6 worst right-wing moments of the week — Glenn Beck is hearing voices

The conservative host says he receives messages from God, while Neil deGrasse Tyson is driving one wing-nut bonkers

Published June 9, 2014 12:19PM (EDT)

Glenn Beck                            (AP/Timothy D. Easley)
Glenn Beck (AP/Timothy D. Easley)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. Gavin McInnes: White liberals love Neil deGrasse Tyson so much he could defecate on them.

Gavin McInnes, ousted founder of Vice, now noted for racist, homophobic andmisogynistic comments, obviously has all the right credentials to be invited onto Fox for some sober commentary about important things.

Just kidding. He was invited on the show to spew hateful and vile things and that’s just what he did. In a segment devoted to picking apart an interview with “Cosmos” host Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chris Hayes, McGinnes did not disappoint.

While talking to Hayes, Tyson had the audacity to make a joke, about his “greatest fear” being that intelligent life would steer clear of making contact with Earth because of the signals we unwittingly put out into space — including past TV and radio programs.

Pretty funny, right? Maybe a little science nerdy, but he is a scientist after all.

“I hate this guy,” McInnes blurted out. “I remember hearing Chris Hardwick on a podcast talk about Neil deGrasse Tyson and he was just salivating. White liberal nerds love this guy so much, he could defecate on them like Martin Bashir’s fantasies and they would dance in the streets.”

Little surprise he then segued from not very veiled racism to out-and-out racism saying that Tyson deserved whatever racial profiling he got when he was young because he “looked the part.”

“He talks about things like, ‘when I was young in New York I would get racially profiled when I’d go into stores,’” McInnes said. “Back then he looked like he was in the Warriors. He had a huge afro and a cutoff shirt and New York was a war zone. Sorry, you fit the profile.”

Meaning of course, being black.

2. Virtually every Republican after new EPA rules came out: I’m not a scientist but... here’s a bunch of idiotic stuff I learned in grade school.

The “I’m not a scientist, but” statement of faux humility was the most popular refrain this week in Republican circles, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and press conferences. It was almost always followed by either second-grade level science like, “but carbon dioxide is good for plants, why do we have to limit it?” Or some other nonsensical argument against the new, much needed regulations.

There is, of course, only one retort to, “I’m not a scientist, but ….”

It's, “That’s right, so shut up and listen to what actual scientists have been saying about this for, like, ever.”

We know, we know. We live in dreamland.

The stupid reactions to Obama’s announced coal restrictions ran the gamut.

You can read about them here.  And here. But if we had to pick a favorite, just on the grounds of moronic immaturity, the prize has to go to this pathetic imbecile:

“Thanks to the Obama administration’s EPA and the new regulations released today, America is poised to become the ‘no pee’ section of the global swimming pool,” said Marita Noon, executive director of some bogus right-wing group called Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy. “Just because we declare that we won’t pee in the pool, won’t stop the others.… We’ll be stuck in our little no-pee section with a crippled economy while the rest of the world will be frolicking in unfettered growth.”

Well now, that is a terrific way of deciding on matters of vital national (and international) interest. C’mon everybody, let’s keep peeing in the pool, until, well, the pool is entirely urine, and no longer any water whatsoever. Or, they catch us, whatever comes last.

3. Glenn Beck: God speaks to me about destroying people’s political careers.

Hoo boy, Glenn Beck piled crazy on top of crazy this week reaching new paroxysms of crazy. First he told listeners to the Blaze that God told him to destroy Van Jones’ White House career. Holy moly. Yahweh himself. “I don’t know how we figured out Van Jones,” Beck said. “I really don’t know how we figured out Van Jones,” he said. “That was really — that was not from man.”

Cue spooky music.

“Because I didn’t even know who he was, and there was two conversations happening in my office. I have two producers talking about Van Jones, and they were getting ready to talk to me about something, and I was talking to another two producers. And as I’m listening and I’m engaged in that, I just hear the name ‘Van Jones,’ and I said to those producers, ‘Stop.’ I turn around and said, ‘What was the name you just said?’ They said, Van Jones.”

Okay, so hearing voices. Makes sense.

4. Brian Kilmeade: Bowe Bergdahl’s father’s beard strikes me as Taliban-ish.

A precondition to being a buffoon is blindness to your own buffoonery, and hypocrisy. And nothing beats the hypocrisy of the Republican response to the release of the American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Initial cheers and tweets were immediately taken down and the distorted memory of Ronald Reagan as master-hostage-negotiator-with-terrorists has been resurrected. Iran/contra player Oliver North is making the rounds on conservative media, as if anything the convicted perjurer had to say was in the least bit relevant.

But the commentary on the release of Bergdahl from his Taliban captors reached its nadir when the right-wing commentariat decided to make the soldier’s father’s beard an issue. Brian Kilmeade told Fox & Friends that the beard, which Bergdahl’s father had been growing as a symbol of his son’s captivity, made the soldier’s father look like he was in the Taliban.

“I mean, he says he was growing his beard because his son was in captivity,” Kilmeade blathered. “Well, your son’s out now. So if you really don’t — no longer look like a member of the Taliban, you don’t have to look like a member of the Taliban. Are you out of razors?”

So, here’s the deal with long beards. They are copacetic with Fox & Friends as long as you say racist and homophobic things and declare Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, a la Phil Robertson and the Duck Dynasty clan. Otherwise, they're a no-go. Especially if you speak a word of Arabic. Then you’re obviously in cahoots with suspiciously clean-shaven Obama for the Muslim takeover of America.

5. Ben Carson: Obamacare is worse than 9/11.

It’s hard to top calling Obamacare worse than slavery for crazy and offensive comparison. But neurosurgeon-turned-right-wing crackpot Ben Carson has a restless mind. During an interview with the Daily Beast this week, Carson defended his position that Obamacare was sooooooo bad, it was worse than 9/11.

Carson pointed out that he thinks “9/11 is an isolated incident,” and of course, Obamacare is this ongoing catastrophe where millions of previously uninsured people now have access to healthcare.

When his questioner asked repeatedly what had done more harm to America, Obamacare or Osama bin Laden, Carson lost his cool.

Carson: “Will you listen? You have to take a long-term look at something that fundamentally changes the power structure of America. You have to be someone who reads. Who is well read.”

And if you read the same kinds of things Carson does —and believe them—you too can come up with crazily ridiculous comparisons.

6. Elisabeth Hasselbeck cheers on homophobic baker.

Haters gonna hate. Sometimes haters gonna pretend their hating is love. And so the right-wing has taken up the cause of the oh-so principled Colorado baker who courageously refused to sell cakes to same-sex couples. Well, now Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has been ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to stop discriminating against people whose sexual preferences are different from his.

Fox Newsian Elisabeth Hasselbeck thinks that freedom is under assault here. Religious freedom, that is. Religious freedom to discriminate against others, as long as that religion is Christian.

“Keep going strong there,” she told the brave baker.

But the brave baker has taken his baking toys and is going home. He won’t bake if it must be for the kind of people he does not wish to eat his cake.

Strike another blow for freedom!

h/t: rawstory


By Janet Allon

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