To be fair to Mr. Mehlman, I think you were pretty eager to stretch his meaning to "civil rights cause homicides."

The real question is, what was it that those three other commentors said that earned them a brown star?

That's bullshit. Everyone knows that the worldwide reduction in pirates caused global warming. All praise his noodley appendages.

And yeah, Ken's a real star witness... er... whiteness.

"post hack ergo helicopter"

Nice.

You forgot: cleavage causes earthquakes.

What's next? Fracking causes earthquakes?

I've always wondered what caused Phil Collins.

But on the upside, disco caused the internet!

Fucking Phil Collins.

I'll surrender my suffrage if it means I won't have to hear another Phil Collins song for the rest of my life.

I am forever grateful to the brave women who fought for the right to vote, so that today I may blast No Jacket Required at full volume, on repeat, whenever I damn well please.

In Mr. Mehlman's defense, he is an idiot.

Holy crap, Ken Mehlman. You got called out. By name!

I'm not even sure the guy deserves it, at least to these lengths. I imagine The Stranger should be happy to have their regulars. But whatever.

@1, It wasn't really a stretch at all, he pretty much says it straight up.

Oh c'mon. Mehlman isn't even the fifth dumbest currently posting slog commenter.

(Yes, everyone, that's your cue to put together your personal top-5 lists. No fair putting Zifferelli in all five slots, tempting though it may be.)

@14. That IS a good end of the year parlor game.

In a way, he is right.

In the old days they'd lynch someone and it was never reported. At all.

Once civil rights existed, it was recorded as a crime, which they then did nothing about, until the feds forced them to.

Hate crimes against gays used to not be reported at all. Police roustings, etc.

Cancer causes cell phones. http://xkcd.com/925/

#5: Will in Seattle. Evidence: too much to even begin to pick out a favorite; just click on any thread basically ever.

#4: Ziffy. "I believe I have interesting opinions." 'nuff said. Would probably score higher except that he hides out on the "I, Anon" threads exclusively.

#3. The anonobot. Possibly the most undeserved use of the royal 'we' in human history.

#2. StrangersWeakestTroll. Like a dog who keeps crawling back to you after you kick it, only funny instead of pathetic.

#1. Sgt. "THESE TEN LINKED ARTICLES FROM NATURALNEWS TOTALLY PROVE THAT THE BANKSTERS ARE USING UNTESTED VACCINATIONS TO BRING ABOUT THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND THIS IS COMPLETELY RELEVANT TO THIS ARTICLE ABOUT RIHANNA" Doom.

Mehlman's point is that the gun nuts hate America's freedoms. Obviously.

@19 Very good, but there must be a way to fit Bailo ("Looky! I'm firstest again!") in that list somehow.

And the Slog posts containing only one (sometimes two) comment each from both Bailo and Useless Will and no-one else are sad and pathetic, and should just be removed.

The point of many of those fp's is to get you guys to start talking, instead of sitting there like lumps, stuffing your faces with Top Pot donuts.

@19, 21 - This is the best game. How about You Gotta Be Kidding Me? When was KittenKoder? That one was a real gem of trollery.

Never let the truth get in the way of telling a good BS story, Ken. Violence rates and even gun violence have been falling for a long time, see http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/07/21…

The problem with calling out this despicable troll is that they have appropriated the name of a real person, and you're effectively rewarding their efforts to associate the (already disreputable) name of that real person with the utterly disgusting bile they're propounding.

Shoulda gone Top Ten, Doc, so you wouldn't have to leave off Lew Siffer or blasts from the (please, sweet chaos, please) past like SeattleBleurgh or LovesChoad.

Well nobody said Mehlman was dumb. Just that he's a shit.

US homicide rate per 100,000 in 1960: 5.1
US homicide rate per 100,000 in 2011: 4.7

Violent crime rate is indeed higher but I would wager a fair amount of that could be chalked up to better reporting/record keeping.

@21: the problem with Bailo in this context is that he has moments of lucidity. Certainly some individual posts of his can damn near shatter the stupidometer, but you have to rank these things based on the mean and the distribution, and Bailo's passing attacks of sanity keep from being a top seed.''

@26: I'm restricting this to currently posting members. Lifetime achievement awards are a different list.

I have to jump to the defense here, and say that Phil Collins singing "Supper's Ready" on Genesis' 'Seconds Out' album is the greatest version of this song ever.

C'mon, Dom. Everyone knows that pirates caused global warming. DUH!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spag…

Call me an asshole, but I fail to see the problem with the comment. It may be factually incorrect, and if so I invite someone to post a disproving statistic. But his point, I think, is that social upheaval, while often for the greater good and progress of the body politic overall, sometimes occurs via an uptick in real human cost, occasionally in the form of atrocities.

If real, substantial gun control comes about because of the terrible events in Newtown, for instance, those 26 people who lost their lives become progressive heroes a hundred years from now.

@22 - Posting on Slog, sitting there like a lump, and stuffing one's face with doughnuts are not mutually exclusive, and I can prove it.

