Conspiracy Season: 2012 Election

Well, overlord Obama has won re-election despite a mountain of conservative conspiracy theories.

I have to give Fox News credit for ignoring the desperate lunacy of political evil genius Karl Rove, and ultimately acquiescing to reality Tuesday night.

Rove, of course, served as George W. Bush’s top political advisor, helping to destroy John Kerry in 2004 by somehow turning his Vietnam service into a negative, despite the fact that Republicans loathe draft-dodging types and Bush never made it anywhere near Vietnam.

On election night Tuesday, Rove had to juggle the weirdness of being a Fox News commentator who was also running an anti-Obama SuperPAC, the goal of which was to get Mitt Romney elected the 45th president of the United States.

The New York Times’ David Carr described the tension in an article yesterday:

Just after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Fox News called Ohio for Mr. Obama. But Mr. Rove, who had helped finance over $300 million in attack ads, was getting phone calls from Romney officials protesting that forecast. He went on live television to challenge it, citing data he was receiving from the Ohio secretary of state.

“That’s awkward,” said Megyn Kelly, the co-anchor, speaking for many of us.

If Fox News had backed up under pressure from the Romney campaign and Mr. Rove, it could have fomented temporary but damaging unrest among its many fervent viewers.

Instead, Ms. Kelly walked down the hall and confronted the decision desk with Mr. Rove’s protest. She asked the head of Fox News’s decision team, Arnon Mishkin, “You tell me whether you stand by your call in Ohio given the doubts Karl Rove just raised?” Ms. Kelly may as well have been asking, “Are we a news organization or an instrument of the conservative agenda?”

Reality won. Undeniable, hard facts won. It was a refreshing change of pace for a network that’s known for spewing anti-Obama, anti-government freak-out ideology 24/7.

Leading up to the election, Fox News spent two straight months calling President Obama a liar regarding the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya. What’s ironic is that, of the dozens of conservative conspiracy theories, this was the only one where there might actually be some there there.

But it’s hard to take conservative media seriously after trying so desperately to sniff out so many other, lamer conspiracies while inciting fear, paranoia and hatred in the misinformation process.

For instance, GOP ringleader and hypocrite former opiate addict Rush Limbaugh said he thinks the shitstorm caused by an American-made anti-Islam movie was a conspiracy “set off” by the U.S. government.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Oct. 5 jobs report came as good news to President Obama. The national unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent for the first time since taking office in January 2009. One year ago, unemployment was at 8.9 percent.

The continuously high unemployment rate has been an albatross around Obama’s neck, indicating economic stagnation, but the new lower rate spelled progress, albeit slowly, which could only mean one thing to conservatives: Conspiracy.

Just 48 hours after the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, I was doing some channel surfing when something that NBC’s Richard Engel said about repressed Muslims on the other side of the world struck me as familiar.

Speaking from Cairo, Engel said that widespread sentiment among Muslims there, and all over the Middle East, is that the U.S. government is responsible for secretly circulating the anti-Islam video that led to widespread protests and violence throughout the region, citing as evidence of the conspiracy, along with the recent American-made video, instances of U.S. troops peeing on Qurans and Taliban corpses, and crazy Florida “pastor” Terry Jones, who threatened to burn Qurans in front of media cameras last year, and apparently helped circulate this video, The Innocence of Muslims.

“They think the United States is secretly paying for not only this movie, but lots of activities like this,” Engel said. “They think it is part of a hidden agenda, a secret plot where the U.S. condemns this kind of thing, but secretly funds organizations like this.”

“And they believe (the video) is evidence that the U.S secretly wants this in order to undermine Islam,” Engel explained.

And as Engel pointed out, anti-West conspiracy theories aren’t only popular in the Mid-East.

“It’s the same kind of mentality you have in North Korea, by the way,” Engel said. “It’s not just in the Middle East. It’s something that’s indicative when you have a totalitarian regime.”

North Korea is a great example. Look how paranoid the people are. It’s like a prison where the inmates are so neglected, yet brainwashed, that they worship the warden who starves them, and wail in the streets when he dies. They live in their own surreality. It’s Bizarro World.

It’s not at all unlike the millions of Americans who saturate themselves with conservative media that tells them the president’s goal is to pervert and subvert America.

“I was in North Korea and I spoke to the miners we worked with and they were convinced that American school children, everyday, wake up plotting how to bring down North Korea,” Engel explained. “And when I told them that is really not the case ... they just didn’t believe me.”

But Engel also said that Egyptian authorities reinforce the conspiracy theory by cracking down on protesters when protesting is supposed to be something the U.S. encourages. It makes it seem like the U.S. has something to hide and only convinces “those who have a conspiratorial mind that they are correct,” Engel said.

Engel went on to explain the popular local sentiment.

“Why else would the Egyptian authorities be fighting back, using American tear gas—because once again, they are firing American tear gas on these people here—if they didn’t have something to hide, if they weren’t defending some sort of hidden, secret conspiracy?”

Sort of like how the “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracy theory seemed proven, some would say, by President Bush’s convenient use of it as an excuse to finish a war his father started with Iraq. In other words, if you already believe a grand conspiracy, it’s not such a long leap to find a supposed motive because your mind wants to believe in and find evidence that might support the theory.

The reason conservatives are so freaked out about Obama is twofold: America has a rich history of racism, and conservative media exploits and harvests that latent racism for fucktons of money. They invent and perpetuate Armageddon themes like Chuck Norris’ Thousand Years of Darkness ad until the folks who get all their information from these sources are convinced that our president sympathizes with terrorists who kill Americans.

