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Tag: retrospective

This Year In Crazy: A Fond Look Back At An Insane Year In Politics

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During his re-election campaign, President Barack Obama repeatedly speculated that the “partisan fever” in Washington, D.C. would break after the 2012 presidential election. One year into the president’s second term, it’s quite possible that his prediction was crazier than anything you’re about to read.

Every week, The National Memo compiles This Week In Crazy, an update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Throughout the year there were countless individual examples that literally dropped our jaws — Pat Robertson’s special AIDS rings, Gordon Klingenschmitt’s warning that militant gays are going to have sex in your house, or any story containing the words “Steve Stockman” come immediately to mind — but a few especially certifiable characters repeatedly stole the dubious spotlight.

So as you prepare to ring in the new year, we invite you to take one last, head-shaking look at the craziest of the crazy in 2013… here they are, This Week In Crazy‘s most valuable players!

Photo: cometstarmoon via Flickr

5. Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis for anti-gay hate group the American Family Association, had an insane 2013. Between hailing Ted Cruz as a modern-day Prophet Elijah, insisting that President Obama was Photoshopped into the iconic image of his national security team watching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and warning that Michelle Obama invited “demons into the White House” by hosting a Diwali celebration, Fischer firmly established himself among the religious right’s most unhinged superstars.

Craziest moment of the year: Fischer outdid himself in July, when he warned that “Christians are being moved out of the United States military so hypermasculine homosexuals can move in, similar to the kind of homosexuals that formed Hitler’s stormtroopers.”

Prediction for 2014: Fischer will surely remain a This Week In Crazy mainstay throughout the Republican primary season — after all, someone has to protect the Liz Cheneys of the world from intolerant lesbian bigots. And maybe if we’re really lucky, we’ll get a sequel to the AFA’s horrifying children’s book, God Made Dad & Mom.
4. Erik Rush

Erik Rush

WorldNetDaily columnist and frequent Fox News contributor Erik Rush may not have totaled the most appearances in This Week In Crazy, but he did manage to earn the most first-place finishes. Apparently, whatever the Obama administration has been sneaking into his drinking water is quite potent.

Craziest moment of the year: All of Rush’s conspiracy theories were deranged, even by the standards of this list — lowlights include his “report” that Valerie Jarrett sold the Midwest to China, and his repeated warnings that the president is conducting false flag operations (including the Benghazi attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Navy Yard shooting) as part of his and Oprah Winfrey’s plot to start a race war — but nothing can top his theory that President Obama is a serial killer.

Yes, according to Rush, over the years the president has killed his closeted gay lovers, several people who knew the horrible truth about Obama’s birth certificate, and — for some reason we can’t begin to unravel — “first dog” Bo Obama’s trainer.

Prediction for 2014: Rush’s WorldNetDaily column after President Obama rigs the Oscars to secure a Best Supporting Actress award for Oprah will probably win This Century In Crazy someday.
3. Louie Gohmert

U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) may not have reached “terror babies” levels of crazy in 2013, but it was still a loopy year for Congress’ least coherent conspiracy theorist.

Craziest moment of the year: For most elected officials, it would be difficult to top comparing African-Americans to lesser prairie chickens, opposing laws limiting magazine capacities because he may have to shoot down a drone one day, or accusing the attorney general of casting aspersions on his asparagus. But most politicians didn’t take an unauthorized trip to Egypt to falsely insist that the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for the September 11 attacks, and compare General Abdel Fatah el-Sissi to George Washington.

Prediction for 2014: With Michele Bachmann not seeking re-election, the path is clear for Gohmert to seize leadership of the House GOP’s unofficial crazy caucus. Meanwhile, John McCain will be quietly weeping for our republic.
2. Michele Bachmann

Of course, Rep. Bachmann (R-MN) hasn’t left office yet — and until she does, it’s almost impossible to imagine any other elected official topping her on a list of crazy people.

Craziest moment of the year: Bachmann offered a wide menu of unhinged theories from which to choose, including a warning that the IRS will stop conservatives from getting health care, an assertion that scientists could cure Alzheimer’s Disease in less than a decade (if only they weren’t so angry about high taxes), and a truly laughable claim that she did not utter a single factual inaccuracy during her 2012 presidential campaign. But they all pale in comparison to a July interview with WorldNetDaily, in which Bachmann claimed that a) President Obama stole the 2012 election by letting all Latina women under 30 vote; b) President Obama has a magic wand with which he will steal the 2014 election as well; and c) the only way for Congress to stop President Obama is to spank him.

Prediction for 2014: Bachmann will follow through with her threat to run for president of the Tim Tebow fan club, then drop out after her campaign staff is caught trying to buy Urban Meyer’s support. Not that the congresswoman really needs a new job — after all, we’re living in the End Times.

1. Glenn Beck

It wouldn’t be This Week In Crazy without the man who was deemed too far off the rails for even Fox News: Right-wing media superstar, and this year’s craziest wingnut, Glenn Beck.

Craziest moment of the year: Beck had the most appearances in This Week In Crazy by a wide margin, so it’s hard to narrow his insanity down to just one specific example. But with apologies to his questioning whether CIA director John Brennan is a secret Muslim traitor, his proposed cabinet for President Ted Cruz (featuring Secretary of State Louie Gohmert), his warning that America’s first black president is plotting to re-institute slavery, his libelous theory that the Boston Marathon bombing was a Saudi plot (leading to a cover-up even worse than Benghazi),and his insistence that Americans are unwittingly worshiping the pagan gods Moloch and Baal (among many other lowlights), Beck’s emotional description of America’s nightmarish dystopian future takes the proverbial cake:

Prediction for 2014: The new year will probably play out a lot like every other year for Beck: with nonstop predictions that America is collapsing, and that the Nazis are coming. It will probably be Cass Sunstein’s fault, and it will definitely be a good reason to invest in gold.

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

We’ll Go Forward From This Moment

This is a repeat of the column Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote on Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s my job to have something to say.

They pay me to tease shades of meaning from social and cultural issues, to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable b—–d.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward’s attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.

Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.

Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, cultural, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We’re frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae — a singer’s revealing dress, a ball team’s misfortune, a cartoon mouse.

We’re wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though — peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people — you, perhaps — think that any or all of this makes us weak. You’re mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

Yes, we’re in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We’re still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn’t a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn’t the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel.

Both in terms of the awful scope of its ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and indeed, the history of the world. You’ve bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.

But there’s a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.

In days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We’ll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

You see, there is steel beneath this velvet. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don’t know us well. On this day, the family’s bickering is put on hold. As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

Still, I keep wondering what it was you hoped to teach us. It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred.

If that’s the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don’t know my people. You don’t know what we’re about. You don’t know what you just started.

But you’re about to learn.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.