1. Ann Coulter: Soccer represents everything that is wrong with the world and now America.
You may or may not care for soccer. You may or may not be swept up in World Cup fever. Chances are, if you are among those who do not particularly enjoy watching the sport, the existence and popularity of the World Cup does not make you hopping mad. Well, it makes Ann Coulter hopping, and rather hilariously, apoplectic. She wrote a syndicated column this week that was one long unhinged diatribe against a sport which she sees as foreign, amoral, socialistic, girly, un-American, and just really, ultimately, not even a sport.
She begins by saying she’s long held off writing about soccer “so as not to offend anyone.” That alone is laughable, as Coulter makes her an all-too handsome living on offending people. Quite intentionally.
“Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.” There’s the old girl back doing what she does best, a kind of hysterical, right-wing, comically offensive crazy talk.
Her problems with soccer are numerous, and include some things that reasonable people might agree with, like the fact that a game which sometimes ends in a scoreless tie is not the most exciting sporting event in the world. Though one might counter that a no-hitter is hailed around America as a great sporting achievement, despite being a pretty dull affair for spectators. Nothing un-American about that, though.
But Coulter’s problems with soccer ultimately are the same jingoistic sentiments that color her entire world view. It’s foreign; people who don’t speak English enjoy it; it employs the metric system, and liberals seem to like it. Furthermore, not enough people get carried off the soccer fields into ambulances and girls are encouraged to play it when young, rendering it “not a sport.”
“I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer,” she writes. “The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.”
And finally, on that moral decay theme. Well, I think we can all agree on who is responsible for America’s deteriorating ethical standards.*
Coulter concludes:
If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.
* Correct. Right-wingers, Fox News pundits, Republicans and provocateurs like Ann Coulter are responsible for America's declining ethical standards. Striving, hard-working, often family-oriented immigrants, not so much.
2. Fox’s Keith Ablow: The World Cup is an evil, pot-smoking Obama plot.
Right up there on the crazy scale, maybe even higher than Coulter, who after all makes a few rational points about soccer's potential to be dull.
“Why are we seeing soccer suddenly skyrocket?” Keith Ablow worried on FOX this week. “Why are we so ready to be entertained?”
That is a worrisome sign. People wanting to be entertained! Must be some sort of apocalyptic thing. People never wanted to be entertained when a Republican was president.
For Ablow, it is all a little too convenient. “I’m suspect,” he said, somewhat ungrammatically while sitting on the couch with a group of Fox women who were all kind of excited about the World Cup, and saw no harm in it. “Here’s the thing,” Ablow hectored them. “Why at a time when there are so many national and international issues of such prominence are we so willing to be entertained? I’m a little suspicious of yet another bread and circus routine. I mean, let’s roll out the marijuana. Let’s pull back the laws ... It’s all to distract people. It’s like Rome. I can see why Obama would love the World Cup.”
No, no Dr. Ablow, Obama does not just love the World Cup. The World Cup is all part of his dastardly plan to take it over and make it into a Muslim, socialist, pot-smoking republic and enslave white people and Christians.
The women were taken aback. Dr. Ablow had killed their soccer buzz. Might be time for the Debbie Downer Doc to see a psychiatrist about the depressing conspiracy theories encircling his brain. Oh, yeah, he is a psychiatrist.
Phew!
3. William Gheen: Mail your dirty underwear to undocumented immigrant children.
Is it possible to come up with a greater douchebaggery than this?
William Gheen, who runs the anti-immigrant group Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) and is a champion of a charming little concept called white rule, responded this week to the current border crisis and the news that Homeland Security is seeking underwear for thousands of detained immigrants by suggesting that “tens of thousands of Americans” mail used underwear, not just to "illegals," but to Speaker Boehner and President Obama too.
Or, alternatively, just launder your underwear.
ALIPAC has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Today, we give William Gheen the additional designation of humanoid heap of diseased bile, dung and contents of used underwear.
But, maybe we’re being a little too easy on him.
4. Louie Gohmert: Obama is luring “scabies-infected” children to the U.S.
Picking on children is excellent for a politician's reputation. Even Sarah Palin knows better than to do that. But not Texas Tea Partier Louie Gohmert, who accused President Obama of luring diseased children to the U.S. during a House Judiciary hearing titled "An Administration Made Disaster: The South Texas Border Surge of Unaccompanied Alien Minors." (So, it's not like the explicit intent of the hearing was to go after Obama or anything.)
Gohmert does not want undocumented children to get some "free pass" to stay in the country.
He is so concerned about the welfare of these children that, at his own great peril, he even paid a visit to one of the facilities and found that some of the young detainees were "lying on a concrete floor." Only, Gohmert doesn’t call them detainees, or even children. They are “cases,” as in “scabies cases, lice cases and flu cases.”
Children, diseases, pretty much the same thing to Louie Gohmert. And all Obama’s fault for “luring” them here, which is a fairly ridiculous assertion given the huge numbers of undocumented immigrants Obama has deported.
Still, it’s the children that frighten Gohmert, who concluded: “the federal government is not doing their job in protecting us from those people who are coming in."
5. Loser in Oklahoma GOP primary: My opponent is actually dead and replaced by a body double.
Winner in the unhinged category, although, jeez, lots of stiff competition this week: The loser in a recent Republican primary who, quite creatively, refused to go quietly.
For out and out bonkers, no one beats Timothy Ray Murray, who lost to Oklahoma Representative Frank Lucas in the GOP primary, and responded to this loss by saying his opponent was actually dead and has been replaced by a robot. Naturally, this would disqualify him for office. It's in the Constitution. No dead people, or robots may serve in the government.
Timothy Ray Murray posted a press release — addressed to “News Person” — in which he demanded the Oklahoma Board of Elections shift votes from Rep. Lucas to him on account of the fact that “it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed [ sic] by a look alike.”
Murray further explained that Lucas had been “executed by The World Court on or about Jan. 11, 2011 in Southern Ukraine. On television they were depicted as being executed by the hanging about the neck until death on a white stage and in front of witnesses.”
Wow, that was more than three years ago. You would think people would have noticed that the guy is dead by now.
No, Murray explains, because he has been replaced by a body double. "It is possible to use look alike artificial or man-made replacements,” such “replacements” are not human, and therefore ineligible to serve in office. Murray went on to assure the board that he “will NEVER use Artificial Intelligence look alike to voice what The Representative’s Office is doing nor own a robot look alike.”
Well, that is very reassuring indeed.
h/t: RawStory
6. Rush Limbaugh says douchey things about black people for like the millionth time.
Rush Limbaugh was among the arch-conservatives who were devastated that Republican Thad Cochran triumphed over his Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, because wah, wah, wah, that’s not what the polls said was supposed to happen. And, no fair! Black people voted for Cochran. Why? Probably because, as Bill Maher said, Cochran was the "least shitty choice."
But to Rush, something more seemed amiss. Musta been some foul play. Voter fraud, and other coded racism, and well, just plain out and out racism.
"I wonder what the campaign slogan was in Mississippi the past few days, 'Uncle Toms for Thad'? Because I thought it was the worst thing you could do as an African American, vote for a Republican. The worst thing you could do," Limbaugh said on Wednesday. "But somehow they were made to believe that voting for old Thad would be fine and dandy. And why? Because they were told Thad's done a lot for black people in Mississippi. Must be the first time they were told that."
It’s all those black people’s fault. Rush knew they should never have been given the vote.
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