The
Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 98)
February
10, 2003
Bill Of Wrongs Edition
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We
skipped a week last week, so there's quite a mishmash of idiocy
to be found in this week's Top Ten. First place was an easy
choice - Bill O'Reilly's unbelievably hypocritical performance
on "The O'Reilly Factor" last week propels him straight
to the top. Meanwhile, Tom DeLay (2) has a new take on racial
quotas, Clayton Floyd (3) hates peace, Dick Cheney (4) has
got his head in the sand, and Mark Sanford (5) is a chickenhawk
extraordinaire. Two weeks ago you saw the State of
the Union speech, but what's the real state of the
union? Well George W. Bush is in sixth place, and if his portrayal
of himself as a compassionate warmongering bleeding-heart
liberal conservative is accurate, it ain't up to much (special
bonus: the graphic for last week's nonexistent Top Ten). Elsewhere,
Laura Bush (7) is scared of poetry, Ari Fleischer thinks that
Nelson Mandela is a "do-nothing", and Jim Saxton
(10) has come up with a great way to stick it to the French.
Enjoy, and don't forget the key!
Bill
O'Reilly
Last week Bill O'Reilly surely laid claim to the title "Most
Hypocritical Man In America." Our story begins with Vietnam-era
veteran turned peace activist Mark Stinson (aka Symbolman)
and his website TakeBackTheMedia.com.
Mark happened to be listening to radio lardbag Rush Limbaugh
one afternoon when Limbaugh called all peace activists "Anti-American,
Anti-Capitalist Marxists and Communists." Disgusted,
Mark decided to organize a boycott of Limbaugh's show. Using
his site to give the boycott momentum, he was soon attracting
attention from the mainstream media, and it wasn't long before
he was invited to appear on FOX's "The O'Reilly Factor."
A bold move to be sure, and Mark had to weather a storm as
O'Reilly accused him of wanting to take away Rush Limbaugh's
freedom of speech (uh, I don't think the Bill of Rights says
you have the right to a radio show) and insisted that organizing
a boycott was in itself un-American. But it only took a mere
24 hours for O'Reilly to trip over his own laughable rhetoric.
The following night "The O'Reilly Factor" hosted
Jeremy Glick, a peace activist whose father died in the World
Trade Center attacks. Evidently O'Reilly didn't really
want to hear Glick's opinions - as Glick tried to explain
that one of his reasons for opposing war is that it always
seems to be America who trains and arms the bad guys in the
first place, O'Reilly first tried to shout over him, and the
interview finally ended with the First Amendment champion
shouting "Shut up! Shut up! Cut off his mic!" (If
you don't believe us, you can hear the audio here.)
Man, you've got to love Bill's appreciation for freedom of
speech. As for O'Reilly's opinion that boycotts make one un-American,
he must have forgotten how he got Ludicris fired by boycotting
Pepsi (which is odd because he seemed quite proud
of it at the time!) And he didn't seem to mind when the attorney
general of Illinois wanted to boycott
Abercrombie & Fitch. In fact, when it comes down to it,
Bill also didn't have a problem yelling at someone to "Shut
up! Shut up!" when they said something he didn't want
to hear. Yup, he truly is a great American. If only we could
all follow Bill O'Reilly's fabulous example.
Tom
Delay
And now for some more hypocrisy on a grand scale. At a recent
meeting of Republican leaders, Tom Delay touted his new plan
to hire more African Americans as GOP staffers. "One of our
problems was, in the hiring of African Americans, we can't
find good conservative African Americans to work for us,"
said Delay, who seemed genuinely unsurprised at this revelation.
"But I've got 20 résumés now of young conservatives." According
to the Washington Post, "Participants at the meeting
said the party needs to recruit more blacks to serve on staffs
of House and Senate Republicans, which could translate to
more black candidates and voters in the future." So
lets get this straight: the Republican Party, which strongly
opposes affirmative action, wants to hire staffers based
entirely on the color of their skin. The hypocrisy here
is to be expected; what's sickening is that rather than doing
this to actually help minorities, they're simply trying
to cover up their racist tendencies and win votes by parading
blacks around. Absolutely disgraceful.
Clayton
Floyd
Here's something interesting - did you know that some people
meet the idea of "peace" with "dismay?"
If not, you should check
out Missoula, Montana. All it took was Ward 2 Councilman
Jim McGrath attaching a photograph of a peace sign to the
lid of his city-issued laptop computer, and the next thing
you know people's panties had been twisted into uncomfortable
bunches all over town. Ward 6 Councilman Clayton Floyd seemed
particularly affected by the photo and displayed all the symptoms
of a first-class wedgie. "I've heard from a number of folks
indicating dismay with what Jim has displayed on his laptop,"
said he, expressing "concern" about the problem.
Good grief. To his credit, Council President Jack Reidy decided
that, "We've got more important things to do" than worry about
Jim McGrath's laptop. He probably should have added, "Oh
for God's sake Clayton, it's a photograph of a peace sign,
not ritual Satanic murder. Get your head out of your ass for
once in your life, will you?
Dick
Cheney
You can rely on our great leaders in Washington to tell the
truth, especially about life and death matters such as war.
Can't you? It was revealed last week that then-Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney fired a Commerce Department demographer named
Beth Osborne Daponte in 1992 because she - whoops - attempted
to calculate how many Iraqi civilians died during Gulf War
I. See, not long after the war, Cheney said that "we
have no way of knowing precisely how many casualties occurred,"
and was then promptly embarrassed by Daponte's estimates:
13,000 civilians killed directly by American and allied forces,
about 70,000 civilians killed subsequently from war-related
damage to Iraq's infrastructure. Then, according
to MSNBC, "After a reporter called Daponte and included
her estimates in a story about war casualties, her boss informed
Daponte in writing that she was being dismissed for releasing
'false information.'" Nice. Incidentally, Daponte now
estimates that the civilian death toll in Iraq was even higher
during the Gulf War. But that probably won't bother Dick Cheney.
