This Week In Crazy: Put The Devil Back Into Hell
666 is not only the number of the Beast â it is also, it seems, the number of weeks this election cycle has been going on. Welcome to âThis Week In Crazy,â The National Memoâs weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Monica Cole
Well, Iâm glad we have our priorities in order. Monica Cole, director of the American Family Associationâs One Million Moms initiative, has her sights set on getting FOXâs new show Lucifer kicked off the air by organizing a boycott of companies that advertise on the network.
The new show, she writes, is âspiritually dangerousâ because it âglorifies Satan as a caring, likable person in human flesh.â Cole complains that the show poses questions âmeant to make people rethink assumptions about good and evil, including about God and Satan.â
Permit a digression into comic book geekdom for a moment. This TV series is based on the DC Comicsâ title Lucifer, written by Mike Carey, but this interpretation of the character originally appeared in The Sandman, the groundbreaking comic penned by prolific scribe Neil Gaiman. Gaiman said he took cues for his Lucifer from John Miltonâs Paradise Lost when he fashioned the character. So letâs all stop pretending that literary works using the Satan archetype to examine weighty issues of predestination, free will, and moral character is, like, Barack Obamaâs fault, or something remotely new.
Gaiman issued a succinct rebuttal to the OMMs on his Tumblr, when the they got this boycott thing kicking eight months ago:
Ah. It seems like only yesterday (but it was 1991) that the âConcerned Mothers of Americaâ announced that they were boycotting SANDMAN because it contained Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans characters. It was Wanda that upset them most: the idea of a Trans Woman in a comic book⊠They told us they were organizing a boycott of SANDMAN, which they would only stop if we wrote to the American Family Association and promised to reform.
I wonder if they noticed it didnât work last time, eitherâŠ
I should note here that organizing a boycott is totally cool â and hopefully trying to tell Olive Garden where to spend their marketing dollars will keep the OMMs distracted and occupied enough that they wonât do anything that might have an actual impact.
Next: Gordon Klingenschmitt and Lance Wallnau
4. Gordon Klingenschmitt and Lance Wallnau
Itâs been a while since weâve had Dr. Chaps on this page. Gordon Klingenschmitt, readers will recall, is the ringmaster behind the âPray In Jesusâ Nameâ program, a pastor, and the Colorado lawmaker who said that a woman getting her child ripped out of her womb in an assault was Godâs just punishment.
In an interview originally flagged by People for the American Wayâs Right Wing Watch, Dr. Chaps hosted on his program Lance Wallnau, a proponent of Dominionist ideology which holds that Biblical literalists can and should control government and other social institutions.
Wallnau shared with Chaps a juicy tidbit he had received from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (who last summer claimed to possess knowledge of a âsecret memoâ that the Justice Department was planning to legalize â12 new perversions,â so grain of salt and all that).
Per RWW:
DeLay apparently revealed to Wallnau that leading left-wing political strategists had convened a secret meeting at which 100 very wealthy donors agreed to give a million dollars apiece to found and fund a series of progressive groups that would carry out their agenda while maintaining the appearance of independence.
Wallnau asserted that this secret effort, called âThunder Road,â set out to identify the weaknesses in the conservative movement âand then created nine or 10 siege works, or engines, single-issue organizations that would be tasked to break down the wall and exploit the weakness.â
Here he listed the names of some of the groups tasked with bringing about this nefarious plot, including Media Matters, MoveOn, and Right Wing Watch.
Hat tip and video courtesy of the âThunder Roadâ conspirators at Right Wing Watch
Next: Bill OâReilly and Friends
3. Bill OâReilly, Lis Wiehl, and Kimberly Guilfoyle
As you may recall, anti-abortion activists from the disingenuously named Center for Medical Progress (CMP) created a phony biomedical tissue procurement company, falsified their identities to set up surreptitiously filmed meetings, and then deceptively edited the footage they shot to make Planned Parenthood appear to be running a racket, harvesting and selling baby parts for profit.
The videos inspired a congressional probe and several state investigations (not to mention likely spurring a mentally disturbed man into killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic, citing âno more baby partsâ as his motive). So far, the only malfeasance thatâs been uncovered is that of the âjournalistsâ themselves. A Harris County, Texas, grand jury handed down indictments of CMP founder Daniel Daleidan and an accomplice, one of which was for the felony of tampering with a governmental record.
