Quit Shitting On...

By Glenn

Like sailors, we at OYIT are not afraid of cursing or attacks from sea-based monsters. Neither the s-word nor a giant squid strike fear into our hearts, and hopefully not in yours either (for those of you who still have them). The term to "shit on something" means to put it down, to malign it and in general to do the rhetorical equivalent of defecation. It's easy to shit on things that deserve it, such as the show Kath & Kim, any Weezer album after Pinkerton or the atrocious Lieberman-Graham amendment in the recent war supplemental. In this series, however, I will defend things that I find - either amongst my friends, amongst my enemies or in the world at lage - unfairly shat upon.

If you think that a personal conversation with me is the inspiration for a specific defense, you may be right. But you also might have just reminded me of indignation that I earlier felt. In other words: don't take it personally.

Quit Shitting On...

...California. After Iowa's Supreme Court decided that their Constitution allowed for same sex marriage, a lot of people started to make the case that "Iowa is more liberal than California" or that California should be ashamed of itself for Prop 8 and the repercussions while Iowa was now a beacon for progressivism. Iowa, I've visited California. I know about California. I've seen California pass more progressive legislation than almost any state in the country. You sir, are no California. Keep in mind that it was the PEOPLE of California that passed Proposition 8 and it was the SUPREME COURT of Iowa that allowed same sex marriage. I've also lived near and spent much time in Iowa and if it was put up for a statewide up or down vote, a Prop 8 would have passed with much more than 52%. I'm not trying to shit on IOWA either, because compared to Missouri it is California. But, let's keep things in perspective here people. California, for all of its budget woes and its history of electing shitty governors, is much more progressive than Iowa.

...Twitter. The structural limitations of Twitter are obvious: you can only use 140 characters. Beyond that, it can be as strong or as weak of a social media tool as people make of it. If you don't want to see tweets about what people are eating for breakfast or word of mouth review of the Pixar movie "Up," then don't follow your friends. If you don't think you have anything to tweet about, you may not. But trying never hurt anything. Just glancing at my Twitter page, I see the following tweet:

KansasJackassRT @themadvoter: This is priceless: the RESPONSIBLE white separatist movement condemns Holocaust Museum shooting: http://bit.ly/IpJfE #p2
3 minutes ago from TwitterFon

This is from a progressive blogger in Kansas, who I choose to follow for a whole host of complicated reasons. He doesn't tweet about rush hour traffic (something I've been guilty of several times), but rather passes along an interesting link he found in a humorous manner. I already covered some of this in my piece on how not to act like you're 45+, but it need to be said again: shitting on Twitter because people tweet stupid things is like shitting on email because 60% of it is spam. Yes, 60% is a true figure - I saw someone tweet it.

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I was going to do online dating, but I'll wait on that for now. If you have further suggestions for things that are being shat upon and might need some defending, please tell me. And don't say Dick Cheney.