Folks, we clearly are witnessing the launch of a whole new right wing faux controversy. As Oklahoma and Texas appear ready to eliminate AP history classes in their schools, Fox News is now jumping on the bandwagon too. Andrea Tantaros cranked up her barely functioning brain stem and got all kinds of huffy about it.
Glenn Beck now fancies himself a movie mogul, so he’s now apparently planning a remake of European Vacation, with himself as Clark Griswold and his co-host Pat as Cousin Eddie. They’re taking their families to Europe this summer before the whole place is destroyed by Muslims and other ne’er-do-wells.
To the surprise only of those far-right pundits and Tea Party types whose quest for ideological purity consistently undermines their ability to think rationally, John Boehner was elected for a third term as speaker of the house. Best part: Louis Gohmert got a whopping three votes, presumably including his own.
Peter Beinart points out the reasons why the Tea Party types would love Eric Garner, the man killed by an illegal choke hold used by the NYPD officer, if he were white. Every element of the story feeds directly into Tea Party ideology — except the color of his skin.
After a two year fight, the Satanic Temple — really just a group of atheists with a flair for the dramatic — will be allowed to put up a holiday display at the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee (limited public forum, for the win). The same display was rejected last year because the state deemed it “grossly offensive.”
Jim Bakker, the con man who sold fraudulent hotel scams while cheating on his wife and pretending to be a man of God in the 80s, is proving P.T. Burnum right. He’s still running a scam, only this time it’s selling survivalist supplies by telling wild tales of an Ebola epidemic and the collapse of the electric grid.
Louis Gohmert went on Glenn Beck’s show and made a monumentally stupid claim that because two female nurses have been infected by Ebola in Texas, this shows that the Democrats have declared war on women. Because, of course, it’s official Democratic party policy and has nothing to do with the fact that the hospital, which has nothing to do with Democrats, didn’t have proper procedures in place to handle an Ebola case.
I thought the comments on local news stories about the AHA sending a letter to the school system in Jackson, Mississippi about a mandatory convocation for teachers that was really a church service, but they were nothing compared to the comments on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze website’s article about it.
Following in the path blazed by Glenn Beck and continuing her never-ending quest to bilk as much money out of the few people who still take her seriously, Sarah Palin is starting her own online TV network: The Sarah Palin Channel. Presumably, it’s for those who find Fox News a little too complicated.
Many, including me, praised Glenn Beck for saying that the child refugees should be treated with compassion rather than being made into a political football. But that was before he actually invited Ted Cruz to come along with him to hand out teddy bears and soccer balls to the very kids he wants to send back to life-threatening poverty and violence.
Glenn Beck recently claimed that his good friend, fake historian David Barton, had been invited to give his usual lecture full of lies to politicians in a former Soviet republic. Now Barton has revealed that it was in the Ukraine, where he told them how to base their entire country on the Bible.
Glenn Beck’s morning rants to his staff continue to produce high comedy. He told them this week that Obama is “fomenting revolution” by making the Tea Party feel invisible, unlike gays and thugs and illegal aliens. And that’s why they go for their guns. Because yeah, the Tea Party hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention on the planet Beck lives on.
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
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