10 Outrages and Crazy Statements by Right-Wingers This Week: Pope Provokes Free-Market Freakout
The right freaks out about a compassionate pope and transgendered people, and spews some really bizarre conspiracy theories.
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November 30, 2013
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Before the Thanksgiving floats, there was the usual parade of
right-wing nuts this week, many of whom became apoplectic after Pope
Francis’ much-publicized Joy of the Gospel document, which critiqued
unfettered capitalism and insinuated that thoroughly discredited
trickle-down economics is naïve and just plain wrong.
1. Stuart Varney lectures Pope Francis about capitalism.
Not even the pope is safe from the wrath of Fox. How dare the pope
attack “deified markets” and the idolatry of money? Who does he think he is? God?
Fox
Business host Stuart Varney was just stewing about the pontiff’s
remarks. “Capitalism, in my opinion, is a liberator,” he lectured Pope
Francis from his television pulpit. “The free choice of millions of
people is the essence of freedom. In my opinion, society benefits most
when people are free to pursue their own self-interest. I know that
sounds like a contradiction, but it is not.”
It isn’t. It just isn’t.
Oh,
yeah, and another thing. The pope has no business mixing politics with
religion. Especially when his political views diverge with those of Fox.
Varney again:
“I go to church to save my soul. It’s
got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has
offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has
characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my
politics.”
Pope John Paul II was much more to
Varney’s liking because he was very against communism, and very into
private property. He never made rich people feel bad for having too
much, while millions of others went without.
2. Cliff Kinkaid: Marxists have infiltrated the Catholic Church.
The
problem goes a lot deeper than Stu Varney (and Rush Limbaugh) had
feared. The Catholic Church itself is infiltrated with Marxists. This
conspiracy theory is brought to you by the right-wing, misnamed Accuracy
in Media director, Cliff Kincaid.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not here to beat up on the pope,” Kinkaid insisted
in a video recently uploaded to YouTube.
“That’s not my job. But I can read. I can read this document. I can see
what he is saying, and I can tell you right now that this is a very,
very disappointing document, and it makes me wonder about the future of
the Roman Catholic Church in this world and what they’re heading
towards.”
Kinkaid says he has proof that there is an evil commie
plot in the Roman Catholic Church, that it supports one world government
and that Pope Francis is using “flowery language” to camouflage this
sinister plot, or “what we might euphemistically call a new world
order, a new world economic order.”
But he is not attacking the Manchurian Pope.
3. Pam Geller: How dare the Pope actually read the Koran!
It’s
not the communism that Islamophobic blogger/activist Pam Geller is
worried about with Pope Francis. It’s how nice he is to Muslims. It’s
downright unChristian of him to imply that there might be Muslims who
don’t want to kill the rest of us. He obviously condones the killing of
Christians.
Talk about a leap of faith.
“At a time when
Christianity worldwide is under siege by Islamic jihadists, the leader
of the Catholic Church claims that the Quran teaches non-violence. As
Christians across the Muslim world live in abject terror and fear
kidnapping, rape and slaughter to the bloodcurdling cries of ‘Allahu
akbar,’ the pope gives papal sanction to the savage,” Geller wrote
on her blog.
What
the pope actually did in his apostolic exhortation, which has sent
shockwaves throughout the right-wing wackosphere, was to contrast
“violent fundamentalism” with “authentic Islam.” The latter, he wrote,
was “opposed to every form of violence.”
“How does he know that? When did he become an imam?” Geller writes.
Because
you have to be an imam to read the Quran. Geller has read a few
passages as well, especially the ones about slaughtering Christians in
the name of jihad. Wait, so does that make her an imam?
4. Jeb Bush: Obama is taking revenge on Catholics by moving Vatican embassy.
So,
even though the pope is a socialist and a Muslim, for some reason our
socialist Muslim president is out to get the Catholic Church.
Jeb
Bush took it upon himself to perpetuate the Republican lie that
President Obama is attacking Catholics by relocating the U.S. Embassy to
the Vatican. He’s very vindictive, you know, the president. And he
wants to punish Catholics for the Church’s opposition to Obamacare. When
Obama did all those
mea culpas about the problems with Obamacare, that was just code for blaming the Catholic Church.
Here’s what former Florida governor Bush tweeted out last Wednesday:
"Why
would our President close our Embassy to the Vatican? Hopefully, it is
not retribution for Catholic organizations opposing Obamacare."
Jeb
is not the first Bush to be willfully ignorant of history and
geography. A modicum of research reveals that the process of moving the
embassy from its current location to the compound at the U.S. Embassy to
Italy actually
began under Jeb’s brother,
President George W., whose administration purchased the buildings. The
new location is actually a tenth of a mile closer to the Vatican. And,
just for knowing, many Catholic organizations supported the Affordable
Care Act.
But, hey, since when did actual facts get in the way of an ad hominem political attack on the country’s first black president?
