I really respect the fact that Henke and now Ruffini are trying to do some push back against the whole birther movement and WND, but at the same time, all I can think is “Way to get out in front of things!” The birther thing has been going on for what? A year? A year and a half? Two years? We’ve had repeated posts here about the WingNut Daily billboard project from as far back as May. This isn’t a new phenomenon, and even Chris Matthews and the media have been mocking the birthers for months.
If Ruffini and Henke are serious about cleaning up the GOP, how about they take a real stand- say something about this:
It boggles my mind that the President talking to schoolkids telling them to set goals and study hard could be controversial. As Steve Benen noted, even Joe Scarborough is wondering where the responsible Republicans are. Sadly, the answer is that there don’t seem to be any.
Xecky Gilchrist
One upside to this whole anti-school-speech wingnuttery is that it’s another exposure of just how crazy the contards are getting to be. No fewer than three of my politically apathetic friends, who all have school-age kids, have been shocked at the frothing. They didn’t notice any of it until their kids came home with permission slips the parents had to sign to allow them to see Obama’s speech, then they got looking into it a bit – and they were appalled.
Keith
No national leaders are getting out in front of this because they are afraid that Rush will go on air to complain about it and have his listeners overload the congressional switchboards.
Demo Woman
MSM’s reporting has to be called into question. Josh of TPM fame has a blurb on how did we go from criticizing the President is terrorism, to the President is not trust worthy. MSM give the whackos a forum.
Bostondreams
Funnily enough, my school district in a small rural conservative county in central Florida will be testing students on the day that the President will be addressing schools. Oh, but it will be recorded so we can show it later if we want.
I really hope I do not have to get permission slips to show it. :/
Trinity
@Xecky Gilchrist: So true. Nevertheless it is absolutely infuriating. And the M$M response to it is enough to make me want to scream. The NYT had this b.s. on the cover this morning with the same old he-said/she-said fucking slant. wtf?? When then hell is someone going to just call this bullshit just what it is?
Xecky Gilchrist
Oh, and KEEP YOUR GUMMINT HANDS OFFA MAH PUBLIC SKOOL.
r€nato
Good post by Ruffini but I really tire of the false equivalency bullshit between the extreme left and extreme right.
Ruffini mentions, “the 9/11 Truthers, the LaRouchies, the North American Union buffs, and way back when, the John Birch Society…”
9/11 Truthers include those on both the left and the right. As far as I know, the left-wing truthers have had exactly one member of Congress who stood with them, Cynthia McKinney. She served, what, one term?
LaRouchies – they have, in the past, campaigned as Democrats. However I have absolutely no idea what their agenda has to do with Democratic values and I am pretty sure that they chose the Democratic party as a vehicle solely because it’s much easier to run for office as a Dem than as a Republican. In fact, the Democratic party has done everything possible to disassociate itself from LaRouche.
North American Union buffs – exclusively right wingnuts.
JBS – exclusively right wingnuts.
And of course, birthers – exclusively right wingnuts.
GOP politicians in the House constantly play footsie with the birthers. Right-wing pundits – whether bloggers, TV propagandists or hate radio hosts – do the same.
Enough with the false equivalency bullshit. Teh crazy may not be a franchise owned exclusively by the right wing, but it sure is the right wing which seeks to cynically encourage and exploit teh crazy, not the left.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Trinity: Nevertheless it is absolutely infuriating.
It is that, and you’re right about the media response. We can hope that this is another straw on the camel’s back, and that when it breaks someone will be able to go on national TV and say “You know what? This is a gigantic, steaming pile of turds.”
Irony Abounds
It’s easy to laugh at the wingnuttery that goes on every day, but unlike the past, when the nuts on both sides really had no mechanism for their wackiness going viral, you now have YouTube and, most egregiously, the irresponsible and totally corrupt Fox News and seriously mentally ill people like Glenn Beck trumpeting these delusional ideas on a daily basis providing sustenance to the wackos. It’s sad, scary and more than a bit demoralizing.
It is not unlike the 1930s when radio had a somewhat similar effect on the population with the radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin and his ilk. They were able to generate fear and loathing amongst the population given the hold radio had on the population. Not an encouraging thought.
RememberNovember
yeah, where were the sick-out days for Dubya’s speeches? If anything they should absolutely be paying attention to what the President says. Bunch of asstriches.
General Winfield Stuck
I think this time they have pushed the envelope past the point of palatability of the average voter, certainly the center left coalition, this has been true from day one, and if not also the independents, then we are headed for a clash of civilizations right here in the land of the free.
