Let's get this out of the way up top so that any right-wing dog fuckers reading this don't have to go through too many words to find it: The shooting at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, was absolutely the fault of the two gunmen. They had the AK-47s, they fired at the security officer, and they were presumably driven by their belief in both radical interpretations of Islam and the violence of ISIS. They were shot by other security officers hired by the organizers of the event. Simply put, there would not have been deaths at the CCC yesterday without the actions of two amped up idiot assholes, Elton Simpson and his companion. The 200 people inside, however deluded and dumb they may have been, were fortunate that it didn't end up worse.
The Culwell Center, named after a former school superintendent, is a facility owned by the town's Independent School District to host graduations, reunions, sporting events, and other school and non-school functions. An AP test was supposed to take place there today, but, as you might imagine, it's been postponed.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative, which goes by the initials DICKS, sponsored the event yesterday, the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest, and it was organized by DICKS founder Pamela Geller. Geller, you might remember, has made a career of being the craziest Muslim-hater of them all. If you say you hate Muslims so much you'd cut off your finger to prove it, she'd've already cut off her arm to one-up you. The "art" show was, she said, a celebration of the First Amendment right to free expression, with a $10,000 prize going to the person who drew the bestest Muhammad cartoon of all.
Obviously, Geller saw how people loved French magazine Charlie Hebdo after its staff got brutally attacked by Muslim extremists for their cartoon depictions of Muhammad and thought, "I can do that, too, but stupidly and with bullshit justification for myself." Actually, at a meeting to discuss if the CCC should be used for the event, Garland resident Mary Ehlenfeldt said, "So some lady wants to be stupid and say, ‘I’m going to show everybody what hate is.’ That is what our Constitution says she has a right to do." The CCC had to allow the event by the ISD's nondiscrimination policy, just as it had a previous event, "Stand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect," as well as a DICKS event in January. The two are not remotely analogous, despite Geller and DICKS' attempts to make them so. It'd be like saying a KKK rally is a rational response to a gospel concert.
Geller took to her website, "Pamela's Islamophobic Vomitorium of Batshittery," to declare that the shooting outside the event was a battle in a war: "This is a war. This is war on free speech. What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?" Well, if it was war, chances are the entire center would have been blown up by a missile or a rocket launcher, perhaps while the people being told to stay inside were singing, "God Bless America," because, yeah, irony. (Note: They really were singing inside the CCC.)
Ultimately, the shooting, which is being called an act of terrorism or proof that ISIS is starting to attack here, did exactly what Geller wanted, a dream come true. It was dangerous and deadly, yes, but not so bad that Geller herself was at risk at any time. Besides, she had spent good money on a big security force outside the center. Geller got to prove that all the money people give her is spent on a worthy cause: her nutzoid take on Islam. She got to provoke and propagate. She got the media to talk to her as if she's a serious person. She got Right Blogsylvania to blow itself in support. Christ, that's enough to convince the rubes to donate a shit-ton more to her. On CNN today, Geller insisted over and over that she is not anti-Islam, that the Muhammad Art event was some kind of free speech festival, and that we all are dumb if we don't agree that many Muslims want Sharia law here: "[P]eople need to wake up and we need to take a firm stance on freedom of speech, and we will not abridge our freedoms so as not to offend savages. And this is really, I think, the battle between freedom and slavery. It is that basic."
Don't forget our 2nd Amendment rights to arm ourselves, which is probably what the attackers used.
By the way, the cartoons at the exhibit were just terrible and obvious. A poor use of the First Amendment, frankly.
Here's what the Rude Pundit would have drawn in an attempt to win that prize and use his God-given right to free speech: Muhammad fucking Pamela Geller in the ass on a bed made of the Israeli, ISIS, and American flags. Muhammad would have had the most stereotyped vicious A-Rab face you've ever seen, bearded, big-nosed, brownish, brow furrowed, concentrating hard on savagely pumping Geller's asshole between her lily-white ass cheeks. And Geller wouldn't have been in pain or crying or anything that would denote that she is being raped. Oh, no. She'd be depicted with a dollar sign-shaped dildo peeking out of her pussy and her collagen-injected lips parted in pleasure and nearing orgasm, loving the reaming that Muhammad is giving her, with a word bubble coming out of her mouth as she's panting, saying, as the most fundamentalist of Muslims would, "Without you I'm nothing, without you I'm nothing."
