Indecision 08 Wingnut thread

[Cain]

Yeah, the bloggers are even worse, not least because they can edit their own material.  Like certain bloggers who give out home addresses of "treasonous" reporters or protestors, then retroactively edit the entry before Google cache's it.

They're also not bound by advertisers, with so many free services, and like you say, they tend to cluster around other blogs and readerships with similar interests (oddly enough, I've clustered with a group of bloggers who go out of our way to look at views we disagree with.  They usually debate, and then I follow up with mockery).

I believe Michelle Malkin has already had a poster who was arrested for making death threats or plotting to bomb someone or something.  I'll have to look it up, but with many of the larger blogs, such as LGF (where 1000+ comments is not unheard of), may have similar audiences.

[Cain]

Start up those chain email engines people!  This is a list of people connected to Obama and McCain who have died under mysterious circumstances, that we must spread far and wide across the innernets.

SOJOURNER 'FATIMAH' SHABAZZ – Bangladeshi mother of Arab baby "adopted" by Cyndi McCain from 1984-2003. Grew to regret Muslim indoctrination, converting to Christianity and attempted to reclaim illegitimate black baby from McCains in years approx. 1972 timeframe. Executed 1999 in Darfur under orders of Hova tribesmen related by blood and marriage to Obama, head transported to Bohemian Grove in Northern California as trophy. It was rumored he was going to bring evidence of Wright's complicity in his father's death.

ANTONIN BLAIR – Former Chicago city comptroller killed in 1997 cocaine bludgeoning overdose choking stab plunge gunshot from tall building beheaded shotgun blast. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house. Just weeks earlier had served multiple subpoenas on illegitimate nephews of Obama, including John McCain.

DESHAUN 'BLACK JUJU' HAYNESWORTH – Small-time Washington D.C. drug dealer found murdered in 2008 with sharpened crack cocaine outside Arlington, Va. home of McCain and Obama.

ST. JOHN REINHOLD - Austro-Cornish adventurer and mountaineer known for scaling 17 of world's 19 40,000+-foot peaks without breathing oxygen. Buried in 2002 avalanche of mousepads at computer distribution warehouse owned by Obama high school associate Dennis O'Halloran. Had been investigating Sherpa MySpace suicide pact allegedly engineered by former McCain technology advisor Phil McCracken, who himself disappeared in 2006 only to reappear hours later. Strongly implied that the 'baby daddy' was Barack 'John McCain' Obama.

PANCHO CORDOZA - Died from a gunshot wound. Mexican telemundo actor who portrayed stunt double for popular Sr. Bee character on Channel 12. Still living and employed as former Chicago city comptroller.

OLDSMOBILE JOHNSON – Transvestite homosexual prepared to testify about Obama connection to Hormel meat processing scandal. Confided to friends before 1893 death that McCain did it. Found shot and stabbed in fall from tall building, death ruled 'murder'. It was rumored he was going to bring evidence of Wright's complicity in his father's death.

JOHN-JOHN 'THE TOTAL FAG' DIETZ – Author of tell-all book on McCain, 'One Of These Days, Cyndi, One Of These Days', also one of Michelle Obama's many white, female conquests while at Harvard. Filed murder complaint against Michelle Obama with federal Patent and Trademark Office in 2003. Died from a gunshot wound. Because 'trademarks' were not considered a crime like it is today, she ended up dropping the charges. Fifteen years later, found murdered to death by Obama, Michelle Obama and John McCain of an apparent murder.

HARACK OUSSEIN BOBAMA – Still-born white Christian heterosexual twin brother of Obama. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house. Injured 1961 while still in womb when McCain punched white mother of Obama in stomach. Obama finished job on potential presidential rival by sawing off twin's head with makeshift ritual Muslim scimitar constructed from placenta, partially digested former Chicago city comptroller.

PETER NOONE – Popular lead singer of Herman's Hermits. Found dead of apparent suicide in 1979 following 'row' with Obama, McCain in latter's bathtub. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.

