red: It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the heart of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide. Urban voters are the Democratic base.
  • It's funny as a rant, but that's really all it can be. Most people will not listen to another opinion long enough to agree with it if they are being insulted.
  • Ooh, nice one Frac. I hadn't seen that and it's a good screed (I mean, I agree, but it is a screed). The only real problem is that cities, aside from ones like New York, have declining populations as people move to the suburbs and exurbs so that they can be dickish on their own instead of having to live next to negros. But hey, my state went blue even though we've got the most failing metropolis in the country...
  • Some people think this site isn't funny. At all. (I thought it was kind of an amusing rant, myself)
  • I find it dumb as a post.
  • I'm sorry, but I'm from the South. In fact, my family's been down there for over three hundred years. And this was funny. Who cares if it wasn't one hundred per cent accurate? It was funny. That was its point. Humor. It's a very difficult concept.
  • It's amusing, but it's not that funny. And it's not that accurate historically. There are lots of blue islands down here - stop blaming us and put the blame where it really belongs - on the Midwest, and Texas!
  • Do you mean midwest like Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota or Michigan?
  • Stop getting all hung up on facts, mandyman. Our president isn't.
  • Okay, west west. See that red streak (caution: it's that map!) going up from Texas? Is that - Oklahoma and Kansas and on up - mid west or west west? I get mixed up. But there's a lot of blue waving wildly in a nice band around the Southeast -
  • Mygothlaundry, you probably don't know that Texas was the state with the fifth-largest number of Kerry voters in the entire country. Austin is a huge blue enclave, Dallas just elected an out Hispanic lesbian as its sheriff, and parts of Houston were so blue they went Nader in 2000. Call me politically correct, but I didn't find it very funny. But I'm a humorless feminist and I don't like Polish jokes either. On preview: Hawthornewingo, neither did the guy who wrote Fuck the South.
  • I will defer to the true southerners. Somehow, I don't think we've seen the full picture here.
  • Oh, and I did see that MetaFilter threat. The site is losing its gravitas.
  • Oopsie, meant "thread."
  • *scans horizon for MetaFilter threat, thinks about making sarcastic reference to Mayor Curley*
  • I think it's funny and I'm a semi-rural, working-class Southerner.
  • Wonkette's comments on this piece were very funny. The article was ersatz H.L. Mencken. And we didn't give you Ronald Reagan OR James Dobson, and Rush Limbaugh broadcasts out of New York, lives in blue country and was born in the Midwest, already. So fuck you too, mister.
  • Neal Pollack doesn't think it's funny either.
  • I don't know about this article, but I know at least one Texan who could use some buggery to loosen the six foot pole up his ass.
  • Thanks for the Neal Pollack link. He said absolutely everything I was thinking but lots better.
  • Alex Reynolds--I though vibrators were illegal in Texas. /stupid joke
  • I thought it was funny. Besides, the south can fight back, and they can be pretty, um, funny themselves.
  • And yeah, I know, they're not necessarily southerners, but there's enough political-type posts on the front page already and werenotsorry.com is crazy good fun so cut a monkey some slack.
  • The South is beautiful. Many of the cultures and traditions coming out of the South are fascinating. And I know first-hand about the many good people in the South. Problem is, though, that there are too few of them. The numbers don't lie. The West didn't elect Bush. Defined as CA, OR, WA, AZ, NM, NV, UT, CO, WY, ID, and MT, the West returned 73 electoral votes for Kerry, 44 electoral votes for Bush. The Northeast (New England and the mid-Atlantic states: DC, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME) didn't elect Bush. 117 votes to 0, Kerry. True, the Midwest, when defined as including the Great Plains states, leaned Bush. OH, IN, IL, MI, WI, IA, MN, ND, SD, MO, KS, NE: 66 electoral votes for Bush, 58 for Kerry. But the South? FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, AL, KY, TN, MI, AK, LA: 127 electoral votes for Bush, 0 for Kerry. (If you add in TX, which was a member of the Confederacy, the total for Bush rises to 161 electoral votes.) And while some Southern states were somewhat close (FL went 52% Bush, 47% Kerry), most voted Bush by landslide margins (GA: 58-41 Bush; AL: 63-37; LA: 57-42; MI: 60-40; TN: 57-42; SC: 59-41; NC: 56-44; KY: 60-40; TX: 61-38). Given all this, anger coming from the blue states and directed at the South is pretty understandable. Doesn't change the fact that Austin is a great place, or that the food in Louisiana is wonderful, or that Savannah is beautiful, and so on. But the numbers don't lie: the South elected Bush.
