Joan Peterson mistakes a zombie for a “black man,” and then proceeds to be horrified that zombies are an largely just fun and games, and became an internet meme, just like lolcats. I can’t recall when the zombie internet meme actually started, but it started as a joke. The earliest stuff I can remember being this:
It doesn’t have to be your humor, but this stuff was all over the Internet several years ago, and started, if I recall, largely outside the shooting community. Then some clubs started doing zombie shoots. A club near me had one each halloween and it was very popular, and a lot of fun. You get that Joan? Fun! Some people think shooting is fun, and shooting at zombie targets on halloween? Double fun!
Why is this so hard to deal with and understand? If shooting wasn’t fun, many of us wouldn’t be so energized by this issue. Imagine how it feels for us. It would be like being a golfer, and having petulant busybodies constantly trying to limit access to golf courses, country clubs, and golf clubs, all the while talking about what scary, horrible people golfers were. This is exactly what you people are doing applied to another pastime. Is it so difficult to understand that in a free society, different people have different ideas of fun and humor? Shouldn’t those who value a free and tolerant society embrace such diversity of thought and pastimes? The only answer I can come up with is that Joan and her ilk value neither freedom, tolerance, or diversity, if it people happen to enjoy things they don’t understand or approve of. We have a word for people like that.
Personally, I think the whole zombie thing has jumped the shark. It’s gotten old, and at this point even I’ll agree the joke isn’t funny anymore. But I get how it started, and kept going. Even the Puritans had more of a sense of humor than the anti-gun folks, geez. It reminds me of an old saying about people who wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, terrified at the prospect that there might be people out there having fun. It would seem for many of the leaders of the anti-gun movement, this is an accurate description!
I’d hate to see what would happen if Joan typed the word zombie into IMDB. She might learn that popular movies have been made and done well enough at the box office to warrant even more movies about zombies. Her head might spin at the lack of understanding.
LOL either Joan has been living under a rock (quite possible) or she’s being purposefully ignorant of what zombies are, and that it’s a joke. In fact, I think that picture she’s complaining about is a screen cap from The Walking Dead, if I’m not mistaken.
I bet she’s the kind of person who doesn’t want kids dressing in scary costumes during Halloween either. What a kill joy.
“I don’t find it funny. Most normal people don’t.” – japete
I don’t think this woman gets any contact with the outside world whatsoever.
I never got the whole zombie craze, but i’m not going to stop people from having their fun and enjoying their hobbies. I guess that makes me the epitome of Japete’s ‘not normal’ though, being mature enough to leave people alone.
Heh. Who talks about zombies anymore.
Lots of diversity at the range last weekend. I was standing next to a Hispanic man I’ve shot next to before. To the other side was a Southeast Asian gentleman. A Chinese woman was waiting when I left. And at the local gun shop an African American SWAT officer was picking up his tools of the trade last week. And the range holds zombie shoots. Hell, it is right next to a cemetary.
They look for racism at every corner.
TS you are on to something. Joan is relentless in trying to see something horrible in the character of gun enthusiasts, so she immediately leaps to the racism charge after seeing the zombie picture.
Even after it is proven the charge of racism is based on misidentification of a zombie, she can’t let go and still tries to find something awful about the zombie interest. She even stretches her demonizing into trying to find something horrible about the prepper group zombiehunters.org
I had an epiphany watching the TV show The West Wing. I saw that there are three issues that really push the liberals buttons, causing them to deactivate reason and respond with pure emotion: and those issues are guns, religion, and race.
Joan is already neck deep into her anti-gun emotional quicksand. So it’s only natural for her to reach for the racism club to pound her enemies.
“I saw that there are three issues that really push the liberals buttons, causing them to deactivate reason and respond with pure emotion: and those issues are guns, religion, and race.”
Yup. Those are the ‘dope, gay marriage, and abortion’ of the Left, alright.
To digress a tiny bit:
I go back and forth about whether I think Ted Nugent is a net positive or negative for 2A issues. This post makes the positive argument by contrast. There’s no way any sane person could see Joan and him and come away with the idea that her sheltered life is half as fun and interesting as the one Ted’s living. I say let’s get Joan a TV show.