QUINTLOCK P. MUNROE – After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house. Former Chicago city comptroller with licensing contract to McCain, Obama, killed by way of death in recent years.

MILES BANDERCOOT & JAKE LARUE – Clones of Obama and McCain respectively. Developed self-awareness in 1987 chemical vat incident before being gunned down by onlookers.

SPORT GOODMAN – Beloved Utica, N.Y.-based newscaster and former Chicago city comptroller rolled up into little ball and made to go 'POOF' in a cloud of smoke as if he had never existed.

DABNEY 'GAB' SADDLEMAN – Former Chicago city comptroller stomped to death in riot of former city comptrollers instigated by McCain crony Obama at behest of Obama crony McCain. Died from a gunshot wound.

PAUL ROTHCHILD - Democrat National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Washington DC in 2003. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house. It was rumored he was going to bring evidence of Wright's complicity in his father's death. A 'friend and trusted advisor' to senatorial candidate Barack Obama. Dead of an apparent suicide. Was found dead of an apparent heroin overdose May 18, 1997. Former Chicago city comptroller died from a gunshot wound. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house. It was rumored he was going to bring evidence of Wright's complicity in his father's death. Died from a gunshot wound. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.

[LMNO]

Oh, fuck yeah. 

[Cain]

More deaths to add to the list


DELIA JEFFERSON - First time he shot her, shot her in the side. Hard to watch her suffer, but with the second shot she died.

FRANK "FILES" REMOVED - student, majoring in comptrolling; found dead in his home of an apparent gunshot stabbing, later the body mysteriously disappeared.

JIMMINY FLIBBERTYGIBBET - aide to the ObaCain campaign; discovered in his home with a gunshot wound to the head, a gun in his right hand, with a suicide note in his lap. Ruled a murder by overdose.

HAREGRAVE SMITHSON - Dairy Queen drive-thru employee of the month; told his friends and family that he was collecting a dossier on the shady dealings of the McCabama triad, died in a brutal fryer "accident." Ironically, his files were still in his home, but they consisted only of his pay stubs and DKP records for his WoW guild.

MISTER LEONARD PIERCE - humorist; was known to poke fun at Barack "John" McCain, later dropped off the side of the earth. Last known words were "I'm going to go say hi to Jillian, need anything from the bodega?"

BARUCH McMACCABEE — Judean revolutionary and former Chicago city comptroller found mysteriously dead of apparent martyrdom days after demonstration of super-efficient carburetor (allowing eightfold decrease in oil consumption). Files were mysteriously removed from his house.

ZAN AND JAYNA MCCAIN — Illigetimate Luo aliens from Exor adopted by John McCain. Last seen alive making suspicious terror-related gang fist-bump gesture, later found by Chicago city comptroller Richard "Gleek" Bucketmonkey as a dead giant sloth impaled on an ice-stalagmite (or possibly a fallen ice stalactite). It was rumored they were going to bring evidence of Wright's complicity in a scheme to melt all the world's gold.

IGNATZ RASPUTIN — younger brother of famed healing evangelist, known radical who advocated freeing the credit card debt serfs, survived being poisoned, shot, bludgeoned, and drowned. So it's very mysterious that he died after enjoying his favorite lead coated toy & tomato sandwich.

KICKING BEAR - Oglala Sioux medicine man, al Qaeda operative, Navy Seal, and former Chicago city comptroller. Obama's liaison to the shadowy High Plains meth lab syndicate. Captured by Apaches hired by McCain, staked down to the ground, and licked to death by homosexual prairie dogs, who were some of Bill Clinton's many small mammal conquests.

VLAD WARTZ - Double triple agent for the KGB, the CIA, the ISI, and the Apaches. Obama's liaison to shadowy East European hunchback Neo-Nazi Islamic biker gangs. Wartz reportedly survived 23 assassination attempts, including one that involved a squad of dwarves with flamethrowers and chain saws. In 2004, he was abducted by Ernst Stavro Blofeld on Michelle Obama's orders and dropped into a vat of sharks.

