We Would Like to Apologize For Our Recent Op-Ed "Kill 'Em All, Let God Sort Them Out"

On behalf of Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, I would like to officially apologize for publishing a guest blog last week from Arkansas Senator Tom Rotton on how best to handle the George Floyd protests entitled “Kill ‘Em All, Let God Sort Them Out.” 

We honestly thought we were doing the right thing in giving a forum to a conservative voice after running only anti-Trump articles since the site’s inception in April of 2017. We thought Rotton’s piece would represent either a sensible, thoughtful defense of the use of force in quelling protests or some manner of A Modest Proposal-style satire. 

We were wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. It turns out that Rotton is less an eloquent conservative voice than a genocidal maniac, a true madman. We thought Rotton couldn’t possibly mean the extreme things he was saying. We were wrong, as evidenced by the existence of hundred of self-styled “Rottonists” who took to the street to live out the words of Rotton’s blog post, killing hundreds of people in the process, mostly pregnant women and very small children, and taking control of most of Delaware through armed force. We’re almost single-handedly responsible for all of these deaths, which is something we will have to answer for on judgment day. 

We thought Rotton couldn’t possibly be sincere in encouraging the nuclear bombing of black neighborhoods “just to send a message.” He was. We also thought he was joking when he suggested that every police officer and national guardsmen be given licenses to kill indiscriminately along with access to powerful flamethrowers and instructions to “BBQ anyone who isn’t a cop or a soldier.” He was not. 

In hindsight, we should have done more than glanced briefly at Rotton’s words before publishing them. We probably should have done some vetting. We would have noticed, for example, the eight paragraphs entitled “Bring back slavery” immediately following equally misguided passages about how Hitler was right about everything. 

Devoting page after page to idyllic depictions of smiling slaves singing in the fields was, at the very least, in exceedingly poor taste and tone-deaf given the fragile cultural moment. 

We’ve learned our lesson. Please stop doxxing our families and firebombing our homes. 

We should have read the entire blog post thoroughly before deciding to post it. Hell, maybe we should have even read it a second or third time. We could even have thought about what Rotton was saying and what we were doing in legitimizing his words and rhetoric in the eyes of our audience by publishing them.

Had we we read the piece before we published it, we undoubtedly would have noticed that it both begins and ends with a paragraph reading, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”, a phrase known and revered in the White Supremacist movement as the “14 words.”

We are particularly sorry that we ran the segment of the blog devoted to fashioning what the author refers to as a “Hippie Killer” nail bomb held together with patchouli. We foolishly thought this was another satirical riff spoofing homemade radicalism. We had no idea how real and lethal the step-by-step instructions on how to manufacture a homemade bomb out of simple household items would prove to be. 

We’d like to apologize to all of the hippies that lost their lives to one of these crude yet shockingly effective and destructive improvised explosive devices, particularly Moon Shower Harrison, Sun Beam Thompson, “Jiggs”, Rain Forest and most tragically legendary countercultural icon Wavy Gravy. That the famous clown died a horrible, almost unimaginably painful death at the hands of an explosive we undoubtedly helped bring into existence fills us with guilt and shame. Wavy Gravy certainly deserved better. You all did.

We let you down. We’re sorry. Look, we took a chance in publishing Rotton’s blog post. It turned out poorly. 

We will not make that mistake again. We promise to be much more careful in the next guest blog post we run from Rotton, tentatively entitled, “On COVID-19, Or Why We Must Inject the Coronavirus into Nancy Pelosi’s Eyeballs.” That op-ed will illustrate our commitment to showcasing diverse perspectives while maintaining our high standards. 

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place by pledging at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

And of course you can always pick up the Happy Place’s first book, The Weird Accordion to Al, a lovingly illustrated guide to the complete discography of “Weird Al” Yankovic with an introduction from Al himself here or here