February 22, 2014
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Last week was filled with more idiotic outbursts from right-wingers,
except some of them went beyond infantile rants and raves to posing
real-life harm. As is often the case on the fringe these days, the tone
was set by the biggest bigot from the biggest state, Republican U.S.
Senator Ted Cruz.
1. Ted Cruz: Pray for discrimination.
What
is Texas’s Tea Party senator seeking now? This week Cruz called on
supporters to “simply pray” that LGBT Americans did not get equal legal
rights because same-sex marriage was “heartbreaking.” Yes, pray for a
new Jim Crow.
In an interview with conservative radio host Janet Mefferd, Cruz started by saying that he
introduced
the “State Marriage Defense Act” to undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision striking down parts of the federal government’s ban on marriage
equality. He accused liberal groups of using “brute power” to wage an
assault and “subvert our democratic system.” Then the Harvard Law School
graduate, who forgets that an elite Republican lawyer argued for
expanding gay rights before the court, issued his hateful hope.
Cruz
said that
gay marriage threatened liberty and he urged people to pray to God that
gays and lesbians don’t get equal marriage rights. “I think the most
important thing your listeners can do is simply pray, because we need a
great deal of prayer,” he said. “Because marriage is really, really
being undermined by a concerted effort. And it’s causing significant
harm.”
When right-wingers like Cruz pray for discrimination, a
curious thing happens. God doesn’t RSVP ASAP. But other right-wingers
do.
2. Answering Ted’s hateful prayers, exhibit A.
A
day after Cruz prayed for discriminatory divine intervention, the
heavens—or rather the AM broadcasting spectrum—replied. Wrath-filled
right-wing radio host Mark Levin didn’t like a libertarian caller’s
opinion that LBGT Americans deserved equal legal rights and he disagreed
that evangelizing moralists should stay out of people’s sex lives.
What
about women in polygamist marriages, Levin replied, saying they don’t
have equal legal rights. (Umm, polygamy is illegal in most states.) Then
Levin, ever the AM loudmouth, unleashed a torrent about needed moral
lines. “I’ll give you an example to be as clear as I can,” he said.
“What if an individual decides to have sex with a close relative? And
what if it’s both agreed to, they both agree to it?”
Ted Cruz
prays for discrimination and Mark Levin answers by saying gay marriage
is like father-daugher incest. Levin doesn’t need a microphone, he needs
a psychiatrist.
3. Answering Cruz: Exhibit B, the other Ted.
Not
to be upstaged, another foul-mouthed Ted—dinosaur rocker Ted
Nugent—sprang up on the Texas campaign trail on Tuesday and spewed more
predictable right-wing filth to boost Republican Attorney General Gregg
Abbott’s bid for governor. The Detroit-born Ted answered Texas Ted’s
prayer for discrimination by calling President Obama a "subhuman
mongrel,” among other things. It
wasn’t the first time he’s said it. However, this time the national media took note.
Abbott
replied with the political equivalent of a shrug and a sly smile.
Democrats quickly pointed out that the messenger was a mess, a known
sexual predator for underage girls. Anyone who has followed Abbott’s
antics as AG could hardly be surprised. This is the lawman who
sent Texas
Rangers to arrest Latino grandmothers—one while taking a shower—for
registering voters, marching past local drug dealers and crack houses.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had the right take, noting on-air that Nugent’s hate speech was almost
identical to
one of the slurs used by Nazis against Jews. That point—and sense of
history, of how hate speech can incite real racial violence—was lost on
Nugent, who abruptly
canceled his
appearance on CNN afterward. Nugent, another right-wing crybaby who is
afraid to stand by his words in unfriendly forums, turned to Twitter and
lashed out,
comparing CNN and Blitzer to the Nazi’s propaganda wing.
Then Sarah Palin chimed in, endorsing Abbott on Facebook. “If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!”
4. More rock-ribbed Republicans with thin skins.
Too
bad we can’t give Texas back to Mexico. There’s more poisonous
political behavior from the Lone Star state. (That’s one star on a scale
of one to five.) What is in the water that creates deluded
self-appointed patriots who can dish it out but can’t take it?
