The wingnuts have got themselves in a tizzy about some old chemical shells that were found in Iraq back in 2004. These were just degraded shells which the DOD itself says were from Saddam’s pre-1991 armament. Yet the magic of wingnuttery has suddenly transformed these relics into the long-lost Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Maha correctly divines that the real import of this story is that we — and by “we” I mean “we who have fully functioning cerebral cortices” — need to ask ourselves again, “just how stupid are these people”?

I took all this in, and then made some coffee, and then sat down to consider the burning question of our time — how stupid are Bush supporters, really? This goes way beyond your average left the keys in the car stupid, which plagues the best of us from time to time. There’s something more primordial going on here. In some cases, IMO, we’re looking at simple turtle crossing an interstate stupid. You can’t really blame them for it. In other cases we may be dealing with more exotic forms of cognitive handicaps, however, such as I’m getting messages from Mars stupid, or the cookbook said to separate the yolk from the white so I boiled the egg first stupid.

Actually the wingnuts remind me a little of my brother’s dog Maggie, who can be repeatedly tricked into thinking that an old yellow tennis ball is in fact a fearsome monster. Now Maggie is a sweet, sweet dog — much nicer than any wingnut you could ever meet — and I shudder to make this comparison. And really it’s not fair, because in most respects I think Maggie is probably smarter than your average wingnut. But she’s a sucker for the tennis ball trick.

See, my brother has this old tennis ball that’s split open on one side. As long as it’s lying on the floor, Maggie is undisturbed by it. It’s just a tennis ball. But all my brother has to do is pick up the ball and squeeze it so the split looks like a mouth opening and closing, and she goes apeshit. ohmygodohmyGOD! bark bark bark bark BARK! BARK! Put the ball back on the floor, she’s fine. Pick it up again and squeeze its “mouth,” she goes apeshit. Every goddamn time.

This has been going on for several years.

You would think that an otherwise intelligent dog would eventually deduce that the tennis ball is not a threat. You’d think that at some point — say, after 200 rounds or so — enlightenment would dawn, and Maggie would grasp the central truth that if it’s just a nasty old tennis ball when it’s lying on the floor, then it’s still just a nasty old tennis ball when it’s in my brother’s hand. Yet she cannot seem to make this cognitive leap. Again and again, she is deceived into yelping madly at the monster that has suddenly materialized before her.

If Maggie had a blog — and what a charming thought that is: dogs with blogs! — she’d probably post about the Weapon of Yellow Fuzziness. She’d advise other dogs that the WYF can appear at any time, without warning, but especially when one’s human happens to be sitting on the sofa with an old yellow tennis ball nearby. Some dogs, border collies perhaps, might wonder aloud if there could be a connection between the old yellow tennis ball and the WYF, perhaps even a question of mistaken identity…but Maggie would bark them down. No, no, no! she would cry. The WYF is real! I’ve seen it over 200 times now!

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch, Recommended on June 23, 2006, 7:57 am EST

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The highly coordinated movements of flocks of birds or schools of fish are among the most fascinating phenomena to be found in nature. The group seems to turn and maneuver as a single unit, changing direction almost instantaneously…

…Research by Wayne Potts, published in the journal Nature in 1984, helped explain how flock movements are initiated and coordinated. Potts, through a frame-by-frame analysis of high-speed film of sandpiper flocks, found that any individual can initiate a flock movement, which then propagates through the flock in a wave radiating out from the initiation site. These “maneuver waves” could move in any direction through the flock, including from back to front. ¹

This same behavior is also displayed by a common American species, the Yellow-Bellied Wingnut. The wingnuts are currently engaged in a “maneuver wave” to shed their longstanding association with She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Naturalists are studying the phenomenon with great interest.

¹The Straight Dope.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on June 14, 2006, 1:05 pm EST

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The Senate voted yesterday to kill the anti-gay marriage amendment, which was a welcome but unsurprising bit of news. There was never any chance of this amendment passing; the whole point of the exercise was just to remind the batshit crazy fundies that only Republicans are willing to protect us from the evil homo cooties that threaten our nation.

