Tennessee’s governor, Bill Haslam, recently appointed a well-qualified resident of the state to be the new international director of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. Her name is Samar Ali. And you can guess where this is going.
The state tea-partiers and Republicans are hysterical. SHE’S A MOOOSLIIIIM!
They bought ads in the newspaper decrying the hiring of Ali because she’s Muslim. Various county leaders are outraged and are passing resolutions condemning Haslam because he hired a Muslim. Oh, and as long as the bigots are emboldened, they’re also tossing in complaints about the fact that Haslam hasn’t fired enough homosexuals.
You know, this is why government is supposed to be secular. As long as the people doing the work of administration keep their religion out of their work, as long as they are responsible to everyone in their state, as long as they are competent, I don’t care whether they’re Christian or Muslim or atheist. Unfortunately, our privileged, selfish Christian conservatives have this mistaken notion that the purpose of government is to act as an arm of the Christian church, and that evangelical fervor is an adequate substitute for competence, and that is doing us great harm.
What a bunch of fucking dipshits.
Hiring people because they happen to belong to the same team, Jesus-wise, is the very antithesis of meritocracy.
Tea partners are the dumbest fucking people in the world. They should be served for dinner in finer establishments. It’s what we do with herd animals.
I’m so glad I’m from Memphis and not from Tennessee.
I’m so glad I’m from Canada…
Just swap out “Muslim” with the N-word and their rhetoric would fit right in the Jim Crow era.
But apart from that, calling the Tea Party a bunch of racist nativist bigots is a slander. Here is just an amazing group of patriots. Disgusting asshats. Freedom and the principles of the Constitution my ass.
The invention of a time machine is necessary, so you can bring Jefferson to slap them until the stupid comes out.
Ha Ha –points to Tennessee.
Wait, I am in Louisiana.
Nevermind.
But you just don’t get it, PZ…all these poor American Christians are being persecuted by having to confront the fact that stuff they don’t like actually exists.
Think of the poor Christians’ feelings, PZ!
They’re martyrs!
Well, when a governor named “Ha-Islam” is elected, what should one expect?
I fixed it for you.
Tennessee. What a bunch of idiots. I’m from Pennsylvania which gave the world Santorum. And my representative is Lou Barletta. And, well, never mind.
The Tea Party movement is still not a coherent political philosophy. It is the political equivalent of a three-year-old’s temper tantrum — “I don’ wanna!” repeated endlessly is not politics.
Ewww, she got mooooslim cooties all over the state economy.
@Brownian
But you see, to these dipshits, merit consists of yelling about Jesus a lot, waving Bibles around, and an unswerving devotion to conservative ideology.
Well, yes, but aside from the misogyny, discrimination against religious beliefs, sexuality, or race, general hostility towards dissenting viewpoints, rampant hypocrisy, lack of any coherent message and evidence based claims, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement, the tea party folk ain’t so bad.
I do. I want to know if a candidate believes crazy stuff. Okay, i know a lot of them, (the faithful), behave as if they don’t believe it. So, I also want to know if a candidate is intellectually dishonest.
Don’t let ludicrous see you say that, you will be accused of oppressing children. Mind you, most children I have met have more nuanced views of the world than tea partiers.
What else do they have?
Yup. There I go, viciously silencing children. What can I say? I’m just evil.
Somebody show me a puppy or pretty squid; I am getting so fucking depressed by this shit.
I got your back, Bodach:
Puppy!!
I got something better: Piglet!
How is it that these people can still be so brazenly racist!
Am I in the wrong eon?
@feedmybrain:
Sometimes I think we took a wrong turn around Dallas and ended up in Colonial times.
Of course the Tea Partiers wouldn’t call it racist. Nor would anyone who objects to being (properly) labeled an Islamophobe. They’re only protecting this country from people who want to… I dunno… install a form of government that would never fly in this country because a) we have laws against it and b) to change said laws would require consensus of the majority in most cases and 2/3rds majority with 35 state ratification in others.
Kassad: The down side to trying to slap the stupid out of them is that the shit tends to splatter. The upside is, to steal a line from Hitchens, if you do right before they die, you can bury them in a matchbox.
That is, if you do SO right before they die. Stupid computer of mine always does what I type, not what I mean.
@Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort:
Point taken on the label.
I think it rises from fear of change and an arrogance in their belief that their demographic is the correct one.
