The saying, âthe pen is mightier than the swordâ is as moth-eaten as an old wardrobe in a haunted house. So TBS talk-show host Samantha Bee has updated it for the 21st century.
As of July 2018, the glare is mightier than the gun.
Bee stares down National Rifle Association henchwoman Dana Loesch in a 70-second ad spoofing the NRAâs outdated âhard talkâ commentary. Though the comic hits the pro-gun organization with an ice-cold warning â along with a reprimand for its association with promiscuous Russian agent Maria Butina â she also artfully injects the satirical script with punch lines.
Wait for the 33-second mark for an unexpected twist, as Samantha straightens Loesch out in more ways than one.
The National Rifle Association is run by hypocrites who use the same manipulation tactics they accuse the media of using. You probably knew that, but few journalists have been exposing the NRAâs shameless propaganda like John Oliver of HBO.
In todayâs clip (a tad longer than usual, but well worth it) Oliver takes on some of the creepier moments of NRA TV, including Dana Loeschâs âclenched fist of truthâ speech, Charlie Daniels (who else?) giving a sermon about guns, blood and gator-grappling, and bank robbers getting complimented on their weapons skills.
Does gun-porn for the heartland sound sad to watch? Prepare to giggle. Oliver destroys every last excerpt from the NRA network, and lets gun-obsessed women know theyâre just as absurd as men like Charlie Daniels.
Hello, fellow warriors against Christmas. Please take your seat under this non-denominational spruce tree, next to this avowedly un-sacred crackling December fire. Everyone have their mug of profane winter nog? Good.
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 four:
4. Sean Hannity
Hannity gets a twofer this week.
On Wednesday, performing a postmortem on Tuesday night GOP debates, the Fox News host spoke with Sen. Rand Paul, specifically about his challenge to Donald Trump regarding the tycoonâs stated intention to attack the families of terrorists.
Paul explained that deliberately targeting children, bystanders, and non-combatants was contrary to American values, not to mention the Geneva Convention.
Hannityâs other memorable moment for humanity this week:
Thereâs a refrain weâve heard time and time again when conservative pundits want to make excuses for the senseless deaths of unarmed men of color â âHeâs no angel.â That line got a revamp when Hannity said of Freddie Grey, the 25-year-old black man in Baltimore whose spine was severed at the neck as he was being bounced around a paddy wagon unrestrained. âHe was clearly not a pillar of his community,â Hannity said.
Hannity cited Grayâs âpast arrest recordâ and âmaybe the likelihood that heâs up to no goodâ as reasons why we should, presumably, overlook the fact that he was seen in a video recording, writhing in agony as we was being arrested, and that he slipped into a coma and died days later.
(Charges were brought against the officers involved. The first trial for one of them ended in a mistrial Thursday after three days of deadlocked jury deliberation.)
Hannity clarified that, for the purposes of the officersâ trials, Grayâs arrest record âdoesnât matter legally in the court â but it matters in reality.â
For Sean Hannity, human life is really only precious in a narrow set of circumstances: You must be a pillar of your community, as he defines it, and youâd better be far, far away from any place President Trump might be itching to bomb.
Carly Fiorina is simply not willing to give up on this one.
She gave, as you may recall, a spectacular performance at the second GOP debate, in which she condemned Planned Parenthood by describing a Grand Guignol scene of âa fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, âWe have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.â â â allegedly from a sting âdocumentaryâ depicting illicit practices of the womenâs health organization. Unfortunately, it is widely accepted now that Fiorina was describing a deceptively edited fiction. Widely accepted by everyone, that is, except Carly Fiorina
Still, given that the impassioned anti-abortion rhetoric gave her such a boost in the polls, and that eliminating womenâs rights is such a crucial part of her campaign, it makes sense that the now flagging candidate would refuse to back down from it.
CNNâs Chris Cuomo challenged Fiorina to answer whether or not hers and other Republicansâ raging polemics might have inspired the deranged Christian shooter who terrorized a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, killing two bystanders and one police officer.
Clearly tired of letting Republican candidates lie to his face with no consequences, something must have snapped. Fiorina had hoped that she could simply spout off her fact-free talking points and move on. Cuomo shut her down.
After reminding Fiorina that her lies have real world consequences and likely inspired the right-wing terrorist Robert Dear to go on a shooting spree in a Colorado Planned Parenthood, Fiorina lost it.
The GOP candidate tore into Cuomo, accusing him of using âleft-wing tacticsâ to smear her, of having drunk Planned Parenthoodâs Kool-Aid, and insinuating that he had failed in his duties as a journalist. She stood by her comments, and repeatedly alluded â vaguely â to the horrible wrongdoings of the organization, and maintained her conviction that the videos were not edited (they certainly were, as one of the anti-abortion activists responsible for the videos has recently admitted).
