RUBE WATCH: Scott Sala of Slant Point

As previously noted, there’s a tendency among certain types of self-styled political commentators to use the merest sniff of a scandal or atrocity to wheel out once more their own personal market stall of half-baked schemes, and proceed to "I-told-you-so" at tedious length. In the immediate wake of the first London terrorist attacks, the agreeably angry proprietor of Hell Is Other People alerted our attention to a classic example of this phenomenon courtesy of a perma-pouting New York Republican by the name of Scott Sala.

Scott is the enterprising brain behind Slant Point - a bustling hell-hole of right wing news and humour in NYC - and owner of a face like a horse dressed up as Tom Cruise.

But don’t let his equine good looks fool you - he’s a thinker too - and, like many in his chest-beating boys club, he has all the answers. There have been many solutions proffered of late to the age-old problem of terrorism, ranging from carpet-bombing the Middle East to tighter immigration laws and ID cards (as opposed to such lame, outdated ideas as, say, a bit of fucking police work – which as we all know is completely useless) and Scott is not one to let the action pass him by.

Scott’s own solution - outlined in his touching ode to London town - is racism… uh, I mean "profiling". Because nothing prevents against the dangers of communities becoming polarised and hostile quite like when one of those communities (the one with the guns) goes out of its way to hassle the other. It’s a super idea, Scott, really. Super, that is, if your business is recruiting pissed-off young men to assist in terror campaigns.

Elsewhere, Scotty has something to say about the tragic fate of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot in the face by British police. Such events, our boy notes, "often split a community into those who back the police and those who defend so-called innocent victims". Hmmm. So-called innocent victims, huh? I wonder which side Scotty is on? The rest of this post is some crap about the "London Fog", and I almost thought it was going to end with a warning to us Londoners to keep an eye out for that old rascal Jack the Ripper.

But enough of Scotty’s wise words. Let’s hop over to the bio section and learn a little more about Scott Sala the man, shall we? Despite being a lifelong Repub, he "decided to enjoy some of the more liberal things in life between high school and my late 20s". As far as I can tell, the "more liberal things in life" could refer to nearly anything - from having gay marriages with aborted foetuses to, well, just not being an uptight self-important asshole about everything - but I guess that all depends on your point of view. Anyway, whatever the fuck he’s talking about here, he’d soon had enough of it, and "began to channel all [his] youthful frustration and idealism into realistic beliefs". Oooh! Take that, unrealistic liberals!

Then there’s some bullshit about how he was always a writer rather than a talker, but to be honest, with a mouth like that who can blame him? It’s like a slow-punctured rubber fuckdoll for caveman fetishists.

The key part of the paragraph is the last line: "I’ve finally been unleashed".

I’ve finally been unleashed. These words chill me to the centre of my spineless, terrorist-appeasing liberal core. No hold on wait... sorry. What I meant to say was: these words made me fucking shoot coffee out my nostrils.

Next up: blah blah blah 9/11 blah blah "political meat" (?) ho hum. Then: "I simply got tired of thinking how wrong certain people were and how much more I could say". Personally, I simply get tired of people thinking how wrong certain people are and how much more they can say, so I guess we’re on some sort of common ground here. For Scott, the opportunity to say more came courtesy of his "professional web skills", with which he started a blog. Yes, a blog, that most technically challenging of formats. Hundreds of thousands of people can now claim to possess professional web skills, it turns out.

We don’t have to read much further before we are reminded of Scotty’s talents, for in the next paragraph he promotes himself to "professional web designer and coder" – the "coder" part presumably endowing him with the know-how necessary to place thousands of those fucking irritating little buttons all over the goddamn place. To be honest, at this point I haven't a fucking clue what's going on with Scott's bio, since we’re learning much more about how awesome his website is – how it’s a "great balance of form and function", for example – than we are about Scott himself. I suppose we’re finding out a bit more about his rampant egomania, but it’s really nothing I couldn’t already glean from the squinty-eyed Zoolander-face on the front page. Which reminds me:

I’m afraid to say the story never really picks itself up again after that. There’s some stuff about how it "was time to take back our country", but since he started his blogging adventures in 2003 it’s awfully hard to tell from whom, since the USA was already firmly in the grip of the greedy, lying, power-hungry theocrats Scott seems to favour. It would be interesting to know exactly what he means right here. And as a professional web designer I feel qualified to ask such questions.

In the absence of further insight, however, it simply remains for me to congratulate Scott Sala and welcome him into the fold. You have been unleashed, Scott - into the Hall of Rubes.

RUBE UPDATE!