The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 117)
July , 2003
The State Of The Union Is Wrong Edition

You know it's a big week for conservative idiocy when Michael Savage gets fired from MSNBC for making homophobic comments, and still only manages fifth place on the list. Yup, with the media finally latching on to the "Bush lied during the State of the Union Address" story, it's been tough to keep up with the idiots this week. In first place we have, of course, Our Great MisLeader and Captain Of Responsibility George W. Bush. But who put the uranium reference back into the speech? Could it be Dick "Undisclosed Location" Cheney (2)? Meanwhile the rest of the Bush Administration (3) haven't been faring much better, and Ari Fleischer (4) just needs to hurry up and leave already. Elsewhere, Pat Robertson (6) is fully backing brutal African dictators, Clear Channel Communications (9) gets sued, and Tucker Carlson (10) eats his shoes. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

George W. Bush
Phew - where to begin this week? Perhaps a good place would be with the mind-bogglingly hypocritical comments Our Great MisLeader made recently, when he attempted to defend himself against claims that he lied America into war by calling his accusers "revisionist historians." Revisionist historians? Takes one to know one George. So I guess that wasn't you last year, making those speeches full of humdingers such as: "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." And that wasn't you standing up at the State of the Union address and telling the world that - uh oh! - Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger. And I guess it won't be you that takes any responsibility for these lies that have so far gotten more than 1,000 of our soldiers killed or wounded. Sure, it's easy to stand behind your Secret Service detail and taunt Iraqi guerillas when you're not the one risking your life in a foreign land. But when the shit hits the fan back home, the buck stops... no, don't tell me - anywhere but on your desk. Worst. President. Ever.

Dick Cheney
And what's this? After George Tenet fell on his toothpick Friday night and tried to pretend it was all his fault the false information had gotten into the State of the Union Address (because obviously the person who holds the ultimate responsibility for what goes into the Address isn't the president, silly, it's the CIA director) it was revealed that he had successfully intervened to have the subject removed from a speech Bush made three months previously. So why was the information that was previously taken out of Bush's speeches put back in? I think the administration would like us to believe that George Tenet was supposed to show up at the White House every day and say "Don't forget now - that uranium story is bogus. I wouldn't use it in any speeches this week if I were you." No, someone was responsible for forcing the uranium lie back into the State of the Union Address, and since we now know that George W. Bush is literally not now and never will be responsible for anything at all that happens on his watch, we must look elsewhere for the culprit. So who is the certain undisclosed someone (perhaps operating from a certain undisclosed location) that was instrumental in making sure that the nuclear lie was included in the Address? Hmm... I wonder.

The Bush Administration
Dick Cheney told Meet the Press that, "We believe he [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Condoleezza Rice told Late Edition that "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Ari Fleischer said that "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." Donald Rumsfeld said that "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." Scary huh? But that was then, and this is now. After being caught with their pants on fire the administration was spinning furiously last week, trying desperately to blame someone else for their uranium screwup (there's that personal responsibility thing again). Condoleezza Rice said last week that "the CIA cleared [Bush's State of the Union] speech in its entirety." Meanwhile the CIA say they "tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop" the uranium charge which Bush went on to use. So... Bush and his administration go balls to the wall to convince the world that there was an urgent need to take out Saddam before he used his invisible nuclear weapons against us, the CIA told him it was a bad idea, and yet somehow it's not the administration's fault. What, so Bush, Dick, Condi, and Rummy are just innocent bystanders now? Damn, if National Security is what Bush is supposed to be best at, I can't wait for the results of the rest of his policies...

Ari Fleischer
Come on Ari, pack your bags already. We can already hear your motor wearing down - the spin just seems a little lackluster these days. First up, Ari tried to defend his boss last week by suggesting (apparently seriously) that it was up to the people who thought there weren't any WMDs in Iraq to explain where they've gone: "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are," said he. Ari then shifted from newspeak gobbledegook and moved on to out-and-out lies, claiming that Bush "misspoke" when he told the world during the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger. Sorry Ari, "misspeaking" is when you say things in unscripted interviews, like for example, you'd do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself." But how the hell can you "misspeak" while reading the most thoroughly-vetted speech in the world off a TelePrompTer? "Well, when the president said 'Saddam tried to buy uranium from Niger' what he really meant was 'Saddam did NOT try to buy uranium from Niger,' although that's not what was actually written on the screen." Gimme a break, Ari. Isn't it about time your mom came to pick you up?

