6 worst right-wing moments of the week — Scalia proves why he's the "Fox News Justice"

The Supreme Court Justice shows off his paleolithic worldview, while Hannity blames Baltimore on Obama

Published May 4, 2015 12:45PM (EDT)

Antonin Scalia             (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Antonin Scalia (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. Scalia’s deeply sickening same-sex marriage joke.

The same-sex marriage case that was presented to the Supreme Court this week drew the expected cohort of fanatical Christians and other lunatics who have nothing better to do with their time but make sure that people they perceive to be different from them are as miserable as possible.

But that was not the problem.

The problem is that one of these ignorant haters sits on the Supreme Court. As Jeff Toobin recounts in the New Yorker, at one point after oral arguments were made, a spectator in the back of the court screamed, “If you support gay marriage, you will burn in hell!”

After he was removed, good old Justice Scalia quipped, “It was rather refreshing, actually.”

Oh, hahahahhaha. But actually, no. The trouble is that it is not just a bad joke (like Scalia); it is not a joke at all. There is every reason to believe Scalia shares the man’s view.

Scalia’s tired claim that marriage has remained unchanged for “millennia” so who is the Court to change that is a patently false rehash of a conservative talking point. Marriage has changed a great deal, as Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) pointed out. Most notably, marriage is now considered a relationship between equals, which it certainly wasn’t earlier in the millennium, and even early last century.

With his performance, this week, Scalia "further established his reputation as the Fox News Justice,” Toobin writes.

Oo, feel the burn, Scalia. But he probably doesn’t. He probably thinks that’s a good thing.

2. Tucker Carlson’s site: “Sexy” Baltimore prosecutor flashed crazy girl eyes.

Let’s face it, the most impressive thing about Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby is not that she revealed herself to be willing to be tough on crime even when cops are the perpetrators, but that she’s kind of hot. Or in the words of a sports editor for Tucker Carlson’s excellent (gag) rag, the Daily Caller, “Kind of a smokeshow.”

Yepp, this clown added that "wouldn't mind being unrestrained in the back of Ms. Mosby's paddy wagon" in an article published on Friday. It wasn’t just idle chatter buried in the article, by Christian Datoc, it was in the headline, which was: "Let's Be Honest: The Baltimore State's Attorney Is Kind Of A Smokeshow."

Datoc apparently could not get enough of that press conference during which Mosby announced the charges against the six officers who took Freddie Gray into custody. (Full disclosure, we were similarly riveted by the Mosby’s announcement, though not, it seems, for the same reason.) Datoc wrote: “Throughout the presser, the 35-year-old prosecutor managed to maintain a fiery, authoritative demeanor AND flashed some serious “crazy girl” eyes, a combination which — if truth be told — I found incredibly sexy.

That’s some batshit crazy (not to mention racist and sexist) stuff, truth be told.

3. No one is more eager to believe the cops’ crazy leaked story about Freddie Gray than Sean Hannity, because now he can blame Obama.

The Baltimore police’s outrageous leak to the Washington Post of an absurd explanation for how Freddie Gray sustained his life-ending injury was insane on its face. But not to Sean Hannity. Envisioning the already suffering Freddie Gray purposely flinging himself around in the back of the police van to break his own spine had the ring of truth to the Fox newsian. It has to be true! It was in a good newspaper, after all!

Hannity went nuts, pouncing on the report to attack, who else, Obama for his “rush to judgement” in the Gray case. Enter voice of reason Geraldo Rivera (yes, Sean Hannity has the ability to make Geraldo Rivera appear as the voice of reason. Quite a remarkable feat, actually.)

Rivera, who is primarily known for suggesting that black people’s attire is what gets them killed, did think something about the report was fishy. Namely, that it was crazy. He told Hannity that he doubted very much that the Baltimore protesters would buy it, either, saying, "They will not be convinced by the Washington Post report that this fellow died as a result of self-inflicted wounds."

This outraged Hannity. "So the facts be damned!" he bellowed.

