Liberals vs Conservatives vs Common Sense: Most Offensive Protest Signs

In the aftermath of the tea parties, I posted a few thoughts on the CNN reporter fiasco.  I obviously felt she was very biased, but I also had a few choice words for the conservative wing-nut who compared Obama to Hitler on his sign.  There is no doubt; there were some very offensive signs at the Tea Parties organized by conservatives.  In fact, our good friends at the Huffington Post were so prepared to be offended they had their citizen reporters out at the rallies to snap photos of the most outrageous signs (I am assuming they weren’t sent there to offer support).

Since I completely agree that their “ten most offensive signs” are all in pretty bad taste and demonstrate an extreme lack of common sense, I thought I would do a little Google driven protest sign comparison and see who is willing to push the limits of common sense the farthest…  (ok, so part of me wanted to find out if HuffPo was being a big fat hypocrite)

And so, The Common Sense Republic, in conjunction with offended people everywhere, would like to present the first four rounds of the occasionally-semi-annual:

Liberals vs. Conservatives vs. Common Sense

Most Offensive Protest Signs

Round 1

The first sign here is definitely the most offensive of these two, because the dude not only called Obama a tyrant ready to enslave the human race, but a racist one at that…  And there is just no reason to go there.  This isn’t a blowout though, because #2 is basically butchering the quote from Kanye: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.“  Both protesters are essentially painting a sitting president as a racist.

Winner: Conservative

Round 2

First of all, both of these village idiots score a -3 on the Universal Tact Scale, but the guy with the weird girly shirt clearly has the least common sense.  Not just from combining “Hitler Bush” with “Insane World Criminal”… the proof is calling NBC a “Bush Slave”…  Yes, he did, look close.  Olbermann is so Uber-offended right now!

Winner: Liberal (he offends conservatives AND nbc.  Not an easy feat.)

Round 3

This is a pretty serious accusation, and I understand how the supporters of the Obama Administration could take offense.  Surely no liberals would say anything this offensive, right HuffPo?

Oops.  If it wasn’t for the Bush stickers all over his shtick, I would have thought this guy was straight from Venezuela.  Not much common sense there, either…  but at least it would be put to good use.

Winner: Liberal

Round 4

So we have another Obama-Hitler idiot now…  I already used a Hitler-Bush guy above, but he did look like a wacko with that shirt, so I will give the benefit of the doubt.  Probably a one-time thing, or maybe even a generational thing…

Or… Not.

Winner: Tie (they both say the same thing)

So, End of Round Four, Liberals lead with the most offensive signage, 3-2.

Are my votes ill-placed?  Not a fair fight?  I’m open to reason.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of different ideas out there; a lot of people who are just misguided and a lot of people who just plain have no sense. It is always fun to laugh at some of the craziest signage on both sides of the coin, while wondering how they could stand out in public making some of these statements.  Even though they are a riot (yes, it is.), these extremists do offend a lot of people and give other supporters a bad rap.  It’s just not going to get better as long as people only get offended by the extremists on the “other side”, because both conservatives and liberals have crazy people on each outside edge that are, quite frankly, embarrassing to everyone. (State of Texas included.)

If you happen to be in the middle of any kind of rally, protest, or other activity supporting your point of view, do everyone a favor and politely confront the ones in your group who make false or offensive accusations.  Not only does this protect the reputation of your cause, but it forces the blogs to talk about something slightly more serious and much more exciting… like which party to blame the swine flu on, or whether the new Disney movie is racist.

And that’s just common sense.

Come back next week for Rounds 5-8, with some of the most offensive signage in the past 10 years.

unCommon Sense: to TeaBag, or not to TeaBag

The politically charged “Tea Parties” that seem to have become more widespread in the US recently have gotten a lot of people on both sides of the fence up in arms. The typical conservative response so far has been (not surprisingly) full support, while accusing the democratic controlled congress of attacks on their liberty and their futures; they say the protesters are just average folks fed up with big government. Ok…  Meanwhile, the typical liberal response has been to paint these protesters as anarchists and maybe even the newly minted and potentially dangerous “rightwing extremists”.  However, most major outlets largely ignored the protesters altogether… One commentator, Rachel Maddow, even went so far as to mock sexual innocence, wondering aloud on her MSNBC show tonight if the protesters realized what the dirty implication of a “tea bag” meant. The current guest on the show casually suggested that the protesters probably weren’t aware – since they didn’t watch her show, but rather the “other” channel.

So, to quickly sum up how Maddow was trying to rip conservatives: The Fox News Channel’s idea of a Tea Bag; protesting with some flavored water. MSNBC {Rachel Maddow}’s idea of a Tea Bag; dipping some testicles in an open mouth.*  Oh, those silly, out-of-touch-with-crude-sexual-terms Fox News watchers…  I guess they all must have graduated from high school more than 5 years ago.  Stay classy, Maddow.

* The Common Sense Republic’s official stance is that while we appreciate the humor inherent to both Tea Bags, we simply cannot choose sides.

Shockingly enough, MSNBC wasn’t the only network to associate the Murdox Empire with all this tea-baggery today:

Now this video was shown in a number of conservative outlets, and yes, on the surface, this lady seems to lack any journalistic skill. Maybe it’s just me, but she didn’t sound like she was there to really hear what people had to say or how they felt. She asked condescending questions, cut off responses, and had a pretty obvious “I am better than you” air about her. The real gem comes when she inanely accuses the tea parties of being “anti-cnn”, because “this is highly promoted by the right wing conservative, Fox” (probably the biggest giveaway of her lack of common sense) I think the video pretty much speaks for itself.

As I watched the video I thought her behavior was very out of the ordinary for a CNN reporter, who generally seem to be middle of the road, and I wondered what got her so riled up. So I did a little research and discovered another, longer piece of the clip, which actually explains why she was so abrasive with the average guy just trying to be a dad while saving a buck.  Right before talking to him she interviewed this guy…

So this guy… This friggin’ guy… He single handedly tries to help prove the whole liberal anarchist position right there with a stupid, off topic sign about the President.  Not only that, but this philosopher makes such excellent points and backs them up with such well thought-out arguments, how could he possibly be ignored by logical human beings? Granted, he probably wasn’t ready to defend himself, but does this guy really think that calling a sitting president a fascist is going to get his conservative and/or possibly redneck agenda anywhere? It just made him look like an idiot. That can be a big problem with the right, they sometimes can get caught up in the moment and take things too far. One day they are listening to a little too much talk radio, they get all riled up, suddenly the feathers are good and ruffled, and now they want to run out and shank something. (usually the only thing that ends up dying is their personal cause). And a great example is this overzealous or maybe even complete kook of a guy… this friggin’ guy… who makes all the good folks out there, everyone who stood in the rain and cold for a legitimate political concern, look like they have no common sense.

So once again it boils down to two opposite and overly extreme points of view playing a little game of “shoot myself in the foot roulette”.  And who ends up losing?  We all do.

It appears Im not the only one who thinks this way, respected blogger Michelle Malkin apparently saw it coming a mile away, and even exposes some further hypocrisy by the reporter, based on some actions during a protest back in 2006.

Update: HotAir is linking to a new Youtube video that contains a key former CNN reporter calling for an apology from the “journalist” above for being rude and crossing a journalistic line.  Good Stuff.

So what do you think? Are you going to let the liberals, conservatives, or even the Republic tell you what you think about this new plan for a bigger government with increased spending, taxes, and bailouts? Do average people think it’s a bad idea or is it just the extremists? Only you can decide.

Related Post: Liberals vs Conservatives vs. Common Sense: Most Offensive Protest Signs