Count on Bill OâReilly to downplay the alleged wrongdoings and nakedly anti-womenâs-rights agenda of the CMP, and praise them instead for their spunky ingenuity. Or as the no-spinster put it: The group âput together undercover stings designed to show that Planned Parenthood executives were marketing the body parts of dead fetuses.â (They were, indeed, âdesigned to showâ it â in blatant contradiction of the facts â but OâReilly neglects to mention that.)
Chatting with Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl and The Five co-host Kimbery Guilfoyle on the Factor Tuesday night, OâReilly led a nice self-enclosed roundtable discussion, reinforcing the notion that the alleged crimes alleged (forging California drivers licenses) were entirely justified by the higher calling of âinvestigative journalismâ to âuncover the practice that was happening,â as Guilfoyle put it. She also praised the group for its âfine workâ and said the indictments represented a âwitch hunt.â
According to Wiehlâs legal analysis, the charges were bogus since the fraudulent documents were not intended to commit fraud, but rather to âuncover illegal activity.â (That they didnât actually uncover any seems not to matter terribly to her.)
The segment carelessly bandies the same falsehoods about Planned Parenthood, and the videos, that have been circulating since CMP released the tapes last summer. OâReilly and his guests rally behind the anti-abortion crew on the dubious premise that they are âjournalists.â In fairness, one could argue that what the group did was journalism â by Fox News standards.
Of course, they werenât the only pundits on Fox News to praise the anti-abortion groupâŠ
2. Steve Doocy and Andrew Napolitano
On Tuesdayâs edition of Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy and Andrew Napolitano gabbed a bit about how the indicted activists are no different from any other good gumshoe reporter. Regarding the crimes they are alleged to have committed, Doocy said: âJournalists use these techniques everyday.â
Once again âletâs be clear here â these are people who deliberately and deceptively edited their footage to convey untruths that would smear an organization that provides healthcare services for 2.7 million men and women in the U.S. every year.
Per Napolitano:
This is really a head-scratcher. And Iâm beginning to think that it is a political hit job on the people who did the investigating. So you have bonafide journalists assuming identities, pretending to be medical ethicists or people in the business of dealing with body parts going to Planned Parenthood saying, all these abortions, are you really selling the body parts? Well, yeah, we are. [emphasis, lots of it, mine]
No. No theyâre not.
Hat tip and video courtesy of Media Matters â you can view the full transcript of their chat here.
1. Ann Coulter
In her syndicated column posted Wednesday, the #1 Donald Trump fangirl ticked off her reasons for remaining steadfast in her rabid devotion to The Donald. With typically breathless prose, and casual disregard for the facts of history as well as any modicum of decency, she sings an aria of ecstatic praise for the GOP frontrunner.
Hereâs just one choice tidbit. Regarding Trumpâs proposal to ban Muslims, Coulter writes:
After San Bernardino, Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, and the media reacted as if heâd flown two planes into the World Trade Center. He didnât budge. It turned out that no one who is not a sanctimonious douche was offended.
In fact, quite a few people â prominent conservatives and Republicans included â who are not sanctimonious douches were offended. But this snippet is representative of Coulterâs conviction that Republican voters need to stop caring whether Trump actually stands for all the tenets of conservatism (âThis is not an election about who can check off the most boxes on a conservative policy list,â she writes). She rips into other Republican candidates for being weak on immigration, at one point accusing Marco Rubio of having ânearly destroyed the nation with his amnesty bill.â
The pull quote above also exemplifies her logic throughout the piece, namely that if Trump gets away with something, that makes it perfectly okay and consistent with real American values. Since Trump is still in the race, and is the unquestioned frontrunner, playing everyone in the media like a fiddle, it stands to Coulterâs reasoning that he has been entirely justified in everything he has said and done.
She praises him for, among other things, bringing the offensive term âanchor babyâ into the mainstream.
She praises the rambling, risible speech with which he kicked off his campaign last June as âthe biggest one-address bombshell since Sen. Joe McCarthy waved the list of 57 (not 206) Communists.â McCarthy, she notes, âbought this country another half-century of survival, and thatâs exactly what Trump is doing right now.â She means the speech in which Trump called Mexicans rapists, as Coulter recalls with delirious enthusiasm.
Since Trump has brought her brand of seething, senseless xenophobia to the fore, Coulter says âIâve felt like Iâm dreaming.â
âEverything weâve been begging politicians to talk about for the past decade,â Coulter writes â presumably referring to herself and the White Supremacists getting a boost from Trumpâs popularityâ âDonald Trump has brought up with a roar.â
Coulter roars along too.
â
Image: Darwin Bell via Flickr Â
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!Get This Week In Crazy delivered to your inbox every Friday, by signing up for our daily email newsletter.