One is only left to scratch one’s head and wonder why, why, why? Why
was it so important to Fox host Megyn Kelly to repeatedly look into the
camera and tell America’s children that Santa is “just white”?
It
is laughable, yes—and Jon Stewart helped us laugh at it when he asked,
“Who is Megyn Kelly talking to? Children who are sophisticated enough to
watch the 10 o’clock news, yet naïve enough to believe in Santa, and
racist enough to be upset that he might not be white?” That is, as he
points out, a fairly narrow segment of viewers.
But what Kelly’s
insane rant really shows is just how mean-spirited she really is, that
her vaunted empathy extends only to white working women, or rather to
white working right-wing women who think like her. Her empathy deficit
is front and center in the repetition of the word, “kids,” and the use
of the word “just.” When she says, Santa is “just white” to the “kids”
out there, and they are just going to have to deal with it, it seems
that she is also talking to non-white kids. Just deal with it, you
non-white kids. Santa’s not for you.
In the ensuing kerfuffle, she
accused her detractors of race-baiting — and claimed it was an
off-handed remark, that she was just kidding — and again asserted that
Santa us white. In response to a thoughtful article on
by
Aisha Harris, who chronicles the genuine pain she felt reconciling
Santa’s “whiteness” with her African-American family’s Christmas
celebration, Kelly ratcheted up the jerkiness. “Just because it makes
people uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.”
Because you
can’t change the facts of a made-up story about a jolly man who flies
around and gives children toys. And made-up stories belong on the news,
kids.
Patty
Robertson slays us. He really does. His delusional view that gayness is
a contagious germ was revealed this week when a viewer named Catherine
wrote in for some advice. She had recently reconnected with an old best
friend who, it turned out, was a lesbian. Catherine had invited her old
friend to meet her children, but became concerned when her old friend
wanted to bring her life partner along.
Big
mistake, the 700 Club host told her. Having lesbian friends in her home
could turn her children gay, and “you don’t want your children to grow
up as lesbians.”
Exactly how this transmission of sexuality would
occur, he did not explain. It, like the lord, works in mysterious ways,
but suffice it to say, “Danger!”
While Catherine should not risk
infecting her children with the acceptance-of-the-lesbian-lifestyle
virus, Rev. Pat said nor should she shun her old friend. Because, who
knows, maybe Catherine could infect her friend with the good Christian,
heterosexual lifestyle, ummm, virus.
Failing that, he counseled:
“It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody, ‘Look, I love you and we’re going to
do what we can to be friends if we can, but I have my lifestyle, it’s
Christian. And you have yours, it’s not. And so, I’m sorry, we can’t
indulge in certain things together.’”
Like lesbian sex, we’re presuming. That’s out.
3. Trump rejoices at having his birther conspiracy confirmed.
Perhaps
Trump’s obsession with the wide-ranging conspiracy to obscure President
Obama’s real birthplace could be better sorted out by a psychiatrist,
one who specializes in racist delusions. Know anybody?
Of course,
the wonderful thing about conspiracies is that everything proves them.
And so it was this week that a tragedy gave the real estate tycoon
Spy magazine
dubbed “the short-fingered vulgarian” further fodder for his ongoing
crusade to prove the president is a “furriner.” (Note that we
high-minded, progressive scribblers would never make fun of someone for
physical attributes they can’t help, so we won’t repeat that
short-fingered thing again. Vulgarian, maybe.)
Loretta Fuddy, the
65-year-old Hawaii state health director who authorized the release of
Obama’s birth certificate was killed in a small plane crash over the
coast of Hawaii. Nine other passengers survived. “How amazing, the state
health director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died
in plane crash today. All others lived,” the Donald tweeted.
The
implication is clear. The president had his thugs kill her. How? you
ask. Or, more to the point, why? Since the birth certificate is
released, confirmed Obama’s Hawaii birth and the matter closed for
everyone except the truly irrational.
Dunno.
Maybe the comb-over can explain.
4. Jim Garrow: Of course, Obama was in on that plane crash, and he also tried to nuke America (God stopped him!).
The
Donald is not the only eminently reasonable man who thinks Obama
arranged that plane crash. He enjoys the company of Conservative nutjob
Jim Garrow, who also knows for a fact that Obama killed Andrew
Breitbart, Michael Hastings and Tom Clancy. Oh, yes, and he tried to
nuke America.
“There are no coincidences with this administration
and with the thugs that have brought Chicago tactics to bear,” Garrow
said. “We’re seeing murder.”
His theory:
Fuddy was killed with neurotoxins before the plane crash.
Dastardly plan revealed. Mwah-ha-ha-ha, the president said in a statement.
5. Beck manages to make the strange story of the fraudulent sign language interpreter at Mandela’s funeral even stranger.
For
many, truth can truly be stranger than fiction. Much of what is in the
news would not be believable in a fictional universe. The revelations
about the fraudulent, schizophrenic sign language interpreter at Nelson
Mandela’s funeral, who may have thought he was signing the voices inside
his head, was one such story. It was all the responsible media could do
to keep up with the bizarre facts as they were revealed. But for Glenn
Beck, mental illness and a history of violence were not enough.
Something else, an even more sinister plot, had to be at work. He wants
the man’s blood tested, he said on his radio show “to find out if
anybody jacked him on anything.” Why, you say?