In an ominous fear-mercial, Norris indirectly calls the Obama administration “evil,” warning that “our great country and freedom are under attack,” and that, of course, “it may be lost forever” if Romney can’t find enough old white people to vote for him.

“We know you love your family and your freedom as much as Gena and I do,” Norris deadpans while creepily clutching his wife's hand in a garage somewhere. “And it is because of that we can no longer sit quietly, or stand on the sidelines, and watch our country go the way of socialism, or something much worse.”

Something much worse? What could that be? Let’s consult the major conservative conspiracy theories. The answer could be any of the following, or any combination of the following:

• Obama is a Muslim

• Obama is not an American.
• Obama is a terrorist-sympathizer.
• Obama is helping the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrate the U.S. government, via Hillary Clinton’s Muslim aide, to impose sharia law.
• U.S. public schools and colleges are liberal mind-control factories that fail to teach the truth about our 6,000-year-old planet.
• The media is controlled by liberals who hate conservatives and not only doesn’t treat them fairly, but conspires against them at every turn.

• Obama’s father was some other guy and his mom was a fat slut, etc. (Dinesh D'Souza: Obama’s America 2016 documentary)
• The Obama administration controls weather forecasts and climate scientists. Global warming is a liberal hoax.
• Obama spread the video that pissed off Muslims to sow Mid-East turmoil and make green energy viable.
• The Obama administration influences the Bureau of Labor Statistics to lie about the unemployment rate—but just this once. Where were they during the September 2010 election when unemployment was 9.5 percent?

“This inherent distrust seems to permeate every corner of the Obama record,” writes Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic Wire. “Rather than argue that the President is out of touch with most Americans, some must go further and insist that he is not an American at all. Increased Democratic turnout sways the election? Voter fraud. Miscounting the size of crowds at public events? The media is bending over backwards for their favorite liberal. Convention events canceled due to the weather? The National Weather Service does what they're told. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court decides a tough case in the President's favor? He was blackmailed.”

There are dozens of major GOP conspiracy theories. So many that they overlap each other. Fox News and others have so regularly carpet bombed their audience with conspiracy theories that they're left pissed off, paranoid, vulnerable and gullible. At this point, they'll believe anything.

It reminds me of the hit HBO show “The Wire,” specifically, when Det. Bunk Moreland tricked a naïve young suspect into confessing by telling him a Xerox machine is a lie-detector. “The bigger the lie, the more they believe,” he explains with a smirk.

Well, it’s true with modern day conservatives: The crazier the conspiracy theory, the more popular it is.

Exhibit A:

“Now my question is,” Limbaugh asked his self-described ditto-head radio listeners on Sept. 20, “Could it be—feeding this false narrative—that Obama is setting off these protests in the Middle East? Had this film lie never been told, had the regime behaved in a more adult and responsible manner, would there be all this chaos around our embassies in the Middle East?”

Limbaugh agreed with rioting Middle East Muslims, saying on his show that Obama incited them with the video, insinuating that the “administration” had something “to do with it,” comparing the president to mischievous cartoon child, Bart Simpson (“Nobody saw me do it; you can’t prove anything; I didn’t do it”).

Of course, bad Bart impression aside, Limbaugh gave an idiotized fantasy version of events that didn’t make any sense at any point. He implied that rioting Muslims were doing so because of lingering resentment over Obama killing bin Laden (despite the fact that there was never any backlash from the Muslim world about bin Laden’s death), and then exposing them to a video (that they already knew about), which led to anti-American violence and helped Obama in a way that was unclear.

Of course, Limbaugh didn’t mention the late abu Yahya al Libi, al Qaeda’s No. 2 man who was vaporized in an American drone blast this past June in Pakistan and, according to leaflets left at the scene of the attack in Benghazi, is the real reason for a planned, coordinated strike on our personnel there. Mr. Libi was from Libya. (The attack in Libya is alleged to have been orchestrated by Ansar al-Sharia, a group supported by al Qaeda. The movie protests were most likely used as cover for the attack.)

“So you got Obama, spiking the football, bragging about killing bin Laden, and then inciting these people with this video, telling them there’s this video that some American loony tune made,” Limbaugh said before adding a sarcastic Obama impression, saying, “Yeah, ‘We didn’t have anything to do with it. My administration had nothing to do with it. We didn’t do it.’”

So Obama’s covert agents spread an amateur film to Middle East media outlets? Usually these conspiracy theories have some round-about way of making sense to their believers, but I couldn’t figure out how Obama benefitted from “feeding this false narrative,” by throwing “gasoline on a simmering fire,” as Limbaugh put it.

“And so this is the price that a desperate regime trying to hang on to power—and sadly for the world, the more desperate Obama gets, the more damage he inflicts on the rest of the world!” Limbaugh huffed and puffed. “By blaming this video, that makes them mad.”

By blaming the video, that makes them mad? I’m sure the video itself was plenty to make them mad. It supposedly portrays the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a bit of a dickhead. And Muslims have traditionally been a little sensitive when it comes to satirical renderings of their prophet, to say the least.

We’ve seen how similar situations have gone over in the past, but I’ll give Limbaugh the benefit of the doubt and assume the Salman Rushdie and Danish cartoon debacles slipped his delusional mind. There’s nothing new or shocking about this. Half the world is free to express ourselves and have poor taste, while the other half— tortured and shackled—can’t even grasp the notion.

What’s really happening is that by blaming the video, it makes conservatives mad—not Muslims.

