Wingnut Week In Review: Benghazi To Beyoncé

Why are Republicans such stupid bigots?

January 16, 2015

Terrance Heath

Campaign for America's Future

ourfuture.org

From Benghazi and Beyoncé, to the terrorist attack in Paris, this week was a smorgasbord of wingnuttery.

The world is still reeling from the terrorist attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which ten journalists and two police officers died. At least, most of the world was still reeling. America’s wingnuts were riding the fresh wave of Islamophobia rising in the western world.

Rupert Murdoch warned of a “growing jihadist cancer” via Twitter. 

Comedian Aziz Ansari proceed to mock Murdoch unmercifully.
Ansari had so much to say, that he created a hashtag for it all: #RupertsFault.

Author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling slammed Murdoch for imposing collective guilt on all Muslims.

Rowling also praised the Muslim hero who saved Jewish lives in Paris.

Former congressman Joe Walsh tweeted that Islamists should behead those who refused to run an image of the first cover of Charlie Hebdo after the attack.

[tweet https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/555439146253426688]

• On “Meet the Press,” Chuck Todd asked religious scholar Reza Aslan who in the Muslim community is going to “stand up” in the aftermath of the Paris attack. Aslan’s response can be summarized as, “JFGI.”
• Fox News’ terrorism expert Steven Emerson called Birmingham, England, a “totally Muslim” “no-go zone.” British Prime Minister David Cameron responded by calling Emerson an idiot.
• Twitter talked back to Emerson with the hashtag #foxnewsfacts.
• Fox News reporter Emily Miller claimed that the terrorists are “not coming here with guns because Americans can shoot back.” Miller added that gun ownership would have stopped the Charlie Hebdo attack, “or at least slowed down the number of journalists that were slaughtered in Paris.”
• Here’s a newsflash for Emily Miller: Americans are more likely to be shot by a toddler than a terrorist.
• Pro-gun group, The Truth About Guns, re-enacted the Charlie Hebdow attack with paintball guns, to prove that an “armed civilian” could have stopped the two gunmen. They failed miserably. The armed civilians “died in almost every scenario,” except for the one who simply ran away.
• Alex Jones hosted Harlem pastor James David Manning, who theorized that President Obama made a deal with groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban to attack other countries while he’s president.
• Former congressman Allen West said the Republicans in Congress should ask the president, “: Are you on the side of liberty and freedom or the Islamic terrorists?”
• Broadcaster Bryan Fischer said that God punished Charlie Hebdos’ “blasphemy” against Christianity with a Muslim terrorist attack.
• The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is still skating the razor’s edge of justifying terrorist acts by religious fundamentalists. Donohue told Newsmax’s Steve Malberg that if an outraged Christian was to kill “Piss Christ” artist Andres Serranno over his infamous work, it would be the artists own fault.

Benghazi

The federal investigation into former CIA director David Petraeus has been going on for three years now, but on January 9, FBI and Justice Department investigators recommended charges against Petraeus. Wingnuttia smelled a conspiracy, of course.

• Fox News intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge suggested that the investigation is an attempt to silence Petraeus’ testimony on the Benghazi attack.
• Rep. Louis Gohmert (R, Texas) said that Petraeus was only being a “good soldier” because he’s being blackmailed by the Obama administration.
• Fox News host Megyn Kelly speculated that “a lot of people” (most of whom exist only in her mind) must be wondering if the whole scheme is “aimed at preventing him from maybe seeking political office … which maybe some people might want him to do at this point.” Newsflash, for Megyn Kelly: Petraeus has bigger baggage than Benghazi, that might make a run for public office tricky.

Beyoncé

Former Arkansas governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee slammed President and Mrs. Obama’s parenting skills, for letting their daughter listen to the music of Beyoncé. Out promoting his new book, Huckabee told People magazine, “I don’t understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything — how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school … and yet they don’t see anything that might not be suitable” in Beyoncé’s lyrics, or in choreography “best left for the privacy of her bedroom.” Huckabee described Beyoncé as “mental poison” in his book.

Meanwhile, in response to a caller who asked why he made “disparaging comments about Huckabee,” Glenn Beck called Mike Huckabee a liar and “one of the most disingenuous men I have ever, ever met.” “He is Jeb Bush, hiding behind the cross,” Beck added. “He is a liar to your face. He is a very disingenuous man.”

Mike Huckabee’s own son, David Huckabee, once lost his job as a Boy Scout camp counselor for killing a stray dog, by hanging him by his neck, slitting his throat, and stoning him to death, and was once arrested for having a gun in his bag at the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, Huckabee might want to ease up on criticizing anyone else’s parenting.

Here’s hoping Huckabee is looking over his shoulder, because the “Beygency” has him in its sights by now.

Here’s the best of the worst in wingnuttia this week:

• Rep. Randy Weber (R, Texas) compared President Obama to German dictator Adolph Hitler, in a tweet criticizing the White House for not sending a high-level official to a Paris rally against terrorism. “Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for right reasons,” Weber tweeted. Weber later apologized.
• Weber joins a long line of conservatives who have compared President Obama to Hitler.
• Televangelist John Hagee called President Obama “anti-Semitic” for not attending the Paris unity rally. Hagee said the president sent “a very clear message to the American Jewish community. And that message is: we simply don’t care.”
• The Heritage Foundation’s “Opportunity for All” summit featured only male speakers.
• Not surprising, since all but one of the GOP House Committees are led by men.
• Glenn Beck blamed President Obama for the closure of an Ohio bridal store once visited by a Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola. Next, Beck blamed himself for helping whip up hysteria around Ebola. Gotcha!
• Rush Limbaugh blamed Democrats for John Boehner’s bartender potting to kill the House Speaker, because “This guy blamed Boehner for Ebola, which — my memory is what it is — the Democrats tried to claim about the House Republicans.”
• At the Bible Baptist Church in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, Pastor Eric Dammann boasted that he “punched a kid as hard as I could,” for “not taking the Lord serious.”
• Anti-LGBT activist Randy Thomasson called on governors to “call out his/her state’s militia or National Guard” to stop gay couples from marrying.
• Pastor Larry Tomczak attacked Ellen Degeneres in a Christian Post op-ed, stating that Degeneres “celebrates her lesbianism and ‘marriage’ in between appearances of guests like Taylor Swift to attract young girls.” Degeneres took him down in her usual classic style.