Tuesday, December 20, 2011

People With Money Making the Right Decisions

Sometimes when you're writing you want to hold on to the funny thing and put it right at the very end of what you're doing where it will become an entertaining surprise BANANA. See what I did there? Look again closely if you are not quite getting the design of this elementary lesson in comedy BANANA.

In this case, though, it is to our advantage to blow an obvious punchline early because someone has written A Thing that gets more entertainingly excruciating as it goes on not just for the all-endumbening idiocy of the argument, but for the position of its finger-pointing author.

What do you know about Zachary Leeman? My guess is NOTHING, you lucky lucky person, but for you I will ruin the whole thing. Here is his bio:
Zachary Leeman currently serves in the Unites States Army Reserves as a truck driver in the 619th Transportation Company. He attends Southern Maine Community College where he plans on getting an Associate's Degree in political science. He is currently hard at work on his first novel. You can follow him on Twitter @writingleeman.
Okay, got that? Zachary Leeman is a public employee going to a public college where he's trying to get a degree involving public business. Oh, and HE WINS ALREADY:



Am I an official hater? I filled in the forms but I haven't mailed them yet.

Anyway Zachary Leeman has written a dumb column:
Bestselling horror novelist Stephen King recently helped out his fellow Mainers by holding a contest through his Bangor-based radio station: however much money listeners donated, King would match. The money would then be donated to lower-income Mainers to help pay for heat this winter.

King raised $242,370. Not too shabby. Clearly, this is a commendable and gracious effort on the part of King. It says a lot about his character. But when you bring it into context with past King quotes and his overall liberalism, it brings up an interesting hypocrisy in what famous liberals and 1 percent types do and say.
Okay person who drives trucks for the government and goes to a public college, what kind of hypocrisy have you identified?
In the past, King has stated that he thinks people who make as much as he does should be taxed as much as 50 percent. Why?
To pay for people who drive trucks for the government and for their education in public colleges.
Has King fully thought about a world where 50 percent of his money is taken by Big Government and then they decide where it goes?
Perhaps more people could get jobs driving trucks for the government and for their education in public colleges.
Just because it goes to the government with the “best intentions” does not mean it will help heat fellow Mainers’ homes.
It might, though, be something of a boon to people who drive trucks for the government and who receive education in public colleges.
Yet liberal entertainers like King continue to beg Obama to tax them more when they are fully capable as individuals who have found financial success to use their disposable income anyway they see fit, including helping those they see as needy.
Aha! HYPO— No wait, that's not actually hypocrisy, budding-writer-who-drives-a-truck-for-the-government-and-who-gets-educated-at-a-public-college-in-obvious-need-of-funding-for-dictionaries, it appears that Stephen King is willing to pay more taxes and that is that, and those taxes may or may not help folks directly with a heating bill, but you can bet they help people who drive trucks for the government and who receive education in public colleges.
How Stephen King has not connected his actions with his beliefs is really quite amazing.
Has he imagined a world where the government taxed him less?
No, he has never imagined an America without taxes. And my guess is that a person who drives trucks for the government and goes to a public college might also find it unfathomable.
Imagine how much more good he could do with that disposable income!?
Here is where, on the initial read, I doubled back and re-read what Zachary-the-Government-Truck-Driver wrote: the premise here really does appear to be that Stephen King could, if taxed even less, be oh-so-much-more generous to people who can't afford to keep the power on in their fucking houses in the greatest and richest country in the world. Not to mention that King might donate to public college endowments! The world would be a better place if zillionaires could keep more money away from the payrolls of drivers of government trucks and students in college because they could then in fact give all that money back to the people who don't have the money that was taken away from them! Nobody needs Robin Hood when Prince John is willingly giving all his money to the unfortunates, which I believe he in fact did which is why there was no Robin Hood legend in the first place.
Or not. It’s really his choice. When giving becomes forced giving, then the whole act has lost merit.
So if we imagine that Stephen King is giving charitably now, and then volunteers to pay taxes for things like public colleges and OMG TURN LEFT QUICKLY OR THE GOVERNMENT TRUCK WILL CRASH there we go JesusChristthatwasclose. Anyway, Stephen King volunteering to pay taxes is Stephen King forcing himself to give away the money he was giving anyway? O THE NOT-HYPOCRISY-AT-ALL.

And in a time of crushing student debt and an overstretched military slowly pulling back from two dumb wars, rising poverty and job losses and predatory foreclosure nightmares and empty strip-malls and idle factories precipitated by crazy rich guys trading bullshit paper they didn't even know how to measure the worth of, not to mention a time of people in Maine who can't pay their heating costs, Zachary Leeman provides a sweet little gift just for you and I:
Why is it liberals cannot imagine a world where people with money make the right decisions?
Thank you, gently-insulated-from-the-real-free-enterprise-world Zachary Leeman, for redistributing the gifts of the free time and the totally-serious-no-fooling book-learning the government has given you to we few participants on this little corner of the internet. And you know something, gentle reader? There's still more of the column left for you look at BANANA.

29 comments:

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Zachary Leeman currently serves in the Unites States Army Reserves as a truck driver in the 619th Transportation Company

The 619th was immortalized in the movie Top Truck.

Or not. It’s really his choice. When giving becomes forced giving, then the whole act has lost merit.

I think this was forced giving on King's part anyway- people who can't pay their utility bills have the lights turned off, and they can't read with no light, so King is really self-serving when he donates money to help people pay the utility bills.

Why is it liberals cannot imagine a world where people with money make the right decisions?

Because we have never seen that world? Next question?

fish said...

Zachary is a font of wisdom:

If you're looking forward to G.I Joe 2 more than Expendables 2, you're probably gay

Death to the either/or!

