Ignore Westboro Baptist Church

Yup, it's been a long time since I blogged, but I felt this was a good way to get back in the pool.

To the surprise of absolutely no one paying attention, Westboro Baptist Church is planning to bring their travelling hate show on the road to Joplin, MO to make asses of themselves at the funeral of the tornado victims. Fark.com:

On its website, the church says "Thank God for 125 dead," an echo of its common refrain crediting God with having people killed in retribution for the United States' tolerance of homosexuality.

Members plan to be in Joplin on Sunday when President Barack Obama is to visit and may attend at a memorial service for storm victims.

And no, there is no level to which these slime will not ooze. There is, predictably, a completely meaningless and ineffective Facebook page to which people can show their displeasure, not that anything has EVER resulted from a Facebook protest.

A couple of points:

• Yes, these people are disgraceful.
• No, there's no reasoning with them.

Now that we've established that, a couple more points:

• Yes, they are permitted by the Constitution to say and do whatever they want, so long as they break no laws in doing so. You don't have to like it, but...
• If you try to infringe on their rights or harm them, they will sue you for damages, because that's how they make their money.

Here's what you, and everyone, needs to do: We need to decide to stop paying attention to these freaks. They THRIVE on the attention, they are deliberately as annoying and offensive as possible precisely to rile you up so that they can purposefully goad you into doing something stupid. They're the taunting bully that runs to the teacher after you lose your cool and gets YOU in trouble for throwing the first punch.

An example: When I was a news reporter in northern Iowa, there was a series of bomb threats called in at Mason City School District by annoying punks who wanted a day off. The local TV station did the smart thing by NOT reporting on future bomb threats that turned out to be without merit (which was all of them, fortunately) so the attention-whoring twerps wouldn't get their kicks seeing their merry mischief on television after school.

Same deal with these vermin: they get off on pissing you off. They are psychologically unbalanced, but it is the collective response they get that keeps them coming back.

I make no judgement on whether they even believe the shit they spout (though I suspect they do). The point is, they've figured out yet another way to make money without being productive members of society, and the more we let them get to us, the longer they'll perpetuate their evil.