OUT-fucking-RAGEOUS.......

[Postman]

http://www.rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philly.com%2Fdailynews%2Fcolumnists%2Fstu_bykofsky%2F20070809_Stu_Bykofsky___To_save_America__we_need_another_9_11.html

Stu Bykofsky | To save America, we need another 9/11

......let's hope they attack your newspaper building, with you in it, FIRST.

A weak attempt to gloss over just how criminal these fuckers in the White House are.

These right-wing assholes can kiss my liberal ass.

[softwarevotingtrail]

1. This really is the ultimate in perversity

Stu -pid Byoksky should be branded a terrorist and sent to the Gulag. That's the kind of system he's rooting for, after all.

[lvx35]

34. A link to the cached version (the link isn't working for me)

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:wqK7V8AHg84J:www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/9050212.html+to+save+america+we+need+another&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

[snappyturtle]

2. Here's a bit of the article....and it is outrageous!

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that. *


I know this is more than four paragraphs but since they are the epitomy of brevity I deemed it OK so readers could get the essence of this article.....again, just outrageous. Maybe we need a depression too!

[zanne]

6. "The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever"

If the "unity" lasts long enough for the 2008 elections, that'll be just fine with him.

[snappyturtle]

12. Being the selfish person he is, you're right! n/t

[rurallib]

8. The US is target rich for more than just Al-Quieda

Also target rich for someone wanting to establish a dictatorship based on fear.

[snappyturtle]

13. Yep, America is just one huge pile of compost laced with fear,

threats and uncertainty......very furtile for dictatorship.

[jgraz]

19. How nice of him to provide a list of targets

If this guy was a muslim he'd be in Guantanamo by now.

[Iris]

32. Frightened people blindly following a questionable leader is not unity, it's just a flock. nt

[snappyturtle]

33. True. n/t

[jedicord]

3. He even named US landmarks that would make good targets.

We need to be attacked so we can remember the enemy and restore unity.

The guy's a friggin' nutcase.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. It's serious like "1984" or "A Modest Proposal".

Third time the article has been posted. Third time the "outrage!" chorus has started.

It's a piece of satire. It's nasty, but Bykovsky writes for a blue-collar crowd and has a lot of self-styled Joe-Six-Pack conservatives who read his stuff. Yeah, it's a little too subtle for some of them. But I read the thing and had no trouble seeing the satire.

There is a lot of kick-crotch satire out there.

Sometimes, just repeating bullshit back to its source makes the point, like 1984 or A Modest Proposal. Don't mistake it for the real thing, which is usually couched in polite language.

--p!

[barbtries]

18. it's satire?

i didn't know it was. i took it at face value. either i'm dense or i would have to have been previously familiar with the writer, and i wasn't. maybe i'm dense, but a disclaimer would have eased my mind.

[jgraz]

20. If it's satire, it's incredibly poor satire

I think the dude's serious.

[Dogmudgeon]

22. It's *excellent* satire

A Modest Proposal (Swift), Lysistrata, and The Art of Love (Ovid) all scandalized the proper folk of their eras. In our own era, 1984 (Orwell) and The Report from Iron Mountain on the Desirability of War (Lewin) each scandalized all our own good Liberals.

We are too accustomed to Onion-style satire, clever but utterly transparent. Bykofsky's article is the real deal. He is about as much of a warmonger as Cindy Sheehan. He's just more literary-minded. And the fact that he's caused so many DUers to loose their cool speaks well for his command of the art.

--p!

[jgraz]

28. I'm sorry -- did you just compare him to Jonathan Swift?

Even allowing for that whole "eye of the beholder" thing, comparisons to Swift or Orwell are a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

Even today, Swift's "Modest Proposal" is obvious satire, and screamingly funny. It may have scandalized more than a few humorless readers back in the day, but most people understood it for what it was.

And why was that? Swift followed the form and structure of other famous (Latin) satires of the time. Anyone from the educated class (i.e. the people reading his piece) would recognize the allusion and immediately know that Swift was not serious. His subject matter (eating babies) was still shocking, even as a target of sustained irony, but very few people of the day mistook it for a serious policy suggestion.

This article, on the other hand, has no anchor point for either humor or irony. The opening sentence gives away the entire game, which is exactly the opposite of how Swift structured his piece. Bykofsky does not set up his target properly or pull the reader in with a faux-serious exposition. It's unfocused, all over the map, and none of the smaller setup "jokes" land at all.

Of course, it's unfair for me to criticize satire which I don't think exists. I don't know Bykofsky's history, but it's very difficult to interpret this article as anything but dead serious. If he did mean it a humor, he really needs to get his irony meter recalibrated.

[Dogmudgeon]

29. "His subject matter (eating babies) was still shocking ..."

But, alas, thousands of people who read it took it seriously.

Swift may have used what now appear to us to be gags, but Orwell didn't. 1984 was sustained grimness and Ingsoc was never really questioned by Winston or Julia. The most incisive satire was from O'Brien. In 200 years, that will probably seem funny, too, if people become more perceptive of literature.

It is not the satirist's obligation to set his audience up. In a culture saturated with "hip" stand up comedy, our mind seeks the set-up and the punch, set-up and punch, set-up and punch.

He knows his crowd, too -- a generation of preening hipsters who think they have the world sussed, and are masters of wit, reared on Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks. And they will read it, and gasp in horror, and scream for his hide.

A truly large number of educated and intellectual people took Report from Iron Mountain as a serious government-sponsored scientific report, like On Thermonuclear War. A number of Johnson Administration AND Nixon Administration policy wonks took it seriously, as well, until they tried looking for the "Special Studies Group" and found it didn't exist.

