archy

Gravity: Friend or enemy?
Atrios found this nugget:

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (AP) - A bullet fired in the air during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony came down and struck a participant in the head, critically injuring him, authorities said.

Gregory Allen Freeman, 45, was charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment in the Saturday night incident that wounded Jeffery S. Murr, 24.

About 10 people, including two children, had gathered for the ceremony. The man who was being initiated was blindfolded, tied with a noose to a tree and shot with paintball guns as Freeman fired a pistol in the air to provide the sound of real gunfire, Sheriff Fred Phillips said.

A bullet struck Murr on the top of the head and exited at the bottom of his skull, authorities said.

This kind of story provides a real challenge for a snotty liberal like myself. Normally we liberals are against people shooting their friends in the head, though if anyone must do that, I suppose I’d rather it was a pair of kluxers. Really, this is an embarrassment of riches. The smartass comments are just bursting to come out (A kluxer shot through the brain? Thank God they didn’t damage anything he uses).

Just the other day, in the context of Dean’s confederate flag comments, I was worrying about the need for liberals and Democrats to show white Southerners that we don’t look down on them all as a bunch of stupid, inbred goobers. What are we to do when the news from the South is actually about stupid, inbred goobers? If we laugh and make snotty comments, can we convince their neighbors that we don’t mean them? On the other hand, the kluxers need to be ridiculed. Publicizing them when they look like drooling idiots is one of the few effective strategies we have to disarm them.

Naturally this one will go to the Darwin Awards.