I’m not a fan of his style, but I’m not his audience. He’s a rocker, and how many rockers can you think of that are crazier than a shithouse rat? Uncle Ted has gotten more mellow in his older years, and he’s still way way over the top.
“It would be like being a golfer, and having petulant busybodies constantly trying to limit access to golf courses, country clubs, and golf clubs, all the while talking about what scary, horrible people golfers were.”
One of the things I discovered living in France was that a license is required to hit golf balls with a driver. First they came for the guns, then they came for the 1-wood…
What have you done to deserve relocation to France ? :-)
Even as a native Frenchman I have more and more trouble standing that country …
“One of the things I discovered living in France was that a license is required to hit golf balls with a driver.”
I hope you’re not being serious.
I absolutely despise these white “eracism” jackasses who are always trying to ferret out racism where there is none. I can’t wait until the day comes where ‘racism’ can no longer be abused as a sort of scarlet letter.
Personally, I don’t comprehend this zombie stuff, either. It just seems so silly. Even Hornady is making “Zombie Max” ammunition (and selling a lot of it, it seems). I too find that silly.
But this Joan woman annoys me. It’s almost like she’s some evangelical from a bygone era … worried about the “souls” of poor, stupid primitives. She strikes me mostly as condescending and narrow-minded.
A few people (Tam, Joe Huffman and a few others) have referred to her and her ilk as latter day Carrie Nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Nation
Her comments get even stupider: “The picture doesn’t look like a “Zombie” to me. I think it’s a stretch on the part of you guys. If the photo is supposed to represent what most people think “zombies” look like, it was poorly done, to say the least.”
So what does she think a ‘Zombie’ looks like? Does she have personal experience w/ them? I know she’s used to dealing w/ the mental zombies in her anti-gun groups. Maybe she got confused.
Everybody knows you racist bubba gun-nuts just use “zombie” as code for the “N-word” anyway!
The number of keystrokes that people waste on this woman when they could be using the time volunteering for the NRA, GOA, or state-level rights group is staggering.
I’m pretty much resigned at this point to “point and laugh” every once in a while when she bangs out hilarious, jaw dropping examples of cluelessness.
Tam,
I think it is important to keep the spot light on people like Joan.
She, who shows her cluelessness in this post, is proclaiming she has ‘common sense’ solutions.
If she can’t even tell fantasy from reality; doesn’t that point to her ideas as being a little out of line?
This isn’t some run of the mill anti-rights advocate — this is a leader in several organizations.
+1 Note that she flew, or was Flown out to meet new Brady Prez Gross.
the Eagle does not hunt the fly…this is no Fly!
Mikey Numbers is a fly. He sits in Italy, and goes to work at the UN, and writes a crappy blog that nobody reads, and doesn’t do much of anything else.
Joan, while may appear on the blog side to look like Mikey Numbers, but when she goes to work in the morning, its to ban guns, and when Minnesota pushes an anti-freedom bill she’s there giving press interviews and testifying on the floor of the capital!
We can’t forget this.
The really inane stuff is only worth pointing out because she’s a leader of the gun control movement, being that she serves on the Brady Board. Otherwise she’s not worth anyone’s time. My point in showing stuff like this is more that the leaders of their movement are intellectually vacant. They do not want a debate, because they are incapable of debate. They have a strong opinion on a topic and a culture they know nothing about, and that’s never clearer than when they choose to write about it.
Sometimes I wonder if the reason Ladd spends so much time trying to bait the mouth foamers, and lower the level of the debate, is because he simply doesn’t have any other choice. There’s no one left making a strong intellectual case for gun control; they’ve thoroughly lost on that count, and they know it. So what’s left? Touchy Feely Vacuous nonsense (Brady) and foaming at the mouth hate (CSGV).
If that’s what keeps the checks coming, and their paychecks going out, I’m sure they are fine with it.
I think many people find Joan’s single-trackedness unbelievable; they keep waiting for her to admit it’s all overplayed schtick. –It ain’t, kids; she really is that dull.
Pretty much true. I don’t waste my time trying to engage her anymore. At this point it’s just pretty much pointing out the humor when something really err… um… stellar… springs from her keyboard.
