The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (Week 47)
December 10, 2001
There's One Terrible President Edition

Christmas is fast approaching, but don't worry! We've done your holiday shopping for conservative idiocy, and wrapped them all up nice for you in a convenient ten-pack. Topping the list this week is none other than George W. Bush, who sets the standard for idiocy in a time of national crisis. John Ashcroft (2) finally puts the brakes on his anti-constitutional jihad. Bill O'Reilly (3) has a small problem with the honesty factor. J.C. Watts (5) is back for the second week in a row. Meanwhile, the Salvation Army (6) goes soft on pedophiles, Enron execs (7) line their own pockets, Linda Tripp (8) loses her house, and one crazy guy with a gun (9) gets a little irked by some Christmas lights.

George W. Bush
There is little doubt that the pivotal moment in George W. Bush's presidency, and probably the most important moment in his entire life, was when two airplanes collided with the World Trade Center on September 11. It may also come to be remembered as a defining moment for his own conservative idiocy. According to the UK Guardian, when an eight-year-old in Florida asked Bush what he thought after the first plane crash, Bush responded: "There's one terrible pilot." Perhaps sensing the sheer vapidity of his response, he hastily added "It must have been a horrible accident." It's such a typical conservative reaction, to laugh at the incompetence of the pilot before lamely acknowledging the suffering of the victims as an irritated afterthought. Bush also claimed that he learned about the crash by watching it on TV ("the TV was obviously on") just before he started reading to a bunch of elementary school children, even though published reports indicate that he got the news by phone from Condoleeza Rice, his National Security Advisor. There's one terrible president.

John Ashcroft
John Ashcroft has gone completely insane. In the last three months, he has led an all-fronts, full-scale attack on our most basic constitutional protections. Vast numbers of people are being detained for little or no reason. Our privacy is being chipped away. Our "justice system" now includes military tribunals, secret evidence, and wiretapping of attorney-client conversations. And more of what we say by phone or Internet is being monitored. But (predictably) the Attorney General drew the line when he felt that gun rights were being threatened. When the FBI asked to use gun purchase records to see if detainees had bought weapons, he denied the request. Apparently, in Ashcroft's world if you say the wrong thing or if you look the wrong way then you've damn near committed treason. But if you're suspected of terrorism and you buy a gun, that's none of the government's business. What would a terrorist want a gun for anyway? Everyone knows that guns are for protecting freedom. (Duh!)

Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly likes to tell his viewers that his television program is a "no-spin zone." It seems that he could also be calling it a "frequent-lapses-into-outright-lying zone." Last week, CNN's Bill Press exposed this egotistical blowhard for the lying fraud that he is. Press writes that after he appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor," O'Reilly was trumpeting what a fair guy he was because he let Bill Press, a liberal, on his show, but "you wouldn't see me on CNN." It seems that O'Lie-ly would have us believe that liberal CNN is afraid to have him as a guest. If only it were true. Says Press: "Last Spring, during a debate on the Don Imus show, my co-host Tucker Carlson invited O'Reilly to be a guest on CNN's 'The Spin Room.' He agreed. Then he ducked multiple requests and never showed." Caution: You are about to enter a no-spine zone.

Bob Barr
Useless Bob has surely got a lock on Capitol Hill's coveted "Brownest Nose" award. Barr's pathetic crusade to enforce new laws on the DC area's Metro system, requiring that they change all the signs reading "National Airport" to "Ronald Reagan National Airport" has finally come to and end. The winner - Bob Barr's ego. The losers - Virginian taxpayers. Barr has fought tooth and nail to have the signs changed (at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars) by basically claiming that tourists are incredibly stupid. "Honey, the map says National Airport, but I swear we want Ronald Reagan National Airport." "Gee, you're right. But I don't see a station marked Ronald Reagan National Airport. Just this one here called National Airport. Now I'm so confused I don't know where I am or what my name is." The Washington Post reported Bob as sniffing, "Entities that receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars should not allow the partisan views of its leadership to be the deciding factor in which laws they will or will not follow." Yeah, because there's nothing partisan about Bob wanting to force an unwilling Metro system to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just so he can demonstrate how far his head is up Reagan's backside. Oh, but I forgot - Bob's simply wants accuracy. This has nothing at all to do with partisanship. So with that in mind I'm sure you'll soon see him insisting that Metro change the name of the Stadium/Armory station to its more correct title - Robert F. Kennedy Stadium/Armory. Yes, in your dreams maybe.