DRANO ALKASELTZER - Indonesian classmate of Obama's, cousin of Darsano Rahardjo, distant relative of Ferdinand Marcos and of Robert E. Lee. Obama's liaison to the shadowy southeast Asian born-again Christian porn mafia, he later branched out into heroin smuggling, kidnapping, extortion, rioting, and creating disturbances in residential neighborhoods late at night. In 2006, he was overcome by four of McCain's sumo wrestler flatulence assassins.

IRONY - abstract concept killed from overwork while comptrolling (or as GWB would have it, comptrollerizating) the city of Chicago. Last gasp was heard when John SIDNEY "Whiplash" McCain promised to run a respectful campaign. Ironically, the files were removed from its house before its death.

BILL "WILLIAM" "BEHOLD A PALE HORSE" COOPER - Repeatedly tried to inform the American people of what was going on through clearly and patiently crafted impulsive and undocumented purposeless rants on shortwave radio, particularly about the UFOs which were going to make Revelation finally happen in some way involving the New World Order. However, Cooper didn't count on Barack Hussein Obama X coming to power in completely unrelated local politics in Chicago — and soon after, Cooper died of so-called "natural causes" after a shoot-out with local sheriff's deputies trying to serve him a warrant. Later the files were removed from his house. They were then returned, so that they could be removed more mysteriously, which they were.

ROBERT STACY MCCAIN - Award-winning columnist, reporter, editor, author, bon vivant and raconteur, bastard Indonesian half-brother of John McCain and former gay lover of Barack Hussein Obama, died of "natural" causes while yelling "nigger, nigger, nigger" and "gimme some iced tea, motherfucker" in a crowded Harlem restaurant in 2007, and was later found strangled, burned, shot and poisoned behind the Automat on 52nd st. while performing fellatio on an unnamed Republican Senator from Alabama.

CORKY SCHLOCKWURSTER - Leather fetishist, sadist, sociopath, stamp collector. McCain's liaison to the shadowy world of underground Beach Boy cover band Bolshevik cells. Compiled a dossier on Obama's and Bill Ayres' plot to spray the southern Idaho potato crop with hallucinogens. Assassinated by Obama operative Hugh Beaumont.

OLGA GREX - Dominatrix librarian. Commanded Fred Thompson's special ops unit in its bloody seven-hour shoot-out with Mike Huckabee's Gamma Force, near Guntersville, Alabama on February 15, 2008. Successfully infiltrated McCain's headquarters with counter-brainwashed spittle-flinging Ron Paul supporters. Shortly after making overtures to Obama's Legion of Death military arm, Grex was abducted by pro-McCain space mummies and beamed onto the surface of Neptune.

HENRY DENT- High-flying public prosecuter in Chicago, devoted father of four. Killed in 1997 in a mysterious car accident just years after questioning whether Obama had the right to attend his exclusive golf club. No evidence of Obama's involvement has ever been dismissed.

JEFF "PASTY" GLODSTEIN - Basement dwelling pseudo intellectual "humorist" killed in mysterious auto-erotic asphyxiation stabbing after threatening to slap Obama with John McCain's comptroller's cock. Died when humor-powered bicycle broke down in front of an onrushing freight train which was, incidentally, transporting several thousand tons of missing files.

MUSTAFA AL-IBN VON SCHTUPPMEISTER - file clerk; worked for the Clinton/Brownback campaign, found dead of "death." The files were recovered, but were then mysteriously unrecovered.

TUPAC SHAKUR - rapper; Obama's cousin's hairdresser's son's penpal's uncle's best friend's dog-groomer's mother-in-law's rabbi's poker-buddy's favorite 7-11 clerk's brother was Biggie Smalls' bodyguard. The files were recovered; they became 2Pac's posthumous albums after McCain scrubbed out the references to Obama's extraterrestrial contacts.

