Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
Michele Bachmann
Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) earned her regular spot on this list with her hysterically unbalanced speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday. Among other outrageous statements, Bachmann claimed that President Obama wastes $1.4 billion per year on perks like dog walkers and chefs, and that 70 percent of food stamps actually go to “bureaucrats” — lies that are so preposterously false that Washington Post Glenn Kessler was forced to conclude that “there really aren’t enough Pinocchios for such misleading use of statistics in a major speech.”
Perhaps most absurdly, Bachmann insisted that scientists could cure Alzheimer’s Disease within 10 years “if we’d only put our mind to it” — but unfortunately, scientists are too upset about over-regulation and taxes to bother with it:
When CNN’s Dana Bash attempted to confront Bachmann over her crazy statements on Thursday, the Tea Party’s favorite congressperson made arguably her sanest decision in years: She literally ran away from the cameras.
Rush Limbaugh
Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh tried his hand at music criticism Wednesday, when he asserted that the new Beyoncé song “Bow Down/I Been On” is actually an affirmation of Limbaugh’s misogynistic worldview.
“She got married, she married the rich guy, she now understands. She now understands it’s worth it to bow down,” Limbaugh said.
As Media Matterspoints out, actual music critics agree that Beyoncé’s lyrics are a shot at her critics, not a command for women to submit to their husbands. So, in case this was somehow unclear before, you should not be getting your pop culture analysis from Rush Limbaugh.
Steve Stockman
Deranged representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has never been a friend to environmentalists, and on Thursday he stepped up his antagonism with a bizarre rant on Twitter. After asking “why do liberals hate science?” the congressman fired off a series of tweets ranging from misleading to downright odd:
Energy-rich oil propelled civilization into the 21st Century. But liberals want to turn back the clock to inefficient Bronze Age wind power.
— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013
There is reportedly $1 trillion in oil off the coast of California. But liberal hatred of science and human progress keeps them bankrupt — Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013
Funny thing about liberals hating oil and gas – they’re expressing it on computers made from petrochemicals. Why do liberals hate science? — Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013
The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.
— Rep. Steve Stockman (@SteveStockmanTX) March 21, 2013
Truth be told, given Stockman’s long record of genuinely crazy behavior, praising Earth for emitting gas when poked is really not so far out of the ordinary.
Oliver North
On the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, many media outlets took a long look at how the United States could have been so wrong about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Not Fox News, however. Instead it chose to play host to disgraced Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, who spread a conspiracy theory about Saddam’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and blamed President Obama for the chaos in Iraq.
In an effort to prove that the war was “worth it,” North asserted “We got rid of a brutal despot who used chemical and biological weapons against his own people. Weapons of mass destruction that he probably exported to Sudan before we got there.”
This theory has been repeatedly debunked — not that anyone should expect North to tell the truth when it comes to weapons in the Middle East.
The Bible Viewers
The History Channel’s popular miniseries, The Bible, attracted controversy this week when a number of viewers noticed that the show’s depiction of Satan looked suspiciously like a certain sitting U.S. president:
The network quickly released a statement saying “History Channel has the highest respect for President Obama,” and “It’s unfortunate that anyone made this false connection.” Similarly, executive producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey insisted that “this is utter nonsense. The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics– including Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our president.”
That wasn’t good enough for many of Obama’s loonier opponents, however. Right-wing conspiracy repository WorldNetDailyviewed the similarity as the latest in a long series of signs that President Obama is Beelzebub, the Biblical “Lord of the Flies.”
Not to be outdone, right-wing radio host Rick Wiles posited, “I think God guided the hand of the makeup artist and blinded the eyes of everybody on the movie set while it was being recorded, and the spiritual blinders were removed Sunday night when the program was broadcast nationally on the History Channel.”
“How many clues do we need from Heaven to understand that the man in the White House is a devil from Hell?” he asked. Hopefully nobody ever shows Wiles the Game Of Thrones episode featuring the likeness of George W. Bush.
