I can’t stop laughing.
I’m sitting here watching The Daily Show, and the moment of zen clip features some assclown on Fox News1 stating that Michelle Obama was seen ordering a burger, fries, and a shake, and then likened the number of calories she ingested to eating a live raccoon.
::spittake::
I’ve been sitting here alternatively laughing and scratching my head — trying to understand how the hell one would know the number of calories in eating a live raccoon.
What if the raccoon were grilled? Served tartare? Would one have to eat the entire raccoon, or just the prime cuts?
This is my problem, people. Sometimes I can’t just accept that people are batshit insane. I have to try and rationalize their batshit insanity, which, in turn, drives me batshit insane (or batshit insaner, if you must.)
I literally was in the bathroom washing my face and muttering to myself: How the fuck do they know how many calories are in a live raccoon? Who the hell eats a live raccoon (besides, like, Bear Grylls)? Why am I talking to myself?
Jesus H. Cheese and Crackers.
Flames. Flames… on the side of my face.
Seriously, though — a live raccoon!?
Fox News is ridiculous.
1 Apparently, said assclown is Greg Gutfeld. Gutfeld is Glenn Beck 2.0, and the new host of “Take Five” or whatever the hell it’s called. I don’t know. I don’t care. See? This is me not caring.
[via Media Matters for America]
Linkmeister
And does gender matter? What if it were Rocky Raccoon?
I’m gonna be up all night worrying about this.
Comrade Kevin
What about a dead raccoon?
hhex65
Most of the calories are in the racoon’s soul– so, live it must be.
nar
What they really wanted to say was: “nigger!!! nigger! nigger! nigger!!!! ……. niggers eat live racoons!!!!” That’s what it’s all about.
BR
Do you think it’s a dogwhistle?
Yutsano
@BR:
Is the Pope Catholic?
Calouste
So a raccoon weighs about 10 pounds. Say half of it is edible at about 1800 calories per pound, which makes for a rather large burger.
But I like these kind of comparisons. Let’s make some for Fox News. 5 minutes of watching Fox News does about the same amount of brain damage as drinking two quarts of really cheap bourbon, and an hour of Fox News has the same effect as drilling a 3 inch hole in you forehead with an electric drill. You think those estimates are ok or do they underestimate the effect of Fox?
Origuy
Dog whistle, hell. That was a bugle call.
Zam
This made my drunken night
asiangrrlMN
Raccoon, eh? I guess I should be grateful they didn’t call it a coon.
Yutsy, you still around? What did you do to Lexie?
Steepman, I been working on relations between Canada and the US (ask Yutsy what I mean), and I’ve been taking a hiatus from politics. I’m easing my way back in.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN:
The sordid tale is here for your perusal at your leisure. One of us is going to be the death of the other, I just know it.
She knocked boots with a Canuckistani. It’s more in-depth than that, but that’s the extreme basic version.
Donut
Google: Dave Chappelle – Black & White peoples food
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Yikes. That would be a heart-stopper, indeed. Poor Yusty. It’s a damn good thing she’s so cute!
P.S. I like your basic explanation of where I’ve been while off the grid!
stinkdaddy
A live one? That’s oddly specific. Does the caloric content change if it’s dead?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: She’s being moody right now, which is just ducky by me. But she ain’t going back out there any time soon until I determine if it was an accident or deliberate.
@stinkdaddy:
The soul of the live flesh must be consumed, else it is nothing but a sack of useless meat.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I hear ya. Now that she’s had her taste of feeeeedom, she’s addicted. How you be?
middlewest
I’m sure that poached wild raccoon in a low-sodium broth is actually quite healthy!
Not a city raccoon, though, those fuckers are all fat.
TenguPhule
That’s no coon…it’s a Tunchstation!
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Pooped. Just made a bunch of Tex-Mex fixins and cooked a light but late supper. I dunno if I can hold out much longer.
Pope Bandar bin Turtle
I think he was really trying to say Rac Coon! Get it?
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Nom nom nom. I’m eating cherries. They are deee-lish.
Spaghetti Lee
So we’ve got the whole “coon” thing, calorie-based shaming, and some haw-haw-them-colored-women-sure-is-fat for good measure. Dammit, Fox! If you’d thrown in a reference to Cadillacs and the hippity-hop music I’d have won this round of Wingnut Bingo (or Wingo, as some call it)!
A Humble Lurker
I got to say, if that’s some kind of weird dog whistle, as a white person I would think the whole ‘eating a live raccoon’ thing would fit better with the hillbilly cousin marrying, moonshine drinking, pig wrestling, meth smoking, no teeth having, Appalachian mountain living, deliverance extra white people stereotype. (But enough about the Palins.)
