Thursday, June 30, 2011

Thank you to Matt and Crank

We like to thank Matt & Crank for requesting their fans to "unlike" us on FaceBook. As a result, 8% of our fan base has gone. By Matt & Crank's estimate, another 42% need to go. We are not a place for Matt & Crank fans. Just as we do not go to their FaceBook page or WZBH's FaceBook page to post garbage, we appreciate Matt & Crank fans refraining from posting garbage there.  We also thank Matt & Crank fans refraining from cluttering our blog with innane comments.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Gay bashing is back in style with Matt and Crank

With all the issues there are to talk about that affect the average Delmarva resident, Matt and Crank chose to go on a gay bashing spree followed a couple of days later by talking about "truth". On Thursday, Matt discovered that the state is considering raising the Bay Bridge toll to eight bucks, something the rest of us knew about for over a month. We figure Matt and Crank are too busy worrying about who is kissing whom than to concern themselves with the real issues facing all of us who call Delmarva home.

They wasted two segments of their show talking about a gay couple in Kentucky who dared to splash around in a pool together and – gasp – kiss. Sure, they tried to hide their gay bashing by saying if the couple were a straight couple, they’d be offended over the behavior, but admitted that they are more offended because the couple were “two dudes.”

Where it got really twisted and perverted was when Matt claimed he wouldn’t want his children, if he had any, exposed to such disgusting public displays of affection and questioned what sort of perverts would get turned on enough to kiss each other when there are a bunch of “half naked kids running around.”

We, at the Critics Page, have been to our share of public pools, beaches, and swimming holes. We’ve seen plenty of public displays of affection from men and women horsing around, holding hands, and – gasp – kissing. Sure, we all could pick out an instance where we felt the couple should take it to the motel room, but, in general, such public displays of affection happen every day every where and not just at the public pools. How else are our kids going to learn appropriate public behavior between two adults who love each other if they don’t have role models to learn from?

Not one of us have ever seen a bunch of kids running around a pool and thought, “How did these half naked kids get that couple over there turned on enough to hold hands or steal a kiss?” We’ve always seen a bunch of kids running around in their swimwear having a good time. We have to ask. What sort of pervert thinks of kids running around a pool as being half naked?

Matt and Crank believed they were being coy by whitewashing their gay bashing, but their message was clear. Gays don’t belong in public acting like straight couples because they are all pedophiles.

A couple of days later, they try to justify their bigotry by talking about “truth.” The gist of the segment with a philosopher amounted to a discussion of whether being tolerant of others who aren’t on the side of “truth” means we should start accepting their version of “truth”.

Not only did Matt and Crank confuse facts with truth, but so did the philosopher. The philosopher did make one good point that whooshed right over Matt and Crank’s collective heads. The philosopher cautioned that we need to be humble and recognize that what we think is the truth may actually not be the truth. That caution didn’t stop Matt and Crank from making their not so subtle point that their bigotry should be tolerated and accepted because they speak the truth and because they have truth on their side, they shouldn’t be silenced for speaking it. We beg to differ.

Today, Matt and Crank spoke out against same sex marriage. They threw up the usual, predictable conservative Christian smoke screen to make a non-point. But what could one expect from two who were told by their bosses that same sex marriage is a topic they aren’t to talk about, but they figure if they refer to it in Pig Latin, that somehow that fourth-grade language trick lets them off the hook because they are talking about agay arrigemay and not gay marriage?

This, we’re sure, may come as a shock to Matt and Crank, but marriage has been redefined over the centuries – no, thousands of years – and continues to evolve. In this country alone, people didn’t marry out of love until about a hundred years ago. Prior to around 1900, most marriages were performed to enhance one’s (usually the man’s) social and financial status. There’s a reason George Washington didn’t have children with Martha, but all up and down the East Coast, you can see the signs of “George Washington slept here.”