That’s right. He said facts. Facts are those things that police say in Hannity’s world. No matter how nonsensical. Why was Rivera not on board with this?

Mainly Hannity just wanted to attack Obama, though. If the Washington Post report is true, Hannity said, which no one in their right mind thought for a moment, “That means the President of the United States has injected himself wrongly four times in four high-profile race issues. That makes him a four-time loser.”

Oh God. Shut up, Hannity, you million-time loser. We hear there's an opening on Cliven Bundy's ranch for you.

4. Fox’s Charles Payne: Raising the minimum wage rewards mediocrity.

Commenting on the unrest in Baltimore this week, Congressman Keith Ellis (D- MN) said: “What we’ve done in the U.S. is to say the affluent part of our society is going to demand more tax breaks, more wealth, more privilege, leaving less and less for the less fortunate. And the way we keep the less fortunate under control is through policing and prisons. That is the unfortunate formula we’ve constructed.”

Done. Good. Pretty concise summing up of the situation.

Wait, no? Fox’s Steve Doocy and Charles Payne do not agree.

“It’s an old tired excuse,” Charles Payne commented. He thinks there’s plenty of money for everyone! Hooray!

The War on Poverty hasn’t worked, Payne went on to say, which surprised everyone because there hasn’t been a War on Poverty for many a year, mostly just a war on the poor.

Worse still, Payne claimed, The War on Poverty rewarded mediocrity, just as raising the minimum wage rewards mediocrity. Scratching your head, yet? We are. If those kids in Baltimore would just stay in school, they’d get those great new knowledge-based jobs in the new economy, Doocy and Payne agreed. Because that’s working out fabulously well for highly educated adjunct professors making poverty wages, right?

So, yeah kids, stay in that crumbling old school that has been systematically starved of funds and has metal detectors instead of books. Do as Charles Payne says and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

5. Maryland GOPer – Take food stamps away from rioters parents?

There’s only one way to respond to poor people’s pain for some GOP-ers: Make them poorer and inflict more pain. That was the suggestion of one Republican lawmaker in Maryland’s General Assembly, who suggested food stamps be taken away from the parents of kids involved in the riots that erupted in Baltimore after Freddie Gray’s funeral.

"I think that you could make the case that if there is a failure to do proper parenting and allowing this stuff to happen, is there an opportunity for a month to take away your food stamps," Maryland state Del. Pat McDonough said Wednesday during a radio broadcast clipped by The Intercept.

Look, he’s not a total psychopath. McDonough acknowledged that his proposal “might seem a little harsh.”

Oh wait, yes he is, because then he went right back and attributed the rioting to a “lack of parenting.”

6. Texas GOP-er’s truly bizarre connection between gay marriage and events in Baltimore.

We’ve heard a lot of theories about why parts of Baltimore were in flames this week, but this one takes the cake. Proving that the right-wing brain is nothing if not creatively able to make utterly bizarre leaps of logic, Texas Congressman Bill Flores suggested there was a connection between gay marriage and the explosion of rage on Baltimore’s streets.

The GOP-er was discussing the same-sex marriage case before the Supreme Court with that font of fairness and wisdom, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Same sex marriage, they both agree, is an abomination. And of course, it will also lead to the breakdown of the family. Not sure how, but it just will. Just because. And the breakdown of the family leads to other problems of course, “Let’s talk about poverty for instance,” the Congressman suggested. Oh yes, let’s, they both agreed. “The break down of the family has contributed to poverty.”

Okay, same old same old. Blaming poor people for their poverty because of their loose moral standards. Blah blah blah. But here it comes. The death defying leap of logic:

“You look at what’s going on in Baltimore today, you know, you see issues that are raised there,” Flores. “And healthy marriages are the ones between a man and a woman because they can have a healthy family and they can raise children in the way that’s best for their future, not only socially but psychologically, economically, from a health perspective. There’s just nothing like traditional marriage that does that.”

There it is. We didn’t think it was possible to connect those two things, but we were oh so very wrong.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


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Alternet Antonin Scalia Baltimore Fox News Sean Hannity Tucker Carlson