A sane conservative could easily argue that the Obama administration used the video protests as cover for several days to avoid calling the Libyan attack a coordinated terrorist strike because it was election season here. A sane conservative could ask why security wasn’t beefed up more at our Mid-East posts on Sept. 11. There are plenty of critical questions to ask this administration about the attack in Benghazi, yet conspiracy theories are what dominate the conservative airwaves.

As always, no angry Muslims waited to figure out who was to blame. The offensive material was released online in the free world by the video’s creators, who wanted to incite the Muslim world. They sent it to Egyptian media, which, like ours, has goofy characters with crooked interests, some of whom exploited it and attributed it to the U.S. government, and the shitshow began. Violence would have resulted regardless of who’s to blame for the production and dissemination of the silly video.

Limbaugh blaming the U.S. government for the video’s release and/or circulation is the exact same conspiracy theory that Middle East dictators are using to get their people riled up and united against the United States to distract attention away from their own brutal regimes.

As Richard Engel explained from Cairo, “The region’s dictators are in part responsible for imposing this mentality that is a closed circuit. It is a way of looking at the world that sees it through a conspiratorial paradigm. And that was convenient for the dictators because it got people hating the West, hating Israel, hating America, and not hating their own leaders who presented themselves as the only thing that could protect the people of this region from this onslaught that was coming in from the outside, and those mentalities don’t die easily.”

Limbaugh is now arguing the same thing that propagandized people in the Mid-East are! The video was an inside job. Muslims who think the U.S. government is behind the video believe the goal is to undermine Islam. But Limbaugh is preaching to conservatives who think Obama is in alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood, who believe he “pals around with” and “sympathizes” with the jihadists who kill Americans.

But why would Obama want to piss off his Muslim buddies? It didn’t add up. How do dead ambassadors and terrorist attacks on American interests help Obama?

The answer finally came on Oct. 9 when Limbaugh told his listeners that Obama “privately” wants turmoil in the Middle East, so that American oil supplies will be disrupted, thereby causing an American green energy revolution. Aha! Of course.

“We have a president who is very content … and an energy secretary, Steven Chu, who want the price of gasoline to get up and go higher,” because “they’re big believers in this green energy hoax,” Limbaugh said.

“Privately, that’s exactly what (Obama) wants,” Limbaugh said, referring to a hypothetical situation where “tumult in the Middle East” during Obama’s presidency “interrupts oil supplies to this country.”

Limbaugh said that “in a free market, nobody would turn to” green energy because it’s “so expensive.” But “if you get fossil fuel prices up to ten bucks a gallon, eight bucks, whatever,” Limbaugh reasoned, “then green becomes more attractive, and with government subsidies, they could get the price of green energy to lower than gasoline if gasoline prices skyrocket.”

Great Scott!

“These guys are getting exactly what they want,” Limbaugh said about Obama, Chu, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “This is who they are. They gonna bring this country down.”

So just to be clear: According to Limbaugh—and, therefore, millions of like-minded Americans—President Obama’s terrorist-friendly regime circulated the anti-Islam movie because although it undermines Islam, which is the president’s very own secret faith, it also helps his American green energy conspiracy prosper, which is apparently more important than aiding his secret terrorist allies.

Gotcha.

The way Limbaugh chooses his words would be admirable if his interests weren’t purely malignant. He takes extreme care in crafting his rhetorical weaponry. It’s designed manipulation with a purpose.

Limbaugh refers to the Obama administration as a regime. It automatically makes one think of a Middle Eastern, Muslim dictator. After eight straight years of George W. Bush referring to Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, we’re very familiar with the term, but having it applied to the U.S. government is new.

By using a word that’s usually reserved to describe America’s enemies to describe our own government, Limbaugh is trying to create a distortion. It’s meant to help people subconsciously draw the same conclusion as Chuck Norris’ ad: Obama is evil. He’s a foreign enemy trying to destroy our beloved Christian nation under God.

As you’ll see by the following definitions, Bush used the word regime appropriately:

1. a mode or system of rule or government: a dictatorial regime.
-Dictionay.com
1. a government, especially an authoritarian one: ideological opponents of the regime -Oxford

Calling the Obama administration a regime is all a part of the right’s campaign to discredit the president as unAmerican. They question everything from his birth certificate to his faith. I don’t think it’s insignificant that he’s the first black president in a country where half the people fought passionately to defend the enslavement of black people just 150 years ago.

Words matter. It’s the reason conservative media referred to the president as candidate Obama during the campaign. It’s the reason health care reform is a “government takeover” that’s been “rammed down our throats.” It’s propaganda. It plays on our emotions and biggest fears.

In America’s case, we fear Muslim terrorists. We’re so easily manipulated post-9/11. Media outlets understand this and they ride it all the way to ratings and financial glory to the detriment of the truth, our political discourse, and our democracy.

And it certainly doesn’t help that the president's strange African name frames a middle name that he shares with a famous, now-deposed despot. It’s too valuable to many conservative figures not to use regularly. Despite the custom of ignoring middle names, he’s Barack Hussein Obama!

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was no stranger to GOP conspiracy theories about President Obama. Despite zero evidence, Romney repeated the false Fox News meme that Obama goes around the world “apologizing for America” and sympathizing with our enemies, despite the killing of bin Laden and an unprecedented uptick in drone strikes that have wiped out more al Qaeda members than President Bush ever dreamed.

Then, despite a 9/11 anniversary truce that both presidential campaigns agreed to honor until midnight, Camp Romney preempted the deadline and released a statement based on a backwards timeline just hours after the Benghazi attack, which wasted no time politically capitalizing on the deaths of American personnel, saying that the Obama administration was responsible for independent statements from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier in the day, before the attack.