Yes, Bykofsky IS dead serious. And he will probably claim that he wrote the piece on the up-and-up for a few days, too, as he has in the past. But there is no reason to think he really wants another 9-11.

On the other hand, there are a LOT of people who DO. Holding a mirror up to them will have an interesting effect.

--p!

[JHB]

21. It's not (intentional) satire, just a guy who "blames America first"

Stuwey's column is a tantrum thrown by someone who wants the unity we had back, but he apparently never paid attention to why it was lost in the first place. To him, no one squandered it, there were no real reasons for it, nobody specific can be held responsible; no, it's nobody's fault, it's just US and our lack of fortitude.

Just another column from someone who sagely hasn't been paying attention to the world around him.

[spanone]

5. wow, only a seriously fucked up mind would think like that....ol Stu must need help.

[zanne]

7. I don't think he's the only one thinking like that.

Republicans were in their glory right after 9/11 when everyone was "united". Some of them reminisce about that time fondly and wonder where the "unity" went.

[spanone]

11. yep, it went in the toillet known as iraq

[Javaman]

9. And here in a nutshell is why the repukes will never get it...

rather than just having responsible government with a responsible leader, they choose to kill more people so that fear works as their binder.

Just fucking insane.

[Marr]

10. I sent him an email. Hope he writes back.

Mr. Bykofsky,

I can think of another man who shared your hope that an attack on this country would galvanize the people behind his chosen cause. He blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Have you really slipped so far into jingoistic lunacy and paranoia that you're hoping for your fellow citizens to be murdered, simply to vindicate your political position? Are you really that sick? Can you sit there and claim to love America, while you're rooting for Americans to be murdered? Have you ever stopped and considered whether you might have become the thing you claim to despise; an America-hating extremist who condones terrorism?

My only consolation in reading your article is the knowledge that most men like yourself are moral cowards, and would never actually make their hoped-for attacks a reality. Most are content to simply sit on the sidelines and berate America for not sharing their lunatic political views. Here's hoping that you are one of these cowards, or, failing that, that our corrupt Department of Justice is keeping an eye on you-- and not just their political opponents.

Sincerely...

Blah blah.

[tabasco]

14. Well, I see the reich-winger's logic.

They say the anti-American liberals forgot about 9-11. There's even that atrocious country song "Have You Forgotten?" So this reich winger wants another 9-11 to refresh our bad liberal memories. The super-patriotic, America-loving reich wingers would love another 9-11 to happen. It would teach those America-hatin' liberals a lesson.

[Hydra]

15. K&R

Keep banging the drums for new theaters of war around the world, or better yet, an attack on america that will be used as an excuse to shut us all up and send us to the camps. How american of them! :sarcasm:

[Beelzebud]

16. I sent him a piece of my mind via email. I really let him have it.

I just read your column, in which you sound like Osama Bin Laden's spokesman, pining for an attack on America so your political party can regain its support.

You sir, are one sick son of a bitch. Another typical conservative. You actually are WISHING for another terrorist attack on America to satiate your own selfish desires for Republican dominaiton.

Go to hell. Nevermind, it sounds like you'd like it there.

[barbtries]

17. that's sick

obviously written by someone who has no clue of the devastation violent premature homicidal death wreaks upon not only the victim but scores of that person's loved ones. i am so disgusted that sentiments such as this could ever be published and/or received with credibility. myGAWD

[Hydra]

30. As if he cares

As long as he gets what he wants, screw what everyone else wants.

Bush in a nutshell, so why should his propagandists be any different?

[treestar]

23. So he thinks we won't have unity or passion if we aren't attacked?

We have to be attacked every so often to keep us in shape?

What an asshole. Not much different than the PNAC meme that they needed another Pearl Harbor.

[Contrary1]

24. I don't see another 9/11 type attack coming, at least in the near future...

I've got a sick feeling in my gut as to what they will do next, but I won't share it here.

From comments I have been reading made by Philly locals, Bykofsky can start cleaning out his desk.

[robinlynne]

25. where's homeland security when you need them?

[Zavulon]

26. Jesus fucking Christ.

I know the reich-wingers are fucked in the head, but not even from them did I expect this.

The war isn't enough, we need to lose another three thousand people over here, too. That'll make this a better and safer country.

I'm going to follow a previous poster's example and send this sick fuck a piece of my mind.

[Ganja Ninja]

27. "Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces"

Wrong! It was the Bush administration's insatiable hunger for Iraq's oil fields and the war they foisted off as a fight against terrorism that split America. Iraq itself has never done anything to America.

"Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why?"

Because we never found any WMD's there and slowly over time people realized they've been lied to.

"In contrast, Britain just pulled its soldiers out of Northern Ireland where they had been, often being shot at, almost 40 years."

It didn't take them 40 years to realize what a cluster-fuck Iraq is and they are withdrawing as we speak. But I like the reasoning. Because one country spends 40 years trying to bring peace at the point of a gun before it's willing to admit it hopeless, we should put ourselves through the same for no apparent reason. Brilliant!


What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda. (Nice! Why not send them GPS coordinates?)

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

Ah! Yes! Those were the good old days. When none dared to oppose the dear leader. Back when we had an army that wasn't worn out and shell shocked. The GOP was on the rise and all was right with the world. The post 9/11 GOP glory days. Who wouldn't want to relive those again?

[Raejeanowl]

31. He Really Hasn't a Clue

..but I emailed him briefly anyway. I think the discussion has progressed far, far beyond his apparent suppositions.