5. Birther preacher Manning: Obama had mother of his lovechild killed.
Despite
the pope’s apparent sanity, there was still plenty of lunacy in the
right-wing pulpit this week. Take birther preacher (yes, that’s a
category) Rev. James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary
Church, who leveled this bizarre accusation: Remember the apparently
mentally ill woman who was shot and killed after she tried to ram her
car into a barrier outside the White House in October? Her name was
Miriam Carey, and that was no random, tragic incident. According to
Manning, that woman was the mother of Barack Obama’s illegitimate child.
The
proof, says the good reverend—who also believes Michelle Obama was born
a man and that the president was born in Kenya—will come when Miriam
Carey’s young child is given a paternity test. Just to make extra sure.
While
the incident is being investigated, neither the family nor their
attorney has suggested this conspiracy. Their denial of the conspiracy,
says Manning, is just more proof that Obama had his secret baby mama
killed.
That’s the wonderful thing about conspiracy theories. Everything proves them right.
6. Dinesh D’Souza: Obama is a grown-up Trayvon. I take it back. No, I stand by it. No, I take it back.
Conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza called President Barack Obama a "Grown-Up Trayvon” on his Twitter
page,
earlier this week. “I am thankful this week when I remember that
America is big enough and great enough to survive Grown-Up Trayvon in
the White House!” was the tweet, according to
Politico.
Then
he deleted it. Then he defended it, saying the President himself had
said he was like Trayvon, showing a deep understanding of the
President’s compassionate speech. Then he deleted that.
Make up your racist mind, D’Souza.
7. Colorado school board member recommends castration for trans people.
Intolerance
and hate comes in so many packages—this time, it's a little old white
lady in Colorado who holds a small amount of local power. It came to
light this week in Gawker, that Katherine Svenson, a school board member
for the Delta County school district, recently suggested that
transgender students not be allowed to use the bathroom corresponding
with their gender identity unless they have been “castrated.”
Lovely.
“Massachusetts
and California have passed laws relating to calling a student,
irrespective of his biological gender, letting him perform as the gender
he thinks he is, or she is,” Svenson said at the meeting. “I just want
to emphasize: not in this district. Not until the plumbing’s changed.
There would have to be castration in order to pass something like that
around here.”
Given the chance to walk back those inflammatory remarks when questioned by a local news station, Svenson declined.
“I
don’t have a problem if some boys think they are girls,” she said. “I’m
just saying as long as they can impregnate a woman, they’re not going
to go in the girls’ locker-room.”
(h/t
Gawker)
8. Klingenschmitt: The devil sent transgendered boys to rape your daughters.
Discharged
former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt has similar qualms about
transgendered people. They are out to rape your daughters; the “demon of
rape” sent them, Klingenschmitt ranted on his Internet broadcast
recently. Even when the transgendered person is really young, like
6-year-old Colorado girl Coy Mathis, who was born a boy.
“He
has been dressed as a girl by his parents because his parents have a
political agenda to push these coed bathroom bills into Colorado state
law,” Klingenschmitt declared, without any apparent evidence or need for
evidence.
The parents, who have had the wisdom to accept their
kid for what she is, and fight for her right to be who she is, are
“abusive,” according to Klingenschmitt, and they are part of a broader
movement, “to violate your daughters.”
Changing your gender identity to carry out rape. That’s a lot of trouble to go through.
(h/t:
Right-Wing Watch)
9. Florida Tea Partier: GOP ‘gay thugs’ are forcing employers to hire effeminate males and masculine women.
The
author of this little piece of absurdity is one Danita Kilcullen,
co-founder of the Fort Lauderdale Tea Party, who is very upset that 10
Republicans joined Democrats to approve the Employment Non-Discrimation
Act (ENDA) in the Senate. She blames that “thug organization,” the Log
Cabin Republicans, for this turn of events, and promises that the act
will force employers to “hire someone with orange hair, body/neck/face
covered with tattoos, multiple piercings, or a man in a dress … or for
that matter, a demonstrative effeminate male or purposeful butch-looking
female,” according to an email obtained by the Broward County/Palm
Beach
Sun-Sentinel.
That
would be terrible, especially if that orange-haired, tattooed, pierced person could actually do the job.
10. Alec Baldwin: Gay Fundamentalists?
Alec
Baldwin, liberal actor with an anger problem and a streak of
homophobia, flailed around this week after his temper got him into
trouble once again, and cost him his flagging TV show. First, he
compared his lashing out at a no-doubt extremely annoying paparazzo
allegedly with a homophobic slur to Martin Bashir's suggestion that
Sarah Palin be subjected to the slave punishment of defecation in her
mouth. (Bashir later apologized. We forgive him.)
When that didn’t work, Baldwin blamed “gay fundamentalists” for his demise.
We just have one question, Alec: What are gay fundamentalists?
. Lesson: rubbing the egos of Church-hating left-wingers doesn’t make more Catholics, it just makes the Church less respected.
