Tag: comics
This Week In Crazy: Put The Devil Back Into Hell

This Week In Crazy: Put The Devil Back Into Hell

666 is not only the number of the Beast — it is also, it seems, the number of weeks this election cycle has been going on. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Monica Cole

Well, I’m glad we have our priorities in order. Monica Cole, director of the American Family Association’s One Million Moms initiative, has her sights set on getting FOX’s new show Lucifer kicked off the air by organizing a boycott of companies that advertise on the network.

The new show, she writes, is “spiritually dangerous” because it “glorifies Satan as a caring, likable person in human flesh.” Cole complains that the show poses questions “meant to make people rethink assumptions about good and evil, including about God and Satan.”

Permit a digression into comic book geekdom for a moment. This TV series is based on the DC Comics’ 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 Milton’s Paradise Lost when he fashioned the character. So let’s all stop pretending that literary works using the Satan archetype to examine weighty issues of predestination, free will, and moral character is, like, Barack Obama’s 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 “Concerned Mothers of America” 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 didn’t work last time, either


I should note here that organizing a boycott is totally cool — and hopefully trying to tell Olive Garden where to spend their marketing dollars will keep the OMMs distracted and occupied enough that they won’t do anything that might have an actual impact.

Next: Gordon Klingenschmitt and Lance Wallnau

4. Gordon Klingenschmitt and Lance Wallnau

It’s been a while since we’ve had Dr. Chaps on this page. Gordon Klingenschmitt, readers will recall, is the ringmaster behind the “Pray In Jesus’ Name” program, a pastor, and the Colorado lawmaker who said that a woman getting her child ripped out of her womb in an assault was God’s just punishment.

In an interview originally flagged by People for the American Way’s 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 “secret memo” that the Justice Department was planning to legalize “12 new perversions,” 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 “Thunder Road,” set out to identify the weaknesses in the conservative movement “and 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.”

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 “Thunder Road” conspirators at Right Wing Watch

Next: Bill O’Reilly and Friends

3. Bill O’Reilly, 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 “no more baby parts” as his motive). So far, the only malfeasance that’s been uncovered is that of the “journalists” 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 O’Reilly to downplay the alleged wrongdoings and nakedly anti-women’s-rights agenda of the CMP, and praise them instead for their spunky ingenuity. Or as the no-spinster put it: The group “put together undercover stings designed to show that Planned Parenthood executives were marketing the body parts of dead fetuses.” (They were, indeed, “designed to show” it — in blatant contradiction of the facts — but O’Reilly neglects to mention that.)

Chatting with Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl and The Five co-host Kimbery Guilfoyle on the Factor Tuesday night, O’Reilly 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 “investigative journalism” to “uncover the practice that was happening,” as Guilfoyle put it. She also praised the group for its “fine work” and said the indictments represented a “witch hunt.”

According to Wiehl’s legal analysis, the charges were bogus since the fraudulent documents were not intended to commit fraud, but rather to “uncover illegal activity.” (That they didn’t 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. O’Reilly and his guests rally behind the anti-abortion crew on the dubious premise that they are “journalists.” In fairness, one could argue that what the group did was journalism — by Fox News standards.

Of course, they weren’t the only pundits on Fox News to praise the anti-abortion group


Next: Fox & Friends

2. Steve Doocy and Andrew Napolitano

On Tuesday’s 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: “Journalists use these techniques everyday.”

Once again —let’s be clear here — 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 I’m 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 they’re not.

Hat tip and video courtesy of Media Matters — you can view the full transcript of their chat here.

Next: Ann Coulter

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.

Here’s just one choice tidbit. Regarding Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims, Coulter writes:

After San Bernardino, Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, and the media reacted as if he’d flown two planes into the World Trade Center. He didn’t budge. It turned out that no one who is not a sanctimonious douche was offended.

In fact, quite a few people — prominent conservatives and Republicans included — who are not sanctimonious douches were offended. But this snippet is representative of Coulter’s conviction that Republican voters need to stop caring whether Trump actually stands for all the tenets of conservatism (“This is not an election about who can check off the most boxes on a conservative policy list,” she writes). She rips into other Republican candidates for being weak on immigration, at one point accusing Marco Rubio of having “nearly destroyed the nation with his amnesty bill.”

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 Coulter’s 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 “anchor baby” into the mainstream.

