Yay! A New 'Star Wars' Trailer

thepilot.com:

So everyone’s watching (as of this writing) to see if Joe Biden’s in, out, or still dithering. The Donald and JEB! are exchanging nasty remarks because Trump pointed out, quite correctly, that JEB!’s bro was president on 9/11, something that was once considered treason when a Democrat dared to say it (which few did). It’s all very wearisome.

So of course, what I want to talk about is: YAY YAY YAY, THERE’S A NEW “STAR WARS” TRAILER OUT!

I can’t help it. I’m a huge “Star Wars” geek, and have been ever since the day back in 1977 when I sat with my best buds in the Town and Country Cinema in Aberdeen and watched that enormous white Star Destroyer slide ominously into view, seemingly from overhead and behind us, blasting away at the plucky little Rebel ship.

Even the tremendous disappointments that were the last three movies (the “prequels”) haven’t diminished my affection for what I’ll always think of as the real “Star Wars”: the tale of Luke and Leia, Han and Chewbacca, Obi-Wan and that bad, bad Darth Vader.

Sure, they were hokey. Sure, some of the dialogue was laughable. But those movies drew me in to a fascinating, complex universe full of heroes and villains and great stories, and they haven’t let me go yet.

All that said, after the aforementioned prequels (about which the less said the better), it’s hard for a fan not to feel some amount of trepidation over the idea of a new trilogy. Especially since they’re being directed by J.J. Abrams, whose “Star Trek” reboots were so ludicrous and full of logic holes that I can only get through them by regarding them as comedies.

So, like hundreds of thousands of others, I went to one of the numerous sites running the new trailer for “Star Wars Episode VII-The Force Awakens”, which releases December 18th . I crossed my fingers, took a deep breath, then played the trailer. Actually, I played it several times. Not too many. Twenty, thirty tops.

So far, I have to say, I’m encouraged. It looks like the Millennium Falcon’s back, along with Harrison Ford as the wisecracking, reluctant hero Han Solo. So is his friend, the giant hairy Wookiee Chewbacca.

I’m pleased to say that after the somewhat ridiculous baddies of the prequels (not even the great Christopher Lee could make a character named Count Dooku less than ridiculous), this villain looks truly villainous, in the Vader mold.

In fact, he seems to have a bit of a thing for ol’ Wheezy, since the trailer shows him looking down at a smashed and battered Vader mask and vowing “I will finish what you started.” It looks like the improvements in visual effects are put to good use in what appear to be epic TIE-fighter vs. X-wing battles.

Obviously, a mere rehash of the old movies wouldn’t be satisfying, so the trailer gives us a glimpse of some new characters: a plucky young woman with a staff on her back and a cute little rolling droid that looks like a soccer ball with a soup bowl on top; a tormented-looking black dude who appears to be a former stormtrooper-turned-Jedi; and a mysterious X-wing pilot played by Guatemalan actor Oscar Isaac.

Of course, no “Star Wars” movie release would be complete without some ridiculous controversy. Remember the fuss that erupted back in 1999 over whether the character Jar Jar Binks was a racist caricature, instead of just incredibly annoying? Well, this time, it seems to be white people complaining.

The casting of a woman, a black Englishman, and a Latino in the lead roles led to an eruption on the Internet using the hashtag “#BoycottStarWarsVII” and claiming the movie “is anti-white propaganda promoting #whitegenocide.”

Seriously. “White genocide.” At first I thought it had to be a joke, and there’s some evidence that that’s how it started out. But then it got picked up by actual racists decrying the “race mixing” in the film and referring to director Abrams as “Jew Jew Abrams.” #SMH, as the kids say on the Interwebs (it means “Shaking My Head”).

No matter. I’m not going to let a bunch of racist trolls ruin my enjoyment of Star Wars. There’s only one person who can do that, and his name is George Lucas. When the time comes, I’ll be there in the theater with my heart full of hope and my bag full of popcorn, ready to feel that sense of wonder and to be swept again into a galaxy far far away.

Don’t mess this one up, Mr. Abrams.

HATERS ARE GONNA HATE: The comments in today's Pilot show that, no matter how lighthearted or innocuous the topic, so-called "conservatives" are going to be dicks about it. Like this one from Mark/Francis: 

"Under the guise of a satirical article and sharing with all as you reminisce those days of your childhood, eating popcorn and stuffing yourself with concession stand goodies, once again you have cleverly stirred the pot in an attempt to create racially motivated comments, it seems to be the subject you get most enjoy and one that gives the most return to feed that ego. Try using a bigger spoon."

