Tag: fred phelps
This Week In Crazy: Only Racists Hate Ted Nugent, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

This Week In Crazy: Only Racists Hate Ted Nugent, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

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:

5. Will Brooke

Will Brooke, a Republican candidate for House in Alabama’s 6th congressional district, really doesn’t like Obamacare.

In his new ad, Brooke tells the camera “We’re down here to have a little fun today, and talk about two serious subjects: The Second Amendment, and see how much damage we can do to this copy of Obamacare [sic].”

As cheery music plays in the background, Brooke builds his copy of the Affordable Care Act a quaint little wooden coffin — and proceeds to unleash hell upon it with his stockpile of rifles.

Brooke’s ad may not be particularly original — it’s just a more over-the-top version of a Joe Manchin ad from 2010 — but it’s certainly effective. Provided that Brooke is chasing Rick Perry’s endorsement, that is.

4. Bryan Fischer

On Tuesday, American Family Association mouthpiece Bryan Fischer took a rare turn towards civility — by his standards.

“Now I’m not saying that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ,” Fischer told his audience. Hooray for bipartisanship!

“I am saying that the spirit of the anti-Christ is at work in him,” he added.

Oh.

As it turns out, President Obama is just one of many historical figures to be “empowered with the dark spirit of the anti-Christ” (Michelle Obama, with her demonic Diwali party, is probably another). This may seem extreme, but look on the bright side: At least Fischer is still one step behindWorldNetDaily.
3. Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent

Photo: Mike Licht via Flickr

Last month, the town of Longview, Texas withdrew its invitation to have racist, sexist, possible pedophile Ted Nugent headline its annual Fourth of July celebration.

Nugent “didn’t really fit what we trying to put together, a family-oriented program,” Mayor John Dean explained at the time.

But on Saturday, Nugent shared the real reason Dean withdrew the invitation: Racism!

“I hear from reliable sources that the mayor is a racist and was offended that my band performs mostly African-American-influenced music,” said the man who personally solved America’s “black problem.

On Tuesday, Nugent further clarified that “the lie that my concerts are inappropriate for any city anywhere is absurd,” adding, “My family friendly concerts are legendary and will continue to be all summer long in 2014.”

Who wouldn’t want their kids to learn about “the jackboot Nazi motherf*ckers in the Department of Justice,” or America’s “well-fed motherf*cker food stamp c*cksuckers?”

“Those that hate me are following the Saul Alinsky playbook on how to dismantle, fundamentally transform the greatest nation and quality of life the world has ever known,” Nugent added. “Those that hate me hate America, plain and simple.”

This seems like a good time to mention how Ted Nugent avoided serving in America’s military.

2. Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson still hasn’t gotten over his disappointment that Governor Jan Brewer bowed her knee to the God of Gayness and vetoed Arizona’s anti-gay bill last month.

On Wednesday’s edition of The700 Club, the televangelist reiterated that such an offense never would’ve happened in the “good” old days.

“I think you got to remember from the Bible, if you look carefully at the Bible what would have happened in Jesus’ time if two men decided they wanted to cohabit together, they would have been stoned to death,” Robertson said. “So Jesus would not have baked them a wedding cake nor would he have made them a bed to sleep in because they wouldn’t have been there. But we don’t have that in this country here so that’s the way it is.”

But who is making Jesus bake gay wedding cakes in the new millenium? Could it be...Satan?

“The Devil is trying to say, ‘I’m going to destroy your progeny any way I can. If you will kill your babies, that’s fine, I’m with you; if you will deny the chance of having babies, that’s fine too; but I want to destroy your opportunities to reproduce,’” Robertson explained. “It’s a very serious thing and we’re not talking about it, and we need to as a society, we have to realize where the attack is coming because it is definitely an attack.”

Video of Robertson’s latest rant is below, via Right Wing Watch



1. Edward Farrell

EdwardFarrell

Most politicians would not openly mourn the death of Fred Phelps, the hate group leader who became famous for protesting soldiers’ funerals with signs exclaiming that “God hates fags.” But this week’s “winner,”Maricopa vice mayor Edward Farrell, clearly isn’t most politicians.

As the Maricopa Monitorreported, Farrell marked Phelps’ death on Monday morning by linking to an obituary on his Facebook page, with the message “We need more Fred Phelps in this world. May you rest in peace sir.”