“It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” Romney’s gun-jumping statement said, referring to a preventative message put out by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier that day as crowds began to gather outside in protest of the American-made, inflammatory movie.

In response to Egyptian media accounts of the movie, a statement titled “U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement” was posted on the website of the Embassy of the United States Cairo, Egypt, along with some similarly themed tweets. The website message read:

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions … Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

Although the message wasn't cleared by the White House and was put out before the Benghazi attack, according to Romney's campaign, it was a clear cut case of Obama sympathizing with terrorists who kill Americans, despite the fact that nobody had been killed yet when the message was posted.

But, really, why so many conspiracy theories among the right?

Well, consider that most Americans get their information from the television. And despite conservatives whining about the unfair “mainstream media,” their “fair and balanced” network is consistently the most watched cable news network in the country, by far. (I’m convinced it’s a big reason Americans will end up just as we’re depicted in Mike Judge’s prophetic Idiocracy.)

The television. That's how so many people come to believe in the same crazy crap. People really believe they’re getting news from Fox News. And therein lies the problem. It’s not news; it’s a political propaganda and entertainment machine. But that’s confusing, no?

It reminds me of that Dave Chappelle comedy bit about women who dress like whores, but then act surprised and offended when a guy hollers at them like a piece of meat.

“’Just because I’m dressed this way does not make me a whore,’” Chappelle says in the bit, imitating an upset lady. “Which is true. Gentlemen, that is true. Just because they dress a certain way doesn’t mean they are a certain way, but ladies, you must understand that that is fuckin’ confusing.”

People who don’t know it’s not news, or refuse to believe it, go on subjecting themselves to conspiracy theories galore. Propaganda. It’s why Richard Engel can’t convince people on the streets of Pyongyang that Americans aren’t plotting to destroy them any more than he can convince Muslims on the streets of Cairo that the U.S. government isn’t responsible for an amateur video.

But how to thwart all the misinformation and paranoia that repressed people with no rights and American conservatives love to consume? Richard Engel offered his opinion for a solution.

“They need education, they need more free thinking,” Engel said, “and they need to break out of that conspiracy theory.”

President Obama commented on the anti-Islam movie fallout at the UN on Sept. 25, drawing a distinction between the West’s free speech and the shackled minds of the Muslim world, saying, “As president of our country, and commander-in-chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.”

At the root of all the conspiracy theories, I think, is hate. Where did it all come from? Some of it is innate, but much of it is continuously harvested by the media. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi tried to take some of the blame on behalf of his colleagues.

“Mainly for grim commercial reasons, we in the media manipulate people to stay wired on hate and panic-focused on the race for every waking moment, indifferent to how much this depresses the hell out of everyone,” Taibbi recently wrote. “In doing so, we rob people of their patriotism and their desire to vote.”

Conservative columnist and former George W. Bush speech writer David Frum agrees. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show Friday, Frum said that Fox News viewers who were caught off guard by Romney’s election night loss were essentially propaganda victims who had been “fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.”

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly appears to be aware of conservatives’ and their media’s rift with reality. During Fox News’ election night coverage, when Rove was dragging his heels to admit defeat, Kelly turned to him and in a very Karl, cut the crap already kind of way, asked, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?"

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough echoed what Frum said, essentially that the main conservative media outlets have obviously prioritized making huge shitpiles of money above telling their audience the truth.

“Conservatives have been lied to,” Scarborough said unequivocally on his “Morning Joe” show Friday. “They’ve been lied to by people who engage in niche marketing and make tens of millions of dollars engaging in niche marketing—and I’m a capitalist; God bless ‘em, they can do whatever they want to do—but that’s not an electoral strategy, that’s a business strategy..”

That was Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus had resigned, citing an extramarital affair. The timing (less than three days after Obama was re-elected), and the fact that Petraeus was the top spy in the world, has raised questions and birthed brand new conspiracy theories.

Not surprisingly, today, Fox News introduced the official Petraeus conspiracy theory despite investigative journalist Bob Woodward saying on “Meet The Press” yesterday that Petraeus’ Benghazi testimony would have likely supported what the White House has already said.

“It turns out that Petraeus, a week and a half ago, went to Tripoli, Libya, and conducted his own personal inquiry into Benghazi, interviewed the station chief, actually got the base chief from Benghazi down, interviewed him, interviewed the head—I think, twice—of the Quick Reaction Force that was involved in this episode, so he knows the full story,” Woodward said.

David Gregory asked, “What was going to be the takeaway from what Petraeus would have presented had he testified?”

“I think it would, essentially, back up the White House,” Woodward said, eliminating the administration’s motive to get rid of Petraeus before he could deliver any damning, contrary testimony.

But, of course, Fox News is skeptical.

“As an old intelligence analyst, the way I read this is: The administration was unhappy with Petraeus not playing ball 100 percent on their party line story,” said Fox News military analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters. “I think (Petraeus) was getting cold feet about testifying under oath on their party line story. And I suspect these tough Chicago guys knew about this affair for a while, held it in their back pocket until they needed to play the card..”

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson points out that certain stories are just too ripe, too juicy, not to become conservative conspiracy theories. Like George W. Bush to the 9/11 “truthers,” sometimes it’s just too easy not to go for the conspiracy. Like a great sale on crappy, unnecessary knickknacks that you just can’t afford to pass up.

“What we have here—(Petraeus is) the head of the C.I.A., so this immediately becomes a spy novel,” Robinson said today on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “And you’re never going to convince people that there are coincidences in a spy novel, so the fact that the Director of National Intelligence hears about (the Petraeus situation) on Election Day is always going to give rise to conspiracy theories.”

Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren kicked off her show tonight asking, “Is it coincidence, or is it cover-up?”

Here we go again. We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Becks get bad vibes in NYC park

Barely two business days after New York voted to allow same-sex marriage, Glenn Beck found an excuse to attack those heathen, homo-loving New Yorkers.

On his radio show Tuesday morning Beck played the role of victim, whining about the “arrogant 25-year-olds” who he says ruined his family’s outing to Bryant Park in Manhattan Monday night.

Beck, along with his wife and one of their daughters, went to the park to watch a public screening of Albert Hitchcock’s 'The 39 Steps' as part of Bryant Park Movie Night.

According to Beck, the trio were subjected to hostile heckling (“We hate conservatives here!”) and Beck’s wife Tanya suffered a vicious attack. Wine was allegedly “kicked intentionally on to her back,” leaving her “completely wet,” Beck told his naive listeners.

But that's obviously bogus. No man on earth would let some young movie-night hipster get away with intentionally spilling wine on his wife, especially someone like Beck who conveniently had two bodyguards present to do any necessary ass-kicking on his behalf.

Of course, it wouldn't be fair and balanced to only include Beck’s narrative. Local citizen Lindsey Piscitell was sitting right behind the Becks and has a different version of events. Surprise, surprise.

“It was my friend that spilled the glass of wine on Tanya--and I can assure you that it was a complete accident,” Piscitell wrote in reaction to Tuesday’s New York Magazine article about Beck’s alleged horror story.

“As soon as the wine spilled (and I question how Tanya became soaked from a half glass of wine) apologies were made and my friends pretty much scrambled to give Tanya & co napkins--no doubt aware that it would look terrible and that their actions could be perceived as purposeful. No words were exchanged after that, as I think that it became pretty clear to Beck & co that my friends and I were doing everything in our capacity to help clean the ‘mess.’”

“These were some of the most hateful people I have ever seen,” Beck sobbed Tuesday. “All I wanted to do is go out on a blanket with my family and have dinner in the afternoon sun and sit around Americans--not like-minded Americans--and watch a movie in the park.”

Like John Bender says in the movie The Breakfast Club, "B-O-O H-O-O."

Being no stranger to dopey dramatics, Beck suggested the crowd would have lynched him if only there were a rope. Of course, there are no pictures of any noticeable hostilities, just people minding their own business.

“I swear to you,” Beck continued. “I think, if I would've suggested, and I almost did, ‘Wow, does anybody have a rope? Because there's a tree here; you could just lynch me.’ And I think there would have been a couple in the crowd that would have."

Yet, despite Beck’s imagined lynching scenario, his clan remained Monday--their resolve stronger than ever. As Beck tells it, they were the Rosa Parks of Monday night’s movie in the park. Or better yet, Jesus on crucifixion day. It’s inspirational, really.

It’s unfortunate if people behaved as poorly as Beck alleges some did. But am I surprised by it? Not at all. Do I think Beck exaggerates the severity of the hostilities? Absolutely.

That being said, Beck is the most inflammatory, controversial, shit-stirring media figure in existence. Ironically, he charged the crowd with “spewing hate,” which is precisely how he earns a living for his family.

Beck has called President Obama a “racist," said he hates 9/11 victims’ families, called Hurricane Katrina survivors in New Orleans “scumbags” and progressives “enemies of God,” fomented widespread anti-Islamic sentiment in this country, and used violent rhetoric to appeal to the ignorant, hateful folks who adore him like tricks do their pimp.

Nobody should spew hate, but Beck does it in epic proportions everyday, over the airwaves, and makes millions of dollars doing it. So if anyone should be prepared to expect some verbal backlash, it’s him.

Beck described Monday night’s crowd as the “most hateful people I've seen,” but that’s probably because the multi-millionare media mogul probably doesn’t get out and mix with the masses all that often.

But that’s how it goes. Beck is a super polarizing figure. His success wouldn’t be possible without hate. People either hate him or hate his enemies. And it’s not an accident. His shows are designed to piss people off, one way or another.

It comes down to words. Nobody was assaulted Monday night. Just as Beck has the right to take to the airwaves and build a media empire that caters to America’s blight of backwoods, brainless bumpkins who fear blacks, Muslims, Mexicans, gays, the media, science, sense and progress to the detriment of America, his critics have the same right to heckle him in the streets.

Again, bad behavior is inexcusable whether you are Glenn Beck or a rowdy, anonymous, wine-spilling Hitchcock fan. But if you stand on your soap box all day, everyday, being obnoxious, terrifying people and enraging them, and then expect to have flawless smooth sailing when you venture out amongst the segment of society that you've targeted as communists and terrorists, then you’re a dumbshit.

You reap what you sow. In the words of the great American wordsmith Robert Hunter, “If you plant ice, you’re gonna harvest wind.”

"I'm sure it's unnecessary to point out the hypocrisy in Glen's statements that we were being hateful," Piscitell concluded in her online reaction to Beck's complaint.

"I can assure him that we don't need his sympathy. Incidentally, none of us have made a career of "spewing hate" on the radio, or any other media platform. We live our lives intolerant only of those who don't tolerate: We have chosen New York as our city for that very reason. We do things like go to Bryant Park Movie Night, and vote to legalize gay marriage. We don't taunt Glen, or his family. And we certainly don't waste our wine, even on Tanya.”

Zing!

Taser tide turning in Canada as U.S. drowns in ignorance

The disparity between Canadians' awareness and that of Americans about the deadly concoction of police and Taser guns is staggering.

As hundreds of bodies pile up here in the United States, last Tuesday "the (British Columbia) government took a crucial step towards establishing an independent, civilian-led, office to investigate any serious incidents involving police."

