Rabble rousing, satire, and other forms of free speech.

So I'm wasting my time on Reddit today and I see this:

Obviously, I clicked the ape one first. Can. Not. Unsee.

Once I got past the horror of the orangutan-meets-pipe link, I visited the link above it: the blog of Shelley the Republican.
Now, to offend Redditors, and merit a place on /r/WTF, you have to be very, very special. We're talking about people who've come up with a forum that discusses whale penises almost exclusively. So I was obviously very intrigued that a single blog could be "the most offensive thing."

Case in point, though I actually find this pretty funny.

Anywho, the blog was, at first glance, as promised: balls-to-the-wall liberal bashing. I'm not a stranger to such bloggage, though (Grandma Grizzly FTW), so I continued. And I decided that this Shelley Goodman person is my new favorite.

And pretty cute, in a "I'm-possibly-a-nutter" sort of way.

I'm not going to give you a full rundown of the STR (crossy thingy) THE FREEDOM BLOG. It's message is quite clear: God hates everybody who isn't a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, plus a good number of them as well.

C.S. Lewis: confusing other Christians with talking lions since 1950.

But it doesn't end there. The offended Redditor assumed it does, and so do a lot of the people who read it, I'm guessing. But there are two distinct possibilities that I was running through in my head as I eagerly consumed the crazy:

1. Shelley the Republican is exactly who she comes off as. Her and her fellow writers (Grandma & the Rapist) are God-fearin', rabble rousin', tough-talkin' folks who just want Freedom and Speech and Churchin' and, apparently, a spell-checker.
2. Shelley the Republican isn't a Republican. Or, she's not this Republican. This whole thing is satirical and hizlarious and maybe a little immature, but she doesn't really mean it.

If the first, Shelley is doing exactly what us baby-eating liberals want. She's playing our game, even if some of us don't realize it and get offended, and especially if she has no clue she's doing it, either.

The Liberal game. Fucking hipsters.

This raging, overblown, ill-informed brand of fundamentalism casts anyone who associates seriously with it in a negative (and loony-bin-tinted) light. It uses hateful rhetoric - which is funny, considering the founding philosophy on which the Christian religion formed - and makes our deep, snooty-progressive disdain totally valid. Certain people do this especially well, sometimes without realizing it. Like this woman.

And this woman.

Just peed myself.

First off, holy-shit-they're-all-women.

FUCK WHAT HAPPENED TO MY GENDER?!

Second, these people are ruining it for anyone else in the Republican party who's not bat-shit insane. Like really. No one will take you seriously if these bitches are on your side. And in the unfortunate bipartisan freakshow that is the U.S. governmental system, that's nothing but good news for liberals like me.

Hooray for crazy ladies!

Plus, it's free speech. And I like speakin' free. To make myself feel better about the overwhelming girliness of the group of crazies above, I present my favorite crazy:

I am oddly comforted. First time for everything.

The second option is that Shelley (and maybe Gramma Grizzy, and maybe Coulter, etc.) isn't a crazy. She's just a bright, slightly immature liberal out there to stir things up a bit. If so, she accomplishes a number of things for progressives: she makes the dumber ones angry, thereby (hopefully) causing some discussion within liberal forums (Reddit?), leading to better educated liberals; she makes conservatives as a group look certifiable; she deepens the rift between moderate conservatives and loony ones.

Anything - ANYTHING - to keep this out of the White House.

Here's the thing: I outgrew taunting Republicans long ago. I have nothing against most of them; my grandpa's pretty conservative, and I love him to death. So no, I don't find Shelley the Republican offensive, at all. Annoying, maybe, if I was having a bad day. My suggestion? We let her and her kind do their dubious work. And then we giggle when the shit hits the fan and pretend we didn't, cause we're more mature than that.