The
Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 155)
May
10, 2004
Winning The Hearts And Minds Edition
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Soooo......
last week wasn't exactly a banner week in the war for the
"hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. Unfortunately
it appears that George W. Bush (1,2,3) has known about what's
been going on at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere for quite some time
now. Not that it really matters to the Media Numbnuts (4)
- they're still content to try and pretend that the images
coming out of Iraq are nothing to be concerned about. Of course,
there's plenty of idiocy on the home front too - Thomas Druce
(5) just got put back in prison, Marc Racicot (7) is a hypocritical
asshole, and Bill O'Reilly (8) lies yet again. As usual, don't
forget the key!
George
W. Bush
Hey, guess what? Our Great Leader was told about abuse in
Iraqi prisons during the winter
holidays! But he's not to blame for any of the fallout
from this despicable affair, because this Responsibility President
is responsible for nothing. Yes, it appears that prisoner
abuse has been rampant in Iraq for
a while now, and it was only a matter of time before the
disgusting practice of humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners
- many of whom had nothing to do with the fighting - would
become public and ruin any chance we had of "winning
the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. So what was
done about it? Surprise! Nothing! That's great! Here we have
a situation which should have been stopped long ago on humanitarian
grounds alone, yet which was left to fester and in fact endorsed
as good
practice by the military. And now that the news of torture
and abuse has finally come out, not only is the world shocked
that the U.S. military has been engaged in such practices,
but the extremely fragile possibility of success in Iraq has
been blown out of the window. All because of the inaction
of the Bush administration. In fact, if you look at the 9/11
hearings, it seems that ignoring reports about very bad shit
happening is standard operating procedure for Team Bush.
George
W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld
But don't expect this latest scandal to dislodge any members
of the Bush administration from their posts. Hell, we've had
9/11, anthrax terrorism, the entire WMD fiasco leading to
the invasion of Iraq, the lack of success capturing Osama
bin Laden (oh wait, that's scheduled for September)... and
nobody's been given the boot yet. So don't expect a little
event like, oh, I dunno, the utter ruination of our already
dismal occupation of Iraq to cost anyone their job. There
were loud
calls for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation last week, but
if the Chimp has anything to do with it, Rumsfeld is staying
right where he is - I guess you don't change horsemen in the
middle of an apocalypse. Apparently Bush has expressed his
"annoyance" with Rumsfeld in private - annoyance?
Annoyance? - but press secretary Scott McLellan said
last week that "The president greatly appreciates the
job that Secretary Rumsfeld is doing." Incidentally,
is it a surprise to anyone that Bush ran every single company
he was ever involved with straight into the ground? I guess
now we know why. He hires complete
fools and then when they screw up he refuses to fire them
while pretending they're doing a great job. It might not have
been a big deal when it was just his investors' profits he
was flushing down the toilet, but this is the world we're
talking about here. Oh please sir, may I have another four
years?
George
W. Bush
Don't worry though, because Our Great Leader has solved the
entire mess with an appearance on Arab television and an apology.
Of course, the
appearance on Arab television didn't
actually include the apology. Oh, and one of the two TV
stations which ran the interview was a US government-financed
station which didn't
translate his comments into Arabic. Very useful. Oh yes,
and the apology I mentioned earlier? Bush didn't actually
make it to the Iraqis who were abused. Nor to the Iraqi people
in general. He made it to King Abdullah of Jordan. And when
I say he made it to King Abdullah, what I mean is that we
didn't actually hear the apology, but we do have his
word that he made it. So there you have it. Bush has sorted
out the entire situation by appearing on Arab TV without an
Arabic translation, not apologizing, and then allegedly privately
apologizing to the ruler of a country who has nothing to do
with any of this. Great job!
Media
Numbnuts
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity finally snapped last week (in
unison, predictably) and declared that the pictures of prisoner
abuse in Iraq - which even Karl Rove concedes
have set the Arab world's view of the US back "decades"
- were nothing more than a little light-hearted fun. Said
Limbaugh, "This is no different than what happens at
the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's
lives over it... These were just boys and girls blowing off
steam during a stressful situation. Let's not make an international
incident out of it, for crying out loud." A guest on
Hannity and Colmes said that the pictures were no worse than
a frat
hazing. "So in other words, this is not a big deal?"
replied Sean. (Hannity had already compared the prisoner abuse
to frat hazing on his radio show earlier in the week.)
Now, I don't know if it's escaped Rush and Sean's attention,
but generally speaking frat members don't go around pulling
random people off the street and hazing them against their
will. Come to that, how can these two giants of morality look
at the pictures and even try to make excuses? I wonder...
if Iraqi soldiers took Sean and Rush away from their families,
put them in a jail cell, stripped them naked, put hoods over
their heads, forced to simulate oral sex on their fellow inmates,
put a leash around their necks and dragged them around on
all fours, piled them up in a heap of other naked inmates,
and beat the shit out of them - would they still consider
it to be "not a big deal?"