J.C. Watts
EDITOR'S NOTE: Whoops! Looks like we screwed this one up. We failed to notice that this story, which was emailed to us, was actually two years old. Unlike Rush and the conservative media, we admit it when we make an error. But we still think J.C. Watts is an Idiot and a Hypocrite.
J.C. Watts is a fine, upstanding American who knows the meaning of those great Republican values like honesty, integrity, and keeping your word. So when Watts promised the people of Oklahoma's fourth district back in 1994 that he would only serve three terms in Congress, they probably expected the thick-necked former footballer to, well, serve three terms. Such foolish constituents. Turns out that ol' J.C. is gonna run again, "regardless of what I said in 1994 about term limits." Whatever, it was just a stupid campaign promise. It's not like he signed a pledge or anything - oh, wait, actually, he did sign a pledge. No doubt, he had his fingers crossed as he was doing it. I wonder what Watts, the former associate pastor of Sunnylane Southern Baptist Church, thinks about that pesky commandment about "bearing false witness."

The Salvation Army
It's the holiday season again, which could only mean one thing: It's time to stiff the homophobic Salvation Army bell-ringers at the mall. But for those of you who are still dropping change into the little red bucket, consider this nugget of conservative filth... Not only is the Salvation Army anti-gay, but they are also pro-pedophile. According to a lawsuit filed in Kenai, Alaska, the minister of the local Salvation Army church molested three children, all members of his congregation. The parents got in touch with the Salvation Army commander in Anchorage, but instead of reporting the allegations to authorities, the Salvation Army instead assigned one of its officers to talk to the minister. One wonders what sort of "talk" this officer had with the minister. Because apparently that official also was indicted last spring on charges of sexual abuse and second-degree sodomy of boys under 14. So, according to the Salvation Army, consensual sex between adults = BAD! Nonconsensual sex with children = A-OK! Maybe this Christmas you should send your spare change here instead.

Greedy Enron Executives
As if the Enron bankruptcy story weren't disgusting enough already: Greedy corporate bastards lie about profits to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Stock goes into a nosedive. Execs lock the 401(k) plan so employees can't sell as stock goes from $90 to zero in a blink of an eye. Retirement accounts vaporized. Thousands out of work. But last week, the story got even uglier. It turns out that Enron handed out $55 million to its executives just two days before declaring bankruptcy. Of course, this wasn't an example of looting the store before it burned to the ground. Enron calls them "stay-on" payments, "to retain key employees in critical businesses" for 90 days. Considering that they've done such a crappy job for the last few years, one wonders what, exactly, these key employees will be doing for 90 days that makes them so valuable. Figuring ways to move large sums of money to secret accounts in Switzerland and/or the Cayman Islands, perhaps?

Linda Tripp
The Washington Post reports that Linda Tripp is facing foreclosure on her home in Columbia, Maryland. According to her lawyer, "it's been very difficult for Linda to focus on where her career goes from this point in her life." Ironically, she kept her job at the Pentagon up until the end of the Clinton Administration, but was unceremoniously fired the moment Bush took office. Poor Linda, none of her old conservative friends are returning any of her phone calls now. I guess sticking your nose in the private business of the President of the United States isn't such a marketable skill anymore. And speaking of noses... One wonders if Linda would be in danger of losing her house if she hadn't blown all that cash on cosmetic surgery.

Dumb Gun Guy
Guns. Where would we be without them? A gun is an excellent tool which can be used for hunting, target shooting, home and personal defense - but what the NRA won't tell you is that a gun is also excellent for simple stress relief! Take the example of James Craig Wilson of Vancouver, Washington. James, an obviously levelheaded and well-balanced individual, was having a splendid afternoon until he was suddenly faced with a shocking personal trauma. That's right - he couldn't get his Christmas lights untangled. Now we all know that a situation like that would drive any sane person into a wild and uncontrollable rage, but then things went from bad to worse. While James was wrestling with the lights in his driveway, his daughter returned home and drove over them. Jumping Jehosephat! What's a man to do? James decided that the best way to deal with this highly irritating situation was to go round to the back of his house and start firing his .45 into the ground. Sadly the local sheriff's deputies showed up and had to explain to James that they weren't so convinced about the therapeutic value of popping a cap in your grass. Ah, responsible gun ownership at its finest.

Trent Lott
And finally, it seems that Shameless Trent will grasp at any available news hook. Consider this bizarre attempt to score rhetorical points using the death of George Harrison. We couldn't possibly make this sound any more ridiculous than Roll Call did: "Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) opened his press briefing Friday with a somewhat odd reference to George Harrison, the ex-Beatle who died last week after a battle with brain cancer. 'Since September 11th, in honor of George Harrison, I'd have to say it's been a hard day's night,'Lott said of the workload on Capitol Hill. The response from reporters was lukewarm, to say the least, because it seemed like an awkward way of referring to the former Beatle's death. But Lott tried again a moment later. The Minority Leader said he's hoping bipartisanship will break out because 'In this hard day's night, we still have some urgent and emergency things' to get done. This comment also didn't elicit much of a response from the crowd. In the hallway after the briefing, Lott asked some scribes why they hadn't reacted more positively to his tribute and then proceeded to read off the lyrics from 'Hard Day's Night.' After still failing to get a good reception, he quipped, in apparent reference to the stimulus package, 'Money can't buy me love.'" See you next week!

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