COSMOPOLIS COLLEANDER - gypsy wench; gave Obama a tarot reading about McCain that he didn't like, ten days later she was found hung by her left leg from a tree. The cards mysteriously vanished from her nomad's tent.

BLACKY "MUSLIM" BLACK - Black black black blackity muslim black Obama black white woman blackity Islamo black baby black black blackblackblackmuslim. The files were never recovered.

LADY LYNN FORESTER de ROTHSCHILD BANANA FO-FANA LOUISA FRANCESCA BANANA FANNA BO BESCA the THIRD - Aristocrat and philanthropist with a heart of gold (actually made of 24 karat gold - replaced the fleshy meat organ she was born with). Accused Obama of being out-of-touch with common man. Found buried under a heap of money, caviar, fabergé eggs and Stradvarius violins, bludgeoned to death with a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite. After discovery of her mysterious shooting with a silver plated 1824 Beretta .54 caliber percussion pistol (signed by Bartelomeo) the files were removed from the estate. It was rumored that she was Obama's secret lover and baby mama. Stabbed to death with a jeweled Damascus steel sword forged by Domingo Montoya. After her death, the mysterious was filed away in the vaults, which then mysteriously disappeared.

BARACK OBAMA - killed by himself in a bizarre Muslim initiation ceremony involved two geese and a vat of liquid water. Death ruled a suicide. Files mysteriously disappeared in mysterious circumstances after being found then lost then transfered to laser disc. It is rumoured that Barack put himself through law school by comptrolling part time.

[LMNO]

Can we add that to whatever lollercause/horrormirth pamphlet we're putting together?


That was fucking brilliant, sir.

[Cain]

I was not responsible.  The first is the writing of D. Aristophanes, the latter the commentators of Sadly, No!

However, I think we should steal them anyway.

[Iason Ouabache]

I was not responsible.  The first is the writing of D. Aristophanes, the latter the commentators of Sadly, No!

However, I think we should steal them anyway.

I will definitely be yoinking them if I get one of the many annoying anti-Obama forwards.  And judging from my mom's e-mail list, I will be getting at least one in the next couple of months.

[Cain]

Well you can certainly use this one

THE FILES - paper like white objects with writing on. After a successful career as Chicago comptroller, they became the pivotal element of the McBamba campaign, detailing the candidate's links to the Neo-Nazi atheist, Leprechaun Morris-dancing, Hindu, Anglo-Saxon Australian mutant underground. They died in mysterious circumstances, while being removed from a house.

[Cain]

ITT we argue about political shock jocks.         

Hey, he's only got the third biggest radio show in America, and an audience who seems are not too nuanced in their worldview.  What could go wrong?

ROFL, I know... I don't know which is worse... that intelligent people take him seriously, or the jabbering masses take him seriously. When I was in school for Broadcasting, we had a short study on the 'new' political shock jock as a show style. Our instructor thought that they would peter out, because it was so obvious. Boy, was he wrong.

Well thats the problem.

A well educated, economically secure population would laugh off Savage as a crank and a lunatic, and he'd have to go back to writing books about healthy balanced diets or whatever it was he used to do.  It was something like that.

But when you're job is being outsourced to China, and you're being told every day that its all your fault for not trying hard enough, and then some blowhard comes on the radio and lies about how illegal immigrants are being welcomed with money and free homes, all while shitting over the country and bringing in diseases, or how the Middle East is filled with American-hating lunatics who want to convert America to a Caliphate and you don't know any better, since your teacher was more interested in making the case for the Bible being the foundational document of civilization than teaching actual history, and how the liberals at home are saying we shouldn't all lock them up....

in that sort of climate, people like Savage do thrive.  Its the same deal with Rush Limbaugh.  They take very extreme views, strip them of their most obvious wingnuttery, and introduce them into the mainstream.  And people don't bother to debunk them because "they're cranks who no-one really believes", or, even better, they claim people like this balance out people like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore (not that I especially like either, but thats like saying Adolf Hitler balances out Ramsey MacDonald).  And so the right moves to a gradually more radical position, and thats how nutters like the Freepers or ex-Constitution Party nativists can drive policy decisions.