She praises the rambling, risible speech with which he kicked off his campaign last June as “the biggest one-address bombshell since Sen. Joe McCarthy waved the list of 57 (not 206) Communists.” McCarthy, she notes, “bought this country another half-century of survival, and that’s exactly what Trump is doing right now.” 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 “I’ve felt like I’m dreaming.”

“Everything we’ve been begging politicians to talk about for the past decade,” Coulter writes — presumably referring to herself and the White Supremacists getting a boost from Trump’s popularity— “Donald Trump has brought up with a roar.”

Coulter roars along too.

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Image: Darwin Bell via Flickr  

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.

This Week In Crazy: How To Zap God Out Of Your Head

This Week In Crazy: How To Zap God Out Of Your Head

Captain America is anti-American, scientists can nuke the religion right out of your brain, and the End Times are in sight.

Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Rush Limbaugh

In case you were not aware, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Benghazi Committee Thursday. To give his listeners a taste of what to expect, Rush Limbaugh looked into the tea leaves on his Monday show and predicted the whole thing was “going to be a giant nothing burger.”

Fair enough. The legitimacy of the committee has been thoroughly gutted — thanks in no small part to Republicans cheerfully parading the fact that this has all been one badly botched political hit job.

So yes, it was safe to predict that committee chair Trey Gowdy and his investigation theater show were pretty much D.O.A. — undone by sloppy hubris and a nakedly political agenda. A “giant nothing burger,” indeed.

Oh wait. Rush wasn’t finished.

It is going to be a giant nothing burger. The Democrats will waste as must time as possible praising Hillary for her cervix. Yes I meant that. You think I meant to say service, right? No, they’re going to praise her for being a woman. It’s a big deal now. She’s a victim. It’s the reason she’s running. To be the first woman. So they’re going to praise her cervix. What else is there? When you’re talking about that to praise. They can’t mention the wig. So they’ll praise her — okay, okay, I’ll say service. Just to smooth it over.

Yes. Very “smooth.”

ViaMedia Matters

Next: Fox & Friends

4. Fox & Friends

The folks over at the morning chatterdome Fox & Friends are continuing their project to espy culture warfare in every last nook and cranny. On their Sunday show, they cast their indignation spotlight upon the latest issue of Marvel’s Captain America, which introduces the classic character’s new identity — Sam Wilson, a Black superhero also known as the Falcon (portrayed in the Marvel films by actor Anthony Mackie).

Co-host Clayton Morris described the move as a “publicity stunt” to drive sales and to poison the all-American ideology of traditional superhero comics. Specifically at issue is the fact that Wilson’s foes in this latest storyline are the Sons of the Serpent, which The Comics Book Database describes as a “racist and anti-immigrant extremist group, espousing a white-power ideology, and often seeking to destabilize the U.S. government through terrorist and hate-crime activities.” They claim to defend the laws of God, nature, and the U.S. Constitution. Topical, no?

Captain America is “going up against conservatives! They’re the new enemy!” Morris exclaims.

The Serpent, co-host Tucker Carlson says, is not a jingoist homegrown terrorist. He “is an American who has misgivings about unlimited illegal immigration and the costs associated with it. That, according to the comic, is ‘evil.'”

Morris describes the Serpent as an “odd new enemy,” but far from being an Obama-era weapon of liberal cultural propaganda freshly cooked up to tee off conservatives, the Sons of the Serpent have been wreaking havoc in the pages of Marvel Comics since 1966.

Per Vulture:

Tucker Carlson voices his displeasure that Captain America isn’t fighting ISIS instead of “ordinary Americans, probably some of you watching at home.” Morris chimes back in that he misses the days when “Captain America used to be punching Hitler in the face.” Captain America has not fought Hitler since 1945, you know, the year Hitler died. At the time, Morris was negative-31 years old.

Video below courtesy of Raw Story:

Co-host Anna Koiman concludes: “Keep politics out of comic books.”

(All of this recalls the outrage of Evangelist Franklin Graham, who got indignant when Marvel introduced a gay superhero in its flagship title, X-Men, which has been an allegory for discrimination since its 1963 inception, so it kind of made sense that the story would include an LGBT character.)

