Whineboro

It's almost the start of a new year, and that means it's the perfect time to check out the upcoming Westboro Baptist Church picketing schedule for 2009! If you are unfamiliar with the WBC, their most charming websites are here and here. Though they claim their beliefs are Baptist with a glaze of Calvinist, their main beef is American tragedies. September 11th? Because of sodomy. 4217 casualties in Iraq? Because of gomorrahmy. 5 Amish girls dead? Virginia Tech shooting? Mine disaster? You get the idea.

Every year I wake up on January 1st and think, "This is the year Fred Phelps Sr. (aged 79), founder of WBC, is going to croak," and every year he continues to outlive my expectations. Of course, he has nine children to carry on the Westboro dynasty (thirteen, if four weren't estranged), the little Raouls to his Fidel. I will admit, the man does have an impressive legacy; no one else wears the crown of "All-American Douchebag," garnished with numerous counter-hate websites. Phelps makes Howard Stern look like the tacky drunk Best Man at a redneck wedding.

WBC has an exciting lineup for the new year, especially on January 19th. They plan to make eleven tour stops in one day (with direct quotations taken from their website) in Our Nation's Capital:

1. Federal Courthouse in Baltimore: "We will come and picket outside that vile Federal Courthouse where they put the servants of God on trial for the simple reason that they SERVE GOD."


2. France Embassy: "...a most debauched, filthy people."


3. Canada Embassy: "land of Sodomites" and "We have DNA evidence against that evil land."


4. Australia Embassy: "Heath Ledger is in hell" and "the entire nation was founded by convicted murderers, rapists, and treasonous peoples."


5. UK Embassy: "The Queen is a whore!" and "Episcopals are tyrants."


6. Holy See (Vatican) Embassy: "What type of tyrannical freaks would call themselves a separate nation and then set about to change times, and laws and subjugate their people to offer up their little babies to the pedophile monsters called their holy priests, except they are in fact the servants of Satan? "


7. Kenya Embassy: "Kenya is a murderous land of heathen, you know!"


8. Switzerland Embassy: "You sit quietly by while those nations around you devour their people, and then profit from their misery."


9. Ireland Embassy: "A most violent, superstitious devout catholic pile of pooh!"


10. Italy Embassy: "From their libidinous leaders, to their really "wise" men, you each one hate God."


11. Israel Embassy: "And just because you pretend you are following the teachings of God - that does not make it so."
    

The reasons for picketing sound like 7th grade world history textbook stereotypes. And many of them are plain wrong: the French are no more debauched than Americans, Switzerland played an anciallary role in WWII in aiding the Axis, Brokeback Mountain is a pathetic reason to hate an entire continent, and Episcopalianism is purely an American phenomena. Plus the one about Kenya is just mean.