Friday, January 18, 2013

Hipsters: more conformist than a Victorian matron.

Kathy Shaidle had a post the other day about New York hipster types taking up hunting and target shooting because they think its "edgy". Here's Kathy's post, and here's the original story: "How Gun Culture Won Over Liberals: The new "gun nuts": media elites, locavores, and hipster hunters."

The story begins:

On a Sunday morning a couple years ago, Brooklyn journalist Foster Kamer and a few of his "particularly liberal" blogger friends decided to skip brunch and hit the shooting range instead.

"We said, hey, let's do something ridiculous," he recalled. "Let's go shoot guns."

They chose the nearest site they found, a range that operated out of a basement in midtown Manhattan. "The first thing that happened when we got there was we heard some guy hammering away at a target with what sounded like a cannon. It was just in such tight quarters. It kind of freaked us out."

It didn't keep them away, though.

One 30-minute gun safety lesson and a few bucks later, Kamer and his friends were blasting away at their own targets — the first of many. "Sometimes we go bowling, sometimes we eat together, and sometimes we go shooting," he said. "It's something to do."

Yes, they go shooting because its "something ridiculous". Forty seven layers of irony available to any hipster OWS/peacelovedove dweeb liberal punk who goes <gasp!> SHOOTING. Its so completely wrong, it has to be right. And of course they discovered what boys have known for a few hundred years now, shooting is -fun-. Its big fun. Huge fun. Its a hell of a fun time.

So they go shooting for several years, and then... Aurora!

As for Kamer, he said he hasn't picked up a gun since last July, when a masked shooter opened fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

"After that, I think the thought just occurred to me, like, you know, there's something that feels a little bit weird about doing this right now," he said. "I just kept thinking, Jesus God, am I propagating this? Is there a way to justify this to myself?"

But Kamer, who spoke to BuzzFeed Wednesday afternoon, minutes after President Barack Obama went on TV and laid out the most aggressive gun control agenda in a generation, said there should be room on the left for both a cultural appreciation for guns, and support for the president's efforts.

"Do I plan to go back again [to the range]? Yeah, yeah, I probably will," he said. "Would I mind my ID being checked and having to sign off on a bunch of forms before I'm handed a rifle and a box of 20 shells? Hell no, I wouldn't mind."

Several things spring rather forcibly to mind.

First off, this retard immediately draws a connection between his harmless weekend target shooting in the basement, and the mentally deranged Aurora Colorado shooter. "
"I just kept thinking...am I propagating this? Is there a way to justify this to myself?" Which is pure magical thinking at its finest. A Haitian witch doctor couldn't come up with better. Little Foster's weekend target practice causes Aurora. Genius.

Second, "
Would I mind my ID being checked and having to sign off on a bunch of forms...? Hell no, I wouldn't mind." He knows he's waaaaay off the reservation here, and he's terrified. Suddenly the nested levels of hipster irony are conflicting with Holy Writ! Guns Are Bad, Guns Cause Crime, Gun Owners Are Eeevile Republicans! That's liberal catechism. Little Foster better show he's all about the government gun control and he's got a big ol' man-crush on Barry too, or he's going to get ex-communicated.

That would be bad for him. He's a lefty blogger/writer/journolister. If he gets declared persona non grata by the liberal universe for being a possible NRA supporter, all his hipster friends will stop calling him up. Everyone he knows will de-Friend him on Facebook. His Twitter followers will drop him like a hot rock. He won't get any more writing work. His blog hits will disappear. He'll have to get a McJob.

Little Foster is in danger of being shunned from Polite Society, in other words. Enough whiff of scandal about him that he might not get those invites to tea and parties anymore, like a fourth tier Victorian society woman caught out without a chaperone.

These little boys like to pretend they are Edgy, Transgressive, Ironic, and all that other do-your-own-thing BS that liberals champion. But they're just pretending. In reality they're all conforming to a pretty rigid set of regs, dress code and all, stressing like mad in case somebody denounces them as UnCool and they get tossed out of New York like a leper out of a nudist colony.

The Phantom

6 comments:

Black Mamba said...

You know what else is "edgy"? Michelle Obama's amazing new haircut! Are there any limits to this inspirational woman's fearless originality?

http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/01/17/michelle-obama-bangs-new-hair-picture-twitter/

"Edgy" was my least favorite stupid word until the debut of "snark", which I guess is supposed to be a portmanteau of "snide" and "sarcasm". It really pisses me off for some reason.

Anyway, my real point is that the new blog layout looks spiffy.

The Phantom said...

Thanks Mamba. I finally tried a different template. :)

Your "ReeOwww, hssst!!!" comments on Moochele and her new hair cut are well taken. She now looks less like a Klingon warrioress and more like Jade the stripper.

Which is a mental image I must now try to scrub from my poor brain.

dlm said...

Found this while I was on a walk about started from Kate's. Please reassure me that not even the CFC could be so stupid as to comply with such a request. "In response, I'm posting publicly a copy of the gun registry database I received via the Access to Information Act in 2007." Glenn McNutbar.
I realize this is off the current topic, but I didn't know where to put it. Thanks for the insight and wit in your posts. Keep up the good work.

Alyric said...

Hey, Phantom. I realize it's not related to this post, but I thought you might be interested in this story:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/ex-cop-manhunt-newspaper-delivery-women-shot.html

LA Police seem to be gunning down anyone driving a blue truck right now. Two instances of shooting first, asking questions later - in the first they shot two women out delivering papers.

But these are the people we're supposed to trust to protect us after we give up our guns.

The Phantom said...

Hi Alyric. I saw a picture of that truck after the cops were done with it, they shot the shit out of it. Its amazing those women lived, there must be forty holes in it.

Alyric said...

No kidding - There's a valuable lesson to be learned here. You're safer if the police are shooting AT you. (See the Empire State Building shooting, where two cops wounded nine bystanders firing at a suspect eight feet from them).

Any civilian who pulled something like this would be on the hook for attempted murder... these cops will probably get two weeks paid suspension.

The worst part is, the LAPD won't learn a damned thing from it. Except maybe "confiscate the cameras before it becomes a story".