We understand that Matt and Crank are part of a generation that believes the world began around the time they were born so it may come as a surprise to them to learn that the Supreme Court did, in fact, define marriage in 1967, back when at least 16 states still had laws that a White person couldn’t marry a Black person. The Supreme Court decided that marriage was a basic civil right between two consenting adults and a state would have to show a compelling reason to deny that right. It wasn’t until the DOMA Act around 1996 that further refined the 1967 definition to mean “a man and a woman.”  The DOMA Act redefined the 1967 definition and, like DOMA's supporters, fails to provide a "compelling reason" to deny marriage to a same sex couple.

Since Matt and Crank decided to compare same sex marriage to bank robberies (We’re still scratching our heads on that one), we’ll do an analogy of our own. Matt and Crank claim that no state outlaws gays and lesbians from marrying. Gays and lesbians are free to marry as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex. That certainly means their rights aren’t being infringed upon.

We actually have an example in case law of such warped logic being shot down. Some cities had decided that since we have the right to bear arms, denying the ammunition wouldn’t infringe upon our rights to own a gun. Various courts said no way. It is infringing on the right to own a gun because what good is a gun without the ammo.

Every state that has adopted some form of the DOMA Act into their laws or state constitution has negated two consenting adults’ basic civil rights much like the laws outlawing ammunition negated one’s right to own a gun.  What good is marriage if love isn't the foundation?

Listening to Matt and Crank tackle the issue of same sex marriage is akin to eating a Big Mac for dinner instead of a solid square meal. Sure, the Big Mac satisfies the hunger, but it has little nutritional value and leaves a lot of fat hanging around your middle.

To our surprise (ok, not really surprise), we came in on the middle of their gay bashing spree. For some odd reason, Matt and Crank think they are talented in the video-making department. They pass off half-truths and stereotypes in poorly done voices in attempt to further validate their bigotry. Since our schedules have changed and we’ve been unable to record the programming reviewed here, we treat you to Matt and Crank’s own video they boast about on air and is posted on the official WZBH website. Yes, they just can’t treat gays and lesbians with any sort of respect. We view their own video as further proof of their agenda to validate and spread their bigotry as the “truth”.

On Friday, Matt posted on the official Matt and Crank FaceBook page linked through the official WZBH website that about forty years ago, White people were brainwashed into not having kids and now White people will go extinct. Again, he carefully couched his words so as not to say, “White”, but careless enough to say “we’re doing it to ourselves’, so readers know what he is talking about. While we at the Critics Page do not subscribe to the Stormfront mentality of race preservation like Matt does, we do strongly urge Matt and Crank not to have kids. We’re certain God didn’t mean for everyone to reproduce and we’d like to think Matt and Crank top God’s list of people who shouldn’t procreate.

In fact, with Matt and Crank’s incessant pushing of an agenda that White, heterosexual, Christian males should rule the household and world and everyone else should be secondary followers, we’ve come to the conclusion that Matt and Crank should slither back to the other side of the Bay where they came from. Hey, thanks for spending some time over here and spending your money here, but you’ve overstayed your welcome. Heck, we’ll support a Bridge toll ten times higher than the proposed eight bucks if it would help keep unwanted foreigners like Matt and Crank off our peninsula.



Friday, June 10, 2011

Wow! Some chick has replaced Chris Steele!

This past week, we have listened to JJ a bit and from him we've learned that Sarah will be replacing Chris Steele, who has left the station.  We applaud WZBH for bringing in someone who isn't just another White, heterosexual, young male.  We really haven't heard much from Sarah, but a few clips we did hear, she sounds like a refreshing change to the normal fare WZBH has been offering. 

Our critic, who listened to the clip between JJ and Sarah, is already in love.  As he put it, she has a sweet voice and she got drunk the Friday before she learned she got the job at WZBH so how could you not love the woman?  The rest of us might not be in love with her, but we are looking forward to what she has to bring the radio waves.