Fiorina called it an âadmissionâ of guilt that Planned Parenthood is dispensing with its practice of asking for reimbursements to cover the costs of donating fetal tissue â a perfectly legal practice that unfortunately has given anti-abortion activists the ammunition to accuse them of profiteering.
Fiorina remains obstinately and willfully mendacious, despite the fact that a congressional probe and several state investigations into Planned Parenthood have all failed to find any criminal wrongdoing.
Republican candidate Rick Santorum got awfully feisty during the GOPeeWee debate Tuesday night. Sharing the stage with his fellow bottom-tier candidates, each languishing in the poll dregs, Santorum, presumably angling for a boost, said: âIslam is not just a religion; it is also a political governing structure.â
The former senatorâs animus for religion in government is particularly risible when held against his own record of making the enforcement of Christian dogma upon Americans a touchstone of his campaign.
Earlier this year, Right Wing Watch assembled a comprehensive list of some of Santorumâs more egregious moves to impose his brand of conservative Christianity:
In June of this year, he promised Glenn Beck that, as president, he would refuse to enforce marriage equality, laughably calling the Supreme Courtâs Obergefell decision âtantamount to government establishing religion.â
Apparently, a Santorum administration would interpret the Courtâs ruling that all couples be treated equally as a violation of the Establishment Clause: âIf the government goes around and tells churches what they have to believe in and what their doctrine is, that is something that is a violation of the First Amendment,â he told Beck.
You can listen here; the tone-deaf hypocrisy is delicious:
A few weeks before that, he told Chuck Todd that heâd fight the Supreme Court on marriage equality â âof courseâ â claiming that Roe v. Wade was also decided âin errorâ and that âWeâre not bound by what nine people say in perpetuity.â
No, rather, weâre bound by what Santorum thinks one man said 2,000 years ago â in perpetuity.
The Blazeâs Dana Loesch went on a shrill rant Tuesday against the godlessness and idiocy of gun control advocates, whom she likened to a bunch of âtragedy dry-humping whores.â
Her aria began by attacking the widely-publicized New York Daily News cover that excoriated GOP lawmakers for offering âthoughts and prayersâ for those lost to gun violence, despite their record of torpedoing legislation that would actually do something to rein in gun violence.
Loesch affirmed that it was not the gun-loving conservatives, but rather the âGodless Leftâ who have âblood on their hands.â Between wiping flecks of rabid foam from her mouth, she accused liberals of being âilliterate,â mistakenly blaming the NRA when they should be directing their ire to the Department of Homeland Security. Liberals, she spits, should not get mad at Wayne LaPierre, whose integrity Loesch defends on the basis that he is âan older white guy,â but rather at âa younger black man,â Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson.
In other words, donât blame the NRA for our senseless gun laws, which make it easy for any domestic terrorist, regardless of religious or political affiliation (if any), to acquire guns. They are beyond reproach, since, as Loesch plainly explains: âThe NRA is made up of people who are just like me.â
So rather than accusing the NRA and the lobbying efforts of anti-gun-control advocates, we must hold accountable the DHS and a politically correct agenda that, per Loesch, âmade the rule that said weâre not allowed to look at the social media activity of people who are unveiled and coming from hot bed areas of terrorism like Tashfeen Malik.â
This claim, which had been published in prior news reports, that Malik and Farook had used public forums on social media to broadcast their jihadist sympathies and intentions, was revealed to be false on Wednesday by the FBI. But the notion that the feds had been helpless to monitor such messages, their hands tied by âpolitical correctness,â was the foundation for several protracted criticisms at Tuesday nightâs GOP debate: Ted Cruz said unequivocally that âPolitical correctness was killing people.â Ben Carson said he would end the scourge of political correctness. âAll jihadists are Muslims,â Rick Santorum said. âWe need to stop worrying about offending some people and worry about defending our country.â
But back to Hurricane Dana.
Blaming the NRA for gun violence, she said, echoing a favorite fallacy of gun lovers, was like blaming AAA for fender-benders. (Please recall that a license, registration, and insurance are required to drive a car.)
Her diatribe, courtesy of courageous transcribing from Right Wing Watch, continued:
â[Malik] was fetishizing jihadism online but because Jeh Johnson was so obsessed with political correctness and so obsessed with optics â which Iâm sure is going to be of great comfort to the 14 families who lost people in San Bernardino that day â Iâm sure theyâll find great comfort in the fact that Jeh Johnson did all he could to make sure that DHS was beyond reproach in terms of politically correct optics.â
âI also have a major problem with all these tragedy dry-humping whores,â she ranted, âand Iâm not watching my language because itâs about time somebody call you out for what you are. You sicken me.â
She proceeded to lay a series of domestic terror attacks â San Bernardino, Boston, Fort Hood, Chattanooga â at the feet of liberals and a feckless government that had failed to protect its citizens.
