6 worst right-wing moments of the week — Michele Bachmann declares war on Islam

The congresswoman calls the world's second biggest religion "evil," while Bill O'Reilly has a *very* bad idea

Published September 29, 2014 12:20PM (EDT)

  (AP/Carolyn Kaster)
(AP/Carolyn Kaster)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. Fox’s Eric Bolling demonstrates that if ever there was a “boob on the ground” he is it.

President Obama saluted the troops with a latte in his right hand this week, thus launching a flurry of some of the most inane commentary about patriotism the world has yet witnessed. A round of golf and a tan suit have nothing on latte. On Fox, it was all-latte-all-the-time, they were so hopped up on the stuff. This incredibly minor incident is all the right-wing needs to prove that the president has “no respect for the men and women in uniform.” And Fox’s Eric Bolling, co-host of “The Five,” is just the man to set the president right on that. But first, he just has to tell everybody this really funny line he thought of about the first female fighter pilot for the UAE, who is helping drop bombs on ISIS targets. “Would that be called ‘boobs on the ground?’” Bolling quipped Oh, good one, Eric. Hahahahahaha.

Even his co-hosts, and other Fox Newsians, like Greta van Susteren, collectively groaned. They wanted to know, Eric, how are we going to score points against Obama disrespecting the military when you make jokes like that?

Later, after his wife apparently gave him a dirty look when he arrived home that night, Bolling apologized on the air twice. So you know how heartfelt it must have been. Wifey's reaction is likely the only reason he apologized. It is also likely that he has many other boob jokes ready to go, because he just loves using that word.

2. All of Bill O’Reilly’s Fox co-workers say his plan for a huge mercenary “strike force” to fight Islamic extremists is beyond absurd.

Bill O’Reilly was so pleased with himself this week. He had come up with a solution to the problem of violent Islamic jihadist extremists, and it was brilliant. All we need is a 25,000-person, well-paid, mercenary “world-wide strike force,” he told viewers. “You wouldn’t believe how many military people who have called me and gone, ‘that’s a great idea.’

He was right. No one believed him.

Charles Krauthammer said: “You’ve gone from out of the box to off the wall. Do you really want to be running around the world responsible for a band of desperadoes?”

A guest military expert said: “It’s a terrible idea. We’re not going to solve this problem by creating a band of Marvel’s Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy.”

It seems that no one is taking O'Reilly seriously any more.

Back to the drawing board, Bill. Time for another cartoonish plan.

3. Sarah Palin no longer seems to recognize or care that her words make absolutely no sense.

“Don’t retreat: You reload with truth, which I know is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue. Anyway, truth,” Sarah Palin told the crowd at the intellectually scintillating Value Voter Summit this week.

Of course, 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue is the fa mous address of, uhh, the plaza in front of the Willard Hotel? But you get her drift, don’tcha?

Another excerpt: “Bush’s war was bad, but Barack’s bombs, oh baby those red lines, the strategery [sic] there that was thought up on the back nine, Barack’s bombs, oh they’re the bomb.” Palin seems to have reached the point where she mimics speech by stringing random thoughts and right-wing memes together, and it sounds to her like language. How she got this way is unclear. Too many family brawls, a blow on the head during a moose-hunting expedition, too much Fox News, having been given a national platform before her brain was fully formed? Those are some of the theories kicking around. The audience looked a bit bewildered, so she topped it all off with her version of the now infamous latte salute.

Everyone laughed and laughed. At last a recognizable joke.

And yes, that’s right. She used the word “strategery.”

4. Michele Bachmann: Declare war on Islam; bet no one’s ever tried that before, and it worked out great.

Palin was not the only looney tunes speaker at the Values Voter Summit. Her pal Michele Bachmann managed to take our breath away with her stunningly ignorant, bigoted speech suggesting we “declare war” on Islam. In his speech to the nation, President Obama had the audacity to say that the airstrike war he was launching against ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. That is just not acceptable to xenophobes and Islamophobes like Bachmann, who is just dandy with the idea of a modern-da crusade. Perhaps someone should gently inform her that this is precisely the narrative ISIS would like to disseminate.