Bearing that in mind, I went over to Alan Keyes’ RenewAmerica website to see how his cadre of third-rate wingnut pundits were coping with the news. I was too soon: they haven’t reacted yet. What I found instead was Tuesday’s pre-Senate vote screed by Guy Adams explaining just why this anti-gay marriage amendment is so desperately, desperately important to the future of our country. The picture above is the illustration for the Adams piece, and apparently represents the Evil Cloud of Gayness that, like a gathering storm, threatens to…rain really hard, I guess.

Normally I don’t bother with this kind of crap unless there’s some solid entertainment value, as there was with the banished and much lamented Andrew Longman. This thing by Adams is just the usual shit-for-brains mess: gays want to rule the world, history proves that homosexuality destroys civilization, traditional marriage is on par with the earth’s rotation as a natural law and if queer people get married then the world will stop turning and birds will smash into plate glass windows. Or something like that.

The part I want to share with you is towards the end, when Adams tries to clinch his argument by exposing the full horror of homosexuality:

You may be asking “Why should I care if two homosexuals want to get married–why should it affect me?” There are a few reasons you should be concerned. First, I am going to ask you to envision something that I would not ordinarily ask in polite company, but I’ve heard it said that “There are some people in America who will not reject homosexuality unless they see homosexuality.”

Imagine that you go into your garage, unannounced, and you see your 14-year old son with his head in the lap of another boy in your car. Is this what you’d want for your son? Or imagine opening the bedroom door to your teenage daughter’s slumber party and you see the apple of your eye, your sweet sixteen-year-old daughter whom you simply cannot wait to have grandchildren from, with her head buried under the sheets in another young girl’s private area. See what I mean? I know that that vision is disturbing, but we must know what homosexuality is all about. Homosexuals do NOT want you to know the awful truth of their lifestyle, but this type of behavior is at the very core of it.

That’s it. That’s the big revelation. Oral sex. Apparently Adams thinks that queer oral sex is so horrific in itself that it makes his argument for him. See, I always thought it was the butt thing that freaked these people out.

(I’ll note in passing that it’s telling how the imaginary daughter is described as the child “you simply cannot wait to have grandchildren from,” but the imaginary son isn’t. Females are brood mares for these freaks, and their attitude slips through even when they’re trying to hide it.)

But back to the evils of oral sex: does Adams know that straight people also touch each other’s genitals with their mouths? You would think so, right? The man is 50 fucking years old. But immediately after the above quote he goes on to say:

One astute writer, Debra J.M. Smith, calls it “genital worship.” Indeed. If this is what you want from [sic] your children, remain silent. If you want better for your offspring, write your senators immediately and tell them to vote for the proposed Marriage Amendment.

That’s right, folks: unless the Marriage Amendment is passed, your child may go down on somebody. Okay, obviously logic is not a key element in the argument here, but then it never is with these clowns. What interests me is the freak-out over oral sex. If it’s “genital worship” when gays do it, why isn’t it when straights do it?

Like most homophobic rants, this one sounds like a bad case of repressed desire. I’d say Adams is in dire need of some genital worship, and given his obsession with homosexuality I doubt that Mrs. Adams is the kind of worshipper he has in mind. His whole diatribe is based on the assumption that gay sex is so appealing, people are going to start queering up and going down on each other in droves unless legal action is taken to stop them. You just want to send the guy a leather-bound edition of Allen Ginsberg’s poems and some hand lotion, you know?

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on June 8, 2006, 3:19 am EST

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Here’s another radical college professor spewing bilge into the minds of our young people. Writing on the left-wing crypto-communist History News Network, James C. Cobb sneers at the concerns of a hapless young Republican forced to listen to his America-hating propaganda:

After 34 years of college teaching, I thought I had heard just about every imaginable student complaint. Last week, however, a freshman in my 300-seat US History Since 1865 course came in to discuss her exam with one of the graders and proceeded to work herself into a semi-hissy over the fact that we had spent four class periods (one of them consisting of a visit from Taylor Branch) discussing the civil rights movement.