Thomas
Druce
Former Republican state Rep. Thomas Druce, of Bucks County,
PA, was in more than a spot of hot water last week - he ended
up in jail for two years. Five years ago Druce ran down and
killed
a man while driving through Harrisburg. But rather than
report the incident to the police, he decided to immediately
drive to an out-of-town body shop and pay $3000 out of his
own pocket for the repairs before turning the car in early
on its lease and driving away in a new vehicle. After an anonymous
tipster fingered Druce, he told police that he'd hit a stop
sign and his insurance company that he'd hit a barrel on the
turnpike. Which worked out great, until police discovered
the bumper of his old car at the body shop, still crusted
with blood and hair. Druce managed to strike a deal with prosecutors
and was sentenced to two to four years in prison. But after
two months, he was freed on bail and allowed home - with an
ankle monitor - while he appealed his sentence. During this
time he worked as a political consultant and - believe it
or not - was allowed to keep his driver's license. He was
frequently seen "strutting around the Capitol like he
owns the place" according to other lawmakers. But there
is a happy ending to this story - Druce was finally sent back
to prison to complete his sentence last week. He actually
tried to claim that he "should be given credit for time
spent sleeping in his Bucks County home," according
to Philly.com, but the judge said that that would be "patently
ludicrous."
Ah, can't you just smell that conservative personal responsibility
cutting through the afternoon air like a turd-encrusted samurai
sword?
College
Republicans of Kalamazoo College
Here's more proof that the Republican youth of today are the
Bush Brownshirts of tomorrow. It appears that certain students
were barred from a recent Bush campaign rally at Kalamazoo
College in Michigan when College Republicans stationed at
the event identified them as liberals. Seven students - who
had valid tickets for the event and were not dressed inappropriately,
nor wearing any kind of political paraphernalia, were turned
away by security guards at a checkpoint. According
to The Nation, one of the students, Ted Hufstader,
said, "They told us that we failed a background check,
that we had been identified by volunteers as a potential threat,
and that if we didn't leave we would be arrested."
Those volunteers were College Republicans. Said Hufstader,
"We were very disappointed that our peers singled us
out for what they thought we might do. And we later
heard they had been trained to find potential threats at the
event. But we were not a threat. We're even friends with some
of these College Republicans. This was a sad commentary about
the bitter divide of American politics. Look how hard it was
for us to hear a contrary view. We wanted to see the president
and then talk about what he said afterward. We felt like we
were being blacklisted by our campus peers, and this is a
campus that is supposed to be open to different political
views." Heh, sorry Ted. You're in Bush's America now. You'd
better start bowing down before Our Great Leader if you want
to get anywhere.
Marc
Racicot
Awwww... looks like Marc Racicot and the rest of Team Bush
can't take a dose of their own medicine. Last week Racicot
criticized Teresa Heinz-Kerry for calling Dick Cheney "unpatriotic."
Racicot said in a statement,
"This political line of attack is offensive and should
be stopped." Oh yeah? Racicot didn't seem particularly bothered
when Republicans decided to smear
combat veteran John Kerry on the floor of the House a few
weeks ago? Take Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas, for example, who
called Kerry "Hanoi John," said his true colors
"are not red, white and blue," and said he was engaged
in "nothing short of aiding and abetting the enemy."
Mind you, this isn't a new trick for Bush partisans - they
did the same thing to John McCain back in 2000. So thank goodness
for Marc Racicot, who stood up and condemned his fellow Republicans
for this offensive line of attack. Oh, wait. No he didn't.
Bill
O'Reilly
We noted in Idiots 154 that Bill O'Reilly
has decided to threaten Canada with one of his infamous boycotts.
But there was a hilarious moment on Fox News last week when
O'Reilly tried to claim that his boycott against France had
cost the country "billions of dollars." On The O'Reilly
Factor, Bill told Toronto Globe & Mail columnist
Heather Mallick
that if Canada refused to return two US army deserters, "there
will be a boycott of your country which will hurt your country
enormously. France is now feeling that sting." Mallick
replied, "I don't think that your French boycott has
done too well..." Not so! According to O'Reilly: "they've
lost billions of dollars in France according to the Paris
Business Review." There's just one slight flaw in
Bill's argument. According
to David Brock's new site MediaMatters.org, there's no
such publication as the Paris Business Review. Whoops!
Not only that, but Media Matters reports that "American
imports from France have actually increased since international
tensions with France began in the months prior to the start
of the war in Iraq in March 2003. According to the US Census
Bureau, in February 2004, the United States imported $2.26
billion in French goods and services, up from $2.18 billion
in February 2002." So, uh, great work on your boycott
there, Bill. And thank god for the No Spin Zone.
Disney
Well, well. So the bigshots at Disney have decided that Michael
Moore's new documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 may be a little too
hot to handle, and have ordered their subsidiary Miramax to
block distribution of the film. Apparently Disney's deal with
Miramax means that Disney can "prevent the company from
distributing films under certain circumstances," according
to the New York Times. While
those circumstances were originally intended to mean things
like a movie getting an NC-17 rating or going wildly over-budget,
presumably they now involve things like asking difficult questions
of the Bush administration or suggesting that there may be
more to the events of September 11 than meet the eye. Either
way, Disney clearly doesn't want to be responsible for any
criticism of Our Great Leader. And who wouldn't? He's doing
such a wonderful job.
The
FCC
And finally, it has been revealed that the FCC noticeably
failed to come down like a ton of bricks on Oprah Winfrey
when Oprah did a show on teen sexuality last October, despite
receiving more than 1600
complaints from viewers. The show apparently referred
to such fascinating sexual practices as "salad tossing"
(according to Oprah's expert, that's, uh, oral-anal sex) and
"rainbows" (which involves a penis and several different
shades of lipstick - use your imagination). Funnily enough,
when Howard Stern did a similar
segment on his radio show, the FCC fined Clear Channel
Communications almost half a million dollars and Clear Channel
subsequently dumped Stern. But their reaction to Oprah's show
- which aired during the daytime - was surprisingly silent.
Could this be nothing more than rank hypocrisy
on the part of the FCC? Surely not... see you next week!
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