6 worst right-wing moments of the week — Fox News' demented immigration tantrum

Nearly everyone on Fox lost their minds this past week, while others reacted badly to Bill Cosby allegations

Published November 24, 2014 1:31PM (EST)

Tucker Carlson                      (Fox News)
Tucker Carlson (Fox News)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet1. CNN’s Don Lemon offers advice to Cosby rape accuser on how not to be raped.

CNN anchor Don Lemon scored an interview with one of the growing number of women to have come forward and accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault this week, a woman by the name of Joan Tarshis. The interview took a turn for the worse when Lemon decided to offer his opinions of what Tarshis, who said she was drugged and incapacitated at the time, should have clearmindedly done in the situation.

"You — you know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you didn’t want to do it." Just in case his meaning wasn't clear, he specified that he meant “the using of the teeth.”

How very helpful of Lemon, who pressed on to amply demonstrate his lack of understanding of the power dynamics of rape. The only question is: Did the fact that he and Cosby bonded over their shared view that African Americans need to take more “personal responsibility” influence his line of totally inappropriate questioning? Or does his misunderstanding of rape and willing perpetuation of rape myths stand all on its own?

Lemon apologized afterward, not that it matters, and not that we believe him. This is a guy, after all, who has found himself nodding in agreement with Bill O’Reilly on how blacks must solve their own problems. It isn’t so hard to not say stupid, deeply offensive things on the air. And it helps if that isn’t your mindset to begin with.

2. Whoopi Goldberg acts like a total jerk about the Bill Cosby rape allegations.

Not anyone’s definition of a right-winger, Whoopi Goldberg is outspokenly progressive on a lot of issues. Rape is not one of them. She and her fellow co-hosts on "The View”  expressed some general skepticism about the accusations against Bill Cosby drugging and raping multiple women, mostly because Bill Cosby is a friend of theirs, and that’s, like, totally awkward. Goldberg has wrestled with the definition of rape before—for instance, she opined that a 43-year-old man sodomizing an unconscious 13-year-old girl apparently  isn’t “rape-rape” in her world.

Rape-rape requires blood and bruises. Really serious injuries are great. And no one questions a dead woman, apparently.

Goldberg made it amply clear that she does not believe Cosby accuser Barbara Bowman. Bowman is one of more than a dozen women who claim they were sexually assaulted by Cosby.

“Quite honestly, you know, look, I’m sorry, having been on both sides of this where people allege that you do something, it doesn’t matter now,” Goldberg said. “The cat is out of the bag, people have it in their heads. I have a lot of questions for the lady. Maybe she’ll come on.”

No doubt she will with a welcome mat like that.

Goldberg took the opportunity to offer a lecture on the proper behavior of a rape victim. “The police might’ve believed it,” Goldberg said. “Or the hospital, where you go — and don’t you do a kit when you say someone has raped you? Isn’t that the next step once you make an allegation?”

All "The View" ladies, save Rosie O’Donnell, agreed that the fact that women are accusing Cosby of rape has put them in a really terrible position since they are kind of obligated to discuss the news and current events. How thoughtless of those women.

3. What the hell was Lemony Snicket, a.k.a. Daniel Handler thinking?

It’s bad enough dealing with the constant onslaught of racism and hate-spew from Fox News, newly elected Republican nutjobs and other assorted old white men, but when it comes from supposedly intelligent cultural success stories. Really, wtf? The writer Daniel Handler, author of the popular Lemony Snicket books,  was a presenter at the National Book Awards last week, and idiotically made a racist "joke" at the expense of one of the winners, Jacqueline Woodson, whom he says is a friend.

After Woodson accepted her award for young people’s literature for her “ Brown Girl Dreaming,” Handler got up and took the stage, saying:

"I told you! I told Jackie she was going to win. And I said that if she won, I would tell all of you something I learned this summer, which is that Jackie Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink in your mind."

Again, wtf?

"And I said you have to put that in a book. And she said, you put that in a book. And I said I am only writing a book about a black girl who is allergic to watermelon if I get a blurb from you, Cornell West, Toni Morrison, and Barack Obama saying, 'This guy’s okay. This guy’s fine.'"