When I first found her blog I thought it was a spoof gun control site run by a pro-gun person to make anti-gun people look bad. I could not believe that her thoughts were those of an adult at normal mental capacity so I assumed it was a joke. But nope, that is really her. I kinda feel bad for making fun of her because it is obvious she does not have her full mental faculties.
I think her mental faculties are fine… she’s a feeler rather than a thinker. There are a lot of people like that in this world.
But this Joan woman annoys me. It’s almost like she’s some evangelical from a bygone era … worried about the “souls†of poor, stupid primitives. She strikes me mostly as condescending and narrow-minded.
I think you’ve got the comparison right, but the motivation wrong.
There have always and will always be people who think they know better how people should live their lives than they themselves do.
They will constantly be trying to “do something” to force those stupid people to live their lives a certain way.
Whether it’s the evangelical exhorting people avoid movie theaters, alcohol, music and anything that might be construed as fun, enviro-whackos demanding that we move back into the stone-age, or Joan and her ilk poo-pooing about we barbarians who are so uncivilized we feel the need to be prepared to defend ourselves with (gasp!) violence if necessary.
It’s all rooted in the same urges and it has nothing to do with saving souls, the planet, or civility.
It has to do with one thing: Control. The thing that all these people share is the unshakable urge to try to wrest control of the lives of others. If guns were outlawed tomorrow, every gun in the world was seized and destroyed and the technology needed to make more were forgotten, we’d still be dealing with Joan and her ilk trying to control our lives. It would be the exact same song, just with a different subject.
She can’t help herself. Her self-righteous, self-indulgent, narcissism demands that she find something, anything, about others to try to control. It’s how she finds her self-worth.
IMHO.
Five Cents Please
“I think the whole zombie thing has jumped the shark. It’s gotten old, and at this point even I’ll agree the joke isn’t funny anymore.”
YOU TAKE THAT BACK! YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW!
My blog will peter away into nothing. I’m not even that much of a pop-culture zombie enthusiast really. Not like some of these people on the intarnetz.
If JP knew somebody who’d been beaten with a baseball bat, she would be sickened, saddened, and shocked by the kind of loathsome bloodthirsty sociopaths who can sit back and enjoy — ENJOY, as if it were “FUN” — a Mets game.
BEATING SOPMBODY ISNOT “FUN” IN CASE YOU DIDN”T KNOW OK YOU CRAZYPEOPLE RACISTPEOPLE?!?!
Zombies imaginary? Y’all keep thinking that when you become a human MRE for the shamblers. :)
The fail is epic with this one. I’m going to say that she was probably projecting her own racism onto the picture. And either her husband is as much of a racist as she is, or he just agrees with whatever she says to get her to go away. If her blog is any indication, I’m guessing the latter.
I confess: the zombie thing has me a bit perplexed. What worries me is that my wife assigned a paper to her English Composition students: What is the most serious issue facing the world today? Most picked at least half-plausible serious issues. One paper was about…zombies. Another semester…vampires. There is no indication that either students was being funny.
The thing about zombies is that while I don’t think it’s likely or even possible, the premise of there being some kind of incurable, highly deadly pandemic is a real threat. Zombies are just the ultimate form of that in my opinion, where the disease literally attacks you and spreads itself. Is it extreme? Yeah, but a lot of fiction in general is exaggerated.
Huh, I posted a polite comment pointing out all the recent zombie-comedy films, and mentioning that they were so popular I couldn’t get away from them in senior year of college.
I also noted that black men generally do not have corpse-grey skin, and do not stumble around with blood-coated hands and mouths.
She didn’t see fit to allow it through, strangely… First and last time I’ve posted there–there’s just no reasoning with some people.
I can’t help but wonder what her comments would be about this picture, http://www.gottahaveit.com/itemdetail.aspx?itemid=3344&sortby=5&searchtype=0&search=&lotsperpage=25&categoryid=55&displayby=2&pagetype=0&page=0&seo=John-Dillinger-%22Target%22-Original-Wire-Photograph
Or the FBI John Dillinger targets they used up through the early 1960s???
The stupid, it BURNSSS USSSS. She posted that due to the rude comments from one commenter, she was considering not allowing comments to her site in the future. I love me some Reasoned Discourseâ„¢.