That’s about all I have to say about it, for now. Except to add this…
She bragged about that .38 her granddaddy gave her for months on end, making herself out to be some latter-day Annie Oakley. Or something.
Then, she led a TV crew to a shooting range, pulled out the gun, and… couldn’t get it to fire.
So I guess you can say this is progress. Of a sort…
What do you want to bet whether she actually hit a rattler with that snub-nose? Or whether she was even within a mile of the varmint? These questions I’m asking don’t matter a bit, of course, except to the kind of voter she’s trying to reach.
Sorry, ma’am, but for sheer, mind-numbing idiocy, this still doesn’t touch Ted Cruz and “Machine-Gun Bacon“…
Related Posts
So is she a conservative shot or a conservative buzzsaw? I’m so confused.
Breaking News: Gubernatorial candidate shoots self in TV campaign ad.
Video of rattlesnake getting hit or it didn’t happen.
Yea, I’m calling Templeton a rattlesnake.
Between Templeton and the rattlesnake, I’ll take the rattlesnake any time.
Well, if her ads are successful, you might find it hard to tell the difference. Because the point of her ads seem to be to convince people that she’s mean as a snake. And she’s trying really, really hard…
Snakes are not normally mean. “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me,” is more their style. She seems down right poisonous.”
And the tree-hugger in me says you really don’t need to shoot that snake. Let it be.
Not me. Let me be perfectly clear: I endorse shooting the snake, if it’s anywhere in the vicinity.
I’m just not sending this poser out to do it with a snub-nosed .38…
Of course, I’m talking about literal snakes. What’s really evil about this ad is that she is suggesting that the people who serve in our government are the snakes, and she’s eager to dispatch them, too.
And as one Tweeter today asked, you have to wonder how Clementa Pinckney’s widow feels about that…
Ouch.
Nope. If the snake is in your home or someplace where it may endanger–and I mean REALLY endanger–you, then kill it. Otherwise, let it be. Snakes–even venomous ones–are not predatory on humans (save maybe a few large constrictors). Leave it alone, and in ten minutes it will likely be out of sight. Just like it was 10 minutes before you saw it.
I fully understand your point, and it makes all sorts of sense in theory.
But if I walk on by a rattler, and am safe 10 minutes later — what’s to stop that rattler from biting me when I pass that way again?
It’s the Steamboat Willie question. Remember the captured German in “Saving Private Ryan” who tried to ingratiate himself by talking about Steamboat Willie and Betty Grable’s gams, so that they wouldn’t kill him? Well, they let him go, and he ends up killing… well, I suppose theoretically there are some out there who still haven’t seen the movie, so I won’t spoil it.
Now, I wouldn’t have killed the German, either. But a German is not a snake, and has a moral claim on my compassion that a snake does not have. And unlike Catherine Templeton, I don’t equate people with snakes.
If it makes you feel better, I wouldn’t like killing the snake. And you might even convince me that the snake doesn’t “deserve” that fate. But you know, Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.
Here’s something I will always feel bad about — back in the early 80s, the first house we ever owned backed up to a huge drainage gully that ran all the way through Jackson, TN. More like a canyon than a gully, really — kudzu was the only thing that kept my yard from eroding into it.
Anyway, this older lady (she seemed older then; she was probably younger than I am now) lived alone in the house next door. One day there was a snake in her yard, and she was deeply scared of it. She came over and begged me to kill it for her (hence the William Munny reference). I didn’t want to. I’ve never made a study of snakes, but I could tell this one was nonpoisonous. A rat snake or something.
But she wouldn’t listen, and insisted she’d never have peace of mind while it lived.
So I killed it for her. And I’m sorry even to type the words.
But if it had been a rattlesnake, I wouldn’t have hesitated. That was right next to the yard where my then three little children played…
Why in the world would you agree to kill a harmless snake??? That’s barbaric. If she had asked you to kill a puppy that was on her property would you kill that too? This just illustrates what a violent culture we live in.
Oh, boy. I forgot that bud might read that…
And no, I wouldn’t kill a puppy…
Snake people…
Oh, I’ve done it, too. Killed rattlesnakes, that is. A handful of them, in fact. But I wouldn’t do it today because I understand them better. They don’t scare me.
The last rattler I killed was when I was in high school. He was lying in the middle of the dirt road near the bus stop. I stoned him to death. Just about the time I had finished with him, slightly older neighbor Ginger Wigner came by in her pickup truck and told me I shouldn’t have killed it. She was so sad, and I felt like a jerk.
Weird that I recall that.
And looking back at your story about your neighbor, if my neighbor Ginger had asked me to kill it, I would have used my bare handsif need be. So….
“But if I walk on by a rattler, and am safe 10 minutes later — what’s to stop that rattler from biting me when I pass that way again?”
His nature. Be aware f your surroundings so you don’t step on him, and he won’t bite you.
Any snake inside my fenced backyard is fair game for me to chop it in half with a hoe. We’ve got dogs that run around back there. Anywhere else, they can live on.