Yep, of course, the radio political shock jock is quickly being replaced by the Bloggers... the downside is that while Savage and Limbaugh KNOW that they're jerking off for ratings... the Bloggers actually seem to believe their own shit... and create internet feedback loops to reinforce it. LGF, pajamasmedia etc

Coming back to this point:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/93126/did_right-wing_shock_jocks_motivate_knoxville_killer/


When police searched the car of the gunman who opened fire in a Unitarian Church in Tennessee, they found a 4-page letter expressing his hatred of the "liberal movement." A regular consumer of Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, Jim David Adkisson was only following the arguments they make day in and day out to their logical conclusions.

From the Knoxville News Sentinel:

    Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show.

    Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children's musical.

    Adkisson targeted the church ... "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

    Adkisson [said] that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

    Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

    The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of "the liberal movement," and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

    Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his "hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said. "Liberals in general, as well as gays."

    Adkisson said he also was frustrated about not being able to obtain a job, Owen said.

    Owen said Adkisson specifically targeted the church for its beliefs, rather than a particular member of the congregation.

    "It appears that church had received some publicity regarding its liberal stance," the chief said. The church has a "gays welcome" sign and regularly runs announcements in the News Sentinel about meetings of the Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays meetings at the church.

    Owen said Adkisson's stated hatred of the liberal movement was not necessarily connected to any hostility toward Christianity or religion per say, but rather the political advocacy of the church.

    The church's Web site states that it has worked for "desegregation, racial harmony, fair wages, women's rights and gay rights" since the 1950s. Current ministries involve emergency aid for the needy, school tutoring and support for the homeless, as well as a cafe that provides a gathering place for gay and lesbian high-schoolers.

[That One Guy]

This whole UU church shooting thing has me bothered a bit more than many of these types of things have in the past. Not because it's an "alleged" right-winger (IMO he's just a crazy that happens to have imprinted on right-wing talking points - had he imprinted on something else he'd have taken a shotgun somewhere else), but because that kind of church is where I grew up, and spent damn near every Sunday until I went to college this whole incident made a bit more of an impression.

I've participated in and been in the audience for the kid's performance things. I've organized youth services, presided and performed in them. I've dealt first-hand with some of the crazies that the church does outreach with, and ever since the UU minister in New Paltz, NY started (illegally) marrying homosexuals in the late 90s I've always thought something like this was increasingly possible, especially because the UU church tends to make it a point of being open and public about supporting the "liberal agenda" type stuff.

And now some crazy with a shotgun decided to point it there and pull the trigger. I'm not one for rampant paranoia, but it's been really hard not to picture him walking into my old church in Albany during one of our Youth services, and opening up. If it happened once, who's to say some other crazy won't have the same idea - and next time it COULD be people I know, or a church that I've been to. All I can hope for, really, is that I'll be able to be one of the people that was in the audience that took him down quickly, before he could do more than the 3 shots he managed.

[Cain]

There is a piece by a UU member on David Niewert's site about the shooting http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/07/of-madmen-and-martyrs.html

Niewert's own series on Eliminationism, referenced in the article, is worth reading as well.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-i.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-ii.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-iii.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-iv.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-v.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/12/eliminationism-in-america-vi.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/01/eliminationism-in-america-vii.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/01/eliminationism-in-america-viii.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/02/eliminationism-in-america-ix.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/02/eliminationism-in-america-x.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/03/eliminationism-in-america-appendix.html

[That One Guy]

Thanks Cain for that link - it said what I've been thinking since seeing this go down rather nicely. Most appreciated.

[Cain]

Mister Leonard Pierce of Alternet has a guide to the best smears going against Barack Obama this election season

http://www.alternet.org/election08/93617/a_guide_to_the_sleaziest_(and_most_contradictory)_smears_on_the_dem_nominee/

--------------------------------

The Charge: Barack Obama is black.

