9/04/2009

No, Really, They've Lost Their Fucking Minds: More Incidents of Conservative Brain Damage:
1. Former Marine spokesman Josh Rushing is now a reporter for the English language Al-Jazeera (motto: "Relax; the name doesn't mean anything evil"). He's interviewed Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice. His network had press credentials for the Republican National Convention. But when he was granted access to the Harris County jail in Houston, Texas by Sheriff Adrian Garcia in order to do a report on the "treatment of the mentally ill by U.S. law enforcement," the local Republican Party chair, Jared Woodfill, lost his fucking mind. Woodfill sent out an email for people to call the sheriff's office to "voice concerns" about allowing an American reporter to visit an American jail. Unfortunately, he "accidentally" gave out the emergency number instead of just the random cranky idiot number, flooding the line with calls.

2. As barking mad Michelle Malkin discusses in her column this week, titled something like "Liberal Dingos Will Eat Your Babies," a school principal in Farmington, Utah, apologized this week for showing the "I Pledge" video produced for the inauguration by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. It's sort of like a bunch of celebrities making New Year's resolutions, with them saying shit like, "I pledge to be a better father." Oh, and to do something to help the environment (which these days qualifies automatically as socialism). What creeped them out was Moore pledging to be a servant to Barack Obama. Not artfully worded, sure. But the context was for each person to make some little pledge on their own to work to make the country a better place. We used to call that "citizenship."

Sure, this we can argue about being shown in school, although, you know, if it had been some post-9/11 let's-hold-hands-and-shop thing, there wouldn't be a peep from the right. But in one of those "says everything you need to know" moments, someone from the Utah Eagle Forum (that state's chapter of Phyllis Schlafly's organization [holy fuck, is she still alive?]) lost her fucking mind and said, "We do not pledge to be a servant of the United States."

Motherfucker, you got that right.

3. Regarding Glenn Beck's foray into art criticism of Rockefeller Center, could someone tell him that the whole concept of beating swords into plowshares comes from Isaiah 2:4 in the, you know, bible?