  • I don't know about this article either, but I could almost marry mathowie after reading his "deleted because" comment the other day. Fuck this post. Fuck it.
  • Alaska and Michigan are now southern states? Take those out and your total becomes 141, even including Texas. And if you look at rural New York, say, it's as red as any southern state. The same is true of rural Oregon, etc. The *only* place where this pattern changes is New England.
  • Actually, I think you meant Arkansas and Mississippi, which are AR and MS. In any case, Florida is only half to a third southern, depending upon your perspective. Even most of South Florida went red, y'know, the only exception being Miami and environs.
  • OK, I understand you guys (for values of "you guys" that equal Kerry voters from outside the South) are all angry. I know a lot of Kerry voters back home who are angry too. But one of the truisms of Southern life is that Yankees despise us all. Congratulations to those who approve of the post and the person who wrote it for piling up one more piece of evidence in favor of that truth. I'm like Neal Pollack. My neighbors in Texas may have despised my politics, but for the most part they didn't treat me with contempt. I get that up here in the True Blue NYC metro area more than I ever did at home, with the exception of the time I spent doing abortion clinic escorting. The truth of the matter is that even if there were no Electoral College that allowed blame to be thrown hard at the South (and not at, say, upstate New York), Bush would have won the election anyway. *He had the popular vote*. And $DEITY knows it is easier for people not in and of the South to say "it's a Southern problem" than to get the damn beam out of their own neighborhood's eye. The defense of partial truth is a poor defense against prejudice and stereotyping, you know? I will not be anybody's house Southerner and apologize. The South, or at least the Texas part of it, is my country: when wrong to be put right, when right to be kept right. But it's my country, and saying it's bad, fuck it, throw it out of the country, etc. is mortally offensive to me. If I had to choose--if the North threw the South out of the country right now--I'd choose Texas. And the contempt shown in this "ha ha only serious" article and those like it are a big part of why. (I think the "expel the blue states" meme is just as bad, FWIW.) Bananas to all monkeys who thought this was stupid and offensive, particularly blue-state and non-US monkeys.
  • Blue Staters: Let the Healing Begin Some damn fine suggestions, mainly boiling down to "living in godless decadence is the best revenge on the Evangelical voter." Words to live by. (It's Salon, so you can go here first if you don't want to watch their HTML ad to get in.)
  • Oh, and for another Texan's view, may I suggest you read this piece, with particular emphasis on the last part of the post, where the author talks about her experience knocking on doors for the Sierra Club and the US PIRG. This is the real work; this is how we pry those red votes out of Bush's hands, when we can. When you publicly approve of "Fuck the South", you just help knock these guys right back into the red column. While I don't think, as one net.acquaintance of mine does, that the Fuck the South site is a Karl Rove plant, it is helping his cause. So please, if you find "Fuck the South" really funny, keep it to yourself. I know everyone, including me, has their bigoted impulses and moments. That sort of self-knowledge is the fruit of growing up white and liberal in the South. But I really don't like having to give the same sorts of lectures to my nominally-tolerant political allies that I have to give to my Jim Crow-era great-aunt about what you shouldn't say in public, if ever.
