5 worst right-wing moments of the week — Sarah Palin's weird, narcissistic "apology"

The former VP candidate wants you to know that she's so, so sorry, while Rush Limbaugh tackles the Ray Rice scandal

Published September 15, 2014 3:31PM (EDT)

Sarah Palin                        (AP/Cliff Owen)
Sarah Palin (AP/Cliff Owen)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. Sarah Palin is really, really sorry. So sorry.

Clamoring to stay relevant, Sarah Palin hit the airwaves this week for some startlingly incisive commentary on Obama’s speech outlining his strategy to fight ISIS Wednesday night. Just kidding. She went on Hannity to bash the president some more for playing golf that one time rather than immediately declaring war. It only stands to reason that Palin would be asked to comment on geopolitics. She can, after all, see Russia from her house. But Palin had something really important to say. She feels she owes us all an apology. Great, we feel that way, too. For dumbing down every debate in America (not single-handedly, but she really helped), for using made-up words like "refudiate," for advocating policies that decimate the earth, and for that  brawl her idiot familygot involved in over the weekend. We have a list. Contact us, Sarah.

But no, she wants to apologize because John “Bomb Them to Smithereens” McCain is not president. And, we guess, although she did not say it exactly, she blames herself for destroying his chances.

“As I watched the speech last night, Sean,” she said, “the thought going through my mind is, ‘I owe America a global apology. Because John McCain, through all of this, John McCain should be our president.’”

A global apology. Global. Wonder what the hell she means by that.

See, if McCain were president, everything would be hunky dory. We would have bombed so many people, and had so many more troops in Iraq, and like, had troops and bombs everywhere. Just what everyone wants. “He had the advice, today, still giving it to Barack Obama, and he will not listen to it,” Palin brilliantly articulated. “About the residual forces that must be left behind in order to secure the peace in Iraq that we had fought so hard for.”

Yes, Iraq was marvelously peaceful then. We made it so much better.

Then she warned that the Islamic State is coming to take over America. “Guess what,” she said in her folksy, aw shucks way. “We’re next on the hit list.”

You betcha!

2. Rush Limbaugh learned some things while trying to watch football. It was horrible.

Rush Limbaugh had a perfectly miserable time watching football on Thursday night, poor guy. He made the mistake of tuning in early for the pregame show before the Baltimore Ravens/Pittsburgh Steelers matchup, and instead of hearing some good football commentary, or perhaps some patriotic claptrap on the anniversary of 9/11, what did he get? An earful about how terrible domestic abuse is—not what he signed up for, at all.

“I learned that I’m not doing enough to stop wife-beating,” he said, his voice dripping with mockery, disgust and indignation. “I learned that I am not aware enough. That my conscious (sic) is not being raised enough. I learned that it’s an epidemic. It’s happening all the time. I learned that 600 women have supposedly died from wife abuse since Ray Rice cold-cocked his wife in that elevator.”

But Rush, did you learn that toenail fungus is higher on the evolutionary ladder than you are?

He learned all of this at the hands of James Brown, who gave an impassioned, principled, and very brief  speech about how it is time for men to step up and take responsibility for the problem of domestic abuse. Rush Limbaugh does not like learning things. It makes him very, very ornery. But at least he could brag about one thing. He saw this coming. “As I predicted,” he said. “Football is politics. It has jumped the shark and become politics.”

Football has become, in Rush’s immortal words, “chickified.”

There go those feminazis again, ruining everything.

3. Betsy McCaughey, ‘Death Panel’ fabricator, flees ‘Daily Show’ set after being asked about the popularity of Obamacare.

Will anyone ever take New York’s former lieutenant  governor, vocal and voluminous Obamacare hysteric Betsy McCaughey seriously again? Apparently not. Because this pathetic masquerade of a policy wonk, inventor of the terror-inducing concept of "death panels" that Obamacare was supposed to usher in, just isn’t getting interviewed all that much these days. What a shame—such a hard-working misinformer.

No, the absolutely horrific news is that Obamacare is working and that people like it. Contrary to Fox’s Ben Carson’s assertion that it is the worst thing that has happened to America since slavery, the newly insured just aren’t feeling properly enslaved. Tragically, only 36 percent of Americans even want to repeal Obamacare now. McCaughey devoted thousands of pages, and gazillions of words trying to take this law down. Now she has to settle for an interview on the "Daily Show," which she accepted. (Has she ever watched the "Daily Show"?)

In a segment called “The Obamacare Apocalypse,” Jordan Klepper empathetically informs her: “It’s been a tough road for critics of this law [sad face]. “If people aren’t behind repealing this law, how are we going to get them on our side?”

Whoa! She did not see that coming. She is dumbfounded, thunderstruck. (All those words she once spewed. Where did they go?) Also, she is very angry. She clumsily stands, fumbles with her microphone, which becomes entangled in her blonde tresses. She flees the set and into the night, or maybe it was afternoon.

Oh, the indignity of being called out on your bullshit! What a world. What a world.

Watch the whole terrific segment.

4. Despicable Fox & Friends hosts giggle that NFL girlfriends, or domestic abusers—not sure which—should take the stairs.

The following exchange took place on Fox & Friends on Monday, in response to the video of Ray Rice knocking his fiancée out in an Atlantic City elevator.

Host Steve Doocy: “We should also point out, after that video — and now you know what happened in there — she still married him. They are currently married.”

(Translation from Fox-speak: It’s her fault if she’s getting beaten.)

Co-host Brian Kilmeade: “Rihanna went back to Chris Brown right after [he assaulted her]. A lot of people thought that was a terrible message.”

(Translation: Black entertainers are especially bad role models.)

“I think the message is take the stairs,” Kilmeade continued.

Anna Kooiman giggled.

Oh. Hahahahahahaha. Good one.

Wait, huh? Are stairs safer? Are you less likely to be attacked on stairs than an elevator? Nah, just kidding.

Doocy: “The message is, when you’re in an elevator, there’s a camera.”

It really was so funny, even if Doocy kind of killed the joke by stating the obvious.

Later, after a storm of negative comments on social media, the good folks at Fox & Friends assured their audience that, “domestic abuse is a very serious issue to us.”

Obviously. They spent all of 13 seconds by Huffpo’s count, and one truly hateful joke, on it.

And that Kilmeade, he’s a hoot!

5. Pat Buchanan: There is something far more terrifying than ISIS. And it also starts with an 'I'.

While a lot of pundits and pols were wringing their hands about the threat of ISIS this week, and still others were terribly concerned about the threat to football that punishing domestic abusers poses, Pat Buchanan warned of a much graver problem: immigrants. Now they are some scary motherf*ckers.

With immigrant-child-phobic Laura Ingraham nodding in agreement, Buchanan spoke ominously about how immigrants would single-handedly bring about the “decomposition of this country, socially, culturally, politically.”

We sure hope that ISIS doesn't hear about this weapon of mass America destruction.

“Look,” Pat said, “we’d better realize that the United States itself is in tremendous long-term danger, I think, and the bleeding border along our southern border, the mass movement of people from all over the world into this country...."

Oh, stop, Pat. Too scary! Why, we might even become a nation of immigrants.

Worse still, a nation of Democratic-voting immigrants.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Alternet Pat Buchanan Rush Limbaugh Sarah Palin