The
Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 115)
June
23, 2003
Batten Down The Hatches Edition
This
is becoming depressingly familiar: George W. Bush appearing
at the top of the list because of the disaster going on in
Iraq. But there are some other important areas of conservative
idiocy to attend to this week. Take Orrin Hatch (2) for example,
caught in a double-whammy of stupidity and hypocrisy. Or John
Warner (3), making a fool of himself in Afghanistan. Or Bill
O'Reilly (5), who is just a huge crybaby. And that's
not all - we've also got Donald Rumsfeld (8) comparing Baghdad
to Washington DC, Louis Zizza (9) picking a fight with Pam
Anderson, and Tucker Carlson (10) getting ready to eat shoe.
Enjoy, and don't forget the key!
George
W. Bush
At the time of writing, 54 U.S. soldiers have been killed
in Iraq since George W. Bush declared Mission Accomplished
on May 1. And now the White House is starting to worry. Oh,
they're not worried for the dead soldiers or their families
- that's a "necessary cost" for the money that Halliburton
is going to make off of this invasion thing. I mean, it's
a necessary cost to find Saddam's deadly weapons of mass destruction.
I mean, it's a necessary cost to provide democracy, freedom
and excellent healthcare to the Iraqi people. Or whatever
the excuse is this week. No, the White House is starting to
worry that the political
fallout of all these dead Americans may not be in their
favor. Because while men and women of the armed forces swelter
in 130 degree heat, being shot at by angry Iraqis and not
knowing when they'll come home or even what they're supposed
to be doing, Our Great Leader is swanning around the USA holding
$2000-a-ticket fundraisers
in an attempt to raise $200 million dollars for his election
campaign. The fact that he's doing this under the guise of
some great flag-waving military leader - while soldiers come
home in body bags from Iraq almost daily - is particularly
sickening. They've served his purpose, and now their corpses
can be swept aside while he campaigns. So much for "supporting
the troops."
Orrin
Hatch
It's been a long time since Orrin Hatch last made the list
- but he's back with a vengeance (literally) this week. The
arch-conservative and alleged songwriter said last week that
he "favors developing new technology to remotely destroy
the computers of people who illegally download music from
the Internet," according
to the Associated Press. Is that all, Orrin? Surely you don't
have to stop there! How about remotely destroying the engines
of speeding cars? If they go over the speed limit three times
on one trip, the cylinder block melts. Or how about remotely
destroying the televisions of people who steal cable? There
you are, trying to make out a nipple on the scrambled Spice
channel when suddenly Orrin's grinning face appears and blammo!
There goes the cathode ray tube. But anyway, it didn't take
long before Senator Hatch was revealed to be not merely a
top-notch assclown, but a world-class hypocrite to boot. Savvy
systems administrator Laurence Simon took a peek at the source
code on Hatch's official website and discovered
that Senator Computer-Blower-Upper was illegally making use
of an unlicensed JavaScript menu system - exactly the sort
of crime for which he wants to toast other people's PCs. Shortly
after this announcement, hundreds of thousands of Internet
users were heard to be individually "Rolling On Floor
Laughing My Ass Off."
John
Warner
Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee (and therefore a very important and presumably knowledgeable
man), visited Kabul recently to check up on how things are
going over in Afghanistan (answer: poorly,
but that's another
story). Apparently Warner got a nasty surprise when he
arrived at a training camp, only to be greeted by a French
soldier. "What are they doing here?" demanded Warner.
"They muckin' things up again?" In fact, French soldiers
play a substantial
role in the International Security Assistance Force which
patrols Kabul and the surrounding areas, attempting to keep
the peace and assisting with the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
Funny, you'd think that as chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Warner ought to know about things like that. But
then, as Joe Conason so aptly put
it in Salon: "Warner does better at looking like
a senator than behaving like one."
The
Bush Administration
Here's an interesting
story: it seems that "dozens of people are showing
up every day at a hospital near a defunct Iraqi nuclear plant,
suffering from rashes, bloody noses and other symptoms of
radiation poisoning," according to the Associated Press.
So what? Well, again according to the Associated Press, "The
Tuwaitha nuclear facility, 12 miles south of Baghdad, was
left unguarded after Iraqi troops fled the area on the eve
of the war. It is thought to have contained hundreds of tons
of natural uranium and nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium,
which could be used to make nuclear weapons. U.S. troops didn't
secure the area until April 7. By then, looters from surrounding
villages had stripped it of much of its contents." Um,
so this is how we're preventing nuclear materials falling
into the hands of terrorists, is it? Good job. Incidentally,
U.S. troops had secured the oil
fields by March 21...
Bill
O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly is getting a reputation as the thinnest-skinned
conservative media personality on the air - which is no small
feat, considering the competition.
His recent spat with Al Franken (see Idiots
113) showed Bill up for the blustering bully he is. But
if you thought that was bad, check out this
rant from a recent Talking Points Memo: "Nearly everyday,
there's something written on the Internet about me that's
flat out untrue. And I'm not alone. Nearly every famous person
in the country's under siege ... The reason these net people
get away with all kinds of stuff is that they work for no
one. They put stuff up with no restraints. This, of course,
is dangerous, but it symbolizes what the Internet is becoming."
Waaaaaah! Crikey, Bill! I mean, phew, that free speech can
be dangerous all right. One minute you're minding your own
business, hosting a little talk show where guests with opposing
viewpoints are browbeaten into submission and occasionally
have their microphones turned off so you can "win"
the argument - you know, doing nothing to hurt anybody. And
suddenly all these mean people are saying bad things about
you, with - horror of horrors - "no restraints."
Good grief, it ought to be outlawed! One last thing: it's
funny how O'Reilly suddenly seems to be lumping himself in
with the "famous people" these days, instead of
the little people he claims to represent. Say Bill, perhaps
if you hadn't continually encouraged your braindead fans to
harrass "famous people" who happened to oppose the
war, you wouldn't be getting your butt spanked with the same
stick.
Michael
Savage