“I don’t know where he’s getting all of this,” she complained, “we never discussed any of this in high school.” One might have let the matter rest here as simply an example of a high school history teacher’s sins of omission being visited on the hapless old history prof. had the student not informed the TA in an indignant postscript, “I’m not a Democrat! I don’t think I should have to listen to this stuff!”

Mr. Cobb — excuse me, Dr. Cobb — obviously finds this terribly amusing. The student in question is, of course, absolutely right: the reason she didn’t learn about the so-called civil rights movement in high school is because, as David Horowitz has noted, institutional racism is a “fantasy of the left.” The real history, as all Republicans know, is that in the 60s some uppity Negroes, led by Martin Luther King, began lobbying for government handouts so they wouldn’t have to get off their lazy butts and actually work. Then they used their national megaphone to criticize this country’s brave, patriotic soldiers who were fighting and dying in Southeast Asia so people like “Dr.” King could live in freedom and peace.

But do you think that’s the history Dr. Cobb is going to teach? Hardly! Our campuses are full of washed-up brain-dead morally bankrupt leftists like Cobb whose rabid anti-Americanism renders them incapable of functioning in the real world, so they hide in their ivory towers and lob fetid spitballs of treason at the hapless students trapped in their classes. If we’d killed all these people back in the 70s, instead of letting them get Ph.D.s, jobs, and tenure, we wouldn’t have this problem.

Fortunately David Horowitz is committed to exposing these traitors and shining the spotlight of truth on the leftist network that supports them. I don’t see Cobb listed yet on the network, but I’m writing to Horowitz today so he can be added.

Via The Poorman.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on May 21, 2006, 12:04 pm EST

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I’m going to have every word of this post tattooed on my body. Then I’m going to figure out where Andrew lives and go have sex with him.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on May 10, 2006, 8:46 am EST

4 Comments »

Good news! Jay Bennish has been reinstated at Overland High School. He goes back in the classroom Monday. The official statement from the school district is regrettably weasly, but at least the result is good. Expect a wingnut meltdown.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on March 10, 2006, 6:40 pm EST

13 Comments »

Propaganda is amazing stuff. Done right, you can convince people of almost anything. You can persuade them that reality is the exact opposite of what they see in front of their eyes. Black is white, war is peace, death is life and day is night. The key is consistency and repetition. As Goebbels said, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

You can get away with some pretty wild shit that way. You know how it goes: You pick the pockets of average taxpayers and say you’re helping the middle-class. You pollute the rivers and claim you’re protecting the environment. You fetishize disease and death and call it a “culture of life.” You invade other countries and say you’re bringing them peace.

But the most important lie of all is the one that allows all these other lies to stand: That’s the one about how you’re telling the truth, and anybody who says different is engaging in — you guessed it — propaganda. It’s a neat trick, the ultimate jujitsu. It’s like wrapping your lies in a Teflon coating. Criticism just bounces right off and hits itself in the face. And the very word “propaganda” is no longer a tool for your enemies to use against you, but a weapon in your hands to slash away at anybody who dares speak the truth. The real truth, I mean.

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Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on March 9, 2006, 3:07 am EST

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Did you know that Europe has wingnuts too? They do! In Dutch a wingnut is “een vleugelnoot” (actually I think that means something completely different, but stay with me, people). And the exciting thing is that their heads are just as far up their asses as those of American wingnuts! This comforts me in a strange way.

In a charmingly insane editorial at the Brussels Journal, Flemish vleugelnoot Paul Belien sighs over the rotten state of Europe. The trouble began with the Enlightenment, he says, when Europe began rejecting its glorious religious heritage (persecution/war/intolerance) in exchange for a deadly secularism of reason and knowledge.

Mr. Vleugelnoot envies the “conservative resources” of America, which is still rooted in that wonderful Christian tradition he misses so much (persecution/war/intolerance). “Every so often I travel to the U.S. to recharge my batteries, and I am not the only European Conservative to do so,” he says. “From time to time one needs to breathe the air of freedom before submerging again in the stifling atmosphere of Europe.”

I’m not making this up.

What’s really eating Mr. Vleugelnoodle is that he’s jealous as hell of Muslims. It totally pisses him off that most modern Europeans aren’t into that whole suicide bomber, die-for-the-virgins-in-paradise thing:

In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom….