Of course, she gave no mention of Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Roseburg, Santa Barbara, Colorado Springs, Littleton, et al. All terror attacks that were not influenced by radical Islam, and so whose victims are apparently less deserving of Loeschâs righteous outrage. Though to be fair, the government did little to protect its citizens after tragedies like those too.
Thanks in large part to the efforts of, as Loesch would say: âpeople just like me.â
What a year. The first nine months of the Republican primary race alone account for more inanity, head-spinning untruth, and backwards thinking than anyone could have expected or should have to endure.
Weâve watched science deniers start snowball fights on the Senate floor to disprove climate change and country clerks who would rather go to jail than let people get married. Weâve seen actual presidential candidates threaten to shut down the Supreme Court because God says so and court the endorsements of hate group leaders straight out of medieval morality plays.
Please add your vote to our year-end round up of 2015âs worst in paranoia, bigotry, and contempt for science, civil rights, and reality in general, for as Stephen Colbert so memorably put it: âReality has a well-known liberal bias.â
In two weeks, we will assemble the top 5 for âThis Year In Crazy,â based upon your votes.
If you need a reminder who any of these folks are, please visit the âThis Week In Crazyâ archives. And as always, thanks for reading.
Voting is now closed.
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.
Endorsements from mainstream media figures have provided a scrim of credibility for Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, the Hillary-and-Bill-bashing book just published by Rupert Murdochâs HarperCollins. Without the explicit support of respectable institutions such as the New York Times and Washington Post, Schweizerâs lengthy record of inaccuracy and extremism â not to mention the dozens of errors in the book itself â would have doomed his project to the same irrelevance as so many others of its all-too-familiar type.
More than once in recent days, for example, Joshua Green of Bloomberg News has spoken out to defend the far-right author. On MSNBCâs Morning Joe, during the pre-release publicity push for Clinton Cash last week, Green said of Schweizer: âHe tends to kind of get smeared, but itâs worth remembering this is a serious guy who has done serious work that led to a serious article,â said Green, who went on to complain that Schweizer â whose previous works and connections with far-right dark-money sources were scrutinized by Media Matters, among others â is a victim of âcharacter assassination.â
Character assassination is apparently the least of Schweizerâs worries, if the guy was being serious during his May 4 appearance on former Breitbart blogger Dana Loeschâs radio show. Her very first question recalled a loony wingnut legend concerning the tragic 1993 suicide of Vince Foster, deputy counsel in the Clinton White House:
âI know you donât want to talk too much about it, but there is that, there is always that concern for anyone who goes up against the Clinton machine that they could be Vince Fostered,â she ventured, âand Iâm sure that that was something that you took into consideration.â
In reply, Schweizer swiftly abandoned any semblance of seriousness:
âYeah, I mean look â there are security concerns that arise in these kinds of situations. You know, you donât like to go into too much detail, there were some things that were going on that we felt needed to be addressed. The decision on security wasnât actually made by me, it was made by board members of Government Accountability Institute, and you know, itâs I think showing an abundance of caution. The reality is weâve touched on a major nerve within the Clinton camp. They are very, very upset, and they are pulling out all the stops to attack me in an effort to kill this book off.â
Kill? Oh dear.
Keep this bizarre exchange in mind when journalists like Green insist that everyone must take Schweizer seriously. By contrast, Green tried to undermine me as an âinveterate Clinton defenderâ when we appeared together briefly on NPRâs On Point. As I pointed out later, he obviously hadnât read any of my critical columns on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary campaign. (Incidentally, Schweizer declined to appear with me on that broadcast, with his Murdoch publicist offering one feeble excuse after another â but I would be happy to debate him about his outlandish charges against the Clintons any time.)
The Vince Foster reference reflects on the mental state of Tea Party cartoon characters like Loesch, who remain obsessed with the most deranged legends about the Clintons. But it is also a timely reminder that the Vince Foster nonsense, like other âClinton scandals,â was promoted by the late Republican billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who spent millions on the clandestine  âArkansas Projectâ in pursuit of the Clintonsâ political destruction.
The true story of those covert activities â or as a famous woman once put it, the âvast right-wing conspiracyâ â is told again in our new (and free!) e-book, The Hunting of Hillary, excerpted from The Hunting of the President.
Today, Scaifeâs role is played by the secretive financiers of Schweizerâs âinstituteâ  â namely, the Koch brothers and their network of Republican billionaires, whose plotting and financing of this attempted âcharacter assassinationâ of Hillary Clinton is the best endorsement of her that I can imagine.
You can download the new e-book The Hunting of Hillary for free here.
Photo: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the 2014 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, IA. (Gregory Hauenstein/Flickr)