Did I say Bill O'Reilly is the thinnest-skinned conservative
media personality on the air? I may have to stand corrected.
Michael Savage is suing Thomas and Gunilla Leavitt, the couple
behind websites savagestupidity.com
and takebackthemedia.com
for... well, no reason. "The suit alleges the sites made
false and defamatory statements about Savage," according
to The Mercury News, but it seems pretty obvious that
this is just a nuisance lawsuit designed to quash the Leavitts'
freedom of speech. So move over, Bill O'Reilly - from a conservative
blowhard who thinks that people should be stopped from saying
mean things about him, to a conservative blowhard who is actually
doing something about stopping people from saying
mean things about him. Incidentally, Savage is clearly taking
the high ground when it comes to making false and defamatory
statements, referring to the Leavitts on his show as "stinking
rats who hide in the sewers." Ah, that conservative distaste
for namecalling comes shining through yet again.
The
White House
The White House has "removed sections of a report by
the US Government's own environmental agency to water down
references to global warming" according
to BBC News, which pretty much shows a) how much of a priority
the environment is for this administration, and b) how much
of a damn the White House gives about telling lies these days.
Apparently Bush's team wanted to add so many amendments to
the section on global warming that it "no longer accurately
represents scientific consensus on climate change", according
to an EPA memo. Yup, this seems to fit the administration's
M.O. all right - if you don't like the facts,
either change them or get rid of them altogether. Hell, it's
still working for weapons of mass destruction...
Donald
Rumsfeld

That Don Rumsfeld - he just can't help putting his foot in
it, can he? Last week, while trying to mount a defense of
the "success" we're having in Iraq, the he suggested
that the homicide rate in Baghdad is lower than that in Washington,
DC. "You got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were
the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215
murders a month," Rumsfeld said. "There's going
to be violence in a big city." What on earth is that
supposed to prove? Oh, I see... so all those deaths
in Baghdad have got nothing to do with the suppression of
protests, rocket attacks, suicide bombings, radiation poisoning
from unsecured nuclear power plants... etc, etc. They're just
normal, everyday crimes that you would find being committed
in any major city around the world. Don, you're nuts. Just
let me know the next time you see a roving bunch of rogue
lobbyists driving down K Street blowing stuff up with rocket
propelled grenades and AK-47s.
Louis
Zizza

Just when you thought conservatives couldn't get any dumber,
here comes Louis Zizza. Mr. Zizza attacked Pamela Anderson
on a flight from Florida to California last week because he
mistakenly assumed
that she was one of those rotten anti-war celebrities that
Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have presumably
filled him with hate for. Apparently drunk (although he claims
he was sober) Zizza spied the celebrity, his braincell lit
up, and he let loose the abuse. He was not arrested, but he
later apologized for the mistake and claimed that he thought
Anderson was "someone else." Who, Tim Robbins?
Tucker
Carlson
And finally, we await with bated breath the television event
of the year. A few weeks ago prepubescent pundit Tucker Carlson
announced that he would eat his shoes if Hillary Clinton's
book sold one million copies, and has been foolishly continuing
to make that pledge. To be fair, Tucker's entry on the list
may be a tad premature, because the book hasn't sold a million
copies - yet. But it's on
the way (600,000 copies in the first week) - and when
Living History finally does top that one million mark,
it's Keds on toast time for bowtie boy! See you next week...
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