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
As the Ebola virus sent the far right into hysterics, one This Week In Crazy regular remained remarkably calm: Glenn Beck.
On Friday, that all went out the window.
After lamenting that the government’s incompetent response to Ebola is “literally going to be the death of all of us,” Beck launched into a shouting fit about how President Obama is holding his “chin up like Mussolini” instead of admitting his faults.
“I haven’t seen anyone in Washington say ‘Hey, you know what? I was wrong about ISIS,'” Beck raged. “‘You know what? I was wrong about Benghazi. You know what? I was wrong about the caliphate. Oh, you know what? It seems I was wrong about the economy. Oh, I was wrong about health care. Oh, I seem to have been wrong!'”
I’m sure that President Obama would lower his chin to a non-Mussolini level just as soon as Beck admits that he seems to have been wrong about society’s imminent collapse.
4. Anthony Culler
Photo: Inti via Flickr
Republican politicians have said plenty of awful things about gay people, but perhaps no attack has been stranger than that of South Carolina congressional candidate Anthony Culler.
Culler, the longshot GOP challenger to 10-term congressman James Clyburn (D-SC), took to Facebook last week to decry marriage equality as “a pestilence that has descended on our society, against our will, by those in the courts and government that do not value the traditional family.”
“Same-sex couples that seek to destroy our way of life and the institution of marriage are NOT cute and cuddly but rather (for those of you that are old enough to remember the movie), Gremlins that will only destroy our way of life,” Culler wrote. “These people are bullies and now that they are winning their true and hateful nature is much easier to see and hear. (Watch the response to this post.)”
The response may not have been exactly what Culler anticipated. While LGBT groups largely ignored him, the state Republican party publicly rebuked Culler and his comments. “Most people learned in kindergarten not to call other people names,” state GOP chairman Matt Moore explained.
But Culler will not be silenced. On Thursday, posted another Facebook message, declaring “Operation Gremlin” a smashing success.
Apparently, the only way to stop a Gremlin with a gay marriage certificate is a good guy with an imaginary gun.
3. Kimberly Guilfoyle
In 2012, President Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 36 percent among single women, making them one of the key building blocks to his winning coalition.
How can Republicans close the gender gap in future elections? Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle has a novel solution: Send them away from the voting booth, and back to online dating sites.
Guilfolye explained why women shouldn’t trouble themselves with things as complicated as elections during Tuesday’s edition of The Five.
“It’s the same reason why young women on juries are not a good idea. They don’t get it!” Guilfoyle explained. “They’re not in that same life experience of paying the bills, doing the mortgage, kids, community, crime, education, health care. They’re, like, healthy and hot and running around without a care in the world.”
“I just think we can excuse them, so they can go back on Tinder or Match.com,” she added.
If it’s any consolation to young women, the fact that Fox doesn’t want them to vote puts them in pretty good company.
2. Douglas MacKinnon
Like many conservative Republicans, author and former Reagan administration aide Douglas MacKinnon is not happy about the rapid advances the gay rights movement is making. But thankfully, he has a foolproof solution: Secession.
What could possbibly go wrong?
MacKinnon laid out his plan during a Tuesday appearance on Janet Mefferd’s right-wing radio show. Furious that gay rights have gotten out of control — “The world has been turned upside down if you do happen to believe in traditional values,” he fumed — MacKinnon proposed that South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida leave the U.S. and form new nation.
(Texas, he notes, should not join because “there have certainly been a number of incursions into Texas and other places from some of the folks in Mexico.”)
“You have to remember that all 11 states from the South, including ultimately Texas, seceded legally,” MacKinnon explained in a very Ron Paul-flavored take on history. “They left the union peacefully, they left the union legally, and then President Lincoln…part of the problem there was that the North realized very quickly that it could not survive economically without the power of the South.”
“There’s no reason we can’t do it now,” MacKinnon added. “It’s part of our rights as human beings, as children of God. We are born free, we are born with liberty, and we have the right to not only look to that, but to protect our faith.”
And what would MacKinnon name this new, gremlin-free country?
“Reagan.”
Does this new country need a chairman for its House Oversight Committee? I’m asking for a friend…
1. Louie Gohmert
This week’s “winner” is Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who called for the reinstitution of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell — as only he can.
During a Tuesday appearance on the Point Of View radio show, Gohmert — a self-styled historian and military expert — explained how gay massages will lead America to lose the War on Terror. This isn’t ancient Greece, after all.
“I’ve had people say, ‘Hey, you know, there’s nothing wrong with gays in the military. Look at the Greeks.’ Well, you know, they did have people come along who they loved that was the same sex and would give them massages before they went into battle,” Gohmert said. “But you know what, it’s a different kind of fighting, it’s a different kind of war and if you’re sitting around getting massages all day ready to go into a big, planned battle, then you’re not going to last very long.”
“It’s guerrilla fighting. You are going to be ultimately vulnerable to terrorism and if that’s what you start doing in the military like the Greeks did… as people have said, ‘Louie, you have got to understand, you don’t even know your history,'” he continued. “Oh yes I do. I know exactly. It’s not a good idea.”
But if gay massages stop soldiers from fighting effectively, then how did Gordon Klingenschmitt get kicked out of his house?
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!
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