Get that? I'm not really a fan, I'm just "cleverly" disguising my real intent: to get "racially motivated" comments to feed my ego...comments which Mark/Francis can't keep himself from making. 

What must it be like to live inside a mind so profoundly fucked up? 

Big Business vs. Religious Bigotry in Indiana: Guess Who Wins

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

You know, I’m hard on the Republicans sometimes. But it can’t be easy for them. It seems that Republican politicians keep getting caught in the middle between having to placate the almighty “job creators” whose money they can’t live without and the Religious Right, whose members provide them with those all-important primary votes.

Just recently, it happened again in Indiana.

The subject this time was the Hoosier State’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Law. RFRA, as it’s also called, is one of those laws passed to pander to the persecution complex of the most privileged religious people in the most privileged nation on Earth, who nevertheless are not happy unless they can equate themselves with Holocaust victims, antebellum slaves, or at the very least, black people in the pre-Civil Rights Act South, all because they have to deal with people who don’t think or pray the way they do.

RFRA on its face seems pretty innocuous. It basically says that the government can’t “burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless it’s for a “compelling governmental interest” and the means used is “the least restrictive means” to accomplish that goal. It’s the same sort of measure that allows the Amish, for example, to use reflective tape and kerosene lanterns on their buggies rather than electric safety lights.

Some people, however, fear (not without reason, as we’ll see below) that the law could be used to exempt businesses from local and state anti-discrimination laws and allow them to discriminate against people in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.

The law’s passage led to an immediate backlash from the aforementioned “job creators.” The $4 billion tech company Salesforce announced it was “dramatically reducing” its investment in Indiana, including canceling all programs that required its people to travel there. Tech giant Yelp followed suit.

San Francisco’s mayor and Connecticut’s governor banned city- or state-funded travel to Indiana. The NCAA, which is holding this weekend’s Final Four basketball championship in Indianapolis, said it intends “to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our work force.”

Even NASCAR, for crying out loud, spoke out against it. “We will not embrace nor participate in exclusion or intolerance,” it said in a formal statement.

As the pressure mounted, Gov. Mike Pence immediately took to the airwaves to claim he was shocked — shocked, I tell you — that anyone could think that such a nice, sweet law as RFRA could in any way countenance discrimination against anyone. He blamed the media for “sloppy reporting.” He tried to blame Obamacare, because, well, it’s Obamacare. At some point, he probably tried to blame Benghazi, too.

The governor’s protests might have been more convincing if so many of the law’s supporters weren’t insisting that the law DID give them the right to refuse service to LGBT people.

Micah Clark of the Indiana chapter of the American Family Association, for example, said as much in an interview with The Indianapolis Star. In an interview with Donald Wildmon of the AFA, Clark also urged Gov. Pence not to support efforts to “clarify” the bill to provide that it doesn’t allow discrimination, saying that that would “totally destroy” the law.

Eric Miller, of the right-wing organization Advance America, used the group’s website to crow “Victory at the Statehouse!” when the bill passed, because, he said, “Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!” ( I’m pretty sure he meant the wedding, not the marriage, but whatever).

It should be noted that Miller and Clark were among the few guests invited to the “private” signing of the bill. It’s more than a little disingenuous to claim that a bill isn’t meant to legalize discrimination when the people who’ll tell you that’s exactly what it was meant to do are standing behind you and smiling as you signed it.

As of this writing (Wednesday evening), Indiana legislators were feverishly trying to come up with a “fix” so the law won’t mean what its supporters say it means. We wish them much luck.

By the way, this won’t be the last time this battle gets fought. Walmart, for example, has asked that the governor of Arkansas veto a similar RFRA measure there. (Funny, I always thought Walmart WAS the government of Arkansas).

We don’t know what will come out of this so called “fix,” but we do know one thing for certain: Hatin’ on the gay folks is bad for business these days. And that’s going to be a problem for the GOP.

O'Reilly, Williams and the Usual Gang of Idiots

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for broadcast “journalists.” First there was the kerfuffle over NBC anchorman Brian Williams, who, it seems, might have embellished some of his adventures covering the Iraq war. Williams, speaking at a tribute to a retired soldier, recalled the time when, so he says, the helicopter he was on was forced down by enemy fire.

