Saturday 18 December 2010

FOUR

So here's our hero, he's meant to be studying law but he's not. He's twatting about worrying about all the people that are spiralling out of control and all the things which are the wrong temperature entirely. He decides to divert himself and is idly flicking through youtube (a popular video sharing website on the internet), when he comes across the greatest example of inanity he's witnessed in some time.

Perez Hilton asks Miss California whether or not she thinks every state ought to legalise gay marriage. After a few mangled sentences which were presumably  intended to demonstrate an open-mindedness she says one of the most offensive, idiotic and poorly argued things he's ever heard.

This is what what she said verbatim:
"Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other."
Which sounds like a principled and whole-hearted support of gay marriage, a statement which was unfortunately followed by this:
"We live in a land where you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage," which sounds just stupid. and rather begs the question "What is an opposite marriage?" Isn't it a divorce? Okay, fair enough everyone knows that she meant heterosexual marriage but due to her having the intellectual capacity of a lobotomised tortoise was unable to find the appropriate words. Again she sounds largely in favour of gay marriage albeit in a horrifically inarticulate manner. The problem is that she went on to say:
"You know what in my country and in my family I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman," which is a massive and startlingly rapid contradiction akin to the pope getting halfway through some mass or other and saying "Actually, you know what, this is a load of delusional bullshit, isn't it? Let's go back to mine and have some protected sex before performing an abortion or two." She goes on:
"No offence to anyone out there but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be, between a man and a woman thank you," This is literally the worst argument anyone's ever made. When asked what you think it is necessary to think before answering the question. This is an open admission of not having thought. There is no reason, logic, argument or intellect there, just a blank statement of belief which is utterly, utterly meaningless. I can say "In my family we believe the planet Jupiter to be made of pineapple, goblin tears and carelessness, no offence to anyone, that's just how I was raised," and it is precisely as meaningful as Miss California's statement. Also don't preface your statement with "No offence to anyone" if you're about to say something offensive, it takes none of the sting out of what you're about to say. If someone walks up to your grandmother and says "No offence but you're a malodorous, ugly, fat, syphilitic, promiscuous slapper," the impact is not lessened by the presence of the first three words.

It's doubtful whether or not Miss California has any fixed opinion on gay marriage. If she does then it's massively duplicitous of her to say that she thinks it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other before saying that she thinks that marriage should be an exclusively heterosexual concept. Truth be told, I think she very much wanted to win and was trying to avoid offending anyone, she just did it very badly because she's so fucking stupid that she makes Sarah Palin look like Simone De Beauvoir.

It's not actually her that annoys me though, it's the way she argued or failed to argue. This notion that a blank statement of principle or belief is an adequate substitute for an argument. If you are unable to justify or explain your opinions when they are scrutinised then you have to abandon them, this is how the world operates. If you are a scientist and you say "I know this theory doesn't make as much sense as the other one but I was raised to believe in it, so there you go," then you're probably not going to be massively successful. This line of thought is the line of the pre-enlightenment, it's the line of the fundamentalist, it's the line of the fucking idiot.

I don't suggest that everything someone says has to be well considered, I only suggest that if they attempt to argue in favour of it and cannot offer anything more than "It's just what I believe," or "It's just how I was raised," then they are to be treated as mentally sub-normal and confined to an institution where they are to be detained and subjected to regular jolts of healing electricity until they've read and fully understood A. J. Ayer's "Language, Truth And Logic."

To quote Perez Hilton: "She lost not because she doesn't believe in gay marriage, she lost because she's a dumb bitch."

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