I note that Louis is hanging out with the Westboro Baptist Church again in his new series, starting tonight. This looks to pretty enjoyable.

Seems that the Phelps family are collapsing under the weight of their own hateful absurdity. Can only be good.

In other news, the Phelps' apparently threatened to picket Liz Taylor's funeral. I don't think they quite managed it.

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I don't get this Theroux bloke at all. Weirdos are weird! Shock!

I believe that was one of the reasons they gave her a very early funeral.

'Twas, like all Louis' stuff, quite bizarrely entertaining again. Louis seems to have a peculiar affection for the Westboro Baptist Church, possibly because they really are so fucking weird (yes, you've cracked it there, Tubby) as to be ideal material for Theroux's television (which I happen to think is actually very worthwhile).

I'm not really worried about the Phelps family and their curiously obsessive fixation on one relatively unimportant aspect of human behaviour, which they've somehow chosen (not even god knows how) to link directly to the deaths in service of service personnel, and taken a good few steps further by setting out deliberately to offend and upset the mourning friends and relatives of those personnel at possibly their most vulnerable time by picketing the poor soldiers' funerals. At least they aren't (yet) hi-jacking passenger airliners and flying them into Manhattan skyscrapers. But, by fuck, they're of the very same stripe. Actually, I am worried about the extent to which Phelps' perpetrates what Dawkins accurately characterises as child abuse - an 11 year old holding forth about how "Fags" will burn in hell.

Quite apart from "JEEBUS - who the FUCK pickets a FUNERAL?????" I was left with the sneaking suspicion that the Westboro Church simply had to be an elaborate wind-up, but it seems not. The eldest daughter of the patriarch, Fred Phelps, who basically runs the show, has perfected a technique of displaying 4 deeply offensive placards at one time, together with a further deeply offensive message printed on the outward face of her T-shirt. All the while, she screams (to be fair, she has become a little more sardonic since Louis first encountered her 4 years ago) a terrible message of hatred to passers-by.

I'm sort of thinking that this is a sort of American thing - America is one of the most populous, and one of the most religiose nations around. And I dare say the possible existence of hateful stupidity increases in proportion. I can never quite shake the suspicion that they cannot possibly be serious in this, the 21st century.

Fuck. A. Duck.

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Are they the same lot who threatened to picket Heath Ledger's funeral because he was in Brokeback Mountain? I remember, at the time, thinking they would look rather daft on the news reports being beaten up by a horde of sobbing teenage girls.

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I quite admire their anti-smoking campaign, but they are a bit obnoxious aren't they?

Also, I couldn't help but make a dodgy innuendo when they were talking about going to "a big pink cave in Jordan". Fnaar fnaar.

The Westboro' people are a classic example of a missed opportunity, among many in this analogy. All those guns which can be legally owned and yet no-ones put them out of their fucking misery yet. Stranger given you'd think they'd be prime targets for some of the madder gun-owning elements in American society.

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One of the things I found most upsetting was that they all have the same face. I know they're all related and stuff, but they could at least have had the decency to buy in some sperm or something to break the monotony a little.

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I was wondering this, especially with their picketing of military funerals, to be honest its a miracle theyve not been harmed already.

Yes, I was amazed no one had shot at them yet.

Also, what would happen if, say, the ginger beardy guy who was laying into Louis for being from the BBC and 'having power' got cancer? Would he then be rejected from the church because clearly God hates him and wants to punish him? What if some of them died in a plane crash? Does that mean they're not really the chosen ones? I wasn't quite sure on this point of their doctrine.

In the first film he made made, there was a scene where they spouted their usual bullshit that anything bad that happens is God's will. In a later scene at a protest, a passing driver throws a drink container and it hits one of their children. The distraught mother says something along the lines of, "Who would do that to a child?" Well, following the logic through, your God presumably.

Damn, you beat me to it!
I saw that and thought the exact same thing. Surely they should have rejoiced, and maybe thrown some more things at their children.

Although surely the "god's will" reasoning extends to homosexuality and whatever else they don't like. God must want people to be gay or it wouldn't happen.

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Ah, but.

Gayness is a choice, not a characteristic set at birth. So dog made you straight, but you went against his or her will and became a GAY!!!! because you wanted to flout his authoritee.

Then they were scuppered when his funeral was held.... in Australia.


I've been watching a lot of Louis on youtube in the last few weeks, I like how he mucks in sometimes and doesn't take himself too seriously.

However, other times I wish he would lay the smackdown more often. Especially to this Westboro lot.

I've just been catching up on iPlayer with his programme on children with autism and their parents. Should be compulsory watching for all Mailtards who think autism is something that can be beaten out of children.