That would be bad enough on its own, but Farrell made matters worse with his choice of obituary: “Fred Phelps, Man Who Forever Stopped March Of Gay Rights, Dead At 84,” by The Onion.

Farrell eventually realized that the piece — which contained lines such as “many of the facets of modern-day society that we now take for granted—such as the ban on gay marriage in all 50 states and the inability of homosexuals to serve in the military—can be traced back to Phelps’ vocal public crusades,” and “the current zero-percent rates of divorce and abortion in the United States can be entirely attributed to his powerful message” — was obvious satire.

That prompted an apology, in which Farrell insisted that “I had no clue about this guy; he’s an idiot,” and explained that the mistake was triggered by a recent incident in which a health club employee used his cell phone to take a photo of Farrell in the shower.

“I have nightmares about me seeing my naked body on the Internet,” Farrell lamented. “My heartbeat go up every time I go to the Internet, I think ‘is this the time, is this the time?'”

And so, as improbable as it seems, Sheriff Joe is no longer the most embarrassing elected official from Maricopa.

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

The Wasted Life Of Fred Phelps

The Wasted Life Of Fred Phelps

And what shall we say now that the monster has died?

His estranged sons Mark and Nate told the world just a few days ago that their 84-year-old father, Fred Phelps, was in the care of a hospice and “on the edge of death.” Thursday morning, he went over the edge.

The senior Phelps, of course, was the founder of Westboro Baptist “Church” in Topeka, KS. He was the “God hates” guy. As in “God Hates China” (its divorce rates are too high), “God Hates Islam” (for being a false religion), “God Hates Qatar” (for being rich) “God Hates The Media” (for saying mean things about Westboro), “God Hates Tuvalu” (for having too many holidays), “God Hates America” (for tolerating homosexuality) and, of course, most notoriously, “God Hates Fags” — Phelps’ odious word for gay men and lesbians.

He was also the man who applauded the deaths of American soldiers and picketed their funerals, under the dubious formulation that their dying represented God’s judgment upon this country.

Westboro is a tiny “church” — hate group, actually — said to draw its membership almost exclusively from Phelps’ extended family. His sons say Phelps was excommunicated from it last year for some reason, which the “church” refused to confirm or deny, saying its “membership issues are private.” For what it’s worth, last week Phelps was conspicuous by his near absence from Westboro’s website, which once displayed his words and image prominently.

Now the monster is gone. What shall we say?

The people hurt and maligned by Phelps didn’t wait for his actual expiration to begin answering that question. They started days ago when his sons announced that his end was near. One woman tweeted about Death needing rubber gloves to touch the body. Another woman set up a “Fred Phelps Death Watch” on Facebook, the tone of which can be inferred from one posting depicting feces in a toilet as a photo of Phelps in hospice care.

After his death, one person tweeted the hope that “his final hours were filled with immense physical pain and horrifying hallucinations.”

You can hardly blame people for not being prostrate with grief. This man cheered the lynching of a young gay man in Wyoming. He turned the funerals of American military personnel into circuses. It is hard to imagine anyone more loathsome, despicable and justifiably reviled than he.

And yet it is also hard not to feel saddened by this reaction, diminished by it.

If one is a Christian as Phelps claimed to be, one may hear the voice of Jesus arising from conscience: “A new command I give you: Love one another.” And you may demand an exemption from that command, because being asked to love the spectacularly unlovable Phelps is just too much. But, if you love only the lovable, what’s the point? What does that say or prove? Indeed, loving the unlovable pretty much constitutes God’s job description.

Even beyond the obligations imposed by faith, though, there is something troubling in the idea that some of us willingly become what we profess to abhor, adopt extremist hatred in protest of extremist hatred. As Martin Luther King famously put it, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

It is hard to imagine that anyone beyond, perhaps, his immediate family, is sorry Fred Phelps is dead. And that is probably the truest barometer of his life and its value. But as most of us are not sorry, some of us are not glad, either. What we feel is probably best described as a certain dull pity.

Phelps was given the gift, the incandescent miracle, of being alive in this world for over 80 years — and he wasted it, utterly.

If God hates anything, surely God hates that.

