August 29, 2022

Her married name is Kallie Yanta. She is often featured on local radtrad...

...radio and TV, e.g. St. Michael Broadcasting (channel 14) and (Ir)-Relevant Radio. Yanta was the public face of the religious right during the marriage equality battle a few years ago.

August 28, 2022

It's the same group of neocons that gave us the Powell Memo.

https://thirdworldtraveler.com/Neoliberal_Economics/Lewis_Powell_Manifesto.html

Many of them went on to found the right-wing "think" tanks, not to mention their service in the Reagan and Bush I administrations. When you read their ridiculous prose, e.g. the "danger to Western Civilization", you can really see a straight line through to the alt-right of today. The anti-Semitism is the only thing the neocons find really distasteful about the alt-right.

By the way, a generation before, in the post-WWII years, there were similar attitudes about the riff-raff going to college on the GI Bill. Back then, only the "right" people were supposed to be going to college, and that opened up significantly after the war. Some things apparently never change.

August 21, 2022

Yep. The antecedents of Trumpism go back at least to Reagan, if not before.

There are a number of good historical accounts. Rick Perlstein has written a four-part series of books.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/rick%20perlstein

Another good one is Suburban Warriors by Lisa McGirr.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/suburban-warriors-lisa-mcgirr/1129969754

August 15, 2022

Freud had some...questionable...theories, but he was entirely correct about the damage done...

...by a traumatic childhood. By numerous accounts, Anne Heche went through hell. The real tragedy is that she never found the healing she needed and had numerous downward spirals in her life. And the drug abuse sure didn't help. RIP.

August 13, 2022

Not the bees!

From a terrible movie (Nic Cage in the completely unnecessary remake of The Wicker Man).

July 21, 2022

Whatever will Chanel Rion do with herself now?

She's going to have to get a real job, not a make-work sinecure position at ONAN...er...OANN. But I'm probably wrong about that. She'll just find another billionaire sugar-daddy-funded "news" network. Though I recall hearing that Rion doesn't get along with the execrable Emerald Robinson, so Chanel won't be able to co-host with her on LindellTV.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/oan-chanel-rion-trump-correspondent-1003975/

July 21, 2022

What I can't believe is that Ms. Crockett hasn't been canned from her sinecure job...

...at the Center of the American Experiment. She has made any number of career-ending gaffes and outright racist and anti-Semitic statements. In addition to her sinecure make-work position at CAE, she is also VP and general counsel at the Charlemagne Institute. This "think" tank is obsessed with "Western Civilization" and "Greco-Roman ideals and values", which are giant dog whistles to the alt-right morons. Charlemagne Institute also appears closely affiliated with Catholic rad-tradism (check out the Our Sunday Visitor link to a thoroughly uncritical, fawning article; OSV is a Catholic radtrad paper for those who feel that the official Archdiocesan newspaper is too liberal).

https://www.startribune.com/bloomington-think-tank-parts-ways-with-academic-over-racist-e-mails/558862522/
https://www.osvnews.com/amp/2019/03/20/the-charlemagne-institute-reawakening-western-thought/

July 19, 2022

One of the fishier things is that "Explore Talent" website...

...that featured so many of the crazies, at least the female ones. I don't know if MTG was on it, but Boebert definitely was, as was the execrable Emerald Robinson, who was a "reporter" for OANN and NewsMax, and now with LindellTV.

"ExploreTalent.com" reminds me of what started happening in the '90s, when the out-of-shape stuffed shirts running the "think" tanks clearly realized that they didn't look good on TV and started hiring a lot of young blondes and coaching them on movement conservative talking points. So we got Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley, Barbara Olson, etc. Randi Rhodes called them the "right-wing Fembots". A lot of them ended up at Fox News.

What is clear about "ExploreTalent.com" is that no talent is actually there to explore! It has little or nothing to do with show biz. A few reporters and bloggers looked into it for a while and found even more connections to the Trump regime and movement conservatism in general.

https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1437722108751069190
https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1437709410256576515
https://twitter.com/sandibachom/status/1483157512069206030

July 17, 2022

It's been clear for a long time now that the worst people (psychopaths, etc.) are being allowed...

...to rise to the highest positions of power. And here, we're not just talking about politics. Look at what's been going on in the business world since at least the '80s.

July 14, 2022

Oh, boy...wait 'til the incels and MRA/PUAs get a look at this one.

She's like a stereotype of what you see them complaining about on We Hunted the Mammoth (a blog that parodies the incel/MRA/PUA "movement", such as it is).

Oh, the grammar/spelling issues are a nice touch too. Nothing like overconfidence while tweeting. Pride goeth before the fall.

https://wehuntedthemammoth.com (site appears down)
https://twitter.com/DavidFutrelle (WHTM author)