Racist Fucks

If you haven't already seen the video, I invite you to check it out.  A "man" in Pennsylvania decided to harass a few protesters.  This guy, who news sources have identified as John Pisone, approached a group who were protesting fracking in Mars, PA, just after Christmas.  

John Pisone - Racist Fuck

Now, Mr. Pisone approached the group, apparently to find out if any of them had ever worked for a living.  "...I do work.  What do you do?"  Because THAT is the one thing that determines a person's right to protest something they believe in.  Many of the folks I saw in the video looked old enough to have retired.  More than once, you can here him telling these people that they are lazy.  

It gets worse within the first minute.  Little Johnny decided that the camera man was a nice target, especially because he was a black man.  After showing everyone his commanding use of the English language by calling him "chimp" and "nigger", and getting admonished by several of the group, he states, "I don't give a fuck.  He's milking my tax dollars."  

Let's consider that the cameraman, Tom Jefferson, HAS a job.  He films and distributes video of events, mainly protests, near his home near Pittsburgh.  His YouTube channel has 311 subscribers as of the time I write this.  People DO make money posting videos to YouTube.  I don't know who his employer is, or if he even has an employer but, my point is, neither does John Pisone!!  He just walked up and started harassing people because HIS job (what job was that?  Oh yeah, "work".) was rained out.

Pisone is the definitive racist, insisting that Jefferson couldn't possibly have a job because the man is black.  He manages to cover most of the racist talking points in the first minute of the video, then prods the cameraman by grunting like a gorilla.  

Patrick Rushing - Racist-in-Chief

Let's move on to Airway Heights, WA, where the mayor turns out to be a bigoted S.O.B.  That's right.  THE MAYOR!  The Young Turks did a piece on this loser back in July that is poignant.    Patrick Rushing is this pud's name, and he was the mayor of this city until August, when he finally caved to pressure to resign.  His explanation?  "...back and forth banter that my friends and I do."  Nice friends, hey?

Airway Heights, according to Wikipedia, is 69.51% White, 10.47% African American, 9.93% Hispanic, 3.20% Native American, 1.84% Asian, 0.38% Pacific Islander, and 1.56% from other races.  I'll lay odds that during the next elections, the people of this city will be asking candidates if they are now, or have ever been, RACIST FUCKS.

More over, as any red-blooded American has done, he's posted his rantings on Facebook, of all places!!  Folks, if you've got something to say that could possibly be considered controversial, YOU DON'T POST IT ON FACEBOOK!!!  Now that he has, though, feel free to run to his page and comment.  In some posts, Rushing also claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  There's a real Christian, hey?

And, finally, just because I think it's funny, I present Dumbass number 4,264,994.  (I made that number up.  It's probably higher.)  This one is out of Florida and features this white trash.

Miss Congeniality

Pretend that she has a clue and listen to what she says.  More than once she accuses these gents of taking pictures of planes and calls it a prelude to terrorism.  Never mind the fact that two of the three guys in the video are/were in the U.S. military and served in Afganistan!  BTW, she's putting their faces and license plates on...wait for it.  FACEBOOK!  Oh, and I should mention that she has "Gawd" on her side.

Ignorance comes in many forms and these are only a scant few of the many examples.  "He's black and he's not in a factory between 9 and 5 so, he must be a lazy n--gger."  "She's black and has a 'gorilla face' that only her 'monkey man' could love."  "They're brown so they have to be 'Middle-Easters' and terrorists."

Isn't America great?  More and more, people who have NO clue go out of their way to become real assholes and preach it to the masses.  

Grammar Nazis

I am somewhat the Grammar Nazi.  I'm not the best one, I'm sure.  There are, no doubt, several who have read these posts who would attack entire pages of my material with an editor's pencil and kill the entire thing, but I know more of the rules than you might guess.  Punctuation is not my strongest suit, but spelling and usage are.  I try my hardest to use words as they are intended to be used.  "Less" versus "Fewer", for example.  "Good" vs. "Fine", "Your" vs. "You're", and the classic "There" vs. "Their" vs. "They're"...

Compliments of Oxford Dictionary's Twitter page

So it really bugs me that The Oxford Dictionary decided that an emoji should become their Word of the Year.

Can we truly call something that would be unrecognizable as a word without a computer translating it to a visual representation a "word"?  What happens when there is no computer between the person writing the "word" and the receiver of the message?  Then, an emoji just becomes a sequence of symbols that, alone, make no sense.  :-(

We called them "emoticons" until the intervening computer translated them into graphical representations of that sequence.

OD defines "word" as: "A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed."  I suppose that an emoji can be considered a word if you use this definition.  It seems to meet the requirements.  It is a distinct element, it is often (though, not usually) used as part of a sentence.   But, is it still a word?

A list of the most recent Words of the Year include a hashtag, and the word "hashtag", itself.  While one might fit the definition of "word", I'm not as sure about the other.  Just as nominating a specific emoji might make me wonder if OD should start to use it's own definition of "word" when announcing their "Word of the Year".