The U.S. has two things going against it when it comes to the emerging public safety threat posed by Tasers.

The first is our collective anti-crime stance born of classic Republican propaganda. Before 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terrorism, Republican politicians used crime to scare voters. Richard Nixon initiated the War on Crime, which eventually complimented Ron Reagan's War on Drugs during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and then paid political dividends for George H.W. Bush. All these jackals needed to do was terrify white voters with crime.

For example, to win the presidency in 1988, Bush Sr. simply exploited white America's fear of minorities with scary black killer Willie Horton. That was the nail in the coffin for challenger Mike Dukakis; it was just a matter of convincing Americans to equate black folks with criminals, which half of them probably already did anyhow. White America has always been afraid of black people rising up and revolting; it's a sentiment as old as the days of slavery.

In other words, in America we love our police and side with them almost no matter what. Whoever opposes the police is automatically perceived as a criminal who deserves the punishment they get. It's a belief system ingrained in our national DNA. We Americans love our guns, and police are seen as the brave gunmen who protect us.

After the Rodney King beating in 1991, it was pretty obvious that most white folks sided with the L.A. police and vice versa; and if that's not accurate, I'm sure it was by the time of the L.A. riots the following year, and certainly after the O.J. Simpson murders.

The second obstacle we face in this country regarding government-sanctioned Taser torture is our general ignorance, which has allowed a frivolous context to permeate the unknown Taser problem in our society. Taser victims are punchlines; the whole thing is a joke. Show a random American on the street footage of a man being shocked with a Taser, and I guarantee the result will be laughter.

Tasers have been a joke in America ever since our first nationally televised Tasering, that of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer who acted a little obnoxious, refusing to hand over the microphone at a John Kerry forum in Sept. 2007. Meyer didn't exactly earn anyone's sympathy; he was seen as a rabble rouser who deserved what he got. His unheeded plea ("Don't Tase me, bro!") immediately entered the national lexicon and became a viral joke coast to coast.

It will surely take a more vulnerable character than Meyer, and definitely a more dead one, to change the way we as a country perceive the problem. Unfortunately, it's going to take the death of a young, elderly, or disabled person plastered on the airwaves before the American public understands the depth of the problem.

Steve Consalvi, the 17-year-old kid that was Tasered for running onto the field during a Phillies playoff game in May, 2010, would have no doubt created a perfect national moment of reckoning if he had died in front of a ballpark full of fans. If ever there was a clear-cut case of a lazy officer's life not being threatened by the person he ends up Tasering (the supposed standard for Taser use by police), that was it.

So not only do we lack that Rodney King moment, but Tasers are used for gags in our entertainment, which only reinforces the idea that they are silly slapstick props that make people convulse for our amusement.

But it kind of makes sense. There's no denying the violence involved in a ruthless beating, stabbing or shooting. In the case of the former, overwhelming force is evident from how hard the aggressors have to work; Taser attacks are the exact opposite since police can introduce overwhelming force with the push of a button while acting casual. There's no mistaking the seriousness of shootings and stabbings because a bloody scene leaves no doubt, but witnesses to Taser attacks don't necessarily see the obvious signs of violence apart from the screaming. Police don't even have to lay a hand on the subject.

Tasers are so new and extraordinary that people can't tell how brutal they are. So it's somewhat understandable why Tasers have become synonymous with entertainment. For example, 2009's summer blockbuster The Hangover used the weapon for comedic effect.

In the movie, the characters played by Ed Helms, Brad Cooper and Zach Galifianakis each get Tasered by elementary school students, and for their amusement. Helms' character is drive-stunned in the neck just before Cooper's character is Tasered "right in the nuts!" And for the grand finale, Galifianakis' character is Tasered in the face and then drive-stunned in the neck before a flock of laughing school kids. The movie became the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time.

This Tasertainment obviously only further reinforces the notion that Tasers are hilarious and harmless. That is a deadly misleading message, especially for young people who haven't even had their first encounter with police yet. They didn't even have to be among the throngs of people who saw The Hangover to receive that misinformation because a clip from the Taser scene was included in the movie's preview commercials. And this is just one example.

Canada, on the other hand, is years ahead of us. The main reason they understand the threat more is because they've already had their Rodney King Taser incident.

In Oct. 2007, Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski died of a heart attack just minutes after being Tasered by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) at Vancouver International Airport. The unnecessary Taser attack was caught on video and, once nationally televised, galvanized the country against Tasers. It no doubt happened a little easier there than it would here since Canadians don't assume--as we generally do--that anyone who encounters police must be a criminal deserving of what he or she gets. But nevertheless, they woke up.

The most comprehensive anti-Taser work is being done by our northern neighbors. For instance, Excited-Delirium.com is perhaps the most vast and intelligent anti-Taser resource, and Patti Gillman's website features the world's only known compiled list of Taser victims. (Patti's brother was Canada's seventh Taser death in 2004).

Despite Canadians' growing awareness, the RCMP have been involved in more highly publicized Taser incidents since then, including the Tasering of an 11-year-old in B.C. just last month.

Although Canada's Taser death toll is only 18 percent of what ours is, the public there seems to react to every incident whereas in the States it's not even national news.

For a little perspective, last week I heard that a South Carolina police officer was sentenced to more than five years in prison for breaking a detained man's leg with 27 whacks of his baton. That's right: 1 broken leg = five years imprisonment; 600+ lives = still working and drinking beer on the weekend.