But I have said that before with the death panel nonsense, and the like. I can see Obama losing some support due to the onslaught of madness over the past month. He is not the first presnit to get hammered in August for a controversial initiative. Especially by sitting back so long and letting the wankers in Congress lead with their special brand of witches brew.
But carping that a president out of bounds for addressing young people about staying in school and making something of themselves, is not in our recipe for Apple Pie and flag. It is a wingnuttery too far, and if by chance it catches on that this is believed as communist propaganda that the RW is hollering, then I will join those who say this country is done, stick a fork in it and choose which side your on and get ready for some very very bad times.
gwangung
This is all just another version of IOKIYAR.
Sickens me that so many tolerate and even embrace it.
Molly
I hereby call Peak Wingnut. That’s it. We’re there.
Violet
If there are any left, they’re afraid to speak up. Although that makes them chickensh!ts, it’s also kind of understandable. Heck, they could be shot by some of the nutjobs for stating something as uncontroversial as “The Office of the Presidency should be respected.”
I was in the car yesterday or the day before and caught about five minutes of Glenn Beck’s radio show. He said he home schools his kids but thinks it would be worth enrolling them in the local school, just so he could yank them out of class for President Obama’s speech. Seriously.
There is no negotiating with these people. It’s impossible. They hate President Obama just because they do. President Obama could turn out to be Superman and Jesus all rolled into one, and they’d still complain that they can’t use kryptonite around him so he’s worthless.
RareSanity
Funny on it’s own.
But, also funny cause it’s true.
kay
@gwangung:
I think they have to play the Reagan clip, over and over. Ronald Reagan was promoting guns ownership to school children. I mean, it was clearly his ideology, but it’s a little odd, in today’s terms, to be crowing about how wonderful guns are on a live feed to assembled schoolchildren.
Then he went to taxes. That was inspiring.
Imagine if Obama talked about the assault weapon band and the tax rate? Christ. They’d go screaming mental-case.
mutt
Actually, the wingers are misunderstood here. Its not they are opposed to exposing the President to school children, its the HOW of it.
To wit: Obamanists want to do it “doggy style”- entirely unnatural, you see. its that jungle music, you see.
They prefer the Missionary Position: entirely more wholesome…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-y2QghS2gU
Dreggas
Hopefully this continues to drive people away from the Republican party. In some ways i want the media to keep highlighting the crazies. It shines a big spotlight on just how fucked up they are.
South of I-10
As depressed as I am about current events, at least everyone in my conservative office thinks this is much ado about nothing. They are sending their children to school.
Col. Klink
The clinically insane are now running the GOP asylum without the slightest pushback from either the party or the media. Out of curiosity though, does anyone remember the Iraq war protestors getting a mere 5 minutes of airtime on national TV during the Bush years? And the anti-Bush Left was not only sane, they were right!
Amanda in the South Bay
“Some parents oppose Obama speech to students”
Wow, if this had been on Wikipedia, it’d have been tagged for using the vague “some parents.” Wikipedia has stronger quality control than the NYT.
bloodstar
In defense of some of the people at thenextright and some of the people who’ve finally woken up to the nuttery going on in the Republican party, I think until very recently, they thought it was just a fringy nutty element that was like 2 percent and could be ignored. When the polls started coming out showing it was much more than a fringe (more like a cancer), that’s when you saw the pushback. They’ve gone from ignoring it, to ridiculing it, and now they’re fighting it. Let’s hope it doesn’t get to the point where the birthers win.
Despite all the insanity, I think the fear and trepidation over a lot of the nuttery is a little overblown, Some of the stuff that happened in the 1800s make what’s happening today look like civilized discourse. (which is damning with faint praise I know, but it does help keep things in perspective)
Scott
Yes, but Joe Klein says Wikipedia is leftist.
Allan
It’s OK. A solution has been found.
Sarah Palin will be given equal time to address the nation’s schoolchildren on how education is overrated and to extol the virtues of quitting.
Zifnab
@Scott: Well fuck it. Someone has to be, because Klein clearly isn’t pulling his weight.
Not that I am really interested in putting ideological affiliation behind Wkipedia, but when the right wing spews toxic lies and the “moderates” think we should split the difference between status quo and whatever pile of ass the nutters are screaming about next, maybe a wild flaming leftist liberal totally-on-the-George-Soros-payroll encyclopedia is what the internet needs.
