I Don’t Need Alabama And Alabama Don’t Need Me, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #206
January 24, 2011 Mike Gold 9 Comments
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue … and the governor’s true
Sweet home Alabama
Lord I’m coming home to you
Last week, Alabama’s newly elected Republican governor Robert Bentley said only Christians are his brothers and sisters. In a move that would have inspired Glenn Beck if Beck didn’t already believe he was the Great American Christian, Bentley thoughtfully uttered that trash from a church pulpit at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday service, a church pulpit where the Reverend Doctor King had served as a pastor.
Yeah, that captures the spirit of Dr. King just fine, doesn’t it? It’s a shame this hate-filled cracker doesn’t believe in evolution; clearly, his family tree is filled with monkeys.
It is generally believed that this bigoted clown will suffer no political damage. Whereas a few of those interviewed by the Associated Press thought he probably phrased that badly, most agreed with his sentiments. In fact, just about the only people who were uncertain were a handful of Alabama Jews who seemed to be as bored as they were confused. If they enjoy living in a state that would elect this latter-day George Wallace, they’ve got that whole “identification with the aggressor” thing nailed.
70% of Alabama’s population identifies themselves as born-again Christians. That’s all well and good, but I didn’t hear any of them denouncing the governor or his sentiments. Bentley apologized to Jewish “leaders” only after the shit hit the fan and the reporters started coming around. “But I wonder if he really meant it or was just saying it like politicians do,” one supporter said. Many others felt he shouldn’t have apologized.
The reason why we have a Bill of Rights is to protect the rights of minorities. We wouldn’t have had the Constitution ratified with out it, and amusingly this was at the insistence of the southern states. As David Mamet said, things change.
We are taught that our elected officials represent all people and not just those who paid to get them elected or who look, act and worship exactly as they do. History has constantly shown us this is a complete and utter lie, that the United States really is “a Christian nation” and a land of seething hatred. Blacks, Asians, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, gays, lesbians, Arabs, people of Latin origin and many others remain lucky to get hind teat in this nation of false promises.
Alabama governor Robert Bentley is merely the pimple on the ass of the Great American Majority. He preaches to that choir.
Maybe David Mamet was wrong after all.
“Sweet Home Alabama” was written by Ed King, a Californian, and Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington, who are both Floridians. It’s under copyright, so watch your ass.
Moral metaphysician and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his patently offensive Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants are foisted upon the unsuspected each and every day at the same venue.
MOTU
January 24, 2011 - 1:13 pm
I have way to much work to do today to even begin to write what would surly enrage me and distract me.
So I’ll have to settle for a ‘FUCK ALABAMA’.
I do love that damn song…dammit.
Neil C.
January 24, 2011 - 1:37 pm
Remember: it’s only a theocracy when Islam is involved, otherwise you’re being a true ‘Merican! If I ever need to visit Alabama, I’d better shave my horns….
Marc Alan Fishman
January 24, 2011 - 2:42 pm
Damn. And here I was about the call for the next BBYO conference to take place in Mobile. I’m sorry if this is offensive, and I say it knowing that my own mother-in-law is one.. “Born Again” Christianity scares me. The idea that you are once “lost” and then “find” religion is a weird concept for me to grasp. Granted my mom-in-law had good reason to find religion (a cancer scare), and since reimmersing herself in the church has given her a better social life, and genuinely makes her happy. And she’s not trying to convert me. Hell, she let her daughter, my wife, convert to judiasm!
But this ass in Alabama is just saying what everyone else in that backwater state is thinkin’. I actually wish we could just make things easier some times: Just invite all liberals, jews, muslims, hindis, atheists, wiccan, and any other “anti-christian heathens” and let us have like… 5 or 6 states. They can have the rest.
Whitney
January 24, 2011 - 4:08 pm
For the record, what Bentley said wasn’t Christian. And I dare him to defend it in the scriptures.
Standing in front of executioners, Christians called those who would cause their deaths ‘brothers’.
Mike Gold
January 24, 2011 - 4:18 pm
Whitney, I wouldn’t call my executioner my brother, although I guess Cornel West might (I’m a fan of his; West’s, not executioners). I’d ask my executioner if he belongs to a union, if he’s being paid a competitive wage, if he’s getting benefits and vacation time, and if he’s owed vacation time, if he wouldn’t consider taking it right now.
Mike Gold
January 24, 2011 - 4:21 pm
Neil — Ever have anybody actually look for your horns? It happened to me a couple times. The last time was maybe 35 years ago, a cute waitress in Flint Michigan who stopped looking so damn cute when she couldn’t find the scar tissue.
Neither the horns nor the penis tip grow back: once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Mike Gold
January 24, 2011 - 4:55 pm
Marc, I’ll admit that I personally perceive the generic “born-agains” as much more of a threat to me that the generic Muslim. However unlike a hell of a lot of Muslim-haters, I mean it when I say “generic.” I truly approach each individual as an individual. As the old saying goes, I hate a person for what he does instead of what he is.
However, all this “America is a Christian nation” bullshit, all this “our founding fathers were all Christians” bullshit, all the blue laws (buy a car in Illinois on a Sunday in the past, oh, 25 years?), all the bullshit handed down in YMCAs (I’ve read their mission statement) and the Boy Scouts of America (I’ve read their mission statement as well), the states that won’t inaugurate you as governor unless you make an oath to their god, the judges that won’t allow you to testify unless you swear an oath to their god (I don’t testify; I dare them to toss me into jail for contempt of their Christian court), the bastardization of the Pledge of Allegiance in the mid-50s adding the malicious and clearly unconstitutional phrase “under god,” the fact that if I don’t stand up for “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium I will be thrown out of Yankee Stadium (yes, Jesse, the one in Hymietown)… well, yes, I certainly feel threatened by your generic born again Christian.
But not SPECIFIC born again Christians. Some of my best friends are born again Christians.
JosephW
January 26, 2011 - 1:09 am
Well, I’m certainly not a happy camper (living in ‘Bama and what not) but I do take a slight bit of comfort in knowing that Bentley is NOT Tim James or Roy Moore. If you think that Bentley’s comment was a touch on the chilling side, consider that James and Moore were the avowed “Christians” running for the GOP nomination. Moore, for those who might not remember, was the asshat who decided to single-handedly (in the dead of night) install a Ten Commandments rock/monument into the Alabama Supreme Court building and refused to remove it despite being ordered to do so by EVERY higher court who heard his case. James, on the other hand, was only slightly less crazy. But having either one of them as Governor would actually make EVERYONE outside the state long for the days when Wallace was standing outside the University of Alabama making his “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever” vow.
John Tebbel
January 26, 2011 - 6:27 am
The “pledge” has no meaning or integrity beyond anti-American loyalist foofaraw. I can just imagine Washington and Jefferson falling on the floor laughing at the prospect of their free citizens mouthing it’s senseless platitudes and, gawrsh, a word that’s almost “republican.” Maybe in time we’ll have to genuflect, too.