He was later forced to recant by soldiers who were there at the time who said Williams didn’t show up until a half-hour to an hour after the incident. Williams apologized and is now on a six-month suspension from NBC News.

Among the harshest critics of Williams was Fox News Host Bill O’Reilly, who said that the incident illustrated “a culture of deception in the liberal media” and that his viewers should question “if other news organizations are distorting the facts.”

By “other news organizations,” of course, O’Reilly means “other than Fox News.” If his viewers began caring about news organizations “distorting the facts,” O’Reilly would be out of a job.

The online liberal magazine Mother Jones delved into some of O’Reilly’s own claims of exploits he had while covering the 1982 Falklands War for CBS. O’Reilly, for example, has repeatedly claimed that he was “in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us.”

The story ends with O’Reilly dragging his photographer to safety. He disparaged journalist Bill Moyers by sneering, “I missed Moyers in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. I looked for Bill, but I didn’t see him.” And so on.

O’Reilly also talks about being caught in a “major riot” in Buenos Aires, where “many were killed” and O’Reilly himself had an automatic rifle pointed at him by an Argentine soldier.

Problem is, according to all accounts, no American journalists (and only a tiny handful of British ones) were allowed into the “war zone” in the Falklands, so it’s clear O’Reilly never reported from there. No one else can seem to remember the incident with the photographer.

As for the “major riot” with fatalities, CBS news’s own account (including footage apparently shot by O’Reilly and his team) shows an angry demonstration, but doesn’t show any violence beyond “a man throwing a punch against the car of a Canadian news crew,” according to the Mother Jones article (which actually includes the footage in question).

O’Reilly, confronted with these contradictions, immediately followed Williams’ example, issued a full apology, and went on a six-month hiatus from Fox News.

Ha ha! Just kidding. O’Reilly told Politico that the article was “garbage” and snarled that Corn was a “despicable guttersnipe.”

He even went so far as to threaten New York Times journalist Emily Steele if he didn’t like what she wrote. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” Steele says O’Reilly told her. “You can take it as a threat.”

This was probably a mistake. As I once said to Winston Churchill as we crouched in a bunker during the London Blitz, “Never get into a public fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” I’ll never forget his reply to me: “Who the bloody [expletive deleted] are you?” Then he threw a Scotch bottle at me. That Winston. What a kidder.

Where both O’Reilly and Williams went wrong is that they began to believe in their own celebrity. The stories they were covering were larger than life, so they felt as if they needed to be larger themselves. It’s a perilous trap, as Master Yoda explained to me right before the attack on the second Death Star: “Forget not my words: the story you are not.”

The difference, however, is summed up in a conversation I had with Arianna Huffington when we were having a drink at the 2012 Democratic Convention. “To be a right-winger,” I told her over apple-tinis, “is to live life without consequences. Accountability is for liberals. If you’re on the right, you can lie, you can make stuff up, and if you get caught at it, all you have to do is claim that you’re the victim of a political vendetta by liberal media and stand your ground. Voila! You’re a right-wing hero.”

I’ll never forget her response: “Security! Over here!”

I think she’s kind of into me. Chicks dig it when I speak French like that. But hey, let’s keep that last part between us. No need to tell the wife. She’s still all stressed out from doing reshoots for the new “Avengers” movie.

THE GOBSHITES SPEAK: I knew this one would get a reaction from the usual gang of idiots, and as always, I'm right. Most of it is in the standard vein of "O'REILLY'S NOT A LIAR, YOU'RE A LIAR BLAGH BLAGH BLAGH! As always, the charge is led by the spasmodically  foaming "Francis", who used to post as "Mark," so I've taken to calling him "Mark/Francis": 

Francis posted at 9:31 am on Sun, Mar 1, 2015.

Posts: 1427

Talk about living life through the experiences of others, dude you have made a living from perfecting that craft, only uniform that yourself has ever worn is probably the BSA, and that may be stretching things a bit, only danger you faced has probably been trying to outrun your own shadow, l 'm not an O'Reilly fan but only thing worse than a liar is a coward that cashes in on writing about that liar.

There's nothing quite so amusing as being called a "coward" by someone who's already admitted in print he's so afraid of me that he doesn't dare post under his own name. Come out from under the rock, "Mark/Francis". I'm pretty sure I know who you are now anyway. 