None of us listened to Matt and Crank this week, except for a brief time when I, the critic writing this review, tuned in for a short time.  Matt talked about there being no such thing as human rights and he mumbled on about nonsense.  I turned the radio off in disgust after about three minutes, to the relief of our other critic who was riding with me.  Now we understand why the woman in our group, who used to be able to record the program before her work schedule changed, would, a lot of the times, only listen to one or two segments before calling it quits.

Yes, in the last two weeks, we've learned that profiling people for anything is ok as long as the profiling doesn't unfairly target White, heterosexual, Christian, young males and we've learned that there are no human rights except for those granted by God, which, apparently, are practically none.

Life must be rough when one is a control freak and nothing to control.

We can't wait to hear more from Sarah.  It's a long shot, but two out of the five of us think Sarah will persuade JJ to reconsider his views on marriage and the ideal of commitment.  Our advice to you, Sarah - don't marry him and don't set any of your friends up with him.  Coors Light Brewing Company owns his soul and that's the only commitment he honors.

Oh, and by the way, JJ, Coors Light Brewing Company (i.e. Satan) has a special place for you, in the afterlife.  You'll be stuck neck deep in Coors Light, but every time you bend your head to take a sip of the sweet nectar, the flow will ebb just out of your reach.  And when you look up and see that spicy Italian sausage that goes so well with a Coors Light and quells your hunger, it won't be the spicy Italian sausage you think it is.

Too bad we can't have a nightly Afterlife Dumbass report.  If we could verify the above, it'd be an awesome story!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Chris Steele has flown the coop

None of us have really been listening to WZBH the last few weeks.  We've caught bits and pieces here and there, but nothing worthy of writing about.  Sure, Matt multiplied nine by ten and came up with nine hundred, but JJ already beat him to the bad math about a month ago when he added three to eighteen and came up with twenty-four.  Ironically, Matt complained (When isn't he complaining?) that kids of immigrant parents do better in the math and sciences than kids whose parents were born in this country.  We can deduce that neither JJ nor Matt have immigrant parents.

We were going to write a review on one of Matt and Crank's segments where they justified profiling as a legitimate tool for law enforcement because we all profile every day so why shouldn't law enforcement.  We decided not to waste our time when one of our critic's eleven-year-old son chimed in on our debate amongst ourselves about the points raised by Matt and Crank.  He made us realize how childish the arguments really were.

JJ scared us one evening.  Prior to coming on air, he shares a bit of banter with Chris Steele, who is turning the mike over to JJ after his four hour shift.  They talked about DNR's proposed solution to our overpopulation of deer.  At a thousand bucks per deer, they want to shoot the deer up with hormones to prevent them from getting pregnant.  JJ had a simpler, and cheaper, solution.  Extend the hunting season and any deer shot after the normal season, the hunter would be required to donate half to feed the homeless and needy.

Why did JJ's solution scare us?  At the Critics Page, we've been saying the exact same thing for years.  The fact that JJ came up with the exact same solution and, yet, can't add eighteen and three has all of us scratching our heads.  Are we all just a bunch of drunk, math iliterates like JJ?  We like to think we know how to add simple numbers.

The real purpose of this review, however, is to bid farewell to Chris Steele.  Friday, we learned, Chris Steele is leaving WZBH to pursue his real career in, to quote JJ, "medical field".  Yes, those are air quotes JJ used.

Apparently, Chris Steele had been studying in medical school and now he is ready to move on to his chosen career.  We don't know what he studied in medical school, but we suspect that since he is so intimate with the chicks, he must be going on to become a veternarian.  One of our critics raises chickens and the chicks often get sick or act funny.  If you're reading this, Chris, we hope you make house calls and are willing to come down here to make our chicks happy and healthy so they can grow up and become good breeders.

Oh, and when we do our live interview of JJ, Matt, and Crank around July or August, we hope to be able to still include you.  For what we have in mind, we're sure you won't be too busy.