Let’s not talk about squirrels…
For what it is worth, not the same guy in Saving Private Ryan.
http://www.sproe.com/s/steamboat-comparison.html
Interesting. Looks like I’ll have to watch it again!
Off topic, but killing rattlers is bad in the long run.
We’ve killed so many of them, that through “natural” selection, fewer and fewer rattlers have rattles (since it puts them at a disadvantage). Without that you never know you are even coming up on one. Not that I wouldn’t want to kill one, I really hate snakes, with full blown ophidiophobia (I won’t even touch a pet python and I dislike looking at pictures of snakes), but I always have to keep it in my head that there is a balance and the more I interfere, the worst things will get.
I’m with you, Norm. I tend to go to great lengths to try remove these sorts of things from my vicinity without killing them. Even bugs in the house I will catch and put outside if I can. Though my husband has no qualms about killing bugs in the house or in the yard, especially tent caterpillars in the river birch and wasp nests. I just have to look the other way. I’m sure he would feel the same way about a rattlesnake in the yard, but I would prefer to divert or relocate it if it were possible. Before my cat got too old and lethargic to hunt, she would regularly bring injured rodents into the house and I would regularly take them to Carolina Wildlife Care. I stopped and helped two turtles across the road today. I do realize I’m probably at the extreme end of the spectrum on these things.
But I suspect people either like that ad or are really turned off by it. For me, the metaphor of someone being a snake doesn’t work as a literal thing, because actual snakes are not evil – they are minding their own business trying to survive like all wildlife. Whereas metaphorical snakes are sneaky and malevolent and actively trying to deceive or hurt. Showing her shooting an actual snake just makes me pissed off at her even if I might have agreed with her metaphorical point.
But the more I think about the metaphorical point, it’s bad too. She is essentially proclaiming that she will label and try to eliminate anyone with differing views instead of any attempt at trying to understand or respect.
Yeah, I can’t say I’m quite so defensive of bugs. Spiders, yes, but all the rest can go.
This guy agrees…..
https://m.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2018/05/12/herpetologist-takes-issue-with-anti-snake-candidate-catherine-templetons-latest-tv-ad
Another version of Donald Trump but with slightly better hair. At least its not orange.
“Slightly?”
No, that’s not fair. Trump has the strangest hair I think I’ve ever seen that wasn’t being worn by a clown in the circus.
Ms. Templeton is an attractive, and likely intelligent, woman who doesn’t have to act this way. But she chooses to…
Seriously, a grown man talking about how another man’s appearance? That’s a little on the gay side if you ask me… not that there’s anything wrong with it. What next, critisizing his taste is shoes?
Who sees his shoes? Who sees anything beyond his hair?
And seriously, don’t you think it slights Ms. Templeton to say her hair is only “slightly” better?
If I did, I don’t think I’d waste my time having a discussion about it. Really, I don’t care, sometimes it’s like a bunch of bitter old ladies around here.
Actually, her being an attractive woman is, for me, kind of a relevant thing. Not a huge thing, but…
This gets us into the weirdnesses about male-female relations that I was writing about with the American Girl in Italy post the other day.
I might scoff dismissively when an ugly man like Ted Cruz makes an a__hole out of himself trying to impress us with his Machine-Gun Bacon. And then forget about it. But when it’s an attractive woman…
I’m always deriding Identity Politics, and saying it shouldn’t matter whether a candidate’s a man or a woman, and I mean it.
But… I have to admit that it adds another little twist of creepiness when a pretty woman like Catherine Templeton goes this far out of her way to make us think she, too, is an ugly a__hole like Ted Cruz…
And maybe that’s why she does it. Maybe she’s compensating. Maybe she’s trying to keep us voters from relating to her as a pretty woman, by given us something to recoil from…
I don’t know. I’m going to shut up before I get into trouble…
I don’t know. I’m going to shut up before I get into trouble…
Oh, Brad…
Too late, huh?
First I tell bud about the snake I killed, now this…
If Kathryn were here…
I saw Bitter Old Ladies at Bill’s Music Shop n 1988.
Didn’t “Get Offa My Lawn” open for them?
Nice.
Yes Brad, “slightly”. Not that she is unattractive physically but overall her persona is about on the same par with Trump and therefore the comment. Sorry to have awoken your Don Quixote side and poked the “Claus 2” bear.
I think I read somewhere that, when asked, the Templeton campaign said that no snake was actually shot during the production of the ad.
So, I’m not a fan of Templeton, but she’s not really “equat[ing] people with snakes”. She’s comparing certain people to snakes. I mean, it’s a metaphor. Sure, it’s largely a very dumb (and inconsiderately aggressive) metaphor, but there are lots of those in politics.
#DrainTheSwamp
#ShootTheSnakes
#JumpTheShark
#EndTheMetaphors
The creepiest sound bite of all time is Ted Cruz going “Mmmmmmmmm ….machine gun baaacoonn….”