Flubadubs and how to spot them
terry:
RH, I've read and enjoyed your many posts. This one was beneath you in my opinion.
I'm glad that you've enjoyed many of my posts, Terry. Read more of them, though, and you should find at least
some others that are irritating.
If you agree with them all, one of us isn't doing something right. In this instance I think I've done fairly well in following both the letter and the spirit of that request by the Sage of Seattle.
There's no doubt that the result is irritating--to me too, by the way--because the Sage of Seattle's request was a rhetorical Flubadub in search of a mate.
In case you're not old enough to recognize that reference, Flubadub was a minor character on the
Howdy Doody show in television's early years. It was a nationally broadcast kid's program featuring a friendly adult host and a cute childlike marionette, the title character. There were other characters too, including Clarabelle the Clown (played originally by Bob Keeshan, who later became the famous Captain Kangaroo) and, of course, Flubadub.
Flubadub was a desperate invention intended to explain the host's absence from the show on vacation in 1949. When he returned after his vacation he said that he had been on a hunting expedition for the elusive Flubadub. And he brought it back.
Here's a
good description of Flubadub exactly as I remember him:
a unique South American animal with a duck's head, a cat's whiskers, a giraffe's neck (encircled with rings), a cocker spaniel's ears, a seal's flippers (and four webbed feet), a raccoon's tail hairpiece, a dachshund's body and the memory of an elephant. When Flubadub got hungry he cried "Meatballs!, Meatballs!", his favorite food (a prototype of SESAME STREET's Cookie Monster who cries "Cookies!").
Now that you know about Flubadub you should be able to spot him in much of what Sage of Seattle says. Here's a trial run for you. Try it: it's fun. Compare these two adjacent paragraphs from his recent message:
- The NRA does not speak for me on issues of firearms and my government. I do. I carry my own water, and I'll thank all of you arrogant NRA members to stay out of my face.
- A question is asked, albeit rhetorically, answers are given however and when a person posts his negative views on the NRA and why, he gets torn apart. If the NRA doesn't want to do some simple customer service to, you know, keep their customers (members) happy, then that is a legitimate complaint in my view.
Did you spot the Flubadub? Right! In the first paragraph Sage of Seattle proudly declares that he is
not an NRA member and wants no part of it. But in the second sentence he complains that the NRA does not keep its members happy and asserts that it's legitimate for him to complain about the NRA's bad customer service.
There's an easily recognizable Flubadub for you: it has the head of a non-NRA-member, the tail of someone pretending to have a legitimate complaint, and in between are whingy little parts of a few other things, all assembled into one angry creature that cries "Meatballs! Meatballs!" when it's hungry. You can never satisfy a Flubadub's hunger but many of us keep trying. I suppose some of us don't know it's impossible and others of us find it an interesting sport.
If you had trouble spotting that Flubadub, reread the Sage of Seattle's message to which I responded in the manner you consider beneath me. There he complains about NRA members whose happiness with the NRA is excessive for him.
That's a Flubadub too. But you can put it next to the other one so you can spot the elusive Flubadub more easily.
Some other ways to recognize a Flubadub getting ready to feed is to look for messages that start with demands like these:
- Show me the cites.
- Give me the links.
- Point me to the evidence.
You'll notice that a Flubadub demands service and never lifts a finger for himself. Flubadubs want their food delivered. They insist that other people wait on them, probably so they can criticize its quality, quantity, and service. Challenge them, though, and usually they proclaim their own exhausting activity on behalf of their Second Amendment rights and, possibly, everyone else's too.
Imagine that every Flubadub maintains his own set of lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, DC, as well as in his own state. The Flubadub's network of skilled instructors teaches CWP courses throughout the country. And the Flubadub's magazines and public relations people deal with media throughout the country on gun related issues.
But in reality the Flubadub's energies are focused on feeding in Internet gun forums and shouting "Meatballs! Meatballs!" a lot.
Please don't misunderstand me. Flubadub can be fun to play with as long as you don't mind getting bitten. It doesn't bother me at all. As you may have realized by now, I grew up with the original Flubadub and still find them amusing although I never forget how dangerous they are.
So what I did that irritated you was to create a kind of archtypical Flubadub exactly to the Sage of Seattle's specifications in that second message of his I mentioned. You're offended by its irritating grotesque appearance.
Yeah. That's the point. Flubadubs
are irritating creatures. But they're not so rare as we were led to believe in 1949. They're common, very common, if you know where they live and what they eat.
Their major habitat is Internet gun forums. They come out to feed whenever anyone makes even a slightly favorable comment about the NRA and they go into an absolute feeding frenzy on at least two occasions. One is whenever people praise an NRA accomplishment for our Second Amendment rights. The other is whenever Gun Owners of America attacks the NRA. They're more ominverous than I might have led you to believe, though, because they tend to feed on most positive energy and transform it into negative energy. Look for "yes but" in what they say, as in "
yes I can get a CWP
but it's a violation of my Second Amendment rights to get one" and "
yes the Assault Weapons Ban expired
but it could have been renewed" and "
yes the NICS Improvement Act does some good things
but it could be abused." Those are only examples:
yes you paid for my lunch
but you didn't wipe my chin.
Gun Owners of America's most successful accomplishment is breeding and releasing Flubadubs. I don't know if Flubadubs have pedigrees or whether they're shown in Madison Square Garden for awards. If not maybe Larry Pratt will take the idea and run with it. It could be a revenue producer.