Then of course, there's the weekly" "why are you writing about this" response by the people who can't wait every week to tell me how much they're bored by the column they read every week: 

FarmBoy posted at 10:04 pm on Sat, Feb 28, 2015.

Posts: 127

Gee Dusty, thanks for such a relevant topic.

Any time, FarmBoy. Let me know if you ever have anything useful to add. 

Running Away From Obama: How'd That Work Out For Ya?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

So what happened this past Tuesday? What was the cause of this so-called “Republican Wave”?

You can blame the gerrymandering, which marginalizes Democratic votes and concentrates Republican ones. That certainly didn’t hurt Renee “I need MY paycheck!” Ellmers in her race against Clay Aiken.

But that doesn’t explain Kay Hagan losing to Thom Tillis, nor does it explain Republican victories in other U.S. Senate and state governor’s races.

You can blame the pernicious influence of money in politics. But the fact is, both sides spent huge amounts of money, and in North Carolina, Hagan actually outspent Tillis.

So what was it? You might come to the conclusion that people just don’t like Democratic policies. But then you’d have to explain away what happened when certain measures were actually put on the ballots in various states:

— Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota passed bills to raise the minimum wage, even while electing politicians who opposed such an increase. Not only did these measures pass, but they passed by wide margins. (A similar bill passed in Illinois, but it’s only considered “advisory” and doesn’t have the force of law.)

— Washington state passed a referendum that mandates universal background checks for gun purchases. The bill passed with 60 percent of the popular vote, despite millions of dollars poured into the state by the NRA and other gun rights groups to fight it.

— Voters in Colorado and North Dakota rejected so-called “personhood” laws, which define human life as beginning at fertilization of the egg. It’s clearly a back-door attempt to restrict reproductive freedom, and voters in those states soundly defeated both measures.

— Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. A solid majority of Floridians (57 percent) voted to legalize it for medical use, but that measure fell short of the 60 percent it would have needed to become law.

It seems that voters, when asked to choose, favor liberal policies on the minimum wage, gun control, reproductive choice, and even legal weed. Yet they don’t seem to like Democratic candidates. And I know why.

It’s because they act like such wimps.

One of the recurring themes of campaign coverage was how Democratic candidates were “running away” from President Obama. He’s “wildly unpopular,” the press assured us, despite the steadily decreasing jobless rate, a declining deficit, millions of Americans getting health insurance as a result of the much-reviled Affordable Care Act, and 63 months of economic expansion.

And boy, did they ever run away. Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes refused to even say whether or not she’d voted for the president. Clay Aiken told reporters he didn’t want the president to appear with him. Incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan spent all her time touting herself as the “most moderate” senator.

Republicans, on the other hand, constantly repeated, “Hagan voted with Obama 96 percent of the time."  They painted Hagan as “the deciding vote for Obamacare.” (Funny how every incumbent Democrat in every state was “the deciding vote for Obamacare.”) In the last days of the election, they even put it on the signs: HAGAN=OBAMACARE.

And not once did I hear her stand up and say, “Yeah, I voted for Obamacare, and here’s why: No pre-existing condition exclusions, no lifetime caps on coverage, more people are getting insured, and you can keep your kids covered until they’re 26.” You know, all the things people tell pollsters they like — so long as you don’t call it Obamacare.

Here’s the thing about trying to run away from the president from your party: You’re also running away from the policies that you voted for. That doesn’t work. The Republicans aren’t going to let you do it, and trying to do it makes you look weak, craven, and wholly dependent on polls to determine your loyalty.

Not only does it not work, but as we’ve seen above, it’s so unnecessary. Remember, the president you’re so shy about being seen with got elected twice by large margins. People actually want a lot of the same things the Democrats claim to want. You want to motivate your base voters, the ones you really need in the midterms, then stand up and say, “Yeah, I voted for that, and I’d do it again. I did it because it’ll help the people of my country and my state, and here’s why I say that …”

You want better turnout, Democrats. You need to move the polls, not chase them. You need to stop listening to overpaid Beltway consultants who tell you people won’t like you if you come out strong for the things that help people. You know, the ones Democrats are supposed to believe in.

A few noisy people may not like liberal policies, but everyone hates a two-faced coward.

THE GOBSHITES SPEAK: 

The comments in The Pilot since this column went live show that the Right's not even trying to hide the racism any more:

From commenter "PearlHarbor":  A couple of articles I read called the election white man's revenge.

