Putting aside all of the nutjob reactions to the veto of Arizona’s crazy anti-gay law, some of which were chronicledhere, right wingers were still plenty busy mouthing off this week.
1. Pat Buchanan: 'Repeal all civil rights laws, segregate gays.'
Poor Patty was feeling a bit ignored of late, so he kicked off the week with a doozy of acolumn melodramatically titled “How Freedom Dies.” Springboarding from the kerfuffle around all the exciting anti-gay legislation, the conservative bigot, er, pundit, proposed that the U.S. repeal all its civil rights laws.
“A radical idea: Suppose we repealed the civil rights laws and fired all the bureaucrats enforcing these laws,” Buchanan wrote. “Does anyone think hotels, motels and restaurants across Dixie, from D.C. to Texas, would stop serving black customers? Does anyone think there would again be signs sprouting up reading 'whites' and 'colored' on drinking foundations and restrooms?”
Maybe.
The work of civil rights is done, he goes on to claim, and the only reason for keeping these laws on the books is the evil left-wing plot to “validate the slander that America is a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic country which would revert to massive discrimination were it not for heroic progressives standing guard.”
Where would anyone get the idea that there was a problem with homophobia in this country? From Arizona, say, or Georgia or Ohio or Indiana, which all tried to pass legislation making it okay to discriminate against gays? That’s crazy talk.
Uncle Patty has a much better solution: segregation.
“As for the Christians of Arizona and same-sex unions in Arizona," he said, "if they don't like each other, can they not just avoid each other? After all, it's a big state.”
2. Bill O’Reilly: 'Women have gender-deficiencies and therefore should not be president, right?'
Desperate for further confirmation that Hillary should never become president, O’Reilly invited two actual women on his show for a serious discussion of women’s unfitness to lead the free world, due to their “gender deficiencies.” It was not enough that Michele Bachmann already said the country was not ready for a woman president. O’Reilly invited Republican strategist Kate Obenshain and Fox contributor Kirsten Powers on to discuss the issue, but it didn’t go as planned. First, O’Reilly asked Powers if there was “some downside to having a woman president, something that may not fit with that office, correct?”
“Hmmm, I’m gonna say say, no, Bill,” Powers said.
O’Reilly admitted that men, “may not be as open to sensitive discussion as women,” then practically begged Obenshain to back him up on the woman thing,. “There’s gotta be a downside for a woman, do you know one?” he asked her. There’s just gotta be; throw the poor suffering fool a bone."
“Uh, you know, I’m having a tough time with this one too, Bill,” Obenshain said, adding, “It depends on the certain individual.”
But wouldn’t Russian president Putin, North Korea, the Chinese and “the mullahs” all test a hypothetical Hillary Clinton presidency, O’Reilly wondered.
“But, Bill, they do that to everybody,” Powers replied.
Quick, get Michele Bachmann back on the show. She's a woman who knows her gender is deficient.
h/t: Rawstory
3. Ted Nugent: 'I know I took back the whole ‘subhuman mongrel’ thing, and promised not to call people names, but Obama is a Nazi trying to start a race war... just saying.'
No, Ted Nugent cannot shut up, thank you very much. Even though his brother Jeff told him to tone it down, and his kids have asked him to stop calling people names. To Erin Burnett, he simply denied any racial component to his calling the President "subhuman" because there is "not a racist bone in my body." Nope, not one. Not when he argued that African Americans could fix "the black problem" if they just put their "heart and soul into being honest [and] law-abiding." Not when he said, "I'm beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War" or that "black communities across America" have a "mindless tendency to violence."
Nope, no racism there.
Later, with conservative dickhead Dennis Miller, Nugent defended his claim that Obama is like Hitler, trying to start a race war with Obamacare and the IRS, and said people who work for the administration are like “jack-booted thugs” and “brownshirts.”
The whole pledge to stop calling people names is totally working out for Ted.
4. Paula Deen sees her struggle as very like Michael Sam’s coming out.
Actually, that’s not quite right. Paula Deen did not compare herself to NFL prospect Michael Sam—she compared herself to “that black football player.”
She said, “I’m fighting to get my name back,” adding, “I feel like ‘embattled’ or ‘disgraced’ will always follow my name. It’s like that black football player who recently came out. He said, ‘I just want to be known as a football player. I don’t want to be known as a gay football player.’ I know exactly what he’s saying.”
Got it. So Paula does not want to be known as a gay black football player. You got a problem with that?
5. Pat Robertson gets to use the word sodomy a whole bunch. Praise the Lord.
The other Patty, who so enjoys using that word sodomy, perhaps because it sounds biblical to him—all nice and Old Testamenty—weighed in this week.
You can imagine the state the TV preacher was in about the events in Arizona—not that this whole equal rights for same-sex couples thing hasn’t had his knickers in a twist for quite a while. “What we’re seeing now, more and more, the rights of homosexuals—the practice of Homo.Sex.U.Al.Ity, sodomy, consensual sodomy—is being raised and elevated above the rights of religious believers,” he ranted, complete with finger wag. “And that is terrible!”