You might have thought he’d figure it out from Woodson’s response to his suggestion, “you put it in a book.” But no, he ran with this idiotic, racist story that took all the attention away from this woman's accomplishment. Because he’s soooo funny and successful and such a good guy, and has black friends, and it’s okay if he says stuff like this, because he gets it.

Ugghh.

He apologized later, of course, first calling it an “ill-conceived attempt at humor,” then later allowing that it was just plain old racist. But apologies like this seem kind of irrelevant. It’s just not that hard. Don’t be racist. That’s all. And if you can't manage that, just don't talk.

4. Fox Newsians hate the fact that Obama quoted “Scripture” in his immigration speech. “No fair,” Tucker Carlson, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Mike Huckabee whine.

To review, Obama is Hitler, Caesar, the Antichrist and a Muslim extremist wrapped into one.

So, how offensive was it that this not-Christian enough president had the audacity to quote the Bible during his immigration speech? Fox Newsians were really incensed about that, among other things, this week. In case you missed it, (and you probably did, since the networks did not see fit to air the President’s speech) Obama said:

“Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.”

Nice turn of phrase, right?

Wrong!

On "Fox & Friends," Tucker Carlson said Obama was just trying to claim that “God is on [his] side.” The nerve!

“It’s repugnant,” Carlson said, “for this guy specifically, the president who spent his career defending late-term abortion, among other things, lecturing us on Christian faith? That’s too much. That is too much. This is the Christian left at work, and it’s repugnant.”

The Christian left, huh? Would that include, uh, Jesus?

Elisabeth Hasselbeck chimed in that Obama’s wasn’t “proper use” of the Bible, whatever the hell that means. It’s only properly used when people on the right try to justify their actions, apparently.

Mike Huckabee whined and simultaneously showed his awareness of current events on his Facebook page, saying, “I always thought that Scripture was eternal and unchanging. But apparently, now that Obama is President, Scripture gets rewritten more often than Bill Cosby’s Wikipedia entry.”

Ooh, burn.

5. Rand Paul makes bizarre parallel between Obama’s action and Japanese Internment camps.

Libertarian Rand Paul sometimes gets trotted out (by people like Bill Maher) as a potentially reasonable, centrist alternative to Clinton in the next presidential election. The only problem is, he’s a little batsh*t crazy.

Paul’s lunacy was on display this week when he made a peculiar historical analogy between Obama’s executive order on immigration and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order authorizing Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

Well, they were both executive orders, weren't they?

In Paul’s words:

"I care that too much power gets in one place. Why? Because there are instances in our history where we allow power to gravitate toward one person and that one person then makes decisions that really are egregious," Paul said. "Think of what happened in World War II where they made the decision. The president issued an executive order. He said to Japanese people 'we're going to put you in a camp. We're going to take away all your rights and liberties and we're going to intern you in a camp.'"

"We shouldn't allow that much power to gravitate to one individual. We need to separate the power."

We should not allow any power to gravitate to Paul, that's for sure.

6. Fox’s Eric Bolling has a theory that even he thinks is “crazy” about Obama’s immigration order.

"Fox Five" cohosts Eric Bolling and Kimberly Guilfoyle were just chatting about Obama's immigration order. You know, just chatting.

"Can I be a little conspiracy theorist here for a minute?" Bolling said, launching into a peculiar idea about the timing of the president's announcement. "He’s going to do it because he promised his base he would do it before the end of the year. That's like six weeks, so why now? What’s coming down the pike now?"

"The Latin Grammys?"  Kimberly Guilfoyle interjected. Ooh, she’s a pistol, that gal.

No, said Bolling. It was a rhetorical question. Don’t step on my line.

Guilfoyle compliments herself for her clever answer though.

“Ferguson,” said Bolling.

See how it all fits together?

"There’s going to be news about Ferguson and that’s going to distract everyone," Bolling predicted. "Two or three weeks later, everyone is going to say, ‘did he just slip amnesty in without anyone talking about it much?’"

Don’t know about you Eric, but it seems like there’s been a fair amount of talk about it.

“I don’t know maybe I’m crazy,” Bolling said, disingenuously.

Crazy might be too nice a word.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


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

Alternet Bill Cosby Don Lemon Eric Bolling Rand Paul Tucker Carlson Whoopi Goldberg