  • I say this as a Northerner with a huge Southern family: Fuck that South. I know, I know that all of you guys mean well with your hand-wringing (and I know that you guys were thinking of Missouri and Alabama with your abbreviations), but c'mon. I know this isn't going to win us any votes. I think that was kind of implied with the whole "doesn't make Dems look any better" part. But don't let that get in the way of indignation. I love the South. I love Texas. I love most of the West. But there is truth to the idea that this is a Southern ideology that we've seen surge. This is Southern Baptists. This is Southern Seperatists. This is confederate flag flyers. That is a large part of the South. And, y'know, fuck 'em. The South that's compassionate, that's Martin Luther King jr. and Roy Blount, that's Molly Ivins? They're exempt. They know we're not talking to them. And frankly, I should hope they're a little ashamed of their neighbors. And please, Neal Pollack? I know the South is part of his identity, but he's a fucking over-rated whining hack. Fuck him too. It's OK to tell people to fuck off. And c'mon, when people want to ban gay marriage everywhere, telling them to fuck off is intolerant? Fuck that! Sorry if the people in the beautiful South take a hit because of their inbred neighbors, but seriously, c'mon, lighten the fuck up.
  • As an Emperor Penguin from the Antarctic continent, I would like to say FUCK YOU ALL YOU BUNCH OF SHIT EATING NORTHERNERS and also PUIIIII! PUIIIII! can I have some more fish, please.
  • Thanks js -- everytime that someone moans about this site, another idiot on the Right is laughing somewhere. Its just more distraction from the important work of defending the country from these bozos, just like the Swift Boat Liars for Bush.
  • I'm not a fan of this site either. And I echo Neil Pollack's sentiments. I lived most of my life in TN, and nearly my entire family lives in TN, MS, or SC. I can sing my little song about how most of my family is progressive and liberal, but it doesn't change the fact that I have friends and family that I love that are conservative Southern Baptists. That doesn't mean that they are stupid or backwards. It does mean that they legitimately feel like their way of life is being threatened. Church leaders and conservative politicians have convinced them that they are a step away from having their churches burned down and gay porn shown to their children in the classroom. And when you write people off as being ignorant and stupid at best (I actually had a NYC acquaintance say to my face that all Southerners are half-formed mongoloids), then you shut down any opportunity for positive discussion and understanding. And that opportunity really is there. I worked at ACLU of TN for about 2 years. There were a number of people whom we helped that eventually confessed to me that they previously hated the ACLU because they thought we were trying force a liberal "agenda" on them, but now they understood that we sought to protect everyone's civil rights regardless of religion, race, etc. There was nothing more rewarding than having these people thank me for all that I had done, and that we were there for them at a time when no one else was. I sit down with friends from high school who are staunchly "pro-life", and they have finally asked me "so what does Planned Parenthood do exactly?" because all they've been told is that we are an abortion mill that encourages kids to have sex and get pregnant to increase our profit margin. But they know that probably isn't quite right, and since they love and respect me (even if they don't exactly agree) they are willing to listen. Here's my thought. With a few exceptions, most Southern states weren't a landslide for Bush. We are looking at splits of 40/60, 45/55, 48/52. That's still a whole lot of progressive people in the south. Yes, many of them are in urban islands, but plenty are sprinkled through out the South. The key to connecting with the more conservative voters in the South is that the discussion has to be local, and it has to come from their friends and neighbors. You can't have people bussed in from NY or northern politicians swinging through the state with a stump speech. We call that carpetbagging. Southerners have to talk to Southerners. We have to help them understand that no one is trying to take their way of life, or their faith, or their beliefs away from them; that civil liberties for others don't come at the expense of their own; and that the republicans do not have their best interests at heart, either morally or economically. I think it's possible. I really do.
  • Might I suggest you give them more fish? Everyone likes fish. AWK! AWK!
  • "Thanks js -- everytime that someone moans about this site, another idiot on the Right is laughing somewhere. Its just more distraction from the important work of defending the country from these bozos, just like the Swift Boat Liars for Bush." You don't get it. Every time someone posts this site approvingly, another idiot on the Right is laughing somewhere. It's just one more nail in the coffin of "Yankees hate you and want to force your son to marry a boy and your daughter to have an abortion and ban the Bible" and every other stupid thing Republicans in the South campaign on. It alienates many of your friends in the South and comforts your enemies. It's a cheap laugh that is, in the long term, really expensive. Js, I got that you get it, although you might ask one of your Southern relatives what "my best friend/relative/etc. is a Southerner" sounds like to them. You may not like the answer. We do not need to lighten the fuck up. You need to stop saying "bigotry would just be funny to you uptight people if you would just get the stick out of your ass". If you want to be held up as the exemplar of tolerance, you have to live with the practical portion of the exercise as well as the theory portion. Otherwise, you are living down to what those "bozos" you just told to fuck off think of you.
