AlterNet Comics: Keith Knight on White Santa
December 18, 2013
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white santa
10 Certifiably Insane Rants from the Right-Wing Fringe This Week: War on Santa Edition
December 14, 2013
1. Megyn Kelly: This is for all you kids out there: Santa is white! Hear me? He’s white!
One is only left to scratch one’s head and wonder why, why, why? Why was it so important to Fox host Megyn Kelly to repeatedly look into the camera and tell America’s children that Santa is “just white”?
It is laughable, yes—and Jon Stewart helped us laugh at it when he asked, “Who is Megyn Kelly talking to? Children who are sophisticated enough to watch the 10 o’clock news, yet naïve enough to believe in Santa, and racist enough to be upset that he might not be white?” That is, as he points out, a fairly narrow segment of viewers.
But what Kelly’s insane rant really shows is just how mean-spirited she really is, that her vaunted empathy extends only to white working women, or rather to white working right-wing women who think like her. Her empathy deficit is front and center in the repetition of the word, “kids,” and the use of the word “just.” When she says, Santa is “just white” to the “kids” out there, and they are just going to have to deal with it, it seems that she is also talking to non-white kids. Just deal with it, you non-white kids. Santa’s not for you.
In the ensuing kerfuffle, she accused her detractors of race-baiting — and claimed it was an off-handed remark, that she was just kidding — and again asserted that Santa is white. In response to a thoughtful article on Slate by Aisha Harris, who chronicles the genuine pain she felt reconciling Santa’s “whiteness” with her African-American family’s Christmas celebration, Kelly ratcheted up the jerkiness. “Just because it makes people uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.”
Because you can’t change the facts of a made-up story about a jolly man who flies around and gives children toys. And made-up stories belong on the news, kids.
Kids!? Are you listening?
2. Pat Robertson: Letting lesbians into your house could turn your kids gay.
Patty Robertson slays us. He really does. His delusional view that gayness is a contagious germ was revealed this week when a viewer named Catherine wrote in for some advice. She had recently reconnected with an old best friend who, it turned out, was a lesbian. Catherine had invited her old friend to meet her children, but became concerned when her old friend wanted to bring her life partner along.
Big mistake, the 700 Club host told her. Having lesbian friends in her home could turn her children gay, and “you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians.”
Exactly how this transmission of sexuality would occur, he did not explain. It, like the lord, works in mysterious ways, but suffice it to say, "Danger!"
While Catherine should not risk infecting her children with the acceptance-of-the-lesbian-lifestyle virus, Rev. Pat said nor should she shun her old friend. Because, who knows, maybe Catherine could infect her friend with the good Christian, heterosexual lifestyle, ummm, virus.
Failing that, he counseled: “It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody, ‘Look, I love you and we’re going to do what we can to be friends if we can, but I have my lifestyle, it’s Christian. And you have yours, it’s not. And so, I’m sorry, we can’t indulge in certain things together.’”
Like lesbian sex, we’re presuming. That’s out.
3. Trump rejoices at having his birther conspiracy confirmed.
Perhaps Trump’s obsession with the wide-ranging conspiracy to obscure President Obama’s real birthplace could be better sorted out by a psychiatrist, one who specializes in racist delusions. Know anybody?
Of course, the wonderful thing about conspiracies is that everything proves them. And so it was this week that a tragedy gave the real estate tycoon Spy magazine dubbed “the short-fingered vulgarian” further fodder for his ongoing crusade to prove the president is a “furriner.” (Note that we high-minded, progressive scribblers would never make fun of someone for physical attributes they can’t help, so we won’t repeat that short-fingered thing again. Vulgarian, maybe.)
Loretta Fuddy, the 65-year-old Hawaii state health director who authorized the release of Obama’s birth certificate was killed in a small plane crash over the coast of Hawaii. Nine other passengers survived. “How amazing, the state health director who verified copies of Obama’s 'birth certificate' died in plane crash today. All others lived,” the Donald tweeted.
The implication is clear. The president had his thugs kill her. How? you ask. Or, more to the point, why? Since the birth certificate is released, confirmed Obama’s Hawaii birth and the matter closed for everyone except the truly irrational.
Dunno.
Maybe the comb-over can explain.
4. Jim Garrow: Of course, Obama was in on that plane crash, and he also tried to nuke America (God stopped him!).
The Donald is not the only eminently reasonable man who thinks Obama arranged that plane crash. He enjoys the company of Conservative nutjob Jim Garrow, who also knows for a fact that Obama killed Andrew Breitbart, Michael Hastings and Tom Clancy. Oh, yes, and he tried to nuke America.
“There are no coincidences with this administration and with the thugs that have brought Chicago tactics to bear,” Garrow said. “We’re seeing murder.” No, never coincidences for conspiracy theorists. No such thing.
His theory: Fuddy was killed with neurotoxins before the plane crash.
Dastardly plan revealed. Mwah-ha-ha-ha, the president said in a statement.
5. Glenn Beck manages to make the strange story of the fraudulent sign language interpreter at Mandela’s funeral even stranger.
For many, truth can truly be stranger than fiction. Much of what is in the news would not be believable in a fictional universe. The revelations about the fraudulent, schizophrenic sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, who may have thought he was signing the voices inside his head, was one such story. It was all the responsible media could do to keep up with the bizarre and somewhat sad facts as they were revealed. But for Glenn Beck, mental illness and a history of violence were not enough. Something else, an even more sinister plot, had to be at work. He wants the man’s blood tested, he said on his radio show "to find out if anybody jacked him on anything." Why, you say?
