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Only Ann
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I do find this slightly untoward. Some girls were in fact kidnapped and sold into slavery. I get mocking the slacktivists. I get mocking the gender bigots who can’t see past their own anatomy to see the boys that were… you know… lit on fire and burnt alive. Because girls are the only worthwhile people, and boys aren’t quite people-y for the people club. Which is extremely untoward as well.
This trivializes the kidnapping and not the slacktavists.
The whole #bringbackourgirls thing is just the impotence of feminism laid bare. In fact the whole thing is an explicit claim of impotence. The potent would be #takebackourgirls, or #saveourgirls.
I never took Ann to be weak and impotent type so it should be #takebackourcountry. Which would also imply the same rough men with guns doing rough men with guns type stuff (because feminists can’t walk down a street of benign benevolent people without turning into a jibbering mass of cowardice needing someone else to do something about it, much less stride into the jungle to fight actual actual dangerous people)
Are our conservative firebrands so weak and impotent, there is nothing we can do except whine?
Sometimes people are far too serious.
I prefer Mark Steyn’s contribution:
http://www.steynonline.com/6326/bringbackourballs
I think there’s a time for mockery. The left is in power now, they hold the cards and they have the responsibility. So when they respond to an atrocity with this twaddle, they need to be called out on it. I see a comparison to Clinton’s response to the butchery in Rwanda. The response was almost as feckless, but at least it was made clear that we were going to do nothing, or next to nothing to stop it because wasn’t in our interests. This latest round of moral preening is worse because of the sense you get that these people think they’ve actually done something.
I do prefer mark steyns better.
We can call out the administration on its feckless foreign policy without mocking good-faith moral support from those outside of the administration (including the first lady) who really don’t have many practical options at their disposal. So the hashtag campaign is ultimately impotent; instead of offering impotent mockery in opposition we should try offering an appealing alternative.
I liked this enthusiastically, though I really wish we could drop the first-person possessive; the kidnapped girls aren’t “ours” in any sense of the matter, unless one means it in the meaningless, we’re-all-humans-aren’t-we sense.
Perhaps the good will we’d earn is worth the costs of helping the Nigerians (perhaps it’s not; I haven’t really thought it through). But if we do help, it’s a matter of choice, not obligation.
I’ve also already seen Coulter’s tweetpick over my liberal friends’ Facebook pages, and — to them — it’s simply confirmation that conservatives are heartless SOBs* willing to turn a humanitarian issue into a chance to jab at the President.
Even if Coulter’s tweet was hilarious — which I don’t think it is — it’s not helping.
* I concede that I’m a heartless SOB.
While I agree with your point that it should be “Take back our country,” I think the slacktivists are the ones trivializing the kidnapping with their hashtag. I care too much to float a hashtag about the situation in Africa. It is a cheap response.
As for Ann’s wording, I can sympathize that she is responding in kind to the idiocy that is out there. With her response, it is easy to see the parallels and see what she is lampooning. Years ago, I did the same by creating something called “Poets for the War” in response to the idiocy of the left in bringing back “Poets against the War.” Had I thought about it more, I would have come up with something on the order of “Poets against Tyranny,” but my response was faster than deep thought.
During the run-up to the Iraq War, a bunch of students at my college organized a “Hunger Strike For Peace.” In response, one of my friends organized a “BBQ For A Free Iraq” directly upwind of them, with food being served a half an hour before the hunger strike ended.
It was glorious.
I would have loved to have been there.
In the interests of honesty, I was abroad at the time.
This whole “hashtag for ending bad behaviour by Islamic extremists” (which could easily be followed by “hashtag can anyone honestly tell the difference between a Muslim extremist and a Muslim Moderate”) struck me as silly.
I was not surprised to see Michele Obama taking a lead role in a “movement” in which her teenage daughters should have followed Ellen Degeneres from a distance – after all they are only teenagers and, given the parents, cannot be expected to tell the difference between a political action and screaming hysterically at a Donny Osmond concert.
I was not surprised to see David Cameron join in. The major difference between David Cameron and the mayor of Hoboken is that the mayor of Hoboken actually has a navy.
And I was not surprised to see Ann Coulter swipe back. She makes her bread and butter being a smart mouth.
SOMEBODY PLEASE SURPRISE ME BY DOING SOMETHING INTELLIGENT!
Can’t help you there, Edward. Again, I think Coulter’s response is just the thing for this sort of nonsense.
The original Hashtag campaign struck me as another one of those, “Raising Awareness” campaigns. It’s a way for people to show just how much they really care about this issue without really doing anything. The comedy comes from Michelle Obama’s expression that has all the sincerity and poutiness of a child being told she can’t have a puppy.
Ann Coulter never gains any converts from the left for her barbs, the blowback here is no difference. On the other hand, I’ve found I’ve less regard for Coulter after more or less being on the receiving end of her barbs in 2012.
In the end, the original campaign demonstrates how toothless we’ve become as a nation. The Progressives won’t do anything, equivocate and create moral equivalencies; the Republicans lately seem to fear criticism from Progressive media more than people who will kill, kidnap, and brutalize to push their agenda.
It does come of as a bit mean.
Ann would have done better to write #Bringthembackorwe’lldronestrikeyouandyourwholeclanfurtherbackintothestoneage with a nasty war face.
That’s how conservatives tweet barbarians.
#bringbackourconstitution
Is there anybody who doesn’t already know what they think, and where they line up right or left who’s even aware of the hashtag bollocks, Michelle Obama or Ann Coulter’s?
Of course we’re going to seem like mean-spirited heartless SOBs when we mock the Left. Mockery is mean-spirited and heartless, and the Left has acted like it had an exclusive franchise for far too long.
Why not just say this:
“Well, this “Bring Back Our Girls” hashtag is the best thing they can think up, the only thing they know how to do. Hopefully it works out for them. Bless their hearts.”
Bring Back Our Girls is one of dumbest things I´ve ever seen.