Grover Norquist Endorses Murdering Women And/Or Viciously Mocks Conservatives
Anti-taxtivist Grover Norquist is backpedaling like a Lance Armstrong sponsor over his apparent Twitter endorsement of murdering women for the crime of infidelity, insisting that his praise for Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” as “pro-family, pro-2nd amendment” was actually “mockery” of some sort. It all started with this tweet:
@Bro_Pair Hendrix: “Hey joe..where you going with that gun in your hand.” pro-family, pro-2nd amendment. Janis: anything. Everything.
— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) June 26, 2014
In case you’re unfamiliar, “Hey Joe” is a blues rock classic in which the titular character is asked where he’s going with that gun in his hand, and replies that he’s going to shoot his significant other because he caught her being unfaithful. In short order, the narrator of the song then tells Joe he has heard rumors that he murdered his romantic partner, and is informed by Joe that this is the case. Missing is the verse where the questioner says “Hey Joe, I’m going to call the cops, and maybe they can get you some counseling.”
Of course, the song itself is no endorsement of Joe’s behavior, any more than any blues song is an endorsement of the circumstances that inspire it. The real point is the music, as heard here at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival:
Norquist’s tweet, however, was pretty specifically an endorsement of Joe’s behavior, the idea being that Joe’s possession of a firearm was “pro-2nd amendment,” and that his enforcement of monogamy, even by death, was “pro-family.” While Norquist was clearly making a joke of some sort, the average person would see the point of that joke as an endorsement of firearms and fidelity which were, perhaps, taken a smidgen too far in the song, or maybe even as a dark ode to the song’s power to deter.
When everyone on Twitter pointed this out to Norquist, he quickly, and repeatedly, told them all what idiots they were…READ MORE