"This is exactly the kind of guy," Beck said, "you hire to stand next to all of the world leaders at something like this hoping that he will do something. I believe it is not unreasonable to check his bloodstream to find out if anybody jacked him on anything to have him hallucinate ... It might have just been enough to say somebody cause some kind of problem at this, for whatever the reason. But something is really wrong here."
For the crazies, there are no simple or even massive screwups.
6. Todd Kincannon: The left likes school shootings.
The Twitter war launched by gun nuts in the immediate aftermath of the Arapahoe school shooting, which coincided with the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, reached new levels of viciousness.
“Allow law-abiding school employees who will go through weapons training to carry guns at school. Solved. But the Left likes school shootings,” Todd Kincannon, former executive of the South Carolina GOP tweeted.
Kincannon is not a nice man. Some of his earlier tweets include suggesting transgendered people be put in camps, and lamenting to an Iraqi veteran that the enemy did not have better aim. It should be mentioned that he was pushed out of his leadership role with the South Carolina GOP. Still, the gunnies love him, and he definitely has his followers.
“I bet gun-hating commies are just giddy that a bunch of children got shot in one of their 'gun free zones.' More propaganda for them,” he continued.
And still more:
“Obama started the day using Christmas to push socialized healthcare. Now he can use children killed by gun control to push gun control.” Guns don't kill people, gun control does?
One of his followers chimed in that since the left likes abortion so much, it only stands to reason that they like school shootings too.
See, this is just another example of how when it comes to fighting dirty, Democrats, progressives, the left, is totally, well, out-gunned.
7. Gun lobby uses Newtown anniversary to raise money.
While the parents and family members of the 20 children and six adults massacred in Newtown a year ago celebrated the sad anniversary of these horrific murders by urging others to perform acts of kindness for their fellow humans, the gun lobby celebrated in its own way: by using the anniversary as a way to raise money.
On the eve of the anniversary, Gun Owners of America, one of the most aggressive pro-gun lobbies, posted a message on its website celebrating all of its achievements in the past year. They failed to include that, by Mother Jones’ estimate, at least 194 children have been killed by guns in the year since Newtown, many of them at home, by family members, many by accident, simply because there was a gun around.
More guns is the solution. And more money for Gun Owners of America, in order that they may attain their goal of a fully armed America, and the defeat of this naïve notion that schools should be gun-free zones. A fully armed and cocked nation—that will cut down on the gun violence.
8. Eric Cantor calls Capitol police to bully singing children away.
Some children gathered outside GOP leader Eric Cantor’s office last week to sing Christmas carol tunes with immigration reform lyrics. They were pretty cute, and of course, their singing carried a poignant message about not tearing their families apart. Apparently, Cantor was unmoved. Instead of coming out and talking to them and the adults who were escorting them—or even giving them lip service like most politicians—he called the Capitol police to come and bully them away. That they did. Large men with booming voices came and told those kids to stop their caterwauling, comprende? Or else. They did stop singing—the littlest among them looking a bit frightened. Two minutes later, the big men reappeared and told them that arrests were going to start happening.
What was Cantor doing during all this? Speculation is that he might have been reading the GOP White Paper on how to talk to women without offending them, soon to be followed by the GOP White Paper on how to talk to children without scaring them.
9. Wait, did the head of the Virginia GOP just threaten Obama’s life?
What’s a little humor among friends? Well, if the friends are Virginia Republicans, it can be vaguely incoherent and a little menacing. Last weekend, Pat Mullins, chair of the state’s Republican Party joked to about 450 party members at a party retreat that President Barack Obama was “so close to death” that Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) needed to buy a life insurance policy.
You might have thought such a gathering would include some soul-searching about the drubbing Virginia Republicans recently received in all three statewide races, for the first time in 24 years.
You’d be wrong. It was the media’s fault Ken Cuccinelli lost, Mullins said, because they keep hammering away on that whole fictitious “war on women” thing when all Cuccinelli wanted to do was ban abortions and oral sex.
“This is false narrative by false prophets… Republicans do not win when we are mini-Democrats or Democrat-lite,” he said. Or even, reasonably modern people-lite.
But the certain failure—or should we say, fervently wished-for failure—of the healthcare law is the hook on which Republicans like Mullins will continue to pin their hopes. And that was when he made this creepy pronouncement.
“Obama’s so close to death that Terry McAuliffe is about to buy life insurance on him,” Mullins joked. “I’m looking forward to taking the gloves off!”
Oh those Republicans. Such cards.
10. Steve King: Don’t vote on immigration; keep fruitlessly fighting Obamacare.
Elsewhere in the country, similarly delusional Tea Partying fools continued to rally supporters despite the fact that there does not seem to be any more tea to dump into Boston Harbor.
Iowa right-winger, rabid anti-immigrationist Steve ("cantaloupe calves") King remains desperate not to let the nation or President Obama move on to immigration reform, which he fears will further divide the Republican Party. (On that he might be right.) “Only bad can come from passing anything in the House that has to do with immigration,” he portentously told the far-right birther site WorldNetDaily. The bad he fears the most? Those immigrants who will "erode the law" by voting Democratic.
Why this would be illegal, he does not say.
He would prefer just to keep debating Obamacare forever, refusing to acknowledge that that ship has sailed.
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