AFP Photo/Kimihiro Hoshino

Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist’s Anti-Gay Preacher, Dies At 84

Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist’s Anti-Gay Preacher, Dies At 84

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times

Fred Phelps, a publicity-hungry Kansas pastor who picketed hundreds of military funerals because he believed America was too sympathetic to gays, died early Thursday in Topeka, Kansas. He was 84.

His daughter, Margie Phelps, confirmed his death to the Associated Press but did not give the cause.

With his small Topeka congregation, Phelps also demonstrated at funerals and memorials for Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, former Mormon leader Gordon B. Hinckley and heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio — any observance, regardless of any connection to gay issues, where cameras might be rolling.

Convinced that the deaths of U.S. soldiers were divine retribution for the nation’s increasing acceptance of homosexuality, Phelps and his followers carried signs like: “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11.” A disbarred attorney, Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church were sued numerous times but won a landmark freedom of speech case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite its name, his church is unaffiliated with any denomination. Its Web address, more reflective of its founder’s theology, contains an anti-gay slur. The congregation is heavily composed of his relatives, including many of his 13 children and 54 grandchildren.

Two of his estranged sons, Nate and Mark, have said that Phelps’ clan “excommunicated” him last year. The church declined to comment.

Phelps came to national attention in 1998 leading anti-gay pickets at the Casper, Wyoming, funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old who had been lashed to a fence post and beaten to death. Five years after the funeral, Phelps returned to Casper with plans to erect a granite monument inscribed: “Matthew Shepard Entered Hell Oct. 12, 1998.”

Phelps was denounced by many conservative Christian leaders, including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who called him a “hatemonger” and “emotionally unbalanced.”

Phelps jubilantly acknowledged spreading the message of hate.

“He’s saying I preach hate? You can’t preach the Bible without preaching hate!” Phelps told the Los Angeles Times in 1999.

“Looky here, the hatred of God is an attribute of the Almighty,” he said. “It means he’s determined to punish the wicked for their sins!”

An attorney for many years, Phelps handled civil rights cases in Kansas and elsewhere in the Midwest. In Topeka, he worked on behalf of black students claiming school discrimination and black bar patrons who accused police of abusive tactics during a 1979 drug raid. In 1987, he was honored by the Bonner Springs, Kansas, branch of the NAACP for his “steely determination for justice during his tenure as a civil rights attorney.”

Privately, however, he was intensely prejudiced against African Americans, his estranged son Nate Phelps told the Telegraph, a British newspaper, in 2013. When Coretta Scott King died in 2006, Phelps picketed her funeral, condemning civil rights leaders for “giving away the movement” to homosexuals.

Phelps’ funeral protests were intensely contested in court. In 2006, Phelps and six of his followers picketed a funeral for Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, a Marine killed in Iraq. Considering the case in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such demonstrations, no matter how odious, were legal as long as protesters obeyed state and local laws setting a minimum distance between themselves and mourners.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the nation’s commitment to free speech is not a license for “vicious verbal assault.”

Eleven of Phelps’ children are said to be attorneys, including Margie Phelps, who represented the church before the Supreme Court.

Born in Meridian, Mississippi, on Nov. 13, 1929, Phelps was the son of a railroad detective. An Eagle Scout, he was bound for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when he attended a revival meeting and felt a calling to preach. In 1947, he was ordained a Southern Baptist minister.

He graduated from John Muir College in Pasadena, a forerunner of Pasadena City College, where he led a 1951 campaign against “promiscuous petting” and “evil language.” He also attended Arizona Bible Institute, where he met his wife, Margie Simms, whom he married in 1952.

In 1964, he received a law degree from Washburn University in Topeka. He was disbarred by Kansas in 1979 after suing a court reporter, bullying her on the witness stand and calling her a “slut.” Ten years later, after federal judges complained that he had made false accusations against them, he agreed to stop practicing in federal courts.

For Phelps and his followers, public condemnation by powerful opponents was a healthy sign; it proved that the voices of Westboro Baptist Church were the only righteous ones in a world clamoring with sinners.

When the BBC released a 2007 documentary about the Phelps clan called “The Most Hated Family in America,” Fred’s daughter Shirley saw only one failing, according to the Telegraph: “She wished it had been called ‘The Most Hated Family in the World.’’’

AFP Photo/Kimihiro Hoshino