Articles where? Stormfront.com? The KKK Journal? 

And of course, our old friend "Francis" spoke from beneath his concealing hood of anonymity: As much as it pains me to say this Obama may have been just what we needed, something had to wake White America up, we have been far to lenient and passive when it comes to allowing others dictate their demands, from illegal immigrants marching in our streets to the moral Monday crowd driven by the NAACP trying to use their numbers, it's always been about them, never us, time to think about what we want for a change.

Yes, Francis, let's never forget that it's the white man who is the truly oppressed minority in this country. Wake up, white men!

Jesus. 

Latte Is The New Teleprompter

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Once again, the shrieking outrage over a photograph of President Barack Obama saluting with a cup of coffee in his hand as he steps off Marine One reveals that there is nothing too small or trivial but that the American right won’t throw a giant hissy fit over it.

It’s all very amusing — until you realize what it says about the state of right-wing thinking.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the photo: President Obama, on his way to the U.N., stepping off the helicopter, flanked by saluting Marines on either side. He has his coat slung over one arm and is returning the salute with, horror of horrors, a cup in his hand.

Of course, the right-wing hysteria machine, apparently made up of people who have nothing better to do than comb through every photograph of the president looking for something to be apoplectic about, leapt immediately into action.

“How disrespectful was that?” Republican strategist Karl Rove asked. Half-Term Governor Sarah Palin mocked Obama’s lack of military service in a speech to a “Christian values” convention, a speech in which she also identified the president’s home address as “1400 Pennsylvania Avenue” — actually the address of a park next to the historic Willard Hotel. (It should be noted that neither Rove nor Palin served in the military.)

The National Republican Senatorial Committee even created a website — yes, an entire website — to protest.

Thing is, the president isn’t required to salute at all, and in this situation probably shouldn’t have. According to the regulations published by the Department of the Army (and available online), a salute isn’t required when “carrying articles with both hands” and “when either the senior or the subordinate is wearing civilian clothes.”

In addition, for 192 years of our nation’s history, presidents (including war heroes like Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower) didn’t return the salute at all. The practice originally started with Ronald Reagan, who apparently ran around saluting everything in a uniform.

When a Marine aide let him know that that wasn’t standard protocol, Reagan went to the commandant of the Marine Corps, who told him, “You’re the [bad word] president. You can salute whoever you want.”

Of course, you can just imagine the howling that would have ensued if Obama hadn’t saluted at all. Or if, like the President Who Must Not Be Named, he was photographed, several times, saluting while holding his Scottish terrier in one hand. That’s different, we’re told by the Raging Right. Because — just because it is, OK?

So what next? Will Darell Issa convene hearings on “Latte-gate?” Will there be subpoenas demanding to know if the president took cream or sugar, and if so, was it an American brand? Will there be a breathless (and quickly debunked) expose on “60 Minutes”?

“Tonight on ‘60 Minutes,’ some guy you’ve never heard of who claims to have been a barista on Marine One has written a book in which he details his harrowing experiences on Sept. 23, 2014. He tells us how he would have heroically taken the cup from the president’s hand himself, but received a ‘stand down order’ for some reason we don’t know, but which we know is somehow Obama’s fault. I’m Lara Logan, and am as baffled as you are as to why I still have a job.”

More likely, “latte” will became the new “teleprompter”: a word wingnuts randomly drop into any conversation about the president in an attempt to craft a clever insult that only serves to point out how mindless and ill-informed the person delivering it actually is.

Example: “Wow, did you hear some guy jumped the fence and broke into the White House?” “Yeah, Obama was so surprised he nearly dropped his latte. Get it? Latte! HAW HAW HAW!”

It’s important, the wingnuts say, because it shows a pattern. They’re right, but not in the way they think. The real pattern is this: The right has certain narratives, certain themes they cling to. In this case, the theme is “Obama hates the military.” This is patently absurd, as anyone outside the right-wing anti-information bubble knows. But the truth doesn’t matter to these people. Any information that contradicts the narrative is rejected. Anything they come across, no matter how minor, is warped to fit the theme.

Fix the facts around the theory, instead of the other way around. Sound familiar? That’s the right-wing mindset that got us into the Iraq War. And that’s where it stops being amusing.

