What?!

June 12, 2000 7:59 AM

What?! It's great how BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN is more important to protest than trigger-happiness. I know this issue has already been talked into the ground, but just check the F.O.P. president's quotes. Come ON, guy. Didn't you see the sign above the door that said "Please remove head from rump?"
posted by NickBarat (13 comments total)

The FOP need to justify their existence somehow. One way of doing this is by creating an us vs. them mentality that can be used to drive fund raising. The NRA does it, Greenpeace does it, lots of groups do it. Too bad the FOP are just incredibly silly about the way they accomplish it. Locally (Columbus, OH) we've had some problems with our police. We're the second (or so) city to have our police department taken over by the FBI due to widespread abuses. The FOP could have worked on educating the populace of the city about the accusations it thought were unfair, instead it resorted to paranoid government ranting looney crap. That might have helped fund raising, but it didn't help their cause one bit.
posted by jbeaumont at 8:45 AM on June 12, 2000

I see from this article that they STILL don't get The Boss. "He has all these ... American flag songs ..."

They STILL haven't listened to the lyrics to Born in the USA, 17 years later.

Besides, the lyrics of 41 shots advise citizens of how they should behave around officers, in words they ought to agree with: "Promise me if an officer stops you'll always be polite/ Never run away, and promise Mama you'll keep your hands in sight ..."

Oh, that's right, we're thinking these are professionals ... my mistake. [sounds of disgust]

btw, 41 shots is out there on Napster ... not that I have any reason to know that.
posted by dhartung at 12:22 PM on June 12, 2000

"...and now he's a floating fag. "

Nice to know that the New York cops have come so far in stamping out prejudice within their organizations.
posted by harmful at 1:15 PM on June 12, 2000

Harmful pulled the same quote I was going to pull. What the hell is a "floating fag," anyway?
posted by dogwelder at 1:22 PM on June 12, 2000

Calling Springsteen a "fag" is like declaring war on the State of New Jersey.
posted by solistrato at 1:39 PM on June 12, 2000

"Metafiltered" could be taking over "slashdotted" -- after I found the song in question, it's been the only thing uploaded from me all day -- and about fifty times.
posted by mimi at 1:46 PM on June 12, 2000

I haven't heard the song, and I'm too lazy to find it right now, but "floating fag", suprisingly enough, sprung the image of a big stick floating down a river.

(for reference: "fag" means piece of firewood, like "gay" means happy -- fodder for adolescent giggles when watching old school board movies)
posted by cCranium at 2:53 PM on June 12, 2000

Huh. Based on my extensive knowledge of British idiom (garnered through watching The Tomorrow People and The Prisoner reruns), I always thought "fag" was a British term for matches or something else related to smoking. Live and learn.
posted by snarkout at 3:40 PM on June 12, 2000

cigarette
posted by hobbes at 3:51 PM on June 12, 2000

I've heard 'faggot' and 'fag' used interchangeably for wood, but that could very well be a bastardization peculiar to my own little reality. Neither are in terribly common use 'round these parts (southern Ontario area) though, so I'm willing to accept the fact that I'm just generally confused.
posted by cCranium at 6:48 PM on June 12, 2000

What's wrong with NJ?
posted by brent at 8:12 PM on June 12, 2000

Faggots, originally, were lengths of wood designed to make lighting a pyre more controllable, and were used to burn witches and the like. Eventually, in British slang the term came to mean anything that you burned (which is how it came to refer to cigaretts) whereas in the Americas, it split depending on region. The modern use of the word as an insult aimed at homosexuals refers to their 'flaming' status, according to Anderson's Etemological Handbook.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 11:13 AM on June 14, 2000