@33: In order to show that it was incorrect, I propose the statistic that shows that mass killings were at their height in or around 1929. http://tinyurl.com/bbwnx3j
But frankly, there needs to be a causation between the two things, we can't just say, these two things happened and I will present that one caused the other and it's your job to prove me wrong.

I mean really, if you look at the overall trend: both sea levels and gun violence have been rising steadily since the birth of Christ. The data couldn't be more plain.

If there's more sea, why are there less pirates? Overfishing?

@33, There are SO MANY possible pathways and details that have lead to a world where mentally unstable people think it's a good idea to get a high-powered weapon and shoot a lot of people, and then actually get a high-powered weapon and shoot a lot of innocent people.

We could point to Reagan's closing of mental institutions and dumping the mentally ill on the streets, # we could point to stupid pointless wars (Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq) producing mentally damaged vets who get shite for after-care, # we could point to the general misogyny in the US culture that drives the divorce rate via domestic violence and women attempting to escape said domestic violence, # we could point to batshit Xtian fundamentalist fuckwits who vigorously keep contraception out of the hands of teenagers who need it most - thereby forcing up the unwanted children population and single mother population, # we could point to the selfish, greedy forces exacerbating financial inequality making it harder and harder to even *have* a family, let alone a healthy and stable one, # then there is the "drug war" and cointelpro that brought crack to the inner cities as a method to suppress the black cultural revolution and their attempts to help themselves, # the bizarre and massive increase in the prison population that cycles nearly 2/3rds of black men through the incarceration circuit, # the deprecation of the food supply, making shitty empty calorie foods the norm instead of the exception, # the rise of psych drugs and pharma pressure to prescribe them - even to children-, of which we cannot possibly know the long-term effects, # the fact that humans only started living in cities above 1million population in about 1850; and now 150 years later we live in cities of 8-25 million, a total aberration from all of human history, # the fact that TRADITIONAL families were large stable units consisting of at least 3 generations, and have now been reduced to a bizarre "nuclear" family, which is inherently unstable. ...and I could go on.

ANY and ALL of these could be implicated in the "rise of social mayhem" as one of our trolls inelegantly put it... (although, yes, violent crime has actually gone down) ...but Mr. MEH-lman decides to attempt calling out the 1960s cultural revolution as -bizarrely- the cause of mass shootings. It's on him to prove. Hitchen's Razor: That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

You might as well blame the fucking Inquisition, or the social revolutions of 1848, or the conquest of the USA by White MANifest Destiny mentality, or the Xtian concept that the Earth is ours to brutalize, or the economic imperative to rape the Earth of natural resources and then pollute it as payment. I mean seriously, if you're going to "blame the 60s", where do you stop? Original Sin?

No, the issues we are facing in this situation are: #1. Adequate mental health care for anyone needing it, #2. Supporting loving stable families in WHATEVER configuration they can form, and #3. Banning guns from cities. Oh, and #4. Communities based on inclusion, rather than isolation.

@blip, the html parser chokes on colons, or something. You can use a URL shortener:

http://bit.ly/nUKenv

or just link the image itself.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co…

@42 Is the answer. (With a passing, winking nod to Douglas Adams.)

Where's the fucking thumbs up for #42... a fantastic post.

Well said, Treacle @ 42.

Ken's right that liberty (e.g, the right to own firearms) often comes at the cost of security, but he's, um, misapplied that principle.

Funny that the thread about the brown star comment of the day generates the gold star comment of the day (@42). Nice one, treacle.

Hitchen's razor. Great rant, Treacle.

@42 is always the answer.

Overfishing by pirates is the question.

@30 Indeed.

Our world would be better if we replaced the 2nd Amendment with the requirement of every citizen to own no leas than one Phil Collins album.

There's good and bad
And mum and dad
And everyone's happy to be here.

Another theory, which I think more likely, is that the great crime wave was caused by the mass lead poisoning of urban children as a result of leaded gas fumes spewing out of the many, many cars streaming through postwar American cities. Crime started falling right about when the children born after the phaseout of leaded gas reached adolescence. Remember, lead doesn't just make you stupid, it cuts into your impulse control.

Actually, everything bad in the last half century is the fault of
1) elimination of many strains from natural human bacterial biomes
2) increasing age of fathers at time of conception

Ken Mehlman does have an amazing talent for pulling facts and statistics out of his ass. If only he could pull his head out.

It's statistically shown that a seasonal increase in the consumption of ice-cream happens at times when incidence of violent crime and rape is high. We shouldn't pretend that our eating of frozen desserts hasn't come at a price.

@55

I'd prefer him to stick it 8 feet further in.

Not sure how I got lumped in with MisterG and Cato. First of all, I haven't even commented on Newtown. And second, just because I think you write stupid shit, Dom, doesn't automatically make me some right-winger. I'm anything but.

In fact, I think the gun nuts should have to tell the parents of those 20 kids -- face to face -- that the right to fire off a hundred bullets without reloading trumps the parents' right to see their kids live beyond first grade.

