Shut your whining little mouths

I’ve touched on this before, but I need to grab it and shake it this time.

I am sick of people who whine about things with their mouths, while simultaneously causing the very thing they’re whining about.

In other words, the idiots out there need to get a fast, hard lesson in consequences and dominos. Cause and effect, people — pretty basic stuff.

You can’t whine about manufacturing jobs going overseas and then go shop at Wal-Mart. People shop there — and other discount places — because they’re cheap. Period. I can’t imagine many folks enjoying the leaning–toward-redneck atmosphere. But Wal-Mart has great prices, so why not save a few bucks.

Forget the whole business of how they treat their workers. Wal-Mart offers low prices because it has tremendous clout with the manufacturers. It demands low wholesale prices, and it gets them.

So how to manufacturers offer low wholesale prices? By cutting costs — and the easiest cost to cut is labor.

So when you’re in line at Wal-Mart whining to your friend about the local factory or mill or assembly plant closed, turn your word-of-the-day calendar to "hypocrite."

You can’t whine about big, bad corporations and then demand better returns from your mutual funds and stocks. Why do corporations behave badly? Why do they lie, cheat, steal, bilk, and all those other things? To make lots of money.

Sure, some of that goes to line the CEO’s pocket, but the major reason these companies sell their collective souls to the nearest demon is to keep the stock price up. Price goes down, shareholders get cranky.

And the shareholders are us. We who either own stock directly or through mutual funds, or through 401(k)s and IRAs. We demand better performance, so the companies we’re invested in do whatever they can to give it to us.

So next time you’re bitching about Exxon-Mobil or Chevron or whomever at the gas pump, filling up your I-need-to-compensate-for-something SUV, either go home and move your investments into something socially responsible, or shut the hell up.

You can’t whine about the crap on (and success of) Fox News and also whine about finding something offensive. The way it seems today, being "offensive" is a crime. Pull it off the air. Apologize. Fire people. Change things so as never, ever to offend anyone.

You know what you get with attitude like that? Crap. Bland, useless content. Take the Howard Sterns and Don Imuses off the air and you’re left with inane Clear Channel prattling.

Punish kids for daring to do anything that someone finds offensive is to guarantee them a life of mediocrity.

Fox News understands that. It doesn’t care that its highly partisan slant on news offends people. It doesn’t care about the crap that comes out of the mouths of its commentators, because it knows that it makes Fox stand out. Sure, it offends people, but look what offending people has gotten it: success.

Ann Coulter is the kind of person who ought to be gang-raped, beheaded, and dumped in an unmarked grave. She offends anyone with a triple-digit IQ or a sense of decency. But she doesn’t care — and she sells a lot of books.

During the recent race for Virginia Senate (Allen vs. Webb), I had some wonderful information about some things Allen had said. But I was told not to use it because "it might offend Allen supporters." It didn’t matter if it was true or not, just that it might offend people. The story was that much blander as a result.

So next time you feel like complaining about some "offensive" content somewhere, shut your trap, go home, and eat some white bread dipped in water first. At least get a taste blandness before you inflict it on the rest of us.

More, I suspect, to come.