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. Steve King
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com
Representative Steve King (R-IA), chairman of the GOP’s Cantaloupe Caucus, took a break from insulting immigrants this week to turn his attacks against a different undeserving target: the unemployed.
Speaking at an event in South Carolina, Congressman King explained his opposition to federal aid programs by saying that the millions of Americans who can’t find jobs are pretty much just spoiled kids.
“Now, what kind of a family, if you had six kids and a third of your kids would say, ‘I’m not doing the chores, mom’?” King asked. “If any of them say, ‘I refuse, I’m not going to participate, I’m not going to contribute to the American GDP,’ pretty soon those kids would be on the — you get to eat after you do the work! Not just in hopes that one day you might actually do the work!”
Putting aside the question of how the King family’s chores contribute to the American GDP, ripping the unemployed in South Carolina may have been a rare stroke of political genius from King. Hey, it worked for Newt.
4. Gary Miller
In an ill-fated attempt to follow the advice of the GOP’s post-2012 election “autopsy,” Representative Gary Miller (R-CA) attempted to “show sincerity” towards a group of young immigrants at a recent event in Rancho Cucamonga.
Miller said that he understands the plight of DREAMers, the children of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country at a young age. You see, when he was a kid, his parents moved from Arkansas to… California.
“You know, I’ve talked to a lot of young people like [you],” the anti-immigration-reform Miller said. “I mean, I understand the difficulty. Just like I was born in Arkansas. I came here when I was a year old.”
Video is below, via The Plum Line (the relevant exchange begins at 1:23).
Given that Miller’s district is almost 50 percent Hispanic, the eight-term congressman presumably has plenty of constituents who wish that he would “self-deport” back to The Natural State.
3. Louie Gohmert
Between spreading conspiracy theories about Iraq’s still-nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and becoming the face of anti-American protests in Egypt, it’s been an especially crazy week for reliably crazy Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX). But Gohmert makes the list this week for his performance as a guest host on the radio show of the Family Research Council, a hate group led by regular host Tony Perkins.
Gohmert interviewed Alan Keyes — a fellow This Week In Crazy mainstay — on a variety of topics ranging from global warming and vaccines being scams, to gay marriage ruining the American family, to liberal elites trying to depopulate planet Earth. Yes, you read that last part correctly.
Elites “actually believe that we’re a blight on the face of the planet, we human beings, and we should therefore be put on a path toward our own semi-extinction,” Keyes explained. “I often try to get people to see that if you think about it, if we actually get back to the levels they’re talking about, it would just be these elitists and the people needed to service them. That’s all that will be left in the world.”
“That’s right,” Gohmert agreed. “That’s a scary thought.”
2. Jerry Curry
Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller, which was last seen on this list exposing President Obama’s dogs as racists, checks in at #2 this week for an op-ed so misguided that even WorldNetDaily would think twice about running it.
The column, which was written by retired U.S. Army Major General Jerry Curry and appears in The Daily Caller’s “Guns and Gears” section, focuses on the killing of retired World War II veteran Shorty Belton by two African-American teens. Curry labels the crime as “a sort of Trayvon Martin case in reverse” (it isn’t, at all, but stay with me here).
Because “racial hustlers and parasites” like Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton haven’t spoken out against the robbery to Curry’s satisfaction, he concludes that “America’s white leadership will have to get rid of them and select their replacements.” Wait… what?
“Why don’t I suggest that Black Democrats select the replacements?” Curry asks. “Because Black Democrats are fine for house work, but not for doing heavy lifting.” Oh.
The entire op-ed — which uses the term “hip hopping” as a verb without a shred of irony — deserves to be read, judged, and mocked in its full, crazy glory. But in the meantime, if white people are picking our new civil rights leaders, I suggest that Curry cast his ballot for Ted Nugent. After all, he is on a Black Power tour…
1. Pat Robertson
This week’s “winner” is 700 Club host Pat Robertson, who set a new standard for anti-gay paranoia by warning that gay people in San Francisco murder people with special AIDS rings.
Robertson got to the crazy topic in response to a question from a viewer who wondered if she should have been informed that a man whom she was driving to church was dying of AIDS. To Robertson’s credit, he acknowledges that he “used to think [AIDS] was transmitted by saliva and other things,” but now knows that “unless there’s a cut or some bodily fluid transmission, I think you’re not going to catch it.”
Unfortunately, he didn’t stop there.
“You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there want to get people so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” Robertson said. “Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder.”
Yes, in Robertson’s fantasy world, evil gay people use secret rings (presumably filled with “liquid AIDS”) to infect innocents, just for the malicious fun of it. It’s just one more thing that Robertson and Ron Paul have in common.
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