August 6, 2014

Colbert Wishes Your Kid a Good Night’s Sleep With This New Pro-Gun Illustrated Book

“My Parents Open Carry” Lorna Bergman, Brian G. Jeffs, Nathan R. Nephew.

I first saw this children’s book going around Facebook yesterday. You know the one: it celebrates 13-year-old Brenna’s Mom and Dad for “open carrying” their hand guns. At first I thought, “the illustrations and dependence on Comic Sans are so eye-bleedingly bad it must be a perfectly conceived Masters project by some NYU Tisch grad.” The website promoting the book carries the kind of knee-slapping prose that must be satirical, right? “Before writing this, we looked for pro-gun children’s books and couldn’t find any.” Couldn’t find any! Ha, ha, ha. Which non-profit/government agency/university supplied the grant to fund this brilliant take-down of gun culture in America? Was it Bloomberg himself?

But then I paid my $3.95 for the PDF (you’ll pick up the tab, Mother Jones), and it dawned on me: It’s real. Then I thought, “Wow, this seems custom-made to be pilloried by Stephen Colbert!”

Enjoy:

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We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

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