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Zachary has learned that one need not be very good to earn a share of that sweet wingnut welfare.
~

tigris said...

Yet liberal entertainers like King continue to beg Obama to tax them more when they are fully capable as individuals who have found financial success to use their disposable income anyway they see fit, including helping those they see as needy.

Wait, wasn't the first part of the column about him giving a buttload of money to help the needy? So, is it the desire not to see his country turn into a BANANA republic that makes him a hypocrite? Oh, that's it, isn't it... he writes horror, so doing anything to make the world less horrible proves his writing is all just FICTION!

Why is it liberals cannot imagine a world where people with money make the right decisions?

Oh, we can imagine it, we just know we don't live in it.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...


Why is it liberals cannot imagine a world where people with money make the right decisions?


Because we lived through the 80s, 90s, and whatever you want to call the Bush era?

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

When giving becomes forced giving, then the whole act has lost merit.

Nope, not really! It's still good!

And I'd like to echo what everyone else said here: Sure, maybe rich folks would do the right things with their money if given the option, I've just yet to see ANY evidence of them EVER DOING THAT.

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Also, thank goodness your writing was funny, cuz I don't think I could have handled with banana without the whipped cream and sprinkles.

I mean, seriously, they will let anyone who can poop out words and frame every discussion of popular culture as a liberal vs. conservative have a column, won't they? There are middle schoolers out there who could write better. And who know what "hypocrisy" means.

tigris said...

When giving becomes forced giving, then the whole act has lost merit.

When it's done to make God let you into Heaven instead of roasting you for eternity(in His Infinite Love(TM)) it's WAY merit-ier. Doing it because it's a religious duty is also AWESOME AND TOTALLY DIFFERENT from doing it because it's a societal duty, which is bad unless you live in a theocracy in which case the pendulum swings back to AWESOME BECAUSE YAY GOD.

fish said...

Tigris lacks the subtlety necessary to be properly religious and/or conservative.

Where subtlety means Dissociative identity disorder.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Also, it is my understanding that King has used much of his money to improve libraries and the towns that he lives in and loves in Maine. He just doesn't expect to be lauded for that, and sees no need to broadcast that.

Also, he recognizes that, rich as he is, he can't do it for the entire country and that the government could actually make that kind of thing effective.

Also, fuck this guy who thinks that all the taxes that the government collects goes to entitlement programs. As Substance rightly and hilariously points out, the government almost always uses its expenditures to procure GOODS and SERVICES.

Why, look here! I have an RFP on my desk from the City of Milwaukee, looking for A/E services for City buildings! Those services will improve the buildings, make them more accessible, or energy efficient, or usable; in whatever way, the City will receive value for the money. And hey ho, that money came from TAXES.

Jeez, this guy better drop out of that college, because he is obviously not getting anything from it.

Gawd, I am aggravated for a holiday season.

Dragon-King Wangchuck said...

You know who else has a Bangor based radio station? Zach Leeman's mom.

It must be troo, even wv says "guilte"!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Why is it liberals cannot imagine a world where people with money make the right decisions?

Well, we did, but we grew out of our Ayn Rand phase.


Jeepers, there's all KINDS of good answers to that stupid question, isn't there?

tigris said...

Fish, I used to be both. I got better.

tigris said...

Well, maybe not "properly." I don't think anyone ever accused me of being proper.

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Y'all, this seems super-relevant.

Substance McGravitas said...

turn into a BANANA republic

Ha ha ha, banana is always funny.

tigris said...

John Hodgman is awesome.

“[Now] Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.”

Yeah, wow, shocking that butthurt millionaire bankers would thank a butthurt millionaire banker for vocalizing their butthurt.

El Manquécito said...

banana is always funny.

I gave my lover a banana plant
She said "Darling that is elegant"
It's much too nice to go to waste
But it's much too soft to suit I taste

She want the big bamboo
All night long, etc.

The Jolly Boys

tigris said...

The thing about banana plants is they really sucker like crazy...

Smut Clyde said...

Nabakov is the devil? This guy can DIAF right there.

Substance McGravitas said...

He doesn't like them big words, like hippo-something.

Cole said...

So, he knows he's successful because he has official haters, by which I guess he means he knows he's right because he has critics, but does that mean that Zach thinks Stephen King is Right because Zach hates him?

OMG...this kind of high-level thinking is beyond me.

Let's see...
Member of the working class trade with delusions of grandeur...CHECK.

Young man with military fantasies...CHECK.

Confused and/or delusional ideas about how the world works...CHECK.

Raging insecurity that requires constant attention from everyone, even if it's the "hating" kind...CHECK.

Apparent lack of experience, knowledge, and insight that develops empathy with others...CHECK.

I don't think I'd like to be in a crowded public place in Maine when young Zach finally loses it.

fish said...

Well, maybe not "properly."

That is the critical modifier here. Eventually the cognitive dissonance gets so strong you have to do something or crack completely. Doesn't seem to be true for Obama supporters.

Substance McGravitas said...

Member of the working class trade with delusions of grandeur...CHECK.

That's the amazing part to me. He is not doing well, but his selflessness extends more to people who wouldn't give him the time of day than to anyone around him. It's like hopeful misanthropy: sure, you hate everyone around you but this other class of people I can construct myths around MUST be better.

Cole said...

You make it sound religious.

Substance McGravitas said...

That's true. I put a lot more things in the magical-thinking/religious basket than most people. So sure, the American Dream is a promise of heaven.

Substance McGravitas said...

And naturally those who have achieved that dream are part of a living pantheon.

Brando said...

It's funny because I can't think of many ways to find yourself in the bottom of the 99% than having an associates in political science and being a novelist.

Substance McGravitas said...

You know it. This guy's gonna feel awful when he gets his food stamps.