Just as the U.S. could learn a thing or two about defending against terrorism from Israel, B.C.’s new program that thwarts the highly corruptible scenario in which police investigate themselves after an incident would be a wise adoption for us, and the sooner the better. Until then, comply or die.

I'm just sayin'.

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(Monday, May 16, 2011, was the 18-month anniversary of my friend Matt's death. He died after being excessively Tasered by police in his home in Nov. 2009; as of now he is #565 on Patti's list of North American Taser victims.)

Exit Stage Radical Right

Welp, send in the clowns. Or, in this case, send out the clown.

Glenn Beck and Fox News announced last week that Beck's insane, paranoid, apocalyptic rantings will no longer be televised.

This is good news for America's collective sanity.

Of Mosques and Morons

The United States government took unprecedented action today and proved once and for all that we do negotiate with terrorists after all.

With the clock ticking and only a little over 48 hours to work with, this afternoon Secretary of Defense Bob Gates called a dopey, unknown pastor in Florida to try to persuade him to cancel his plans to burn Qurans.

At 6pm this Saturday—the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks—a confused looking guy who calls himself Pastor Terry Jones plans to burn a couple hundred copies of Islam's holy book at the site of his “church” in Gainesville, Fla., as a means to “confront terrorism,” and, most importantly, spread the message.

“We do not want to become like Europe—that’s the message,” Jones said today in a rambling statement to a throng of reporters now assembled at his ironically-named Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville.

But mainly it seems like he just wants to piss off all Muslims everywhere.

Jones has repeatedly said nothing will stop him from going through with his plan, but hinted in at least one statement to the press that a direct call from the White House, State Department, or Pentagon just might change his mind. That or direct orders from God, of course.

The White House and the Pentagon, figuring they had nothing to lose, took a shot and placed a call—essentially negotiating with a mad man.

Jones—a former hotel manager and author of “Islam is of the Devil”—resembles your average aging Harley Davidson enthusiast with his weathered face, silver handlebar mustache, and loaded sidearm. He looks a lot like Jed Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies, except he wears a suit in front of the cameras in a weak and ultimately futile effort to legitimize himself.

Although it is unclear if Jones' few dozen followers represent a church or a cult, it doesn’t matter much now that the television cameras are amassed in their front yard. It’s actually kind of amazing—like a Field of Dreams soapbox. If you build it, they will come--the “it” being a hateful book-burning ceremony, and the “they” being scores of journalists and TV people from every corner of the globe.

Both the Obama administration and the Pentagon are concerned about the impact that images of kooky-lookin’ Americans burning Qurans would have around the world, and specifically what blowback our troops in Muslim countries could face.

THIS WEEK

The week began with two days of angry protests on the streets of Kabul where Afghans chanted, “Death to America!” and burned American flags.

On Tuesday the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus told ABC News, “It puts our soldiers in jeopardy very likely. And I think, in fact, images from such activity could very well be used by extremists here and around the world.”

And that is when this story exploded.

A statement came out of Iran saying that Muslims can’t be held accountable for their insane actions when they go absolutely apeshit on Saturday.

“We advise Western countries to prevent the exploitation of freedom of expression to insult religious sanctities, otherwise the emotions of Muslim nations cannot be controlled,” warned foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast.

And the predictably chaotic and bloody reaction seems to be exactly what Jones is hoping for.

"Of course it's insulting, of course it's not a nice thing to do," Jones said on ABC News Nightline yesterday. "But this is a very dangerous religion. If we don't do it, when do we stop backing down?"

Of course, Jones seems completely ignorant to the fact that he’s playing right into the hands of al Qaeda and America’s biggest enemies by attacking Islam this way.

Yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "It is regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, with a church of no more than 50 people can make this outrageous and distrustful, disgraceful plan and get the world's attention, but that's the world we live in right now," Clinton said.

Despite the condemnation of his plans by everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, Jones seems committed to burning Islam’s holy book before the world Saturday.

TODAY’S TIMELINE

Despite wanting to stay on message about his well-received economic speech in Cleveland yesterday in which he started applying pressure to specific GOP leaders, even President Obama was forced to weigh in on the crazy Florida pastor today on ABC’s Good Morning America.

“If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans, that this country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance,” Obama said. “And as a very practical matter, I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform."

"Look, this is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda. You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities,” Obama said.

FBI agents visited Jones and presumably warned him of any threats to his life that they are aware of, and have begun beefing up security at the Dove World Outreach Center, and around Gainesville in general, in preparation for any violence.

The afternoon kicked off with Department of Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell fielding reporters’ questions at the White House press briefing.

“We want to make sure every measure is taken to avoid this potentially inflammatory situation,” Morrell said. “It is a very real concern for us.”

A couple hours later, the State Department issued a travel warning for Americans abroad who could find themselves kidnapped and beheaded in a couple days depending on where they are.

Midway through the afternoon, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner offered a weird half-condemnation of Jones’ proposed Quran burning in which he made the case that burning a Quran is no more distasteful than building a Mosque near Ground Zero.

“To Pastor Jones and those who want to build the Mosque,” Boehner said, “Just because you have a right to do something in America, does not mean it's the right thing to do. We're a nation of religious freedom—we're also a nation of tolerance. I think in the name of tolerance, people ought to really think about the kind of actions they're taking.”

Tea Party mascot Sarah Palin’s statement followed, and like an underachieving teenager who borrows a friend’s homework to copy down the answers before class, her message mirrored Boehner’s exactly: The desecration of a holy book is equivalent to the creation of a place of worship, she said.

“Book burning is antithetical to American ideals,” Palin’s statement read. “People have a constitutional right to burn a Quran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a Mosque at Ground Zero.”

