1. CeeLo Green tweets: 'It’s only rape if she remembers it.'
Former Voice coach and performer CeeLo Green is very, very confused about consent. Confused as in Todd Akin “legitimate rape” confused. This week, Green made a series of ill-advised tweets, including “If someone is passed out they’re not even WITH you consciously. So WITH Implies consent,” and, “People who have really been raped REMEMBER!!!”
The tweets were connected to a criminal case in which Green is accused of slipping ecstasy to a woman on a date without her consent. He has pleaded no contest to those charges, but he has not been formally charged with rape. So, let’s review how deeply offensive —and weirdly passive-aggressive—his tweets are. There’s the obvious nonsense about it being okay to rape unconscious people. Then there’s the fact that, if this particular woman does not remember—and his accuser has said she woke up in bed next to Green unsure of what happened the night before—then Green's slipping her ecstasy is the likely cause of her memory failure. Wake up CeeLo!
Perhaps a friend, his lawyer, someone, pointed out how colossally stupid the tweets were, so Green deleted his Twitter account and faux apologized for them. It was one of those, "sorry if you were offended" apologies, popular with the passive-aggressive crowd. He said he was sorry “for my comments being taken so far out of context.”
Not, sorry that my comments were offensive regardless of the context. Green said the remarks were meant as part of a “healthy exchange to help heal those who love me from the pain I had already caused from this.”
All those who feel healed, say aye.
2. Sean Hannity consults 'Duck Dynasty' star on foreign policy and ISIS. 'Duck Dynasty' star says predictably asinine things.
It’s hard to say who is the bigger fool in this bit of tomfoolery. This week, Sean Hannity invited Phil Robertson, the Bible-thumping patriarch of "Duck Dynasty" on his show to talk about ISIS, the extremist Sunni group bent on setting up a new caliphate in Iraq and Syria. On second thought, maybe it’s not that hard. Hannity wins.
Robertson was just doing what he does, saying predictably dumb, biblical-sounding things about evil and Jesus, like, "The whole world is under the control of the Evil One." And, "All who hate me love death." Most memorably, he advised this strategy to combat ISIS: “Convert them, or kill them.” Coincidentally, this is also reportedly ISIS’ strategy. Wonder if Robertson also advocates beheading.
Hannity expressed concern that the liberal media will jump all over Robertson for that "convert or kill" remark. Robertson replied that, he’s prepared, “I'll have a Bible study and preach the gospel of Jesus."
Later in the week, normally military-loving Sean Hannity revealed that he cannot, “in good conscience recommend people serve” in the military while Obama is president. So ... so much for jumping all over that ISIS, killing or converting thing.
3. Kevin Sorbo, washed-up Hercules star, just wants to remind Jews that they killed Jesus.
Right-wing uber-Christian actor Kevin Sorbo has been running his mouth quite a bit lately, with a hot new Christian film to promote and all. (We know, we know; “hot” and “Christian” are kind of oxymoronic.) He had already targeted black protesters in Ferguson, calling them “animals,” then taking it back, sort of. A born-again zealot, he stretches himself and plays an atheist professor in the new film, which is entitled, "God's Not Dead. Showing his deep understanding of his character, Sorbo has accused atheists of always being “so angry.”
This week, he went for the trifecta, by going after Jewish people. He talked to Jerry Newcombe on “Vocal Point” about Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ and the accusations that it was anti-Semitic. Sorbo did not get why the Jewish community was upset about the film's portrayal of ancient Jews as vicious, ugly Christ-killers. He had this message for them: “News bulletin: you did kill Jesus!”
Thanks for clearing that up.
4. Pat Robertson to 80-year-old broke woman: Get a job, and keep up the tithing.
Pat Robertson tended to his television flock with all the usual love and compassion he always musters this week.
