I don’t believe in whining but yesterday’s Mo’Nique thread (“Keep It Up“) was one of the ugliest of the year for all the name-calling and rhetorical mud-slinging, much of it directed as yours truly. All day I was ducking spears thrown by a pack of hysterical p.c. queens for two perceived sins. One, my decision to use the term “lard ass.” And two, observing that if Precious was about some scurvy white crackers in Alabama or Mississippi it wouldn’t have gotten the traction that the actual Precious has because it wouldn’t have the liberal-white-guilt element propelling it along.

I realize that if you provoke in one direction you’re going to get provoked right back — that’s the game I play on this site from time to time — but imagine what it feels like to express one or two specific opinions only to see aspects or side-angles of these views amplified and distorted and made into a slander meme in which you’re portrayed as a racist. It’s a fairly horrific thing, and I have nothing but contempt for the principal torch-bearers out there. They’re not as bad as the Roman Polanksi haters — by far the ugliest bunch to be heard from on this site — but they park their cars in the same garage. (Or in a garage owned by the same chain.)

And all I did was comment about Tom O’Neil‘s reporting about how Mo’Nique isn’t planning on attending the New York Film Critic’s ceremony. I didn’t open up an old can of worms for perversity’s sake. Tom’s piece was posted and I linked with some opinions and comments — that’s all, big deal. And the shutters flew open and a swarm of p.c. banshees flew out.

One of them, a howler named Renfield, said that I lacked “common decency toward [my] fellow man” and admonished me for that pointing out the racial angle in Precious. He urged me to respect the fact that filmmakers are “individuals” and asked, “Christ, do you really need to be taught this?”

Again — I pointed out the racial angle only to explain the “scurvy white cracker” point articulated above. In my humble but earnest view Renfield is a reprehensible slanderer — a Body Snatcher pod person pointing and screaming the words, “He’s not talking the p.c. talk! He’s not using the right terms….Eeeeeeeee!” I said in response, “I don’t think I need to be taught anything by a tut-tutting sanctimonious p.c. drone like yourself, but thanks for the offer all the same.”