Hello, my lovelies.

This evening I was watching Dateline and 20/20 (apparently Gray Goose vodka is way overrated) with my parents (Mm hmm, it’s a Friday night and I’m with the old folks at home, sad, I know). Well, the local news came on after. Personally, I hate local news. It’s rarely informing, mostly just an obits parade. First whatever crappy footage of the crash, shooting or wreck Skychopper Somethingorother managed to catch and then sound bites of relative, friends, or neighbors who always thought the victim had a shifty look to them. I swear to god, all the stations have the exact same footage- they must share it.  So there’s never actually any real news in local news- just a chance to oogle at how tragic other people’s lives are. That’s my main reason for avoiding it, that and the news casters unfailingly atrocious hair and loudly colored blazers.

But on thins particular night the remote was just out of arm’s reach and I was too lazy to move. Wish I had bothered, ignorance is, as they say, bliss.

The Rev Fred Phelps’s name caught my attention. Phelps is an asshole- this is a matter of fact, not my opinion. When a young gay man was brutally, brutally murdered in Wyoming, Ol’ Freddy and his supporters were at the funeral with “God HATE fags!” and “Faggots burn in hell!” 

 I snapped out of my black olive and pepperoni pizza induced stupor, bracing myself for whatever new act of assholery Phelps and his flunkies were up to.  The camera focused in on a funeral where a ragtag group of protesters were carrying signs and wearing t-shirts and nasty expressions.

Oh, god, not another funeral, I thought. Has he no shame or sense of decency? So much for ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’.

But who’s funeral, you ask. A feminist maybe? Perhaps a godless atheist or some heathen pagans.

Nope. Not even close.

A young soldier who’d died in combat. Fighting for his country. Protecting the free world and The American Way and whatnot.

…..Say wha’…..?    I, too, was taken a little aback. Normally the Christian Right bleeds red, white, and blue (not in the French way).

The logic was this: America has abandoned god (I kinda thought we always had separation of church and state going on…but whatevs), Spc. Edward Myers (who was buried with full honors) fought for a godless country. Therefore he’s burning in hell.

Charming, isn’t it? Maybe his young wife and two children will learn from the error of his ways.

The gory details.

Guess the local news can be informational. Tonight the lesson was there is no limit to human callousness and stupidity.