There is a civil war being waged between conservative crazies. Two shock jocks will enter the Thunderdome (i.e. RNC Convention) and only one will triumph. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Ann Coulter
May your takes be ever hot, Ann.
The Trump Cheerleader-in-Chief (and would-be Secretary of Homeland Security) has fired her latest volley against the golden boy’s chief competition, Ted Cruz. In a column entitled “Ted Cruz: Tracy Flick With A D*ck,” Coulter… well, she compares the Texas senator to Reese Witherspoon’s obsequious, overachieving, careerist high school student character from the 1999 satire Election. The only difference is Cruz has a… “duck”?
But Coulter’s real argument here has nothing to do with anatomy. It is instead a rabid, screeching tirade against “THE RULES” (a phrase she keeps capitalizing for some reason), ignorance of which cost the Trump campaign delegates in Colorado and may have profound implications in a heated, contested convention. She writes that if Cruz beats Trump, we won’t get “fun stuff like building a wall,” but will instead be treated to debate-nerd and logician arcana.
Returning the “duck” business, though…
4. Ted Cruz
Filed under news nobody wanted to hear, it came to light this week Sen. Ted Cruz once applied his legalistic brilliance and agile mental acumen to the nagging question of what the Founding Fathers thought about masturbation.
While solicitor general of Texas, Cruz and his team filed a legal brief in 2007 arguing that “There is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationships.” And further, there was no “right to promote dildos, vibrators, and other obscene devices.”
Did it happen this week? No. Is it crazy? I’ve heard worse.
Just seems as good a time as any to remember that this bizarro puritanical clown is currently being groomed as the GOP’s last best hope.
Hat tip Mother Jones
3. Bryan Fischer
American Family Association’s desiccated scarecrow of a spokesman Bryan Fischer posted on his blog article some inane argument about how protesting anti-gay legislation makes you racist.
As always with Fischer, the post is dense with false equivalencies and ripe with unveiled bigotry. He takes aim at Bruce Springsteen, who cancelled a concert in North Carolina after that state’s governor signed into law legislation that sweeps away anti-discrimination laws, and Bryan Adams, who did likewise in Mississippi after the state passed one of those vile “religious liberty” bills. Or as Fischer glosses it: “a new civil rights bill that protects the conscience rights of blacks in a state that once was world-renowned for racial prejudice.”
Fischer’s addition of “race” into what has been widely reported as one of the most brazen anti-LGBT bills to work its way through a state legislature, is frankly bizarre. But here we get his formulation
“Bruce Springsteen is now officially a general in the war on women,” Fischer avers, “and Bryan Adams is now the leading bigot in the South.”
The nonsense here is almost inspired: because the anti-LGBT bill in Mississippi applies equally to blacks and whites, the law “protects the rights of blacks as well as whites.” To wit: “Black pastors won’t be forced to perform same sex wedding ceremonies against their conscience just because a white man in government says they have to. Black churches won’t be forced to rent their houses of worship for same sex wedding ceremonies. Black county clerks won’t be forced to issue same sex wedding licenses that violate their conscience just because a white boss says she has to. ”
It must be said loudly and often that race has nothing to do with this bill. What it does is allow for a brazen latitude of discrimination across the board on the dubious premise of “religion” — so, yes, the law is an equalizer insofar as conservative Christians, both black and white, will both be allowed to, for instance, deny services to gay couples, and LGBT citizens, both black and white, will have their civil liberties curtailed with equal force.
Fischer’s characterization of a discriminatory bill as a beacon for racial harmony shows him at his most specious, most desperate, and most deplorable.
1. and 2. Alex Jones & Glenn Beck
There’s really nobody to root for here.
Radio shock jock extraordinaire Alex Jones calls Glenn “I’m-too-crazy-for-Fox-News” Beck a “religious cult leader.” It’s about as sound an argument as Jones as ever made, and insofar as it describes Beck’s messianic self-regard and zealous proselytizing on behalf of his chosen candidate, it also describes Jones.
Each man is something of a totem for the daffiest, far-right fringe conspiracy-laden ideologies — but the current GOP slugfest has driven a massive rift driven between them.
On one side, you’ve got Beck and his The Blaze media outlet, pumping out reams of copy and hours of video in the service of selling America on Ted Cruz, in whose candidacy, Beck has insisted, he sees the will of God manifesting itself.
On the other side, Jones and his InfoWars mouthpiece, pushing the notion that Trump — in some vague coalition with Putin perhaps — is the only person alive who can save America from the Pontiff/United Nations/Big Pharma pederasty ring (or whatever gets cooked up underneath Jones’ tin-foil hat).
“He is an egomaniac, super-narcissist, probably psychotic, in my view, and he’s insane and wants to be a cult leader,” Jones said. Moreover, he accuses Beck of aping his act, by emulating Jones like some kind of conservative Oprah Winfrey. Oh, there’s more. Check out the video courtesy of Right Wing Watch above.
This rivalry goes back a long way, long before Cruz and Trump fell in and out of love with each other on the campaign trail. Mediaite notes that “in 2013, Jones called Beck ‘despicable’ and Beck labeled Jones a ‘madman,'” and the following year Jones called Beck a “Judas goat.”
So regardless of who wins the GOP nomination, it’s unlikely we’ll see these too clowns cool down their conflict any time soon. It’s too good for ratings, anyway.
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Image: DonkeyHotey via Flickr
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