Cheerleading for a past that never existed

Have I mentioned that RenewAmerica is an unfettered font of feculence? Well, it's true. They don't allow comments on their articles, probably because the sheer weight of the ignorance, stupidity and paranoia expands to fill all available space.

(In the case of some of these columnists, they occasionally reprint their drivel elsewhere, where they do allow comments. But not all of them.)

Case in point: Selwyn Duke. I guess he thinks he looks intelligent, gazing off into the distance (in this case, the distant past) stroking his chin; I think he's contemplating adding more fiber in his diet. But he, for some reason, spewed several hundred words extolling the virtues of this commercial for the "Gung Ho Commando Outfit."

Every toy gun in the commercial looks (gasp!) realistic; there are no sissified colors, no orange plastic piece at the end of the barrel."

(Let's just pretend that the commercial isn't in black and white, OK? That seems like the polite thing to do.)

Yet, in the times that it aired, you never heard of a child being shot after pointing one of these toy weapons at a policeman.

I suppose that, if I was to be completely honest, I have no evidence that his cognitive impairment has a genetic source. After all, one can only imagine the psychological damage caused by a lifetime spent with the name "Selwyn."

My mother always told me not to argue with the mentally challenged, but when did I ever listen to her? And these stories aren't particularly difficult to find.

5-year-old with toy gun killed by officer

(March 5, 1983) A 5-year-old boy locked in his bedroom while his mother was at work was shot to death Thursday night by an Orange County police officer who mistook him for a possible burglary suspect.

The boy, Patrick Andrew Mason, who stood 47 inches tall, was holding a toy gun in his dimly lit bedroom when the officer kicked in the locked door after twice yelling he was a police officer, witnesses said.

The 24-year-old unidentified officer - on the Stanton Police Department 15 months - told investigators he fired his weapon when he saw a "shadowy figure holding a gun" in the room lit only by the flickering light from a television set.

And that's another reason the rule was enacted. Frequently, a cop isn't seeing "a kid with a toy gun," but a "shadowy figure holding a gun." He doesn't have time to assess age, height, weight, or fucking eye color. He's faced with a person holding a gun.

All that, despite Selwyn's assertion that "As for policemen, they could assume that a child wouldn't target them with a real gun." Which is stupid on a number of levels - as a kid, we had a set of brothers living down the street; one of them shot and killed the other, because they were playing with Daddy's gun.

The story I found, by the way, was not, technically, the 1970s (although arguments can be made), when Selwyn claimed he was a boy. But since the rule that toy guns be brightly colored or have an orange plug wasn't enacted until 1992, I'm pretty comfortable with saying he's an idiot.