Why are we all taking a whack at Mehlman? It's like Slog turned into Lord of the Flies.

Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!

61, Your feelings don't equate to facts and statistics. The increase in crime at that time has much more to do with the increase of illegal drug use, not an increase in civil rights. Hate crimes against minorities carried out in a campaign against civil rights increased, but the civil rights in and of themselves had nothing to do with it. Have you not had any American History in your schooling?

@63 You're a shitty history teacher.

I strongly dislike The Stranger's decision to lead a campaign of mockery against someone who, misguided as they may be, at least engages in honest debate most of the time.

@63 - KM: I would strongly encourage you to read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" ... there is some very, very interesting anthropological detail regarding how money and debt works in society, and in particular how the post-WWII period - in the face of strong labor unions - a "deal" was struck whereby if labor increased productivity, they would get a cut of the profits. This allowed Detroit car workers to own their own home and raise a family.

Unfortunately, everyone wants in on this deal, and capitalism can't provide it. One can see the civil rights movements of the 60s quite directly as various marginalized groups standing up and saying "hey, that's a good deal, we want it too" ... and really, why shouldn't anyone be able to support their family on an honest days wages?.

But, since capitalism is really based on exploitation and not freely offered labor, it can't support that deal for everyone, and society had to turn around --notably in the 80s - Reagan and Thatcher-- and ensure that everyone knew the deal was off.

And now today we have these nice charts showing that productivity has continued to increase at quite a remarkable rate... yet wages are stagnant and dropping.

Maybe that is part of why the 60s saw crime rates go up? Maybe its also because the mentally damaged soldiers coming back from the European theatre were emotionally abusive to their children, who then grew up pissed off? Perhaps there are reasons of which neither you nor I are aware.

@63 - One other thing: How does "increased violent crime in the 60s" have anything to do with mentally unstable 20y'olds in 2012 shooting anyone?

63, Your claim of being a history teacher is highly suspect given how often you post innaccurate, apocryphal, and revisionist accounts of history. Although you put on an act of being a reasonable, thinking man, you're one of the most intellectually dishonest people on slog. Once again, you present your skewed personal perceptions as fact with absolutely nothing based in reality to back it up.

I would like to make one last comment: Creating communities of inclusion relies in large part on people giving gifts to one another. Anthropologists know that gifting is the social glue of culture. Want a better society? Gift more gifts.

@66 - Thank you. I've been trying to think of how to put that sentiment succinctly. Ken's thinking is occasionally-to-frequently facile, but I think there's an honest question in there, and a posit that deserves some consideration.

That said, @63, I think that suggesting Civil Rights or the questioning of traditional and/or religious values "made for a less orderly and less safe society" is a fairly shallow reading (which may be why I ask artists, rather than historians, mathematicians, and other bean-counters the important questions). The nearest equivalent I can think of is those who blame the misbehavior on modern youth on the fact that the belt and the switch have gone out of fashion. Yes, failing to adequately beat the rebellion out of your children might contribute to behavior problems if you replace corporal punishment with nothing at all; that doesn't mean either that corporal punishment is preferable to its absence OR that the absence of corporal punishment is why we have gang activity and school shootings.

Likewise, I think reasonable people can suggest that some or all of our social ills can be attributed to spiritual dysfunction or difficulty in establishing or agreeing upon principles of social cohesion without suggesting that belief in a particular (empirically unverifiable) myth regarding an anthropomorphic deity or adherence to a narrow set of standards regarding the makeup of the family is necessary (or even desirable) to address those ills. In that sense, I can take your point in part while still rejecting it in bulk, and insist that nothing short of a rebuke of Huckabee's thesis in its entirety is in order.

@71 - Hear hear! Well said.

@73 - That seems a little petty and disingenuous when you haven't even taken time to address those who've actually taken some pains to both defend your integrity and challenge your thesis.

Does anybody miss Loveschild? That was the troll du jour back when I first started slogging around, and I guess you never forget your first.

And PJ Harvey caused Tracy Bonham. And Tori Amos caused Vanessa Carlton. And Lauryn Hill caused Kreyshawn. And Nina Simone caused hipsters in skinny jeans who claim to love music by old black people while smoking French cigarettes. There's always a price, so true, so true...

In that case, why is it that when crimes happen, I hear with disturbing frequency, "Oh, s/he was such a nice Christian who went to Church!" ?

69: Well he could have worked at Liberty "University" or at any other of those right-wing think-tanks disguised as universities. It's not like they require accuracy or real credentials. They're just collections of sociopaths talking about their feelings.

@73- The crowd can do it's thing. I dislike the staff acting like this is middle school and they are running a clique.

@75 i admit , i kinda miss her/it..

@75 i admit i kinda miss her/it..

I don't deliberately keep a mental profile of every SLOG commenter whose handle I (eventually) recognize, but I'm puzzled as to why Dominic called out Cato the Younger Younger. Enlighten me. Did this comment -- Nothing about Obama offering up cuts to Social Security in the name of balancing the budget? -- hit a little too close to home?