“This is exactly the kind of guy,”
Beck said,
“you hire to stand next to all of the world leaders at something like
this hoping that he will do something. I believe it is not unreasonable
to check his bloodstream to find out if anybody jacked him on anything
to have him hallucinate … It might have just been enough to say somebody
cause some kind of problem at this, for whatever the reason. But
something is really wrong here.”
For the crazies, there are no simple or even massive screwups.
6. Todd Kincannon: The left likes school shootings.
The
Twitter war launched by gun nuts in the immediate aftermath of the
Arapahoe school shooting, which coincided with the anniversary of the
Sandy Hook school shooting, reached new levels of viciousness.
“Allow
law-abiding school employees who will go through weapons training to
carry guns at school. Solved. But the Left likes school shootings,” Todd
Kincannon, former executive of the South Carolina GOP tweeted.
Kincannon
is not a nice man. Some of his earlier tweets include suggesting
transgendered people be put in camps, and lamenting to an Iraqi veteran
that the enemy did not have better aim. It should be mentioned that he
was pushed out of his leadership role with the South Carolina GOP.
Still, the gunnies love him, and he definitely has his followers.
“I
bet gun-hating commies are just giddy that a bunch of children got shot
in one of their ‘gun free zones.’ More propaganda for them,” he
continued.
And still more:
“Obama started the day using
Christmas to push socialized healthcare. Now he can use children killed
by gun control to push gun control.”
One of his followers chimed
in that since the left likes abortion so much, it only stands to reason
that they like school shootings too.
See, this is just another
example of how when it comes to fighting dirty, Democrats, progressives,
the left, is totally, well, out-gunned.
7. Gun lobby uses Newtown anniversary to raise money.
While
the parents and family members of the 20 children and six adults
massacred in Newtown a year ago celebrated the sad anniversary of these
horrific murders by urging others to perform acts of kindness for their
fellow humans, the gun lobby celebrated in its own way: by using the
anniversary as a way to raise money.
On the eve of the
anniversary, Gun Owners of America, one of the most aggressive pro-gun
lobbies, posted a message on its website celebrating all of its
achievements in the past year. They failed to include that, by Mother
Jones’ estimate, at least 194 children have been killed by guns in the
year since Newtown, many of them at home, by family members, many by
accident, simply because there was a gun around.
More guns is the solution.
And more money for Gun Owners of America, in order that they may attain
their goal of a fully armed America, and the defeat of this naïve
notion that schools should be gun-free zones. A fully armed and cocked
nation—that will cut down on the gun violence.
8. Eric Cantor calls Capitol police to bully singing children away.
Some
children gathered outside GOP leader Eric Cantor’s office last week to
sing Christmas carol tunes with immigration reform lyrics. They were
pretty cute, and of course, their singing carried a poignant message
about not tearing their families apart. Apparently, Cantor was unmoved.
Instead of coming out and talking to them and the adults who were
escorting them—or even giving them lip service like most politicians—he
called the Capitol police to come and bully them away. That they did.
Large men with booming voices came and told those kids to stop their
caterwauling, comprende? Or else. They did stop singing—the littlest
among them looking a bit frightened. Two minutes later, the big men
reappeared and told them that arrests were going to start happening.
What
was Cantor doing during all this? Speculation is that he might have
been reading the GOP White Paper on how to talk to women without
offending them, soon to be followed by the GOP White Paper on how to
talk to children without scaring them.
9. Wait, did the head of the Virginia GOP just threaten Obama’s life?
What’s
a little humor among friends? Well, if the friends are Virginia
Republicans, it can be vaguely incoherent and a little menacing. Last
weekend, Pat Mullins, chair of the state’s Republican Party joked to
about 450 party members at a party retreat that President Barack Obama
was “so close to death” that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) needed to buy a
life insurance policy.
You might have thought such a gathering
would include some soul-searching about the drubbing Virginia
Republicans recently received in all three statewide races, for the
first time in 24 years.
You’d be wrong. It was the media’s fault
Ken Cuccinelli lost, Mullins said, because they keep hammering away on
that whole fictitious “war on women” thing when all Cuccinelli wanted to
do was ban abortions and oral sex.
“This is false narrative by
false prophets… Republicans do not win when we are mini-Democrats or
Democrat-lite,” he said. Or even, reasonably modern people-lite.
But
the certain failure—or should we say, fervently wished-for failure—of
the healthcare law is what Republicans will continue to pin their hopes
on. And that was when he made this creepy pronouncement.
“Obama’s so close to death that Terry McAuliffe is about to buy life insurance on him,”
Mullins joked. “I’m looking forward to taking the gloves off!”
Oh those Republicans. Such cards.
10. Steve King: Don’t vote on immigration; keep fruitlessly fighting Obamacare.
Elsewhere in the country,
similarly delusional Tea Partying fools continued to rally supporters despite the fact that there does not seem to be any more tea to dump into Boston Harbor.
Iowa
Tea Partier, rabid anti-immigrationist Steve (cantaloupe calves) King
remains desperate not to let the nation or President Obama move on to
immigration reform, which he fears will further divide the Republican
Party. (On that he might be right.) “Only bad can come from passing
anything in the House that has to do with immigration,” he portentously
told the far-right birther site WorldNetDaily. The bad he fears, will be
those immigrants who will erode the law by voting Democratic.
He would prefer just to keep debating Obamacare forever, refusing to acknowledge that that ship has sailed.
One is only left to scratch one’s head and wonder why, why, why? Why
was it so important to Fox host Megyn Kelly to repeatedly look into the
camera and tell America’s children that Santa is “just white”?
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