I’m reprinting this letter by a friend of mine to the laptop lobbyists (more on them later):
Click Here for news from normalbobsmith or Here for some discussion on the matter
Date: Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:35 pm
Subject: My letter to Laptop Lobbyist
Dear Mr. Carmouche:
I would like to express my thanks for your efforts to shut down normalbobsmith.com
Like ‘Gerry,’ who was so offended by jesusdressup that he just had to get it on television; you too have done your bit to spread the word to a far greater and ever widening audience. Public awareness of what was once an obscure cult website is now, due to your diligence, at least an order of magnitude [look it up] greater than it was.
All this at no expense to Bob! Isn’t that special?
This is called “irony” and “unintended consequences.”
Why am I not surprised that while you proclaim to be defending American values on behalf of others – at $20.00 a pop – you are eager to silence the free speech of someone with whom you disagree and who gives you offence?
You are offended by jesusdressup? So what? Like sleaze television, you can always change the channel. Do you feel that somehow you have a divine and legal right to go through life without being offended?
Parts of your own web site are deeply offensive. You seem to represent, and pander to, the worst possible instincts of the mob – fear, prejudice, ignorance and bigotry. Even more despicably, you give every appearance of doing it for the money. This puts you and the sleaziest televangelists (I do not name Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Fae Baker and their ilk) on an equal footing.
NormalBobSmith, at least, is completely un-hypocritical about his motivations. He wants to have fun, make money and avoid manual labour. That he is using the Christian religion to do so is unremarkable and traditional. Ask any divinity student or alter boy.
However much you are repelled by the concept, the American value of the Right to Free Speech applies to us all, not just those you deem worthy and sufficiently inoffensive.
We’re not talking about child pornography or shouting “FIRE!” in a theatre. This is more along the line of “The Emperor has no clothes.”
This is, so I am assured, a free country, and you are entitled to believe whatever you wish, however imaginative.
To paraphrase Diderot, none should rest until the last Priest is strangled in the entrails of the last Mullah.
Yours Sincerely,
More on the Laptop Lobbyists
This seems to be yet another conservative values group that allows conservative fatheads to pay for a multitude of faxes/letters to be sent to parties that offend them, all through paypal. Sad sacks of crap that these folks are they seem to get results. Damn them to hell.
Here are some of their past works:
They attack “Bad Santa“
Roe Vs Wade, more like Reason version Lunacy
After a long slog through the net I could only find stories related to normalbobsmith and “Bad Santa” These people are not only lazy, but inneffective, good for them.
It’s about time we had fun at their expense, spammers please harvest this email address webmaster@laptoplobbyist.com
Folks, please change your publicly displayed email address on EVERY public forum you are part of to “somehting”@laptoplobbyist.com
I imagine that the current round of spam/worm folks will have that info harvested and used as a fake from/to address in a matter of 10-20 hours.
An old Post on Slashdot
Published by NiteMayr on June 12, 2004This made me smile when I read it again today, so I’ll post it again, but here:
Sheesh, It’s not the lack of outlets, it’s the lack of variety. Of course they are entitled to it, they are not guarenteed it, you dolt. You are entitled to eventualy own a car and a house, but if you don’t leave your house and get a job or you know, inherit, they you won’t get one. I’m not asking for the entertainment fairy to visit each and every community in the US of A, but I am asking the Government to prevent any one body, who is not a licensed broadcaster, from buying X percentage of airtime on a given outlet. (Ryan Seacrest can only go so many places at once sigh
Licensed broadcasters can make said decisions, but it seems to me that the content of said ads should conform to advertising rules.
Now you’re thinking, but what about all of those infomercials, fatty? Yeah, you got me. I’m not sure what to say about that. Except, I’m glad to be Canadian, where we have Canadian content rules that guarentee me some form of Candian Entertainment each hour. Yay Canada!
As it happens, you do seem to want to regulate what people hear ayway, or at least your FCC does.
Given the text of the article, it seems possible that a given concern, say, I dunno, maybe Maggie Thatcher got herself the three dollars it costs to buy 24 hours of air time in Barrow. Stick with me here this gets good. Then, those guys who are forced, through lack of bandwidth/cash to listen to the radio for entertainment (the fricking horror) and they are then subsequently forced to listen to the same bilious mouth that spawned your intellect. You can see where things would rapidly go downhill for good old Barrow. I mean imagine it:
“is that stupid c*#t still on the air?”
“yeah, but she paid for it so it is oh kay”
“Wanna go amuse ourselves with the locals again?”
“Sure”
Yes, they do in fact fail to capitalize their sentences, true.
You can see the potential problems for poor old Barrow now, huh? No? You live in Barow you say? No wonder the moose look worried (I’ve seen the Moose out there, take that as a compliment)
(Hey, I’m not looking to raise the level of debate. I just wanna bring it down to a size small enough that I can drag it into the toilet and give it a swirly)
And if you have read this far and didn’t at least smile, I failed and concede defeat…ah me