PTirebiter
My wife teaches middle school in Allen, TX (upscale suburb just north of Dallas) and yesterday she was informed they won’t be making Obama’s speech available. The district cited concerns over students being kept out of school. In Richardson, again just north of Dallas, my 7 year old grandson came home with a waiver requiring a parent signature, allowing him to watch. NOT watching this historic address is the FUCKING DEFAULT decision for the district. My wife and I, as well as my son and his wife are livid. At what point do we start pushing back hard, and how?
Kyle
Rumor has it that Obama will remind children to drink their milk and eat their vegetables, no doubt as part of imposing a lacto-vegetarianist dictatorship.
You know else who else was a vegetarian? HITLER!
DMD
@r€nato: I think you’ve miss represented Ruffini in your quote. Here’s how that paragraph runs:
“The Birthers are the latest in a long line of paranoid conspiracy believers of the left and right who happen to attach themselves to notions that simply are not true. Descended from the 9/11 Truthers, the LaRouchies, the North American Union buffs, and way back when, the John Birch Society, the Birthers are hardly a new breed in American politics.”
Emphasis mine. Ruffini probably believes in false equivalency of extremists, but he at least admits (intentionally?) that those he listed are right wing nuts, by saying they were the forerunners of the Birthers.
arguingwithsignposts
@PTirebiter:
I can sympathize with the school districts and the children. The parents who would hold their children out of school because the leader of the free world wants to give the kids a pep talk? not so much.
Fuck them.
Joel
What’s amazing is that I’ve been mildly amused by just about everything that’s happened up to this point (since the election campaign that is), but it’s this.. this anti-school speech crap, and the google aggregator spitting out “school speech backfires” stories at me, this is pushing me over the fucking edge.
I remember GHW Bush addressing the students when I was a kid. It was never a big deal. In fact, a lot of the old folks had the nostalgia for days when shit like that happened more often. And now this? These wingnuts can go fuck themselves. Seriously. Enough is enough.
Tom Q
I concur that the biggest disgarce here is the unbelievable timidity of the allegedly maintsream media in covering this story. The bland Times story has already been mentioned, but did anyone catch the CNN noon news? After the correspondent reported Gibbs’ wholly dismissive response, the anchor asked, “But does the White House acknowledge they partly brought this on thiemselves?” Yeah — why was that rape victim wearing a nice dress, anyway? I literally muted the TV at that second.
Everybody blames Fox/Murdoch/talk radio for all this, and god knows they always start it, but, as Bob Somerby (before he went off the deep end) chronicled, it’s the mainstream that has enabled these laughable stories to be treated seriously. It seems to me CNN’s chief function now is to take Fox stories and launder them for general consumption.
JK
Speaking of the John Birch Society
Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues – Bob Dylan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnZoHzFDaI8
Brachiator
@Col. Klink:
The party was hoist with its own petard years ago. Its representatives and media surrogates (Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, among others) insisted that conservatives were the only real Americans, the GOP the only real American political party, and a Republican president the only real and true leader of the American people.
Unable to step back from their own rhetoric (which they never really believed), they are unable to dial back the wingnut lunatic fringe that insists on embracing Obama’s supposed political illegitimacy as an article of faith.
The sadder thing is that if Sarah Palin asked for time to speak to the nation’s school children, these same wingnuts would be shouting for joy, even though Palin hold no political office and doesn’t represent much of anything.
tc125231
I have no idea why you respect this attemt to distance themselves at this late date. To me, they are like children who have been playing with fire who are running around waving their arms after the neighborhood is in flames.
That may or may not be be tragic, (see Auden’s essay on Shakespeare and tragedy), but it does not engender respect.
Do you respect King lear?
PTirebiter
@arguingwithsignposts
Being a semi-rational commie thug, my first thought was they wanted to avoid the revenue loss that all absences incur, but the opt-in waiver put the lie to that glimmer of reasonableness. So yea, fuck them- hard and without so much as the courtesy of a reach around. I’m really sickened by this.
Zifnab
@Brachiator: I would absolutely love if our school children could get to see Obama and Palin talking side-by-side. What a riot that would be.
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
@tc125231:
Goneril: No more; the text is foolish.
Albany: Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform’d?
A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence even the head-lugg’d bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate! have you madded.
Could my good brother suffer you to do it?
A man, a prince, by him so benefited!
If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
It will come,
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.
Violet
You watch. Sarah Palin will demand to speak to the schoolchildren, and the nutjob cabal of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al will scream bloody murder that she isn’t being given the chance. Even though she holds no office and does nothing but use Facebook and rake in speaking fees. Why should anyone give her the time of day? But they’ll scream as loudly as they can that it’s “unfair” and “unequal time” and so forth.
