1. Fox gets Charleston shootings wrong in a wildly improbable way.
Fox Newsians might be given points for creativity if their views were not downright despicable. Their ability to deny the reality that is plainly in front of every sentient being in the universe continues to stagger. The poisonous mix of racism and guns that killed nine peaceful souls in a Charleston church is the elephant in the room that these toxicity and vapidity spewers are ever more at pains not to see.
This one comes to you from the Fox program, "America’s Newsroom," hosted by Martha MacCallum. She was joined by guests Marjorie Clifton, former Obama campaign consultant, and journalist Mary Katherine Ham, who discussed whether the mass shooting might have to do with poor access to mental health, or maybe gun control laws. Easy access to guns? Naahh. D’yah think?
But MacCallum preferred a different explanation. Much as she had to grudgingly admit President Obama was right, that these horrors do happen more often here than in other countries, she parts company with him in explaining why.
“That may be because of the kind of society we are. We have a lot of different cultures living here together,” she said. “We’re a very unique society and that’s a very wonderful thing, in large part. But that may be a contributing factor here.”
Yes, more racism is definitely what the world needs now.
The sound of her guests’ jaws dropping and angels crying was audible.
2. Steve Doocy places himself solidly in contention for craziest, most atrocious Fox Newsian.
This is a very competitive category—it’s hard, very hard to go up against perennial favorites like Hannity and O’Reilly, but Steve Doocy and Elisabeth Hasselbeck are serious contenders. Hasselbeck opened their Thursday morning segment by casting the Charleston shooting as an attack on faith—it was at a church, after all—with no mention of race. “If we’re not safe in our churches, then where are we safe?” she breathlessly wondered. With that absurd spin, she and her co-hosts invited nutcase pastor E.W. Jackson to make the case that arming pastors is a good idea, because of the “rising hostility toward Christians in this country.”
Doocy’s turn to spew nonsense: “Extraordinarily, they called it a hate crime,” he said. “Because it was apparently a white guy in a black church.” He was dumbfounded. Where would people get that it was racially motivated? He did manage to calm himself down by suggesting that the “hate crime” aspect of it must have been because it was a church.
At Fox, the war on reason and reality rages ever on.
3. Rick Perry is very, very confused about things.
Rick Perry has never distinguished himself as a terribly intelligent man. He has often seemed befuddled and confused, along with wrong about just about everything. But he performed some real mental gymnastics in the wake of the horrific mass murder in Charleston by a white supremacist terrorist. Perry dumbfounded us all when he called the shooting an “accident.” Yeah, he did. An accident caused by drugs.
Seriously, wtf.
His primary aim in spewing this utter nonsense was to go after President Obama for his strong anti-gun reaction, which shouldn’t seem like a politically brave stance to take, but perversely, is. Perry to Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV: “This is the [modus operandi] of this administration, any time there is an accident like this,” Perry said. “The president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message.”
Did someone say “parrot"?
Was it an act of terrorism, his host asked?
I’ll tell you what was terrorism, Perry replied, that Charlie Hebdo attack.
Huh?
Shifting topics again as his mind pinged from one nonsensical thought to the next, Perry concluded that prescription drugs were the culprit.
“It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used,” Perry said.
The absurdometer just broke.
4. Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld accuses Pope Francis of being “the most dangerous person on the planet.”
While some Fox Newsians were declaring that the Charleston shooting was evidence of the country’s war on Christianity, the Five’s Greg Gutfeld declared a vendetta against the leader of the Catholic Church.
Weird, right?
But there it is again, that missing hypocrisy-sensing brain function.
The current Pope has been making the right-wingers of the world apoplectic ever since he declared we should love atheists. Then he had the audacity to care about the poor, and lament rampant inequality. Now, he cares about the Earth. Man! What gives?
The Pontiff’s groundbreaking encyclical on the environment warns of “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem” unless human beings make drastic changes. It seems that the religious leader has done what right-wing pols have always suggested, left science to the scientists, who have long been telling us we’re screwed if we don’t do something fast.
Gutfeld isn’t taking that lying down. He had a few choice words for his Holiness. “He doesn’t want to be your grandfather’s Pope. He wants to be a modern Pope. All he needs is dreadlocks and a dog with a bandana and he could be on Occupy Wall Street,” he ranted.
He went on insanely about the Pope being Malthusian, actually being “in bed with Malthus,” which is weird, because Malthus is dead. “He believes that the Earth is overpopulated,“ Gutfeld sputtered, “and remember he said Catholics have to stop breeding like rabbits? Do you remember where that came from? That’s a Malthusian belief. And Malthusians believe that the Earth is overpopulated and it would be nice if there were a few billion people less. How does that happen? Global warming.”
It was pretty unhinged. Juan Williams, a voice of reason who somehow found his way onto Fox, told Gutfeld that maybe being better stewards of the Earth was not really political. “I think the problem for you is that you put it in a box of pure politics, left and right,” he said. “What about if the Pope is simply saying… we should do all we can to support God’s green earth. Is that so radical?”
Gutfeld’s response: “Um, he has a Marxist background.”
Deeply unhinged stuff.
5. Jeb Bush perfectly demonstrates the conservative brain's inability to recognize irony and hypocrisy.
Jeb! Bush announced his candidacy for the presidency this week, stunning millions of Americans. Really? Who could have possibly predicted this turn of events?
Hilariously, Jeb! uttered the following words during his speech. “The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next.” Hmmm, “passed on,” interesting choice of words, Jeb! Similar to “passed down,” as in passed down from one family member to the next.
Seriously, does he just want us to mock him? He does, doesn’t he.
“In this country of ours, the most improbable things can happen as well,” he continued. “Take that from a guy who met his first president on the day he was born and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital.”
Oh yeah, so improbable. It is not as if family connections helped Bush get where he is. But as long as it’s not liberals handing things off to each other, we’re good.
Note, this numbskull is the so-called plausible candidate, not a rider in the overstuffed clown car that got a little more crowded when a certain attention-addicted orange comb-over hired some actors to listen as he announced his presidency and just how very rich he is.
6. S.E. Cupp: Trump will pull other candidates toward reality.
Oh. Hahahahahaha.
Good one. Wait, she’s not kidding. Oh, must be she thinks Trump’s obvious egomaniacal delusionary state will shock everyone else back to some semblance of reality.
Nope.
While appearing on CNN’s New Day, S.E. Cupp had to admit, Trump’s speech announcing his candidacy was a hot rambling mess. But. “What’s sad is Trump is right,” she said. “He is qualified. He has qualifications that would make him an interesting person to run for president.”
It is very difficult to identify what planet this woman lives on.
It’s that irresistible straight-shooter quality of Trump’s she so admires, that willingness to call all Mexicans rapists and brag about selling an apartment to a Chinese person. It’s perfectly marvelous, just what the nation needs in a leader. That relatable hatemongering jackass quality.
Political analyst John Avlon helpfully pointed out that Trump is actually an utterly shameless caricature of a caricature.
Yeah, S.E. conceded, he lacks “discipline,” and “frightens” people. Then she added that this is what makes him so “fun.”
That is some seriously sick shit.
h/t: Raw Story
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