Around 4pm, Secretary Gates called Jones. One hour later, Jones walked out of his church, faced the cameras again, and announced that Saturday’s Quran-burning festivities had been canceled because some kind of deal had been struck between his meager group and the one headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf trying to build an Islamic Community Center and Mosque in Manhattan.

“The imam has agreed to move the Mosque; we have agreed to cancel the event Saturday,” Jones said.

“We have been in contact with the imam in New York City,” Jones said. “I will be flying up on Saturday to meet with the imam at the Ground Zero Mosque. He has agreed to move the location.”

Which was total bullshit! Jones either made it up—which isn’t an option because he’s clearly not that bright—or was inspired by GOP leaders who synthetically linked the two stories just a couple hours earlier.

"Our thought was the American people do not as a whole want the Mosque at Ground Zero,” Jones told reporters today. “If they were willing to cancel the Mosque at the Ground Zero location, or if they were willing to move that location, we would consider that a sign from God.”

“We are, of course, now against any other group burning Qurans, obviously..”

Oh, but of course. Obviously. Duh.

Immediately after Jones’ 5pm press briefing, news organizations scrambled to verify whether a deal had been made between Jones and Imam Rauf and quickly concluded that Imam Rauf’s people knew nothing about it.

Before long, Imam Rauf issued a statement confirming that no agreement had been made, and no negotiations with Jones had taken place, adding that he was "surprised" by the announcement of a deal.

“I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans. However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones,” Imam Rauf said.

“We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we here to barter. We are here to extend our hand to build peace and harmony,” he said.

The property developer also denied that any deal had been struck.

“The Muslim community center called Park51 in lower Manhattan is not being moved,” read a statement issued by SoHo Properties. “The project will proceed as planned.”

Sure enough, the last time I saw Jones on TV, he was hunched inside the back of a New York City cab on Saturday night looking like a mental asylum escapee on the verge of panicking without his meds—a man who had traveled all the way to the Big Apple and packed nothing but his delusions.

FAIR AND BOUNCED

Ironically, Fox News—who, along with other conservative commentators, fanned the flames of anti-Islamic sentiment that directly led to people freaking out about a Mosque in Manhattan and no doubt inspired Pastor Jones to concoct his gimmicky threat in the first place—refused to cover the Gainesville sideshow.

No news network should have let a half-baked hick like Jones hijack the airwaves to threaten to piss off one billion people for minutes, let alone days. But it’s hard for me to give Fox News credit on ethical grounds when they created the whole retarded mess.

A CONCESSION

I enjoy seeing so-called religious, family values politicians fuck up, squirm, make asses out of themselves, and turn out to be flaming hypocrites. I'm equally repulsed by religious extremists of any ilk and enjoy watching them come unraveled and turn out to be sick freaks like the rest of us.

So my joy isn't limited to Muslims acting like lunatics, although I am definitely amused when they freak out in violent rage over something we in the West view as insignificant, such as an artist's satirical rendering of Muhammad.

There's something genuinely funny about sexually repressed religious people taking to the streets, forming angry mobs and destroying their own communities because a guy on the other side of the world created art that they hate.

Free people cannot relate on any level to people whose very sense of humor is shackled. Westerners find that notion as absurd as many Muslims do our apparent insensitivity.

But a hateful provocation on live international television is not the way to go. The smaller and sillier the provocation, the funnier the insane reaction is.

There's a smart, clever way to get irrational Muslims all bent out of shape over nothing at all, like when Comedy Central aired an episode of South Park earlier this year with a timid-voiced Muhammad dressed in a bear costume. The bear costume was a way to avoid actually depicting Muhammad, which is unofficially off-limits ever since the 2005 Danish cartoons uproar, but it still pissed off plenty of Muslims just the same.

In an interview shortly before that episode aired in April, Matt Stone, co-creator of South Park, addressed the double standard that's existed in Western media since 2005. South Park had already depicted Muhammad free of censorship in a 2001 episode, which airs on re-runs all the time to this day without problems or censorship.

"It was before the Danish cartoon controversy so it somehow is fine," Stone said of South Park's 2001 depiction of Muhammad. "And then after that, now that’s the new normal. Like, we lost. You know what I mean? Something that was okay is now not okay and that’s just fucked up."

"That’s a big problem, when you have, like, The New York Times and Comedy Central and Viacom basically just pussing out on it," Stone said. "It’s sad; it’s just sad. I was, like, really sad about the whole thing."

There's a big difference between pissing off the entire Muslim world just to achieve that end, because you're a scumbag who watches too much Glenn Beck, and trying to gain back freedom of expression that's being lost due to successful terrorism.

When Secretary Gates called Pastor Jones, he successfully negotiated with a terrorist insofar as the guy was threatening to cause immediate harm to America's image and troops, and all that was avoided.

Comedy Central, on the other hand, rolls out the red carpet and caters to those who threaten South Park's creators with death threats, despite the fact that Stone and co-creator Trey Parker aren't concerned about their safety.

If Comedy Central were an airline company with a hijacked aircraft, they would refuel the plane, give the terrorists more ransom than they wanted, cocaine and escorts they didn't request, free vouchers for future travel, and allow them to fly off into the sunset with all the passengers still on board, doomed to die.

It's total bullshit that a bunch of people throwing a tantrum on the other side of the world like whiny adolescent bitches, over freedoms they can't even begin to comprehend, can control and censor what's on my TV in the USA in 2010.

I repeat: A bunch of ideologically enslaved dickheads who don't even watch South Park, or live in America, or have anything to do with anything, determine what's acceptable programming for free people.

I'm sorry, I thought this was America.