  • You don't get it. Every time someone posts this site approvingly, another idiot on the Right is laughing somewhere. It's just one more nail in the coffin of "Yankees hate you and want to force your son to marry a boy and your daughter to have an abortion and ban the Bible" and every other stupid thing Republicans in the South campaign on. It alienates many of your friends in the South and comforts your enemies. It's a cheap laugh that is, in the long term, really expensive. And it keeps getting more expensive, the more attention you pay to it, just like the Swift Boat Liars. Rove is laughing at your indignation at this indignation.
  • Imlass, Kimdog: Y'know? Don't care. I'm not feeling particularly tolerant of idiots right now, and really, you do have to be an idiot to believe that Northern Liberals are comin' down to Dixie to burn churches and marry homos. Or to believe that Tax and Spend liberals are wasting your money on their states. Or any other number of myths and misrepresentations that were found prevelent in Southern voters. Sure, the urban ones are fine. Hell, even a good portion of the rural ones are sweet, honest good people. But does that mean that they're not idiots for voting the way they did? Hell no. Same goes for the exurbanites here in my state (most of which trace themselves back to the South). I know that it's a bit of a connundrum: We have people that made a stupid choice, yet we can't tell them they're stupid for fear of alienating them. Oh, and they already believe that we view them as stupid. What? We should laud them for choosing Bush? We should, what, explain to them in soft, comforting terms that they were wrong? No, that's condescending. We should tell 'em that they made the wrong choice? No, then it's us being the bad guys again. We should leave 'em alone? Can't do it, not in a country with national media. Hey, find me an Atticus Finch, and I'll laud the shit out of him. But to pretend that we in the North shouldn't be frustrated by the high level of alienated, regressive, faith-based bullshit that permeates the South is mincing crap. Let them reach out to me. After all, they won, so I get to mope.
  • cosmicray: my bad. I wrote MI when I meant Mississippi, and I wrote AK when I meant Arkansas. Alphabet soup confusion. So give me a break. The numbers remain the same.
  • oops, should have read your second post first!
  • immlass, don't you realize that the kind of thing you're talking about cuts both ways? That many Southerners look down on the Northeast and California, especially? That if you're driving in rural Georgia with New York plates, or in rural Texas with California license plates, your chances of being stopped by the cops skyrockets? That this election was for many people an opportunity to stick it to the know-it-all Northerners? The big difference, for me, is that what Kerry voters look down on in the South are things xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, and so on, while the Bush voters look down on the North because people there do horrible things like respecting scholarship, respecting facts and logic more than religious doctrine, and so on.
  • Aw, how cute! A group of people casually and ignorantly categorised by the rest of the world as irrational, bigoted morons have found a sub-group of themselves to casually and ignorantly categorise as irrational, bigoted morons! I think they deserve a big extra helping of fish tonight. RAK-AK-AK! RAK-AK-AK!
  • js wrote: I'm not feeling particularly tolerant of idiots right now, and really, you do have to be an idiot to believe that Northern Liberals are comin' down to Dixie to burn churches and marry homos. Well, I sure as hell feel like Christian conservatives are trying to cram their religious agenda down my throat, and destroy my way of life. So why is it so hard to believe the many people in the South feel the same way about Northern liberals? And while all of us liberal, latte-drinking athiest/pagan/secularists are in a culture war with the conservative, Sun Drop-drinking bible beaters, our fucking government basically runs amok and we all get screwed.
  • Look, flashboy is a condescending comedian! How very funny and superior he is!
  • And while all of us liberal, latte-drinking athiest/pagan/secularists are in a culture war with the conservative, Sun Drop-drinking bible beaters, our fucking government basically runs amok and we all get screwed. Swift Boats... Swift Boats...
