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. Chris Mapp
Screenshot: YouTube
One week after Texas Senate candidate Dwayne Stovall dropped one of the craziest campaign ads you’ll ever see, another challenger to Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) has exposed his wingnut bona fides.
In an editorial endorsing Senator Cornyn for re-election, the Dallas Morning News noted — in the understatement of the century — that “the other candidates are less informed, little known and generally offer extreme, vague or impractical ideas.”
“South Texas businessman Chris Mapp, 53, told this editorial board that ranchers should be allowed to shoot on sight anyone illegally crossing the border on to their land, referred to such people as ‘wetbacks,’ and called the president a ‘socialist son of a bitch,'” the editorial board wrote.
Mapp’s unique “shoot wetbacks on sight” immigration plan unsurprisingly caused controversy in Texas, forcing Mapp to explain himself. It did not go well; his defense to the San Antonio Express-News was that using the racial slur is as “normal as breathing air in South Texas.”
When Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) launched his insane campaign to depose “Liberal John Cornyn,” it seemed like a safe bet that he’d be the craziest candidate in the race. But this being Texas, perhaps we should have known better.
4. Louie Gohmert
Gage Skidmore via Flickr
Of course when it comes to crazy Texas politicians, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is still the reigning champion.
Gohmert, predictably, was a big fan of the controversial anti-gay bill that passed through Arizona’s legislature before being vetoed by Governor Jan Brewer. But the rationale for Gohmert’s support was rather bizarre — even by his standards.
“These are religious beliefs and how have we gotten so far afield from the Constitution that we say, well if you’re not willing to embrace the liberal beliefs that we have then your religious beliefs are not protected?” Gohmert said during a Wednesday appearance on the Janet Mefferd show. “It doesn’t say that in the First Amendment, it avoids the establishment of a religion. Well some are establishing the religion of secularism and everybody else’s religion has just got to basically go to blazes.”
You may be stuck trying to figure out what the “religion of secularism” is, but Gohmert plowed right ahead, explaining how discriminating against gay people is the natural conclusion to the civil rights movement.
“Some of them are very shocked, they participated in the civil rights movement and then to turn around and have gay rights folks saying now ‘you can’t practice your religious beliefs…’ Wait a minute, wait a minute, we stood up for you and your beliefs and now you’re saying we can’t stand up for our beliefs because they conflict with you?” Gohmert exclaimed. “That’s not what freedom is about.”
In case this was somehow not clear already, don’t take history lessons from Louie Gohmert.
Audio of Gohmert’s comments is available atRight Wing Watch.
3. Bryan Fischer
It may not shock you to learn that America’s most paranoid homophobe, American Family Association mouthpiece Bryan Fischer, was also a big fan of the Arizona law.
On Monday, Fischer explained that the law would be a critical weapon in his never-ending fight against hypermasculine homosexual stormtrooopers.
“They are jack-booted homofascist thugs,” Fischer said of the law’s opponents, “who want to use the tyrannical and totalitarian power of the state to send men of faith to jail. That sounds far more like Nazi Germany than the United States of America.”
Two days later, Fischer offered a slightly more articulate version of Gohmert’s argument.
“Yeah, Jim Crow is back,” Fischer said of the law’s opponents, “but it’s because of the work of Big Gay and their allies, including the NFL.”
With regards to the NFL’s threat to move the Super Bowl from Arizona if the law passes, Fischer raged “What the NFL is saying to Arizona [is that] if you don’t bow the knee to the God of Gayness, you cannot sit at our lunch counter.”
If you’re cringing at Fischer’s awful lunch counter analogy, cut the guy some slack. After all, he loves black males!
2. Lawrence Lockman
Image via Maine.gov
Last year, the right-wing Susan B. Anthony list began training Republicans to stop terrifying voters by sharing their theories on “legitimate rape” and abortion with the public.
Unfortunately, they came far too late to help Maine state representative Lawrence Lockman.
Lockman, a Tea Party-backed ally of Maine’s equally absurd Governor Paul LePage, has a long history of erratic behavior. A report from Bangor Daily News’ Mike Tipping, published Tuesday, reveals that Lockman has uttered a shocking number of offensive statements throughout his three decades in politics. But this statement from 1995 stands out as especially crazy:
If a woman has (the right to abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.
You read that correctly: According to Lockman, if abortion is legal, then rape — excuse me, “pursuit of sexual freedom” — should be too. After all, it’s a victimless crime (unless someone dies.)
Even Todd Akin probably thinks that Lockman should have kept that one to himself.
The revelation of Lockman’s remarks has prompted loud calls for his resignation, and a half-hearted apology from the first-term legislator (“I have always been passionate about my beliefs, and years ago I said things that I regret,” he explained).
If Maine’s legislature does use its superior strength to force him out of office, Lockman shouldn’t fret; after all, the Virginia Republicans would probably welcome him with open arms.
1. Tea Party Nation
This week’s “winner” is Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips, who somehow managed to one-up Gohmert and Fischer with an even more ridiculous response to Arizona’s S.B. 1062.
Writing on the Tea Party Nation website, Phillips laments that “the left and the homosexual lobby are both pushing slavery using the Orwellian concepts of ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusiveness.'”
After slamming Governor Jan Brewer for giving in to the leftist gay slavemasters — “She has an honored place in the ranks of the French Republicans,” Phillips writes — the hate group leader gets to the meat of his crazy argument:
Should a devote [sic] baker be required to create a cake for a homosexual wedding that has a giant phallic symbol on it or should a baker be required to create pastries for a homosexual wedding in the shape of genitallia [sic]? Or should a photographer be required to photograph a homosexual wedding where the participants decide they want to be nude or engage in sexual behavior? Would they force a Jewish photographer to work a Klan or Nazi event? How about forcing a Muslim caterer to work a pork barbeque dinner?
That’s right: One day you’re being prevented from refusing service to LGBT customers, the next you’re being forced to bake penis pastries and photograph the ensuing orgy.
Clearly, Arizona’s anti-gay bill inspired an abundance of startlingly crazy responses. But with apologies to Gohmert, Fischer, and many, many others, Judson Phillips once again takes the (non-phallic) cake.
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!
