Thursday, February 17, 2011

1st Quarter Dick Cheney Award for Corporate Malevolence Goes to New Hampshire Couple

Aimee and Dennis Taylor of Bedford, New Hampshire are the first quarter recipients of the Dick Cheney Award for Corporate Malevolence.

The Taylors are the notorious, self-deputized censors of Bedford NH, who successfully had the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich banned from their school's library because the author referred to Jesus Christ as "a wine-guzzling vagrant and socialist."

It seemed that a book telling the truth of what it's like to scrounge a living in America on minimum wage pricked the Taylor's devotion to Reaganomics, Mom and Apple Pie.

The Taylor's new target is the novel Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

Worse than impugning capitalism, Water for Elephants contains a few pages of sex -- not unlike the bible.

Maybe if there was more racism, sexism and, of course, violence in the novel, it might appeal more to the Taylor's taste. I'm sure they much prefer Mel Gibson's film The Passion over Terms of Endearment.

The motto at the Taylor House appears to be: "A mind is a terrible thing to open."

So, not content with merely depriving their own children of various books they deem obscene, the Taylor Crusaders seek to have this second book made inaccessible to everyone else in the Bedford school.

Now, the casual reader might ask, "How can a couple of regular, ordinary born again Christian people receive an award for corporate malevolence?"

I'm glad you asked that.

The Taylors are this quarter's recipients because they possess and publicly display the sort of malignant ignorance that makes corporate malevolence possible.

Banning books, stifling knowledge, imposing their moral and religious codes on others and demonstrating a level of mental opacity and deep, deep seated selfishness that can only be described as a pathology -- that's what aids and abets corporate malevolence.

These are the reasons the Taylors are this quarter's winners.

Because everyone around the Taylors lose merely by their proximity to these toxic two.

2/18 Update

If Aimee and Dennis Taylor had any integrity or intellectual honesty, they would next crusade to have the bible banned from their local school, as it contains more violence, racism, sex and degenerate ideas than any ten books by Sara Gruen or Barbara Ehrenreich.

So, how about it Taylor Crusaders? Gonna rid the school district of the bible?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your spineless analysis of my fight to prevent my children from reading pornography in Bedford, NH. Not only do I know that such reading is wrong for my son, I know that it is fundamentally morally wrong to give graphic descriptions of oral sex to fifteen year olds. Do you have a moral compass with regards to the age at which your child may read or see pornography? If you do not, you are nearly the equivalent of a child molester--someone who would sex up a child at any age. If you do have such a compass, you and I aare on the same page, but we may disagree as the age. As far as the award, I would like to speak to your group at the award ceremony and am willing to debate any of you at such an event.

Dennis Taylor
Bedford, NH

Whetam Gnauckweirst said...

Red letter at Inside the Hotdog Factory -- a winner of the Dick Cheney Award for Corporate Malevolence has given an acceptance speech!

Dennis, you're an ignorant rube who has the belief system of a dullard child. You represent the proto-Taliban contingent of the US population. They couldn't have chosen a better public face of selfishness, short-sightedness, ignorance and arrogance.

Please feel free to right-click on the image in the blog piece -- that's your trophy!

HowToLiveHappily said...

Disclaimer: I haven't read the book in question, and don't know what scenes we are really talking about. I can only comment on the statement below:

"I know that it is fundamentally morally wrong to give graphic descriptions of oral sex to fifteen year olds."

Why? What makes you think so? How can you be sure?

Thinking back of the time I was 15, I remember having my natural impulses - and feeling guilty about them - because of the way I was brought up.

No matter how well-intentioned this upbringing was, it kept me lonely and depressed, and miserable - for years.

Yes, it took me YEARS to recover from all that unjustified guilt that was inflicted on me.

Dear Dennis Taylor, I know that your family did the same to you when you were young. I know how terrible it felt, because I've been through it. It's sad that it had do happen to you. And it's sad that you haven't recovered yet.

There's no virtue in doing the same to your son. There's no virtue in traumatizing your son. There's no virtue in passing on the pain to the next generation.

Your "moral compass" is broken. Stop perpetuating this madness. PLEASE!

Whetam Gnauckweirst said...

Thanks for sharing that insight!

The purpose of this blog is not to beat up on a family, but voice outrage about censorship, about one person forcing his "morals" onto others and how repugnant it is for one person to attempt to take away freedom from others.

There is vast historical precedent that banning books puts a culture on the slippery slope headed toward tyranny.

Banning books is a regressive act. It's a slap in the face to society.

And the person seeking to ban a book sets himself on a pedestal proclaiming to all others that somehow he knows better than they do.

Believe me, a book banner doesn't know a damned more than any of us do. They merely have the gall, arrogance and immaturity to attempt to impose their will on others.

And it's wrong.