The Specifics: Blacks, as every Michael Savage fan knows, are violent, irresponsible maniacs who commit crimes, take drugs and listen to violent rap music. Left to their own devices, they will say ungrateful things about white people.

The Evidence: The American Conservative makes the case with the sort of genteel care that we've come to not expect from some quarters of the blogosphere: Calling him an updated version of the "tragic mulatto" and lamenting how he fell under the spell of "leftist black nationalist preacher" Jeremiah Wright, it claims that even his Christian faith is "an affirmation of African-American emotional separatism" and calls him a "disturbing test of the best-case scenario" of post-racist America, seething with "a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity." Author Steve Sailer seems baffled that this uppity fellow has made no moves to "forgive whites and ask forgiveness for his own racial antagonism as he accepts Jesus."

The Problem: Some people haven't gotten the message. Everyone from David Horowitz's Front Page magazine to bearded gadfly Warner Todd Huston (who claims that Barry "eschews the thug, rapper lifestyle") claims that rather than being too black, Obama is not black enough, and even Bill O'Reilly, a keen observer of African-American culture, says he doesn't "want to go on a lynching party" against Michelle Obama unless more evidence arises that she's actually black. Come on, Bill! At the height of her husband's senate campaign, she made a tape where she ranted against Whitey, maybe! What more "proof" do you need?

The Solution: Hammer the scary-Negro angle for all it's worth. There's still plenty of N.W.A. videos and Willie Horton footage around just waiting to be used. Most of all, don't forget to follow the lead of humorless culture vulture Brent Bozell, who demands that Obama denounce all rappers. America hates rap, and the more you complain about it, the more with-it you will appear! Warning: As terrible as it is to contemplate, this may actually require you to listen to rap music, lest, like Human Events' Evan Gahr, you accidentally claim as misogynist a Jay-Z lyric that is in fact about men.


The Charge: Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim.

The Specifics: Although it is not, technically, illegal for a Muslim to become president, being terrified at the very suggestion of the existence of Islam is the favorite pastime of the Scaredy-American community.

The Evidence: Exhibit A in the argument that, if elected, Barack Obama will pull off a rubber face mask and reveal himself to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, is his middle name. Of course, "Hussein" is actually an Arabic name, and the majority of the world's Muslims are not Arabs (and there are Arabs who aren't Muslims), but those are the sort of piddling details that keep people like Michelle Malkin from being all that they can be by calling him "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" at every possible opportunity. The dark mistress of this black art is unhinged Michigan D-list pundit Debbie Schlussel, who seems to be of the belief that the president of the United States wields powers somewhere between those of an emperor and a demigod, and that if Obama is elected, America will wake up the next morning to find itself subject to the strictest iteration of Sharia law. Schlussel doesn't let herself get hung up on technicalities: "Even if he identifies strongly as a Christian ... is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?"

The Problem: The greatest gift of the Obama presidential campaign to right-wingers so far has been some carefully selected snippets from the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, who, as far as they are concerned, is the second coming of Huey Newton. Unfortunately, Wright is not only no longer affiliated with Obama, but he is not a Muslim. He is, in fact, a Christian, and even though he's not the, ahem, "good" kind of Christian, if you know what I mean, he is an evangelical Protestant, a group that, historically, the Right has been somewhat reluctant to piss off.

The Solution: Drop the Jeremiah Wright angle. He's no longer Obama's pastor, he doesn't have much to do with the day-to-day running of his church, and even some of the right-wing crazies are urging their readers to forget about him and move on to much more pressing issues of national policy, such as whether or not Obama's wife hates America. Besides, there's a much juicier Chicago-based religious figure they're desperately trying to link him to ...



The Charge: Barack Obama is an elitist snob.

The Specifics: Curiously, although they themselves have a tendency to run multimillionaires for office, promote policies favorable to huge multinational corporations, and favor tax structures that reward the rich and punish the middle class -- hell, they even eat more stinky French cheese than their opponents across the aisle -- the GOP promotes the notion that Democrats are unsuitable for office because they are a bunch of rich toffs.