Michael Savage
MSNBC has given Michael Savage the boot, and it's about time. Savage managed to get himself fired (and just about beat out Rick Santorum for the year's most disgusting celebrity homophobe) after a prank caller posing as a gay man got him a tad hot under the collar. Predictably, Savage exploded. "Oh, you're one of the sodomites! You should only get AIDS and die, you pig!" he suggested, live on air. Now how Savage could expect to not get fired after a comment like that is beyond me. I guess he's just plain stupid. But there's more: Mr. Savage went on to take full personal responsibility for his comments, claiming that "Out of nowhere a crank caller from a competitive talk show went from describing his airline horror story to making vicious personal attacks against me," and "I signaled and thought that this crank caller was cut from the air. His insults continued in my ear piece and I reacted to him personally as an individual who was attacking me to defend myself." Aww, did the nasty man upset you, Michael? Poor downtrodden Mike is now being suspended and dropped from radio stations nationwide. And we'll leave it to David Elder, the program director at Boston's WRKO-AM who recently suspended Savage from the air, to make a final comment as the light slowly dawns upon him: "I think he's probably a homophobe in reality." Gee, d'ya THINK?!

Pat Robertson
When it comes down to a choice between George W. Bush and Charles Taylor, Pat Robertson will take the mass-murdering dictator any day. What do you mean which one? Aha, well, surprisingly, Robertson is squarely in Charles Taylor's camp (and no, I'm not talking about the camp that Taylor uses to train his army of child soldiers). Yes, the Patmeister thinks Bush should not be "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels." "How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,'" said he last week. Er, okay, so Saddam Hussein rapes and tortures people and he gets the boot, but Charles Taylor's just a good Christian boy who never did nuthin' to nobody? Pat, you've completely lost it, old bean. Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Reverend Pat Robertson has an $8 million investment in a Liberian gold mine that he set up in an agreement with Charles Taylor four years ago. Let's just face facts, Pat: you're going to hell.

The Bush Administration
As if the growing anger and frustration at the Bush administration's Iraq screwups isn't enough, the administration is now being accused of coverups, stonewalling and even intimidation by the federal commission investigating the September 11 attacks. According to the New York Times, "the failure of the Bush administration to allow officials to be interviewed without the presence of government colleagues could impede [the commission's] investigation," and according to the commission's chairman this amounts to "intimidation" of the witnesses. So what does the administration have to hide? Well, since by law the investigation must be completed by next May, if they keep up these intimidation tactics you might never find out. But, hey, you don't really need to know. The grown-ups are in charge. Honor and integrity. Nothing to see here. Move on. Case closed.

Tomas Magdich
Gross exaggeration seems to be the order of the day for conservatives these days. Take Justice Tomas Magdich for example, who is allowing felony aggravated battery charges to proceed against John S. Allen, of Dixon, Illinois. Allens' crime? He happened to throw a water balloon during the Dixon Petunia Festival parade, which happened to hit an antique fire truck, which happened to be driven by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert "got wet but was not injured" according to the Associated Press, and now Allen faces felony aggravated battery charges, despite not knowing that Hastert was driving the fire truck. "He is third in line to the presidency of the United States. You won't forget it next time, will you?" Magdich told Allen in court. Technically, Dennis "Wet But Not Injured" Hastert would be second in line to the presidency. But even so, don't you think felony aggravated battery might be going just a tad over the top? Gee, next you'll be telling us that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons.

Clear Channel Communications
Roxanne Cordonier used to be a DJ on WMYI radio in South Carolina - that is, until she was fired, allegedly for her anti-war views. Now Cordonier is suing Clear Channel Communications, which owns WMYI for unfair dismissal. She claims that "management's tolerance for opinions decreased as war drew closer," and that she was forced out because she "would not comply with their orders to be silent." Cordonier also alleges in the suit that "some of the Clear Channel officers and directors have financial ties and are loyal to President Bush and his policies." Which is handy, considering Clear Channel owns more than 1200 radio stations and 37 television stations nationwide. Must be nice for Dubya to have a little propaganda tool like that in his pocket. Not that Clear Channel would ever fire anyone for refusing to kowtow to Our Great MisLeader, of course.

Tucker Carlson
And finally, Tucker Carlson got the surprise of his life on CNN last week when Hillary Clinton stopped by. Carlson had previously claimed that if Hillary's new book Living History sold a million copies, he would eat his shoes. Living History officially passed the one million mark last week, so Hillary made a surprise appearance on Crossfire to present Tucker with a cake shaped like a shoe. I know, it's not quite as good as forcing the bowtied boy blunder to really eat his own shoes, but it was worth it just to see the look on Tucker's face. See you next week!