Time for the quarterly poll--although I'm about a week late--inquiring of the effectiveness of the DUmpster.
As most here know, about three-quarters of the audience of the DUmpster reads the DUmpster merely for light amusement and diversion, much as one reads the comics in the Sunday newspapers. After all, it's very hard to take the primitives seriously; it's not as if they count or anything.
About one-fifth reads the DUmpster for "oppositional research," like the Kremlin watchers of old, trying to discern the next trends and moves by Democrats, liberals, and primitives.
And the rest of us read the DUmpster for anthropological enlightenment.
There's been allegations in the past that the DUmpster's "insensitive" to the primitives, making fun of them.
I beg to differ, but don't let my opinion influence one's own vote in this poll.
The most common complaint seems to be that the DUmpster "makes fun of" things that decent and civilized people are usually constrained from commenting upon; the primitives' size, or their mental states.
I beg to differ. franksolich has been here since Day 5 of the DUmpster, almost four and a half years now, and as moderator, is charged with reading every single word put into the DUmpster, keeping everybody in line.
Someone might protest, but doesn't the DUmpster make fun of the Las Vegas Leviathan, because he's fat?
Pssst.
I have a secret.
Two out of every three primitives are fat, about one-third of those two-thirds morbidly obese.
Going to Skins's island is like attending a national convention of fat people.
But yet only the Las Vegas Leviathan has been taunted for being fat, in the DUmpster.
Why this exception? Because the Las Vegas Leviathan politicizes his plight; he blames his mother of blessed memory, George Bush, and Republicans in general for his blubber.
Nearly all the other fat primitives don't do that, and hence aren't ridiculed for being fat.
Someone might protest, but doesn't the DUmpster make fun of the subway cat, because she's nuts?
Pssst.
I have a secret.
Two out of every three primitives has mental problems, about one-half of those two-thirds serious problems.
Going to Skins's island is like touring a nuthouse.
But yet only the subway cat has ever been taunted for being nuts, in the DUmpster.
Why this exception? Because the subway cat politicizes her plight; she blames all of her craziness on her father of blessed memory, evangelical Christians, greedy capitalist pigs, and the hard-pressed taxpayers of Maryland who are unwilling to give her all she wants.
Nearly all the other primitive nuts don't do that, and hence aren't ridiculed for being nuts.
I dare anyone to find a single instance of where a primitive has put blame for his or her problems on the appropriate shoulders, and cheerfully borne personal responsibility for those problems, and was teased in the DUmpster.
I dare.
And we have the current best-seller on Skins's island, my fellow Nebraskan who's running for public office.
A few seem to think we're being hard on the the big guy.
And it's somewhat true; the Sarah Palin rule applies to the big guy, and he's been thwacked harder than any other primitive's ever been. That he bears up so well under this stress is awesome; the big guy may even get my vote for Top DUmmie of 2012, no matter what else happens the rest of the year, based simply upon that he takes this constant thwacking with good grace.
But the big guy's hardly a martyr; after all, it was the primitives who in 2008 wrote and observed the Sarah Palin rule, and the DUmpster's simply following their lead. The primitives wrote the Sarah Palin rule, and surely can't find fault with decent and civilized people observing it too.