Orange
County, Texas, population 81,837, lies in the state’s swampy
southeastern corner. This week, Jerry Wilson, age 70, a candidate for
county GOP chairman, showed us that the GOP is the party of angry white
men. On Tuesday, he became enraged when he saw a volunteer from another
campaign removing his signs and replacing them with one calling him a
RINO, which means Republicans In Name Only.
RawStory.com reports what happened next:
“I
[Wilson] walked over to him and said ‘you’re pulling up my signs and
destroying them.’ He said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ It was a
fight. He was landing punches, too. I can tell you this. He will
remember the day. Whatever my punishment is, I’ll take it. If I had to
do it over again I don’t think I’d change one thing. He deserved what he
got.”
Wilson was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge for his senior moment and released on a $1,000 bail.
On Friday, Nugent half
apologized.
Gregg Abbott hasn’t said a thing. And Sarah? Well, that uppidy
Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann bounced her out of the
spotlight, saying Hillary Clinton would never be president because there
isn’t a “pent-up desire for a woman president.” She added, “There was a
cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt.
People don’t hold guilt for a woman.”
Yup, the country wasn’t
ready for Bachmann when she ran for president in 2012, and that’s why
Obama was relected twice—tidal waves of electoral guilt.
5. Bitten by one’s own words.
Speaking
of guilt, another leading Republican who looks in the mirror and sees a
saint is watching his presidential prospects crumble. Like his fellow
Republican bully colleague, New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin
Gov. Scott Walker has been trapped by his own lies. An email trove
released this
week in the midst of an independent prosecutor’s political corruption
inquiry confirmed that Walker was running parts of his campaign for
governor out of the Milwaukee County executive’s office, his prior job.
That’s a big no-no under state election law that bars electioneering
from public offices.
But the trove revealed something far more
interesting than these election law denials. Emails revealed how Walker
and his staff were bullies and creeps with capital Bs and Cs. Like New
Jersey’s Christie, Walker’s top aides
took glee in
bullying and mocking. The man-who-would-be-Wisconsin-governor burnished
his uptight white guy credentials by firing a county-employed female
doctor who modeled thongs on the side. His ex-deputy chief of staff
replied to an email comparing non-white welfare recipients to dogs,
saying, “That is so hilarious and so true.” Another email among top
staffers described a nightmare in which someone wakes up as a “black
disabled Jewish homosexual with a Mexican boyfriend.” The person ends up
being a Democrat.
6. Even more right-wing fantasies.
With
Republican friends like these, who wouldn’t want to be a Democrat? But
snarkiness aside, the right-wing political ayslum is a dangerous
nuthouse. Witness the latest bit from inmate Tom Delay, who says people
forget that
God wrote the U.S. Constitution. That’s the treatise that protects
religious freedom and keeps it out of government, needless to say. Yet
dangerous things can happen when these members of the American Taliban
become blinded by their faith and burning desire to believe anything
they say.
When you start with praying for discrimination,
preach intolerance on national airwaves, spew hate-filled rants on the
campaign trail, and don’t have thick enough skin to dish it out but not
take it, and enjoy bullying and jokes based on racial stereotypes, what
does that yield? A spectrum of bad to psychotic behavior.
Witness the week’s other news, such as a
noose found
around the neck of a statue of the first black man to attend the
University of Mississippi, or an all-white high school wrestling team
from New Jersey
posing in a mock lynching photograph with a black dummy. In Ted Nugent’s world, this is America—get over it.
But
repugnant beliefs—not mere distortions—have a way of infiltrating
politics, and that is where Ted Cruz’s prayer to God for anti-LGBT
discrimination gets serious. Take what happened in Arizona this week.
Its legislature
passed a
bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve anyone—the target
was same-sex couples—if it violated their personal religious beliefs.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has not yet signed it.
God may not be answering Cruz’s prayer for discrimination, but other Republicans are.
Steven Rosenfeld covers
democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A
Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).
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