The Evidence: Despite promoting tax policy changes beneficial to the middle class and supporting innumerable aid programs for working Americans, Barack Obama seems determined to keep doing things that, in the eyes of multimillionaire Republicans, make him an out-of-touch elitist aristo whose ability to relate to the common man is constantly hampered by his tripping over his platinum walking stick or getting his diamond-studded monocle stuck in his eye. From his failure to adequately enjoy sport shooting to his inability to bowl a 300 game to his infuriating capacity to talk to farmers about farming, there seems to be no end to what this man will do to establish that he's better than the Republican conception of the working man and/or woman. (The fact that this conception is itself an egregious stereotype doesn't seem to bother the GOP.) What's more, Republicans have tarred Obama's wife, Michelle, as a stuck-up, snooty, Princeton-educated lawyer who looks down on ordinary people, unlike down-to-earth, USC-educated booze heiress Cindy McCain. Obama even thinks that it would be useful to have American citizens learn to speak foreign languages (the gall! The unmitigated gall!), unlike conservatives, who know that if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for them).

The Problem: Some GOP operatives have become so confused by the seeming contradiction between Charge #1 (Barack Obama is a scary ghetto Negro) and Charge #3 (Barack Obama is a latte-sipping elitist liberal snob) that they have gone off-message, and in some cases, completely off the reservation. If you spend too much time, as conservatives often do, fretting that the Democrats are going to tax your capital gains and inheritance money to pay veterans' benefits to a bunch of lazy ne'er-do-well wounded soldiers, you can lose sight of the liberals-are-snooty-Mr.-Howell-types narrative and remind voters of who you really are.

The Solution: The "latte libel," as Thomas Frank calls it, never stops working. And the reason it never stops working is that it doesn't really have anything to do with economics; it has everything to do with culture. As long as the GOP sticks to the plan and distracts people from Obama's actual pro-working-class economic policies by reminding them that he's a sissy who wears his clothes funny, went to a fancy college, has a snooty wife and enjoys weirdo TV shows that no one has ever heard of (bonus: and that star scary black gangstas!), they can never go wrong. It's the slander that keeps on giving!



So now we know which charges, entirely bogus though they may be, work the best against the man who has the sheer brass to suggest that there may yet be hope for our country after eight years of George W. Bush's to-hell-with-it party. We know how to keep them straight, how to deploy them well, and how to keep from getting our Barack-HUSSEIN-Obama-is-a-covert-Muslim chocolate in our Barack-HUSSEIN-Obama-is-a-radical-black-nationalist peanut butter.

But where do we go from here? Looking back at the golden age of the 1990s, when the Republican Party essentially ground the entire government to a halt in its efforts to crush Bill Clinton for the sheer life-hating joy of it, it seems like -- with an intensely uninspiring candidate in John McCain, a sitting president with approval numbers in the low nothings, and Americans actually seeming like they're excited about politics for the first time in ages -- the GOP is barely even trying. Young Barack Obama, by his own admission, took cocaine when he could afford it; where are the Clintonesque stories of him abusing his power to fund a massive drug-smuggling ring? Where are the claims that he deliberately faked an injury to get out of fighting in the first Gulf War? And not once has any official or unofficial organ of the Republican Party accused Barack Obama of murdering anyone (oh, sorry, I spoke too soon).

We can only hope, for the sake of the clown parade that is contemporary Republican electioneering, that silly season gets a whole lot sillier.

[Iason Ouabache]

I've honestly never understood that "elitist" meme.  Why would anyone want a mediocre president?

[AFK]

Because, they want someone who is smarter than them to run the country, BUT, they don't want said person to remind them of how much smarter he/she is than they are. 

This is why they watch O'Reilly, because he constantly reminds his audience, that he's just a loud-mouthed ignoramous like they are.