Hate Hate

I tell you, it's never what you worry about that comes around to get ya.  I used to think, oh my God, this country is in danger of crumbling due to dunderheaded stupidity and all-around dumbness.  I would see the addlepated watching the uninformed and listening to the obtuse and regurgitating their ill-chosen words, and I would fret about it.

But now I see that stupidity is not the big fad that I feared.  Its second cousin once removed, hatred, has come to town.

ITEM, from the Baltimore SUN:  The 19-year-old Baltimore man charged with killing a Hispanic man early Saturday in what has been classified as a hate crime was being treated for schizophrenia and just a month earlier had been committed to a hospital for treatment, according to police and court records. Jermaine R. Holley told police he beat 51-year-old Martin Reyes with a board because he hated "Mexicans." Police have said the suspect may have stopped taking his medications at the time of the attack.  Saturday's killing in the 200 block of N. Kenwood Ave. was the latest in a string of attacks against Hispanics in East Baltimore. Police officers and neighborhood volunteers walked through the largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood Saturday urging residents to cooperate with police.

ITEM from the Huffington Post:  A college student who did volunteer work in Afghanistan was charged Wednesday with slashing a taxi driver's neck and face after the driver said he's Muslim.  A criminal complaint alleges Michael Enright uttered an Arabic greeting and told the driver, "Consider this a checkpoint," before the brutal bias attack occurred Tuesday night inside the yellow cab on Manhattan's East Side. Police say Enright was drunk at the time.

ITEM from WBAL-TV Baltimore:  Baltimore city police are investigating several cases of car vandalism in the northwest section of the city that they've deemed to be hate crimes. Some residents in the predominantly Jewish Park Heights area said they woke up Saturday morning to find anti-Semitic words and symbols spray painted on their vehicles.

It really doesn't seem to take a whole lot to stir up hatred.  Which brings us to today, Saturday, August 28.  

On this date in 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in DC and proclaimed, "I have a dream!"  

Today, 47 years later, Glenn Beck and cable television entertainer Sarah B. Palin

I think she had her teeth whitened for this

will stand on the same steps and address a crowd, which has been advised to bring neither signs nor firearms, on the topic of restoring our national honor. Since we are always told that the only way to have a peaceful society is to have everyone toting their sidearms around, why are attendees suddenly being told NOT to bring handguns to this event?  Surely the organizers are not caving in to the anti-gun crowd...

And surely wacky former morning DJ Glenn Beck was kidding when he said that he was "divinely inspired" to choose this date for his rally.  It can't really be true that God Almighty has taken time from His busy schedule to check his day planner and whisper in the ear of Beck that coordinating his day of self-adulation with the date held so dearly by those in favor of human rights would be the way to go.

And for you Beckites: here are the words of your leader:

I believe in divine providence. It was not my intention to select 8-28 because of the Martin Luther King tie. It is the day he made that speech. I had no idea until I announced it and I walked off stage and my researchers said, New York Times has already just published that this is Martin Luther — and I said, oh, geez. We were going to use 9-12 but 9-12 is a Sunday. I’m not going to ask anyone to work on the Sabbath. I’m not going to ask anybody to honor God on a Sunday.

"I'm not going to ask anybody to honor God on a Sunday."  Glenn Beck.

"Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."  The Ten Commandments.

You decide.