You can imagine his distress, because, in his view Arizona’s proposed SB 1062, which would have allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT people, had “nothing to do with limiting homosexuals.” Nothing.
Instead, “It has to do with giving religious people the right to practice their religion freely,” he concluded.
Which means the freedom to discriminate.
6. Louie Gohmert: 'God answered my prayers by creating the Tea Party.'
Little known verse in Genesis: And on the eighth day, God created the Tea Party. And he saw that it was... well, f*cking nuts!
Well, that is one version of events. The other is cuckoobird Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who says the Tea Party is God’s answer to his personal prayers. Gohmert was marking the fifth anniversary of the founding of the marvelous Tea Party movement, which has brought so much intelligent, nuanced debate to our country, in a speech to the Tea Party Patriots, a.k.a., like-minded nutjobs.
He reminded the assembled what a horrific year 2008 was. McCain lost to Obama; Pelosi became Speaker of the House; Harry Reid maintained leadership in the Senate. “And Anthony Weiner got some new friends to text with,” Gohmert said. Ooh, good one.
But out of the ashes, came people who just did not want to pay any more taxes. The very people Louie Gohmert had conjured in his personal conversations with God. It was a goll-darned miracle, “an answer to my prayers,’” Gohmert said.
The Lord works in very mysterious ways, that is for sure.
7. Gavin McInnes: 'Dominicans abuse food stamps, and use them as a fat pill.'
Why should the homophobes get all the attention this week? What about the racists? They deserve their turn. Enter Vice magazine founder Gavin McInnes, who is famous for telling various publications how much he enjoys being white, and how much he does not enjoy non-whites. This week, he told Fox News' host Sean Hannity that he should not demonize some white surfer who is on food stamps because it’s those Dominicans in New York who are the real food stamp abusers—they are using them as a “fat pill,” he said.
We had not heard of this “fat pill” before. Please do enlighten us, Gavin.
Democratic activist Jehmu Greene, The liberal foil on the show, pointed out that it was wrong to demonize the food assistance program and hungry children because of one surfer Bill O’Reilly’s producer found in California.
“Why not? Let’s demonize them!” McInnes exclaimed. “Have you seen the poor? They’re gigantic! They’re overfed!”
“Talk to a hungry child,” Greene suggested.
“I’d love to,” McInnes replied. “I can’t talk to them, they’re too big, they can’t get off their chair."
If you're a little lost here, you're not alone.
8. Jack Bridwell just does not understand why people are offended by a Confederate flag license plate.
Jack Bridwell, the state commander of the Georgia division of Sons of Confederate Veterans, has designed a specialty license plate that prominently features a large Confederate battle flag. He cannot, for the life of him, understand why this might be controversial or offensive. “What’s the big deal?” he asked plaintively this week. “If I offend anyone, I don’t understand why because we had the emblem on there for years.”
Well, that certainly makes it much better.
Guess he missed the part in history class explaining that the Confederate flag represents racism, injustice, slavery and oppression of blacks, as well as the South just refusing to accept the results of a democratic election. But this is his heritage, and he wants to celebrate it.
Next month: Third Reich heritage month?
9. CNBC’s Joe Kernen: 'Climate change is like witchcraft.'
It’s great to know you can find lunatics all over TV and that idiocy is not limited to Fox News. This winter has really thrown off a lot of people who are immune to scientific study. Because it’s been so cold out their front doors on the East Coast. So therefore, climate change is a hoax, no matter what’s going on in Australia or California. What matters is whether they have to wear a really warm coat or not.
CNBC’s Joe Kernen says climate change, and January’s record-setting heat, probably had nothing to do with increasing CO2 emissions. No, he prefers to go with the explanation that it is just inexplicable.
“It’s almost like witchcraft,” Kernen said on Thursday. “In the Middle Ages it was witchcraft. You would have attributed adverse weather events to witchcraft. Now we just have CO2 at this point.”
Yes, Joe, those two things are very similar, science and witchcraft, witchcraft and science. Whatever.
Then again, this was the week, as Phil Plait pointed out in Slate, when a lot of climate science deniers lost their “expletive deleted.” It was hard to outdo Charles Krauthammer’s Washington Post op-ed in which he called climate scientists “whores.”
In the biblical sense, of course.
10. Cheney rears his Darth Vader-like head: 'Obama would rather buy food stamps than have a strong military.'
It is not enough for Dick Cheney that Barack Obama has upped America’s use of drones and used them to kill more innocent folks in the Middle East than his predecessor. The president has gone soft, Cheney says. He would rather spend money on “food stamps” than on the military. Cheney expressed this view on Monday to Sean Hannity in an interview about the proposal put forth by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calling for shrinking the Army to its smallest size in 74 years, closing bases and reshaping forces. The former vice president called the cuts “ just devastating.”
Even worse? A compassionate president. Truly awful.
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