I listen to George Carlin. A lot. He spends a lot of time speaking about things he hates, and this inspires me. Carlin isn't like O'Reilly, Coulter or Malkin in that he is doing it for the humor value, and backs up his statements with logic. Not being a comedian myself, however, I shall be content to write a list that is at least logical if not at all humorous. With that, here are some things that I hate. Expect this list to get longer.
Anti-Intellectualism
Why is it that we, the American populus, seem to shun those willing to develop their intellect? Why is it that Dubya's apparant lack of brains serves as a benefit to him on the campaign trail? What sort of a society disgraces those most willing and able to tackle its problems? As a nation, it makes no sense to elect someone to office because he is stupid. This should, if anything at all, be a great deterrant to his or her being elected. Thus, this irrational distain for all things mental is something I hate.
Cars Made by Ford
Henry Ford was, let's face it, an asshole. "My customers can have any color car they want as long as its black," he said. His contribution to American capitalism and to the automobile industry? The dehumanizing assembly line process. Upon a legacy of deep seated disrespect for the human condition, and in particular, for his customers, Ford built an auto company that would eventually work to prevent the seatbelt from seeing the light of day. The company's reaction to quality control issues? Use public relations to cover up the issue and let the buyers die.
To be perfectly fair, GM does many of these same things, but for some irrational reason, Ford pisses me off much more.
Wanted
What a stupid waste of electromagnetic waves. Police departments are in an ongoing struggle against fugitives- they don't all of a sudden decide that 100 of them are going down, then relax when they're done. The advertisements for this insipid waste of bandwidth represent the level of intellectual stimulation that the show itself is expected to provide, in that the same couple of lines are repeated ad nauseum. I swear, if I hear that "the next loud noise you hear is me" again, someone will be hurt.
Knee-Jerk Counter-Protesters
Recently, MoveOn helped to organize vigils around the nation to show support for Cindy Sheehan. One of these vigils was hosted by my parents, and was held here in Fort Worth, TX. Towards the end, two counter-protesters arrived with badly scrawled signs reading "God Bless President Bush." Before arriving, however, they saw fit to file a noise complaint with the police. When the police arrived to find only a silent candlelight vigil, it became clear that the counter-protesters were being vindictive and underhanded. If they expect such crass behavior to reflect well upon their Fearless Leader, they are dreadfully mistaken. Of course, to hold it against Shrub would be a gross error of Guilt By Association. We have enough reasons to hate Bush without having to resort to logical fallacy.
