Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Glenn Beck
This Week In Crazy MVP Glenn Beck had a very busy week. Several of his rants could have qualified him for the list — accusing President Obama, John Boehner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham of treason and calling Leonardo DiCaprio a “piece of garbage” for considering portraying Woodrow Wilson in an upcoming film spring immediately to mind — but he lands at #5 for a gem of a rant on his radio show last Friday.
Dipping back into familiar birther territory, Beck lamented that President Obama just “doesn’t know who Americans are,” because he’s spent his entire life “surrounded by people who hate the United States of America. That’s not a slam on him, this is a fact. It’s just a fact.”
Beck went on to explain that the president “is not a sports fan” — an odd claim considering that Beck has previously accused Obama of preferring golf to governing — because “he didn’t grow up here.”
Finally, Beck got to his main point. “I do contend that he didn’t earn [the presidency],” Beck said. “He was chosen by the Soroses of the world.”
Why would George Soros do such a thing? “He can get away with murder,” Beck explained, “because he’s likeable. And he’s black.”
Right, Glenn. Because if there’s one group that never gets accused of crime in America, it’s black people.
4. Phil Gingrey
Photo: Republican Conference via Flickr.com
In a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Wednesday, Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA) demonstrated exactly how out of touch he is by complaining about his meager $172,000-a-year salary. The National Review reports that Gingrey offered the following explanation for opposing an exemption from Obamacare for congressmembers and their staff:
The Georgia Republican, whose latest personal financial-disclosure forms show his net worth is at least $3 million, had little sympathy for lawmakers and even less for staff.
Capitol Hill aides, he said “may be 33 years old now and not making a lot of money. But in a few years they can just go to K Street,” the Washington, D.C., vernacular for becoming a lobbyist, “and make $500,000 a year. Meanwhile I’m stuck here making $172,000 a year.”
Yes, Gingrey is upset that he only makes $172,000 to work 126 days per year. Welcome to Obama’s America!
Thankfully for him, like his staff — the majority of whom cannot reasonably expect to be making $500,000 a year, for the record — nothing is stopping Gingrey from packing up his office and becoming a high-priced lobbyist like so many of his former congressional colleagues.
It’s probably worth noting, by the way, that Gingrey — who has also declared that Todd Akin was “partially right” about “legitimate rape” — is considered to be the rational candidate in Georgia’s 2014 Republican primary for Senate.
3. Louie Gohmert
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com
Leave it to Louie Gohmert to come up with the lamest response to Monday’s mass shooting at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
In an interview with Newsmax on Tuesday, Gohmert eagerly blamed violent video games and a weak mental health infrastructure for the shooting. “Mental health seems to be playing into the Newtown shooting, the Colorado shooting,” he said. “It obviously has an effect and it’s interesting that these people seem to have a common tie with extremely violent video games. And if they have mental health issues and play extremely violent video games, they seem to have trouble distinguishing between what is reality and what isn’t.”
Fair enough — if anyone would know about having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, it’s this guy.
But Gohmert wants to be clear about one thing: Guns are not to blame for the incident in which 12 people were murdered with a gun.
“I see a lot of problems here and blaming this on guns is like saying the big problem with obesity is we’ve got too many spoons,” Gohmert asserted. “It’s not the spoons, it’s not the guns.”
Of course, regular Gohmert followers already knew that the problem isn’t spoons or guns. The correct answer is always the Muslim Brotherhood.
2. Tea Party Unity
Colorado’s recent recall elections, which saw two pro-gun reform state senators removed from office, have inspired a lot of passionate responses from both sides of the aisle. But none was even close to being as tone-deaf as that of the group Tea Party Unity, which proudly proclaimed that the elections were “a fitting commemoration of 9/11.”
“There is a reason I describe Colorado’s recall as a fitting commemoration of 9/11. That September morning twelve years ago, average citizens aboard United Airlines flight 93 fought the first battle against jihadists in America,” Tea Party activist Stephen Nemo wrote, as reported by Right Wing Watch. “The terrorists were determined to destroy our way of life, the freedoms we enjoy – our rights as individuals.”
“At the Battle of Lexington in 1775, American militiaman John Munroe told a fellow soldier, ‘I’ll give them the guts of my gun’ as he lifted his musket to fire on the advancing red line of British troops,” Nemo continued, apparently unaware that the battle did not take place on 9/11. “The Red Coats, you see, were under orders to confiscate the ‘guts’ of Munroe’s gun in order to secure the conceits of a petty, royal tyrant.”
For those of you keeping score at home, that makes Coloradans who supported expanding gun sale background checks the equivalent of Red Coats and jihadists. In other news, the Colorado Tea Party’s plan to secede is looking better every day.
1. Erik Rush
This week’s “winner” is once again Fox News contributor and WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush, who ripped a page from the Alex Jones book with his deeply paranoid response to the Navy Yard shooting.
On the night of the shooting, Rush hopped on Twitter to declare the attack a false flag operation (which fits sungly with his theory that President Obama is actually a serial killer.)
If you think the #dcnavyyardshooting is random or just an irate doofus, you’re kidding yourself. #tcot #lnyhbt
— Erik Rush (@erikrush) September 16, 2013
#NavyYardshooting Part political diversion, part gun-grab theater. NOT random. NOT a lone psycho. #tcot
— Erik Rush (@erikrush) September 16, 2013
Given a few days to consider the facts, however, Rush reconsidered his conspiracy. In his Thursday column for WND, Rush came forward with a new theory: It’s a race war!
“The racial climate in America has been deliberately poisoned in recent years by the self-serving machinations of the political left, career civil rights activists and the Obama administration in particular. This has led to a near-epidemic in black-on-white crime, one which goes wholly unreported by the establishment press,” Rush writes. “Might this contrived, institutional advancement of racial tension have contributed to the rage and instability of a man who already felt disaffected due to his race?”
“Was racial hatred the prime motivator for Aaron Alexis’ heinous attack this week, a factor, or a non-issue?” he continues. “While it is altogether possible that his were the actions of an individual with a psyche disintegrating so rapidly that even he may not have fully understood why he acted as he did, failing to consider race in light of the current political and social landscape would be imprudent indeed.”
You see, Rush isn’t flat-out stating that Barack Obama caused the massacre by being the divider-in-chief. He’s just asking questions.
Meanwhile, Obama and Oprah Winfrey are cursing Rush for ruining their master plan yet again.
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!