Sometimes I hate this country.
James E. Powell
The sane Republicans keep their mouths shut and, if necessary, offer support of some kind to the nutjobs. It is sane for them to do this because it works for their party.
Running a campaign of false, hysterical charges against Democrats has been the standard operating procedure for the Republicans since at least the Truman administration. And it works every time. Why would a sane Republican not approve of it?
The Republicans are emphatically the party of the corporate ruling class. Their numbers would never allow them to rule without the support of the great mass of ignorant bigots.
McCarthyism worked very well for the Republicans. Reagan’s lies became conventional wisdom. The Clinton administration was neutered. Gore was destroyed. And now, despite the disastrous consequences from two terms of more or less unfettered Republican rule, the lunatics have put them back in business.
It works especially well now because the corporate press/media give the lunatics air time and legitimacy.
It also works because Democrats refuse to stand up to it, will not call liars liars, and never never never counter-attack.
So, if your party just got waxed in the last election, you have no policy positions worth talking about, and the freak show puts you back at parity in the polls, why would it be sane to do anything other than support the freak show?
MikeJ
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/disaster-girl
Peter J
Who did the Rouge Khmer consider as their enemies?
* anyone with connections to the former government or with foreign governments
* professionals and intellectuals
* minorities
* urban dwellers
Isn’t that where the GOP is heading? And as a bonus both of them are pro torture.
par4
Responsible Republican? Maybe Ike but he showed some real bad judgment regarding his VP pick and Iran. Otherwise none that I recall.
stevie314159
3 words:
MY PET GOAT
The Grand Panjandrum
What’s a brother supposed to do to get some credit? He’s telling kids to stay in school and work hard …
Any chance they are afraid of strong black men? Nah, that couldn’t be it. These people aren’t ignorant. That is giving them a pass. They are fucking racists. Pure and simple. Racists.
MikeJ
@par4: Lincoln. Of course he was a liberal.
matoko_chan
Ruffini and Henke are just baking another failcake.
We heard the whole Brietbat “take culture back” speel.
Now the GOP is going to “return to intellectualism” and “take back academe”.
lawlz.
Only 6% of scientists are republican, and 65% of postbaccs are democrats.
Who teaches colleges and universities?
teaching research scientists and postbaccs.
Who creates culture?
these people–
Ryan S.
@Molly:
I wish I could agree with you, but I honestly think these people want to see blood. They wont be happy unless they get to shoot somebody.
HRA
I am seriously betting these parents who are so chagrined over the presidnet speaking to their children have no idea what their children are watching on TV or the internet. Add the video games to those two as well. I don’t even want to focus on what those parents know about their children’s progress or lack of in school.
JadedOptimist
I posted this on another blog already, but I think what they’re really concerned about is that kids respond well to the President. He will be talking to kids, which he loves doing, about education, about which he believes deeply. The authenticity will come through, that the President really does want them to work hard and succeed.
And that’s what scares the wingnuts: that their kids will realize that the President of the United States is not a scary monster. What if the kids ask some sensible questions that their parents can’t answer? We can’t allow that!
jetan
Violet, that is a very plausible scenario. I’m stunned that I didn’t see that coming.
Jody
I’m with Ryan, tho I take it a step further.
There is no such thing as Peak Wingnut.
They literally will not stop. Not once someone gets shot, not once they bomb another building. If Obama gets shot, it was the work of one lone nut shooting someone who probably deserved it anyway. If another OKC happens it was probably the work of some lib’rul trying to make real Americans look bad. Unless the children were black in which case they were probably Muslim sleeper cell agents.
The right could control all three branches of government with an iron fist and they’d still be running in circles looking for the next outrage du jour. They could have pogroms expunging Teh Liberal Taint from the face of this great nation, with San Francisco nuked into a crater, and they would STILL accuse their own mother of being a communist sympathizer if she ordered her Freedom Fries with dijon mustard.
Now, last time: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PEAK WINGNUT.
jl
I’m getting confused with the peak wingnut conspiracy jargon. WND is ‘World Net Daily’, whatever that is. I think it is some astroturf wingnut internet rumor mill. Am I right?
HyperIon
@James E. Powell: I agree with what you wrote.
@Jody: and you also.
Nellcote
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I find it interesting when the Prez. does basically the same riff for the NAACP and the wingers approve because obviously black people need to hear the message.
tc125231
@stevie314159: Perfect.