The Well Truly Has No Bottom

You know, after my last column, I didn't think there was anyone who would be low enough to rise to defend the late Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. When even the usual gang of haters fell silent (the ones who show up every week to tell me how uninteresting they find the column they read every week), I thought there would finally be someone so vile, even the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts wouldn't throw in their lot with them.

I was wrong.

Thank you, ******* **** of Carthage, NC for your letter (yes, an actual mailed letter) that proved to me there actually are people in my own town who will defend picketing the funerals of slain children, murder victims, and soldiers fallen in the service of their country, all in the name of hate and in the name of God. Thank you, ******* **** of Carthage, NC for proving that the well of hate, ignorance and abject stupidity truly has no bottom.

Dusty

PS: Thank you especially for attaching a copy of the column to your note, because I certainly would not have known what I'd written otherwise. Also thanks for attaching the obit from Time Magazine with the highlighted sentence that you think proves your point, but which actually does nothing of the sort. If you hadn't done that, I might not have realized I was dealing with a complete dimwit.

Yours in Christ, D

(Updated to remove the actual name, since this sort of idiot would use it to whine and play the martyr.)

Goodbye,Mr. Phelps. You Failed.

The Pilot Newspaper: Columns

On March 19, Fred Phelps, founder and pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, passed away in a hospice in Kansas. You have to admit, he was an easy guy to hate.

Members of the WBC became famous in recent years, not just for their virulent anti-gay stance, but in the way they expressed it: by picketing funerals.

Phelps and his crew started off by picketing in parks in their hometown of Topeka, Kan., because said parks were supposedly sites for gay activity. Soon they were making headlines for protesting at the funerals of gay murder victims, such as Matthew Shepard, waving signs that said that Shepard was in hell and especially that “God Hates Fags,” a phrase which became the slogan most identified with the church.

Quickly, however, they decided to expand the group of people they were trying to offend to, well, just about everyone. They began picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed overseas in 2005, because, Phelps said, combat deaths were God’s punishment for America’s “tolerance” of homosexuals.

I must confess, when I saw a picture of a WBC sign that said “Thank God For Dead Soldiers,” I had to wonder if this wasn’t some bizarre piece of performance art meant to discredit the anti-gay rights movement. (They also once picketed a store for selling Swedish-made vacuum cleaners — because, I guess, Sweden was too gay for them).)

But no, it eventually became clear that these wackaloons were serious. They picketed the funerals of people killed in the Sago Mine disaster. They picketed the funeral of Mister Rogers. They picketed the funeral of the 9-year-old girl killed in the same shooting that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. They stomped on the American flag at the gates of Camp Lejeune after the murder of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach (even though there was zero evidence that Lauterbach was gay).

Their philosophy could best be summed up by a song the church once recorded, a parody of “We Are the World” called “God Hates the World.” And everywhere they went, you saw Phelps grinning his ghastly death’s-head grin and looking like The Beast from “Poltergeist II.”

He was the living, hideous symbol of the worst hatred and bigotry in America, a man who made you grit your teeth whenever you admitted, as the Supreme Court ruled in one case brought against him, that freedom of speech extended even to the most egregiously offensive speech imaginable.

Now he’s gone. So how should we react to the death of someone so completely horrible? Quite a few tweets and Facebook comments called for either dancing or performing — shall we say — other functions upon Phelps’ grave. Others called for studiously ignoring the event.

My favorite suggestion, however, was from a former Baptist minister who came out a few years ago and now blogs under the title of “The Gay Christian”: “My final prayer is that people do show up to his funeral as a show of pageantry. I hope they show up with large, decorated signs and billboards. I hope they line the streets leading to the funeral home, and I hope that they make sure they are seen. Finally, I hope every one of those billboards and signs read, ‘We forgive you.’”

Now, I understand how that would be hard for some, and downright impossible for others. There’s no way anyone can judge a mother of a dead son or daughter targeted by Phelps if she can’t bring herself to forgive him and his followers for publicly insisting that her child’s death was God’s judgment or that the child was at that moment burning in hell.

But I had to smile when I saw the picture of a group of counter-demonstrators who showed up at the first WBC protest after Phelps’ death with a banner that simply said “Sorry for Your Loss.”

Fred Phelps once told an interviewer that if people hated him, he felt he was doing his job right. Maybe it’s time for people, every day, to show Fred Phelps, wherever he is, just how badly he failed, by not hating anyone, even him, the way he and his flock hated others.