Europe’s predicament, I repeat, is entirely self-inflicted. Not Islam is to blame. Secularism is.

Excuse me for a moment while I lean my head out the window and scream in the general direction of Belgium:

“NO, YOU STUPID ASSWIPE!”

See, the Brussels Journal (of which Mr. Veugelstreudel is the editor in chief) is very big into the whole clash of civilizations trip — sensible Europe versus primitive Muslim immigrants. They backed the Danish cartoons all the way as a defense of free speech in the face of intolerant Muslim extremism.

But as this editorial makes clear, European vleugelnoots are no better than American wingnuts at realizing that what makes Western civilization relatively tolerant and worth defending is the very thing they so hate: its secularism. Secularism is why we even have free speech to defend. But Mr. Vooglebooble wishes the Enlightenment had never happened. He thinks the clash of civilizations would go much better if we could turn the clock back to the 17th century and have Christian holy warriors go toe-to-toe with Muslim holy warriors.

And there we get down to it: It’s not really about values for these vleugelnoots at all. It’s not about “tolerance.” It’s about us versus them. Deep down they have absolutely no fucking problem with blowing yourself and everybody else up for God. They just want it to be for their God. They would be happy as hell if all European Christians suddenly started behaving like the most deluded, inflamed Muslim extremists. American wingnuts are exactly the same. Well, hell — at the rate we’re going, maybe they’ll get their wish.

P.S. I have a deep personal affection for both the Flemish and the Dutch, so don’t nobody get their boobledoodles in a wad. I can curse in Flemish, too, so watch out.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch, Cartoons on February 24, 2006, 4:34 am EST

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…and tiny little homunculi of Rush Limbaugh where their brains should be.

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Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on February 18, 2006, 10:37 am EST

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Via Jesus’ General comes word that The Stupidest Woman In the World is urging people to support Denmark by purchasing Watco Danish Furniture Oil. Which, it turns out, is owned by Rust-Oleum and made in Wisconsin.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch, Godbags, Cartoons on February 7, 2006, 9:11 pm EST

1 Comment »

Oh, man. The Wingnut God really crossed the diamond with the pearl when he made this guy. No, not the guy in the picture — that’s Criswell! I’m referring to Andrew Longman, whose columns appear on RenewAmerica. He’s the Ed Wood of wingnuts: impassioned, incomprehensible, and unintentionally hilarious.

In a piece called “You Can’t Fight Islamism with Gay Cowboys,” Andrew explains how Hollywood is abetting the terrorists by making movies with gay people in them. There are two movies Andrew’s pissed about: “Brokeback Mountain,” of course, but also “End of the Spear,” in which a Christian missionary is played by an openly gay actor.

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Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch on January 25, 2006, 12:51 am EST

8 Comments »

I’m amazed at the uproar over Kate O’Beirne’s new book, Blacks Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. I mean, really — what’s the problem?

Here’s the book description* from Amazon:

A top conservative writer explores the black assault on our families, schools, workplaces, and military.

In her long-awaited first book, Kate O’Beirne takes on America’s leading black activists, and confronts them with hard evidence of how blacks like them have done more harm than good over the last four decades.

O’Beirne is all for racial equality and celebrates the unprecedented opportunities that blacks enjoy today. But she faults those extremists who believe that white racism still reigns and that blacks remain its victims. Their agenda is not pro-black; it’s merely anti-white.

Blacks Who Make the World Worse shows how their destructive handiwork can be felt in every corner of American life, including:

• fractured families and dispensable dads
• offices and schools that have become battlegrounds in the race wars
• military units that put lives at risk to promote social engineering

This book takes on some very powerful blacks and challenges beliefs that have become orthodoxy, starting with the myth that whites have been the enemy of black progress. O’Beirne marshals her allies, prepares for a good fight, and never loses her sense of humor. This is a provocative book that will appeal to anyone, black or white, who wants some old-fashioned common sense about relations between the races.

Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch, Gender Issues on January 13, 2006, 9:41 pm EST

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