  • Kimdog: The simple (but betraying me as a biased liberal) answer is that the liberal agenda is for a passive expansionist reading of rights, whereas the conservative agenda is an active restrictivist interpretation. The country has gotten more liberal in its social attitudes (as has every country) as part of a natural progression, which is why the conservatism of evangelical Christians is regressive. So, indeed, they can be trying to bind you to their agenda actively while liberals simply expect things to progress. Further, since the liberal ideals have to do with personal choice, there is no adverse effect aside from the general loosening of conservative mores. I can understand that being scary, but to believe that liberals want to ban the bible or force gay marriage is pretty wackjob. And, once again, I have no problem telling the Conservative Christian agenda to fuck right off. And I think that since the South is a big part of that ideological base (the Bible Belt etc.), that they should expect a little anger from the North, no matter how enlightened the individual is. (Sun Drop sucks. Grape Nehi rules.)
  • since the liberal ideals have to do with personal choice Banning smoking in public places. Universal state-run health care. Pervasive gun control. Lawsuits against "unhealthy" food. Suing tobacco manufacturers. Busing schoolchildren. State-controlled educational content. Tax-operated state-owned schools. Social re-engineering of communities. Anti-enterprise tax structure to fund all of above. ...I'll spare you the rest. You'll pardon me if this list doesn't remind me of personal choice. I don't claim that your bugbears, the Conservatives, are any better in this regard. But the Progressives look like a creepy pack of control fetishists to me. Very little about personal choice in their agenda. So I can sympathize with a "get your hands off of my lifestyle" vote. From either side.
  • Look, flashboy is a condescending comedian! True. Very true. It's an unpleasant, oppressive, alienating form of humour. I generally prefer wide-eyed absurdist rambling, with perhaps a smattering of genre parody; a much more uplifting and liberating form of comedy. There a very few who can pull off the comedy of pure vitriol and disgust, and do it well. As a side note, the author of the 'Fuck The South' piece is not one of them. Which is why I wish people would stop spewing exactly this kind of unutterable crap, which deserves no other treatment. It's the material I'm working with, I tell you.
  • js, I respect that fact that you are angry. I am pretty angry, too. But at the end of the day (or the election cycle), where does that anger get us exactly? Those fucking Southerners still get their vote, just like you and me, and our disdain isn't likely to sway them.
  • Well, flashboy, I happen to be in agreement with you about the quality of "humor" (or "humour," if need be), in the FPP link. Sadly, your post didn't score many humor points, either, mainly because you were incredibly reductive when it comes to the issues being discussed here. The fact is that half of my country voted for Bush, who's shown himself to be 1.) at best, "loose" with facts, 2.) an enemy of our natural environment, 3.) prepared to steal from the poor to give to the rich, 4.) utterly uncaring about what anyone anywhere in the world thinks about what he does, 5.) prepared to give the keys to government to amoral corporations whose only goal is to enhance their bottom line, 6.) wilfully ignoring the thousands of American kids coming back from the Middle East in body bags (never mind the maybe 100,000 dead Iraqis), 7.) pretty much an enemy of science, and so on, and so on. When Bush takes his oath for his second term in January, it won't be because he just showed up. It'll be because more than half the country voted for him. It'll be because he got ALL the South's electoral votes, probably more than anything else. Given his policies, can you blame non-Bush-voters for being mad at Bush voters? I can't. While I think the Fuck the South piece was pretty puerile, I also think it can't be denied that the "other side" of the culture war going on currently in the U.S. is HQed in the South. For you to ignore all the issues arising out of this post and dismiss the conversation as worthless is pure bunk. In the end, I understand where you're coming from, but working through these issues has to happen, and I believe it's happening here in a relatively productive fashion. (I.e. no baseball bats, and only occasional name-calling.) p.s. Best of luck on the comedy. (People automatically assume sarcasm when I say something like that at the end of a passionate post, but I'm being sincere.)
  • immlass is absolutely right. The linked piece sucks, this post sucks, and bigotry is not funny, no matter how fucking angry you are about the fucking election.
  • You kids be nice, or I'll start posting the taglines again. I've told you how fertile these poo-fling posts are.
