5 worst right-wing moments of the week — Laura Ingraham's awful Ferguson claims

The Fox News pundit claims arrested journalists deserve it, while Rush Limbaugh soars to new heights of disrespect

Published August 18, 2014 12:50PM (EDT)

Laura Ingraham                                   (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)
Laura Ingraham (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. Rush Limbaugh’s toxicity reaches new heights with Robin Williams comments.

There were many contenders for biggest a**hole in response to the news of Robin Williams' suicide this week. Fox’s Shep Smith called the beloved entertainer a “coward,” and a pro-life group absurdly opined that a long-ago abortion led to Williams’ depression. But old reliable Rush Limbaugh came out on top of the soulless heap, and remains the undisputed king of the toxic right-wing spew-i-verse. Depression and suicide are not even remotely political issues, yet Rush decided to try to score some points off the actor and his family’s tragedy. It was Williams’ left-wing politics that killed him, Rush asserted. We suspect even he knows this is utter poppycock.

"What is the left’s worldview in general?” Limbaugh said on his radio show, a day after Williams’ death was announced. “If you had to attach, not a philosophy, but an attitude to a leftist world view, it’s one of pessimism and darkness and sadness. They’re never happy, are they?”

One can hardly blame progressives for being a bit demoralized these days, and listening to Rush is enough to drive any reasonable person around the bend, but this has nothing to do with depression, which strikes people everywhere on the political spectrum. Rush knows that. It hardly matters that he tried lamely to walk back those comments the next day. Well, not really, he just tried to blame—who else—the leftist media for misconstruing his words. Not so. We heard you Rush. Loud and despicably clear. Again.

2. Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Atheists persecute Christians kind of like ISIS persecutes Christians.

During the summer, when the war on Christmas is not being waged, atheists must content themselves with waging war on Christians, cruelly depriving them of the Bible in all sorts of public spaces. This is the view put forward by Fox & Friends’ Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who said this week: “It looks like two groups might not get the Bible.... Bibles are booted from Navy base guest rooms, and an atheist group is telling a Georgia high school football team to punt the prayers.” (First of all, who writes this stuff? Punt the prayers? Good one!)

You know who those mean old atheists persecuting Christians and making them bring their own Bibles to Navy base guest rooms remind Hasselbeck of? ISIS, that’s who. Islamic terrorists. She reads the papers. She knows what’s going on in the world. Christians are being persecuted in Iraq by extremist Sunni militants. It’s all part of the worldwide plot to eliminate Christianity, and those atheist/terrorists right here at home are in on it, by insisting that Bibles have no place in public institutions.

Oy gevalt.

Hasselbeck calls what atheists are doing “eliminating religious freedom,” when in fact both freedom of religion and freedom from religion are enshrined in the good ol' constitution. A small detail.

3. Fox News ‘Doc’ Ablow insults First Lady’s fitness, figuring it’s fair because she hates America.

Keith Ablow, that sterling member of Fox’s “Medical A-Team” is rapidly becoming one of the most gag-inducing figures on the network. He went there this week, all the way to the depths of douchebaggery, criticizing Michelle Obama’s figure, not once, but twice, the second time in defense of the first time. “I’m not taking food advice from an American who dislikes America, who in many photographs during her tenure as First Lady is obviously not fit,” he told Politico, just doubling down on being a full-on cretinous troll.

The head case, whoops, we mean "head doctor," had already gone there on the subject of Michelle Obama’s body on the air, commenting that she needs to “drop a few.” Not even his right-wing female colleagues at Fox could stomach that. Not that it is at all pertinent, but the First Lady’s fitness is rather legendary, her arms the envy of many. Ablow’s comments are transparently misogynist, and it is probably only a matter of time before he and his twisted colleagues decide the Obama daughters are fair game, since their father has the audacity to be president while black, and their mother has the gall to try to educate Americans about food, nutrition, health and exercise while black. She obviously hates America if she is trying to do that.

4. Steve King: Racial profiling in Ferguson? What racial profiling? They are all from the same continent.

Pretty much every time the Iowa Rep opens his mouth something cringe-worthy emerges, and this week was no exception. Iowa is kind of the new Missouri, so J.D. Hayworth of Newsmax decided it would be a good idea to get the extremist Tea Partying congressman most known for his blatantly racist views about immigrants to comment on the disturbing events in Ferguson.

The question for Steve King (and who would question his credentials on this topic?) was whether the call for an investigation into racial profiling on the part of Ferguson’s trigger-happy, riot gear-wielding police force was legit. King’s statements were predictably and headscratchingly offensive.

“I’ve seen the video,” he said. “And it looks to me like you don’t need to bother with that particular factor because they all appear to be of a single origin. I should say continental origin might be the way to phrase that.”

Okay, so huh? Are we talking about the continent of Africa? Because, yes, that appears to be what King is saying. You can’t have racial profiling when everyone is black.

There you have it. A prime example of the logic of the insane.

5. Laura Ingraham: Arrested journalists in Ferguson deliberately provoked the police. This is obviously true because Obama criticized the police and whatever side he takes is wrong.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham maintained her status in the pantheon of the hateful this week by going after journalists doing their job in Ferguson, and getting arrested for it. Really, Laura? That’s the position you’re going to take? That WaPo reporter Les Lowry was “looking for a confrontation” with the police inside a McDonalds, and deserved not only to be arrested, but to have his head slammed into a soda machine. President Obama spoke out against the police overreaction, and Ingraham is contractually bound never to agree with anything the President says, so what else could she do?

In an interview with the hardly radical Howie Kurtz, who defended the reporters, Ingraham insisted on repeatedly expressing sympanthy for the “young cops” who were dealing with a difficult situation, and who, after all, were being provoked by the reporters trying to record them by “holding iPhones up in their faces.” The more she talked, the more she made it clear she believed that the mere presence of journalists, with their cameras, satellite dishes, computers, and other tools of the trade were deliberate provocations to the police, who quite understandably sprayed tear gas at an entire Al Jazeera television crew.

She said she hated to sound like a “police apologist” but...ummm...if the shoe fits.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


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

Alternet Elisabeth Hasselbeck Keith Ablow Laura Ingraham Rush Limbaugh Steve King