Remember, we have no way of knowing how many casualties occurred.
Mark
Sanford
Early last year Republican Mark Sanford joined up with the
Air Force Reserve because (he says) he wanted to set a good
example for his four sons, and because he came to admire military
service during his three terms as a member of the U.S. House.
That was certainly an admirable thing to do, particularly
considering that the War on Terror was just getting underway,
and we salute Mark Sanford for his courage, selflessness,
and patriotism. Oh, did we mention that he was also running
for governor of South Carolina? Of course, we would never
suggest that someone might join the military for cynical campaign-year
resume-padding. But, you gotta love this... with a real shooting
war almost certain, now-Governor Sanford wants out.
He swears on a stack of Bibles that he's gotta quit, like
now, because he's just too busy governing the
state, but not because they were about to ship his ass off
to war or anything like that.
George
W. Bush
Two
weeks ago the nation waited with bated breath for George W.
Bush to describe the state of the union, and hey - guess what?
According to Dubya, the state of the union is strong! Light
those firecrackers. Of course, if Bush were either a) an honest
man, or b) not merely a robotic chimp reading his lines as
programmed, he would have admitted that the state of the union
is nothing short of bizarre.
We're going to blow up Iraq because they looked at us funny,
and then if Iran and North Korea look at us funny then by
God we'll blow them up too. (And you, Canada - just watch
it, okay?) Then we're going to cure AIDS in Africa, presumably
by buying lots and lots of vastly overpriced drugs from Dubya's
buds in the pharmaceutical industry - don't worry, I expect
we'll pay them off with the money we get from selling the
oil we steal from Iraq. Meanwhile we won't need any more oil
back here in America because we're all going to drive around
in hydrogen-powered cars - yes, despite wanting to dig up
America's national parks Bush is just a great big environmentalist
wacko at heart. Who'd have guessed it? By the way, I think
we must have solved the problem of whatsisname, you know -
that guy with the long beard and the AK47. George didn't mention
him at all, so we've probably caught him or blown him up or
something. Maybe he never even really existed. It's getting
hard to remember. What else? Well, after busting the budget
on an invasion of a country that didn't commit the 9/11 attacks
- but just imagine if they had! - we're going to fund
Medicare, Social Security, education, and every other government
program that is vital to our society, by magically pulling
money out of our asses. And finally, since it's obviously
been working great till now, we're going to fix the economy
by doing exactly the same thing we've been doing for the last
two years, only more so. Yes folks, the state of the union
is... idiotic.
Laura
Bush
First Lady Laura Bush had invited poets from across the country
to a poetry symposium on February 12 to discuss Emily Dickinson,
Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman, but abruptly postponed
it when she learned that some of the participants would be
sharing poetry with anti-war themes. One of the poets even
planned to wear a scarf with (gasp!) peace signs on it. Mrs.
Bush's spokeswoman Noelia Rodriguez explained that "While
Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their
opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be
inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum."
As a former librarian, the first lady has a unique appreciation
for the importance of keeping a strict wall of separation
between literature and politics. We wouldn't want any thinking
with our reading, now would we? Apparently the symposium will
be rescheduled for March with a new discussion topic: "pretty
flowers and fluffy bunnies."
Win
Smith Jr.
Brown nose alert! State Senator Win Smith of Connecticut wants
to rename Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport in honor of his
idol, and our great leader, George W. Bush. It's kinda fitting
in a way - Poppy gets George Bush Intercontinental Airport
in Houston, Reagan gets Ronald Reagan National Airport just
outside of DC, and Dubya gets George W. Bush Regional Airport
in Tweed, Connecticut. Sort of illustrates the Chimp's achievements
compared to his predecessors (although I probably shouldn't
use the word "achievements"). But anyway, the mayor
of New Haven has decided
that this is a terrible idea, since a) they've already named
a bunch of roads after Dubya, and b) despite the fact that
he was born in New Haven, Bush won't even have it acknowledged
in his biography. Course not - cowboys don't come from Connecticut,
silly!
Ari
Fleischer
Let's face it - there's not a lot of worldwide support for
Bush's Oil War. Nelson Mandela has recently been very critical
of Bush's Iraq policy, and while the White House recently
received a letter of support from eight European nations,
that means the other 40 or so nations in Europe decided to
take a pass. But Ari Fleischer recently tried to blow off
any criticism by thanking the eight European leaders who support
Bush. At a recent
press briefing he said, "The president expresses his gratitude
to the many leaders of Europe who obviously feel differently"
than people like Nelson Mandela. "He understands there are
going to be people who are more comfortable doing nothing
about a growing menace that could turn into a holocaust."
Yeah, I guess Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela is a
bit of a "do-nothing" isn't he Ari? I mean, he didn't
do much while he was locked up in that cell for 30 years,
did he?
Jim
Saxton
And finally, it seems
that some members of Congress are a bit confused about the
concept of making international friends and building global
coalitions. Rep. Jim Saxton of New Jersey, chairman of a new
House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional
threats and capabilities is calling for the United States
to boycott this year's Paris Air Show if France doesn't fall
into line and start shipping troops to Iraq. Well that
should tell them, Jim! Perhaps since Jim Saxton is in charge
of "unconventional threats," he's used to coming
up with unconventional solutions. But when you're talking
about building a coalition for war, a foreign policy of "it's
my ball and I'm taking it home," seems a tad... immature.
And we thought the adults were supposed to be in charge.
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