sometimes they just don't get it

[realthog]

Make no mistake, I'm a great fan of the rationalist organization the Center for Inquiry (CFI), and I think the work they do pushing back against the forces of ignorance and superstition -- and outing the crooks who take advantage of other people's ignorance and superstition -- is excellent.

But every now and then, almost reassuringly, the CFI does something so blitheringly stupid as to defy credence. A few months ago they issued a -- hastily retracted and revised -- positional statement opposing the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (you know, the one that isn't a mosque and isn't at Ground Zero). And now they've sent out a fundraising appeal that you can tell from its opening few lines just isn't going to raise that many funds from the rank-and-file CFI supporters like me.

A Special Message from Eddie Tabash
CFI Board Member, Speaker, Debater, and Chair of CFI Los Angeles

Like most Americans, I have been experiencing difficult economic times in this most challenging year. Nonetheless, I have personally donated a total of $100,000 to CFI during 2010.

That's where I stopped reading, and I suspect it's where most other recipients will have stopped reading likewise.

Anyone who has $100,000's worth of spare cash lying around that they can give to the CFI -- or any other charity -- is not "experiencing difficult economic times". "Experiencing difficult economic times" is what people whose total annual earnings are less than half that $100,000 -- sometimes 'way less -- are doing.

Comments

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Actually, I do know very much what you mean -- and you're perfectly right. But the kind of disconnect Tabash exemplifies seems to be becoming increasingly commonplace. The worst part of it is, most of our elected representatives are among those who've become completely oblivious to what life is like for the rest of us; to take a single example, just recently we saw rich and bloated GOPers, all with free medical insurance courtesy the taxpayer, resisting like hell the notion of extending unemployment benefits. They have quite clearly clean forgotten what life in the real world is like. (Or they're unadulterated shits. Or both.)