I don’t regularly read superhero comics, but National Memo comics expert Eric Kleefeld informs me that Captain America’s latest move is part of a long and proud tradition of wedding politics to comic books: “The essence of Marvel Comics, going back to its glory days in the 1960s, has been morality tales with clearly liberal values,” he says.

ViaVulture

Next: Ben Carson

3. Ben Carson

The GOP presidential candidate and Twizzler-headed historical revisionist Dr. Ben Carson is second only to fellow political gatecrasher Donald Trump in the polls.

Luckily for him, he has secured the endorsement of God Almighty. This, according to Carson himself, speaking Tuesday on Marcus and Joni, which airs on evangelical Christian network Daystar.

As Carson tells it, he once thought the notion of a presidential run was ridiculous, but the clamoring for him to enter the ring kept building until at last he couldn’t ignore it, turned to God for guidance, and has been operating under His aegis and benefitting from His considerable influence ever since.

The political class and the pundits who said he couldn’t do it — “They don’t understand the power of God,” Carson said.

Carson has spoken of the primacy of his Christian faith to his campaign before. (His tax plan is based on the Bible, after all.) But his remarks that God is basically securing his campaign’s success sounds a tad myopic, considering he has stated that any presidential candidate would need to “swear to place our Constitution above their religion.”

Then again, that was in reference to remarks he had made that a Muslim shouldn’t be president. According to Carson anyone can sit in the Oval Office as long as their beliefs and practices fit within his narrowly circumscribed interpretation of what is “consistent with American culture.”

Would President Carson “place our Constitution above [his] religion,” or would he run his administration in deference to his Biggest Backer?

ViaRight Wing Watch

Next: Rick Wiles

2. Rick Wiles

Rick Wiles snags a spot in TWIC for the second week in a row — for his claims that Bernie Sanders’ popularity is a herald of the End Times. His latest ravings weave a tapestry of far-right-wing anti-government paranoia and conservative Christian apocalyptic claptrap — and it all makes makes for some seriously unsettled verbal gumbo.

Per Right Wing Watch:

Wiles warned that leaders like Pope Francis, Al Gore and Bernie Sanders are part of a plan to “use global warming to impose global socialism” during which they will “take control of property, eliminate private property rights take control of natural resources.” Wiles said the purpose of this plan is to impose “a centralized global government controlling the activities of every human being on the planet. That’s what Al Gore and all those socialists are after, and they’re using the climate as the justification.”

Wiles also proposed that this is a sign of the second coming of Christ, “this is evidence of Jesus Christ coming back.” Harris offered that mass support for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is also
evidence that the second coming is imminent.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/229460513″ params=”color=ff5500″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Wiles has been on a roll lately, claiming that Russia is some sort of newfound city on a hill and could be a refuge for conservative Americans once Obama’s mass slaughter begins.

Next: Joe Miller

1. Joe Miller

Joe Miller, the Tea Party darling who five short years ago was a Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Alaska, spent a recent segment of his weekday radio show explicating a theory that transgender advocates were going to use magnets to alter the brain chemistry of Christians.

Along with his guest William Briggs (“Statistician to the stars!”), Miller was responding to a recent UCLA study, which, according to a release from the University of York, was designed to see if stimulating parts of the brain with transcranial magnets could influence participants’ ideologies — particularly their attitudes regarding religion and nationalism.

Per the release, investigators found that “both belief in God and prejudice towards immigrants can be reduced by directing magnetic energy into the brain.”

This of course led Briggs to worry aloud if eugenics was coming back into favor, even though, as Raw Story helpfully notes, genetics did not factor into the study at all: “It focused on an area of the brain and the effects of shutting it down temporarily.”

But Miller saw a more imminent threat posed by these findings: Transgender advocates could one day use magnets to zap the faith in God right out of Christians’ brains! Per Raw Story:

“The whole transgender crowd, they see their main opponent as being those of faith and so obviously they’re going to use any aggressive tactics they can to move forward that agenda,” Miller said

Some grist for Miller’s paranoia mill: The original design for the ARM processors present in all of our smartphones was developed by Sophie Wilson, an eminent computer scientist who happens to be transgender, and a luminary in the realm of mobile computing technology (which we put near our brains every day!). Maybe the best thing to do, Joe, is cancel your show and take what’s left of your un-magnetized brain off the grid before it’s too late.

ViaRaw Story

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Illustration: A Health Blog via Flickr

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

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