  • I can't speak for anyone else, of course -- I see bigotry in some posts here deriding the South, and certainly in the FPP link -- but I believe there's a real issue here, and it has to do with the South, and the fact that the majority of voters there support a guy that the entire world (and half the U.S.) thinks is destructive, selfish, and amoral at best. I guess what I've been trying to do is get people to talk about that real and substantial topic. And I'll contend again that in some way, for at least some red staters, this election was about sticking it to the fancy blue staters with their expensive fashions and smartypants universities and their sophisticated, worldy culture. This is worthy of discussion no matter what you think, languagehat. Though I'm with you on the idea that the mode of discourse of some on this thread is over the line.
  • This is worthy of discussion no matter what you think, languagehat. I'm not saying it's not worthy of discussion. I'm saying bigoted rants are not discussion. And frankly, I'm sick of the two forms of bigotry that seem to be perfectly acceptable among good lefty MeFites and MoFites: against Southerners and against Christians. Half of my family is Southern and most of my family is Christian, and I'm sick and tired of seeing shit flung in their direction with the same jolly sense of well-being that used to accompany attacks on Jews and blacks. Stop it. Just stop it. Also, a thought to mull over: People who have different political ideas than you are not automatically evil.
  • Also, a thought to mull over: People who have different political ideas than you are not automatically evil. Where do I say that, languagehat? I believe that in several conversations here I've been the lefty defending Republicans, trying to get some people here not to lump all Republicans together. And I certainly haven't said anything to condemn Christians in general. If you weren't talking to me, my apology. And if I misinterpreted your first post, my apology.
  • I've been the lefty defending Republicans Hm, I missed that. [puts on reading glasses] Welcome to Wingo-Digest v1n1. Read? [ynq] y Bush voters look down on the North because people there do horrible things like respecting scholarship, respecting facts and logic more than religious doctrine, and so on. the majority of voters there support a guy that the entire world (and half the U.S.) thinks is destructive, selfish, and amoral at best. half of my country voted for Bush, who's shown himself to be [BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH] Evil! Eeeee-vill!! There, I said it. Given his policies, can you blame non-Bush-voters for being mad at Bush voters? I can't. I can and do. Speaking only for myself, one can back a candidate who loses an election without demonizing the folks who voted for the other white man in a tie. The jingoism made some sense pre-election - since so much effort was spent on energizing each candidate's respective base - but now seems childish and, ultimately, self-defeating. Self-defeating because it's perpetuating an already existing stereotype. Or folks can just perpetuate the culture war. Whatever. Hey, maybe they like losing.
  • If you weren't talking to me, my apology I wasn't, particularly; I was talking to anyone who equates Bush voters with the spawn of Satan. That covers a lot of people around these parts. goetter: Well said.
  • Before you typecast me too readily re: my politics and my take on Republicans and the red states, read this, this, this, and this. Thanks. Also, please realize that thoughts often do not come in tidy, complete packages, but evolve through discussion/debate. Though I readily cop to any stupid statements I make. Also, goetter, if you think that most of the world doesn't think those things (or much worse) about Bush, you need to take your head out of the sand. And a more careful reader might have noticed that the fact that I used "some Southerners" instead of "all Southerners" prior to what I thought was obvious hyperbole about what Bush and Kerry voters dislike in each other (my bad) indicates that I do not paint all Southerners with the same brush. In sum, I stand by my assertion that it's of interest that the South voted for Bush, and that it's understandable that some Dem voters are angry at the South. (Have any gay friends? Or any friends who think the Geneva Conventions make moral sense?) To your efforts to have me shut up and go away, I say, "Not a chance."
  • Oops. I said "many Southerners," not "some Southerners." Doesn't change my point.
  • Also, goetter, the idea that the culture war will just up and disappear if we don't acknowledge it doesn't hold water. The culture war existed, thanks to the Right's propaganda over the past 25 years, before the Left even realized it existed. Do you really think it'll go away if the Left returns to ignoring it?
  • your efforts to have me shut up and go away Sigh. Whatever.
  • Love how you pick out small bits of what I say, goetter. Very holistic of you. Also love the condescension of "Sigh. Whatever." I'm not even sure what you're taking me to task about at this point. But I do feel as if I have some valid things to say, and you'd prefer I didn't say them. Thus the "your efforts to shut me up" statement. Let's just agree to disagree. 'Kay?