Phelps Pwnage: A Retrospective
Someone on these here intertubes posted a link to what happened when Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church picketed their latest target, San Diego’s Comics Con. I’m not sure I follow the logic here: have the Westboro fanatics decided that Trekkies and comics fans are fags, so God hates them too? Or have they just run out of people to hate?
Whatever the case, I think we can all agree that when you’re at the point where you’re picketing the nerds, perhaps it’s time to just give up and go home to Kansas. The photos below are a sampling of the cosplay-on-Baptist action, but to get the full flavor of how the nerds used gentle tongue-in-cheek humor to drive away the haters, go to the link above.
This latest eruption of goodwill towards men got me thinking about some of Phelps’ greatest hits. As odious as he and his brethren are, their current antics are always a welcome reminder of the many, many times they’ve been schooled in the past, by all those folks who God hates. It’s also a reminder of how much, in the 15 or 20 years since these nutbags started practicing their performance art, the culture has moved away from them:
Featured above were the young men of Alpha Delta Phi at the University of Chicago. Don’t you love the banner, “No Tolerance for INtolerance”? Back in the dark ages of my college days, frat boys were gay Enemy #1 on campus – at least at less-than-enlightened Bible belt schools. Now they’re performing impromptu drag shows to school the haters.
But perhaps my favorite episode of Phelps pwnage of all time is this:
God bless Michael Moore.
3 weird sisters 
It’s too bad George Takei wasn’t there to render a world-class takedown.
My favorite of the signs: “No Parking Any Time”
When Westboro came to Atlanta recently, our local rabbi, who had stood up against Cobb County’s Anti-Gay Resolution in the early ’90s, debated organizing a counterprotest. In the end, Rabbi Lebow and his supporters decided it was best *not to show up and draw attention to the handful of Phelps followers.
yeah, at this point it just seems that WBC just travels anywhere they feel they might receive a couple of minutes of undedicated camera time.
But the mockery sure works. If there’s a camera nearby pointing at the Phelpses, they will also film the mocking; and as a recent driftglass post said, the one thing that the wingnuts are completely unable to deal with is mockery.
One of my great television regrets (and yes, I have a few of them) is that I missed The Awful Truth. I have my issues with Our Hero Michael Moore crossing the line from brilliance into rudeness. But the few episodes of TAT I saw were perfect.
The Phelpsoids had a plan to picket the funeral of that poor sap who was beheaded at random by a psycho while riding a Greyhound bus. Why? The kid wasn’t gay as far as anyone knew so shut up, that’s why.
Somehow they were let into Canada and good Winnipeggers were promising a beatdown in the graveyard, which might have been sweet; but the cops intervened, keeping Fred & co. well away from the ceremony