How to Be the Same Breed of Asshole as Any Westboro Baptist Church Member

In the last month, the United States has issued some crazy news stories.  Actually, I suppose that is nothing unfamiliar. Moving on.

June news reported a shooting at a gay nightclub which killed a lot of people and injured more. (I refuse to rate it among all of the others and others and again more other shootings as if it is a fucking goal, Jesus Christ.)

OF COURSE, members of the hideous Westboro Baptist Church showed up in the city of Orlando to protest at funerals. To protest. At funerals. Like cockroaches to crumbs, this group of downright nasty crawls all over very public tragedies to hold up signs blaming homosexuality and all who condone or support it for every death and catastrophe. They also yell. With unseemly wide mouths. At funerals. As close as they can get to them anyway.

AP Photo/John Raoux

Angels of the real kind, members of Per American Theatre, the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, and the Angel Action Wings Project wearing, I must say, creative costumes (with wings designed to block view) showed up to form a wall between the grieving and The Waste Matter of The Westboro Baptist Sphincter. Because decency. Because you do not harass the bereaved. Because you just do not pick up a fistful of glass and shove it into the bleeding, gaping hole in someone else's chest.

... Do you?







In May, a little boy fell into the zoo enclosure of a 17 year old magnificent lowland gorilla named Harambe. After what had to be an excruciating and terrifying 10 minutes (about), Harambe was shot and killed. The boy was then rescued. Some -- a lot of -- people went full on pitchfork and torch and not only blamed the mother, but released the father's criminal record and signed a petition to have the parents charged with neglect. One witness stated:

“She had three other kids that she was with. She had a baby in her arms,” said Ms. Nicely, 29, who has two children of her own. source

Witness: "I tried to prevent it, I tried to grab him and I just couldn’t get to him fast enough." source

And then, the one that sent a chill down my spine:

[The Mother] said “He was right here!..." source

Chilling, because that is exactly how fast a 4 year old boy can slip away, as indicated by the fact that a person with her eyes on him could not grab him fast enough to stop him. If you really need me to further connect these dots, please keep reading because you are probably one for whom those dots (facts) never mattered -- bloodlust and all.

A. Nightmare.
freedigitalphotos.net

June news also reported a toddler in Florida -- at Disney World! -- was snatched at the water's edge by an alligator. His parents were unable to fight off the alligator, and the little boy was gone. Just like that. Just like in an incredibly vivid and unshakable nightmare. Except that it was real. All due respect to nature's creatures just being themselves and doing what they do, that is a nightmare. Once again, writer's came to the defense of not just this little boy's parents, but of reason and compassion. They did it because Wow! Seriously?!

And this one was mild.

All of this to ask, besides the obvious, (the not-so-much difference between physically showing up to hold a hateful sign and showing up in comments sections and on websites to post a hurtful sign) what is the difference between those assholes and these assholes and their fistfuls of glass?

That's rhetorical. Because the sum total of that equation is zero.