{"id":57540,"date":"2016-02-15T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T18:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57540"},"modified":"2016-02-16T16:30:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T22:30:20","slug":"name-dropping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=57540","title":{"rendered":"Name-Dropping"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is at a large gas station in Minnetonka, MN. \u00a0Having just bought gas, he’s looking for a new windshield wiper. \u00a0He turns down the aisle marked “Windshield Wipers\/Condiments\/Magazines Showing People Getting Hit In The Groin”, and notices Gutterball GARY – a blogger at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog \u201cMinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com<\/em>\u201c, who describes his hobbies as bowling, heckling people, and shouting really loud – reading a magazine. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

BERG tries to backpedal out of the aisle, but GARY notices him.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Hey, Merg! \u00a0 You’re stupid!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Nothing my mother doesn’t say.<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0The Second Amendment is not an individual right!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Well, the Supreme Court in the\u00a0Heller\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0McDonald\u00a0<\/em>cases disagreed, and made it both a precedent and incorporated it to the states.<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0 You’re stupid and you have no idea what you’re talking about! \u00a0Justice Burger\u00a0said the Second Amendment was “a fraud on the American public.”<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0So?<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0He was a conservative!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Maybe compared to Nixon, who appointed him, but not really. \u00a0 And he was really arguing a strawman; he was saying the Second Amendment doesn’t preclude regulation…<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Burger disagrees with you! \u00a0And he’s from Minnesota! It’s further proof you don’t know what you’re talking about! \u00a0Ha ha ha ha ha ha!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Um,…<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0…ha ha ha ha ha!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Say, Gary? \u00a0In what case did Burger\u00a0\u00a0write that opinion?<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Huh?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Was that statement from a Supreme Court, or even an appelate, case?<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Huh?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0The thing Burger\u00a0said?<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0You’re stupid!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Right. \u00a0It wasn’t part of a case. \u00a0It was a personal opinion, in a 1990 PBS interview. \u00a0It was of no more legal weight than you or me talking to PBS.<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0He was a conservative, and he disagrees with you, and he’s a Supreme Court judge, so you’re stupid!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Huh. \u00a0So because a “conservative” SCOTUS justice had a personal, private\u00a0opinion that dissents from conservative and libertarian orthodoxy, I’m stupid.<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Yeah! \u00a0Ha ha ha ha…<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0um…<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0…ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0So who said this: \u00a0“Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0That sounds like Ted Nugent! \u00a0Which means you’re an anti-semite! \u00a0Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…<\/p>\n

BERG: Actually…<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Actually it was Hubert H. Humphrey<\/a>. \u00a0A “progressive”, a former Vice President and Senator, and the greatest politician Minnesota ever produced. \u00a0And it’d seem he disagrees with \u00a0Justice Burger.<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Who cares what an anti-semite thinks?<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Oh, the Nugent thing? \u00a0Pfft. \u00a0I didn’t even like Ted Nugent as a guitar player all that much; I certainly never appointed him my spokesperson.<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Nope! \u00a0 Nugent is on your side, so you’re an antisemite!<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Ah. \u00a0So if someone were to say “With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. . . . [S]preading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.”<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Sounds like Nugent or some other ReTHUGliCON.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0First – I’m always amazed to hear people actually talking in caps. \u00a0Second – no. \u00a0It was Democrat senator Fritz\u00a0Hollings.<\/p>\n

So – does that make you anti-semitic?<\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0You’re stupid.<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0Natch.<\/p>\n

And SCENE. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is at a large gas station in Minnetonka, MN. \u00a0Having just bought gas, he’s looking for a new windshield wiper. \u00a0He turns down the aisle marked “Windshield Wipers\/Condiments\/Magazines Showing People Getting Hit In The Groin”, and notices Gutterball GARY – a blogger at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog \u201cMinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com\u201c, who describes his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,22],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-57540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-victim-disarmament","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57540"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57604,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57540\/revisions\/57604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}