Asshat of the Day - February 20th, 2009

Today's Asshat of the Day is an individual who I suspect didn't get a Valentine this year, and whom - at the risk of an ad hominem attack - I sincerely hope never reproduces. Not that I'm so sure his genes are that bad - I'm sure any children of his could grow up to be decent human beings if removed from his influence - but rather that I'd prefer it if he never got to have sex. Or experience much by way of pleasure. Ever.

Strong, you say? You be the judge. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, live, from the Blogging Tories Forum, Mr. Rusty Bedsprings!

Now, I grant you, usually making fun of the Blogging Tories is someone else's schtick, but Rusty here is so... deserving a target that we're going to spend an AotD post, just dissecting what's wrong with him. (And this is just his public life. I've no doubt there are many, many more things wrong with his private life.)

First, a brief list of topics that Rusty himself has started:

Pro life supporters are anti-women	Poorly titled thread - Rusty is actually whining about the U of C shutting down an offensive anti-abortion demonstration. And even that's a smokescreen - he's not complaining about fettered rights to free speech - he's simply purely anti-abortion, because the second post (also his) complains about Obama returning funding to NGOs that sponsor abortions - though US funds cannot be earmarked for that particular operation.
anti missle[sic] shield? who needs it, not me i'm invincible	Demonstrating an ability to state a definitive opinion despite having read no more than a sentence from an article somewhere as "research", Rusty attempts to assert, in the face of opposing evidence, that anyone who doesn't want to build an anti-ballistic missile system is a moron, and damn the expense! This one's a good read - even confronted with the ineffective nature of the system, Rusty sticks to his guns.
Your[sic] patriotic? whats[sic] up with you...	Basically, again, with no research, Rusty wades into a case of "kids these days aren't patriotic enough". This, in typical BT Forum manner, transforms into a case of "I wish we were more like the US."
Can their[sic] be too many?	Intended in reference to the case of Nadya Suleman, the young woman who had octuplets as a result of the implantation of multiple frozen embryos. Here, we see Rusty and the rest of the BT crowd trying to reconcile three long-standing right-wing philosophies - less legislation, control over reproduction, and "babies are good!" - with a traditional left-wing tautology that was, at the time of the posting, becoming painfully obvious in the Suleman case: Some people can't be trusted to do what's good for them, society, or their children. Regular poster and general village idiot ezbeatz weighed in with his statement (short form: "Bureaucrats and regulations are evil!") and got modded up by our boy Rusty.
Good	Short form: "Blargh, blargh, blargh! Guy makes mistake, punish him forever!" I'm the first to agree that Erik Millet made the wrong decision here - Political Correctness and acceptance are all very well, but it's O Canada. The kids don't have to sing it if they don't want to. However, saying "Good" to the fact that the poor, beleaguered man has received death threats and may lose his job is quite another thing.
is it wrong to be philisophical(sic)?	This post was so incoherent that the BTs themselves criticized it.

In a way, this post is directed less at Rusty himself and more at the kind of people he represents - those who are uneducated, unintelligent, opinionated, and proud of all three without realizing that value attributed to the last is proportional to the first two. Those who read what they want from a document, and ignore other points. These are the people who have earned the title of Asshat of the Day, and representing them is a card-carrying member: Rusty Bedsprings.

P.S.: My own subversive handle on the BT forums is darkstorme - I encourage anyone who wants a bit of a laugh to join me in posting rational arguments to the various self-congratulatory discussions that take place.