A faithful 80-year-old viewer wrote in to the show about how she and her 80-plus husband have always dutifully tithed to the church. “We both love the Lord and give willingly and our tithe is over 10 percent,” she wrote. But now the elderly couple are having trouble making ends meet. “We never have an extra penny after our monthly bills are paid,” she lamented. And more bills await, a car needs fixing, dental care is due, medical needs, you know, luxuries.
Uncle Pat had some wonderful advice for the writer. First and foremost, keep tithing. (Did he not hear what she said about not being able to make ends meet?) Secondly, sell your belongings on eBay. And third, get a job, lazy. Just “ask God to show you some ways of making money,” the televangelist helpfully suggested.
Also, stop being so neggo. “You’re looking at the downside of all the bills you’ve got instead of saying, ‘God, I’ve been faithful to you. Now, I claim my blessing, and I ask you to open the windows of heaven and pour me out a blessing. Show me what you’re going to do, show me how I can move into blessing.’ So, just ask him.”
Yeah. That’ll work. Just ask him.
5. Fox News guests: 'Feminists are not godly,' basically.
Hoo boy, some more geniuses have been given a forum on Fox News. In an appearance on Fox & Friends to promote their new book, What Women Really Want, hosts of the Internet video show Politichicks excitedly announced their “new brand of feminism.”
But first, they trashed the current brand of feminists, who they think are “intolerant,” among other undesirable traits.
“They claim they’re feminists, but what they actually are, they are sexualists,” said Politichicks editor-in-chief Ann-Marie Murrell. “It has nothing to do with empowering women anymore.”
Sexualists, huh. What the hell is a sexualist? Anyone?
Politichicks host Gina Loudon explained, sort of. “Women don’t want to be objectified, and what the feminist movement has successfully done, is really, sexualized women instead of feminizing women.”
Oh, okay. Wait. Wha…?
“So, we’re here with a new brand of feminism,” Loudon announced, “saying drop the shackles of the old feminism. It’s time for women who really want to be women, who want to be feminine, who want to be what God designed them to be.”
Hurray, a new brand of feminism that purports to know what God intended for women. Just what the world needs now.
6. Heartless GOPer: Just because children are being murdered, doesn’t mean we should not deport them.
Remember compassionate conservatism? Neither do we. Probably because it never materialized.
Certainly, House Republican Robert Pittenger of North Carolina never got the memo on that compassion thing. He is very concerned about the unaccompanied minors flooding the U.S./Mexico border (if by concerned you mean he wants to get rid of them at all costs). To be fair, he’s not just picking on those kids; he told constituents at a reportedly all-white town hall meeting this week that he’d also like to have DREAMers, or children of undocumented immigrants raised here, deported.
ThinkProgress asked Pittenger if the deportations of the unaccompanied minors should continue in light of reports that some of the children have been killed upon returning to their country. Yes, he said, the deportations should continue.
“Do you want to open up America’s doors to the entire world?" he said. "We have to be sensible about what our system can manage. So you put them on planes and you send them back.”
It's the compassionate, conservative way.
7. Gohmert: Non-English speakers bring education down. Ban them from the schools.
Horrible Texas tea partier Louie Gohmert said some more horrible things this week. He suggested that non-English speaking kids be banned from the education system. He too was talking about those unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America, but he really meant all Spanish-speaking immigrants.
“It’s not fair to kids that come in and speak only Spanish, throw them in a classroom with English-speaking students,” Gohmert, who is terribly concerned about fairness, whined to Tucker Carlson on Fox News. “It’s unfair to both the English-speaking and to the Spanish-speaking students. It is not fair.”
Not to be outdone, Carlson ventured an even far crazier, though admittedly less whiny, theory: Carlson argued that immigrants who were going to school in the U.S. were part of a “scam” because some who tried to enroll were “people who were pretending to be kids who aren’t.”
Huh? Why would they do this? Nobody knows. Nor was it explained because Gohmert was on a roll, blaming President Obama for everything, because Obama is “thinking only about the foreign students,” because… of course he is. (Because, duh, remember? Obama's not really an Amurrican.)
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