“Yes, Mr. President, it is about Islam!” Bachmann bellowed to the conservative crowd. “And I believe if you have an evil of an order of this magnitude, you take it seriously. You declare war on it, you don’t dance around it. Just like the Islamic State has declared war on the United States of America.”

She then said Obama should be more Reagan-like, and that he should practice “Peace through strength,” as Reagan did with the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Confusing, because we could have sworn that peace is precisely the opposite of what she had just suggested.

Neither historical accuracy, nor logical consistency shall dim her wild-eyed passion.

5. Laura Ingraham says fighting ebola is all about redistributing wealth. (Yes, she said that.)

Laura Ingraham perseveres in her role as one of the wickedest witches on the right-wing fringe. Her preferred target of unaccompanied minors and illegal immigrants of all ages has now become intertwined with her hysteria and meanspiritedness about ebola. She just resents the hell out of the fact that American troops are being deployed to help fight the worst ebola outbreak in history. Can’t we just lock the doors, close the gates, put a pillow over our heads and wait for it to kill off a bunch of Africans? she wonders.

The above is not much of an exaggeration of Ingraham’s actual words on her radio show this week, which were:

“If we are really serious about ebola being a threat to the United States of America, we have to shut down our border because you never know who could come across–probably not people with ebola, but who knows. We gotta be much tougher on who we allow to come into this country legally on planes….”

Of course, this is all Obama's fault. He's the one who sent our troops to help fight the outbreak, which just makes her hopping mad, in both senses of the word. Also, up to this point, she’s acutally been holding back from being as deeply offensive as she really wants to be. But like the ebola virus, her virulence is hard to restrain. (Warning: protective clothing recommended for the following.)

“The military is just another tool in his arsenal to level the playing field, right?" Ingraham argued. "I mean, in other words, Africa really deserves more of America’s money because we’re people of privilege. We’re people of great privilege, so we should do what we can, we the American taxpayers, to transfer wealth over to Africa. It’s his father’s rage against colonialism, as Dinesh D’Souza wrote about, and maybe this is a way to continue to atone for that… If a few American military personnel have to be exposed to the ebola virus to carry out this redistribution of the privileged’s wealth, then so be it.”

Again, nobody beats Ingraham, not even relatively tepid and tame Ann Coulter, for sheer green venom issuing from her mouth.

6. MIT frat president Bill Frezza gets all mixed up about the purpose of “drunk female guests” at frat parties.

A number of things seem screwy about the op-ed from the president of the Beta Foundation, a person you’ve likely never heard of until now, named Bill Frezza. In a column published briefly in Forbes this week, the MIT genius alum argued that “drunk female guests are the gravest threat to fraternities.” Wait, has ISIS heard about this grave threat to our way of life?

And also, where is he getting this notion? Drunk female guests are essential at fraternity parties. Who else are you going to have sex with when they pass out?

The trouble is that drunk female guests lie, Frezza believes, and not in a good way, which would be to lie still.

This human mix of lint and phlegm really argued this, which can only mean that he really thinks it, which does elevate his woman-hatred to the level of Rush, "No means yes if you know how to spot it" Limbaugh.

Like Limbaugh, Frezza knows full well that the feminazis will unfairly attack him for, well, blaming women for everything including being raped.

“Before feminist web vigilantes call for my defenestration, I single out female guests for one simple reason,” he wrote.  “Fraternity alumni boards, working with chapter officers, employ a variety of policies designed to guide and police member behavior. Our own risk management manual exceeds 22 pages.”

Wow, 22 whole pages! That’s tough, we had no idea MIT students had to do all that reading.

“But we have very little control over women who walk in the door carrying enough pre-gaming booze in their bellies to render them unconscious before the night is through.”

Fear not, Frezza has a plan to deal with the Greek life-threatening enemy: “Identify drunks at the door.” Bar the door. Keep them out. Drunk women, that is. Because fraternity brothers never get drunk.

He said all this and more. And Forbes published it. Then they took it down and fired him, because apparently, they had to be told that this screed was utterly offensive.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


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

Alternet Bill O'reilly Islam Laura Ingraham Michele Bachmann