It’s the way I interpret it when similar, though more subtle, ideas come out over here (UK).
I even heard thugs wear jeans. So shooting anybody wearing jeans is just self-defence? Amirite?
Whops, wrong tab :( Ignore the idiot in the corner, that one was destined for another tread in another blog :(
The Teabaggers claim to interpret the Constitution most strictly. So why are they ignoring Article VI?
@ #17 bodach says:
Kittehs!
Only counts for Christians. And the occasional Jew.
Remember how when you were a kid you learned both at home and in school that racism was bad, a practice of the past that was no longer socially acceptable?
Some kids heard that school, but heard the opposite from their parents at home.
Some kids didn’t even hear it in school.
Those people who, back in the 50s, walked behind the first black kids going to newly integrated schools calling them the n word? They had kids and tried to pass their views onto their kids.
They’re about as familiar with the Constitution as most biblical literalists are with the Bible.
That’s because only Christianity is a Real Religion. The Constitution was only meant to apply to property-owning Protestant men.
Sorry, “property-owning White Protestant men.”
Hope I didn’t forget to close my tags on that last post.
Is Michelle on the case? One more example of the takeover of government by the shadow mooslem conspiracy.
Which Michelle? Because the one in the White House is clearly a lackey of that conspiracy. (Have you ever noticed how she never encourages kids to eat pork or drink alcohol?)
In fact, now that I think about it this may be the root cause of rabid Islamophobia in the US. Can you imagine an America without ribs or whisky? It’s not a place I’d want to live in.
But speaking of the other Michelle (Bachmann): modern-day McCarthyism.
At least there’s one Republican Senator who hasn’t completely lost his mind.
@ #13 radpumpkin:
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
I was thinking it more as a sort of photographic negative of Reg’s speech about the Romans in Life of Brian:
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
@#27, ‘Tis Himself:
I’ve had wingnuts explain to me that that only applies to federal officeholders. Of course, that’s not only simple-minded and just plain wrong, but irrelevant, since Tennessee’s own Constitution says, in Article 1, Section 4:
What’s interesting here is this, in Article 9:
You can be a Muslim and hold office; you can’t be an atheist (which seems to contradict Article 1, Section 4, quoted above). I look for some bigot to claim that a Muslim is an atheist, since they’re not a Christian, therefore…
@thisisaturingtest:
It is indeed irrelevant, per your quote from the Tennessee state constitution. But the wingnuts are indeed correct that this article only applies to federal officeholders.
This should be obvious because many if not most states had religious tests for state office during the ratification of the constitution and for several decades afterwards.
kassad@5
I see a movie possibility:
“Thomas Jefferson-Tea Party Hunter”
daniellavine, @#42:
IANAL, but…it seems iffy to me. I understand what you’re saying, but the entire clause reads:
My bolds.
The semicolon dividing the two clauses could be seen as separating them as to intent to apply the proscription (and probably has been seen as doing so in case law- as I said, IANAL, and could be reading it wrong); but I think a case could be made that state offices are covered as well as federal by the prohibition for religious tests.
w00dview@15
Indeed no need to cast aspersions on the children. Children, generally, just want an answer as to the why of things. Temper tantrums or not. Except when they get highjacked later in life.
Ahhh, human nature, so easily seduced by the mythos, whatever form it takes. My son the chiropractor (and anti-vaccinator), my two daughter, one studying “traditional Chinese medicine” (after receiving a BFA in furniture design from RIT) and the other a graphic designer turned massage therapist. At least my daughters are “soft” atheists. My son, an evangelical christian (or so he purports, I suspect he goes to church to get business). I tried to teach them the logical ways but you can’t control external influences.
Hell, I didn’t wake up to my true “beliefs” till I was in my 50’s, Thanks to PZ and the rest of you. But I’ve always been a leftist libertarian (-6.62;-6.15). Peter Kropotkin anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin
@aturingtest:
Ah, yes…actually, I think you’re being kind to me. That’s less ambiguous than I would have guessed. You’ve convinced me.
I should have known better than to think it wasn’t the law just because it wasn’t enforced.
@ daniellavine, #42
Actually, if I’m not mistaken, the due process clause of the 14th amendment is used to apply the bill of rights to the states
Didn’t
ToadNewt already do that last year?Not since before the civil war.
Never heard of him.
Wouldn’t there be a danger of prions transmitting TPD (Tea Party Disfunction) like other mental aberrations (like CJD)?