I can see it now: “Ma, come ou’ ‘ere with the skillet, I gots me a live ‘un!”
“Nevah mind the skillet, son. Bring it on ‘n ‘ere and we’ll eat ‘er raw.”
joeshabadoo
I like how the fat guy absolutely loved the shake.
The other lady quickly realizes that he’s going off message and insists “its just like McDonalds” to make Michelle looke elitest while the fat guy keeps talking about it being good.
I know they have their marching orders but how can you possibly make drinking a milk shake elitest? Was it arugula flavored? Did they mixin a $350 bottle of wine?
joeshabadoo
I watched it again and I’m almost convinced this can’t be real. “All fat kids turn into models and and actors?” I assume he’s making a sarcastic joke but if he is it attacks the argument he’s making throughout.
If i was writing for the Colbert Report I would have thrown this skit out because it was too ridiculous.
“We are also demonizing a great industry. The fast food industry does more to feed people than any government. If McDonalds was in charge of ending starvation in Africa it would have been done in a year.”
I have no words.
Is this really the kind of stuff that is on all of Fox news? I’ve seen some Beck and O’Reilly clips online but this is just blowing my mind.
lacp
Did they hack the raccoon’s cell phone?
scav
I’m with A Humble Lurker to a degree. No matter what they were aiming for, squirrel brains were first and foremost on the list of related foodstuffs that sprang to my mind. Well, after the stunned incredulity and dazed WTFitude wore off , , ummm, eased enough for non-random neural transmission.
I do wonder about the Fox Cooking Channel though (do they eat the Fox live as well?) Do they eat things live because A) fire is fucking elitist and linked to the Compact Lightbulbs of Satan ™; or B) Killing and then Burning the critters involves too many complicated steps for their demographic; or C) the Real Men and Hedge Fund Managers Eat what the Kill compact forgot to mention that bit; or D) Snowbilly Snookie couldn’t shoot straight on that episode so they had to work with the footage they had available.
WereBear
This is why normal people cannot watch Fox News. You either run away screaming; or your brain starts oozing tapioca and you vote Republican.
The only time I watched it with anything approaching enjoyment was Election Night, 2008. Over my protests, Mr WereBear clicked over: and there they were, looking like they’d been hit upside the head with a freight train.
John Puma
Well eating a live raccoon would obviate the calories of any oil one might use to prepare a cooked raccoon.
But as mentioned above, calorie counting is only incidental in this “story.”
alwhite
Maybe they meant to say ‘coon’ – and the graphic was her standing by the President. Sometimes these dog whistles are so high pitched that they are hard to get exact.
Linda Featheringill
I could see [trying to] eat live raccoons as a weight loss program. Those cute little beasties might look placid to urban folks but as a country girl let me tell you: They can fight.
The human would have to struggle so much with the raccoon in order to get more than a bite or two, probably using at least 200 calories there and maybe more. Then there is the calorie cost of replacing blood loss and repairing torn skin, probably about 200 calories a day for at least 7 days or 1400 calories. Then there is the damage to the human’s mouth and lower face that would take at least 5 days to heal and 10 days if the wounds were severe enough to require stitches. It would be difficult to ingest food during this time and the human’s intake would likely be at least 500 calories a day less. If an infection ensued, the human body would need about another 100 calories a day to fight it off for about a week.
So what do we have here? I calculate that you would lose a pound and a half for every live raccoon you tried to eat.
gnomedad
So it’s not so much that Beck is too crazy for Fox but that he’s blown his cover.
jcgrim
My 5th graders can debate an issue with more depth than these fools.
Sko Hayes
Good lord, you really can’t help but laugh, can you? And Dana Perino (these ladies really need to back off the Botox, their faces are frozen into an expressionless mask) defending the First Lady? It was all very weird.
Then at the end, they start talking about fine dining and all the calories in that food, and how expensive it is to eat healthy and Eric Bolling pipes up:
See? There are gems among the piles of shit.
PurpleGirl
The mocking in all your comments is really great but I have a picture in head that Gutfeld is likening Mrs. Obama to Gollum in TOTR. Especially any scene in which Gollum is eating raw anything. And it is repulsive. They (Gutfeld and his boss Murdoch) may intend for us to be repulsed at Mrs. Obama, but I’m repulsed at them. Can someone pass me the brain bleach?
kth
The only major political personage who is on record as having eaten a wild animal that cheweth not the cud, nor parteth the hoof, is Mike Huckabee.
mikefromArlington
Fuck these assholes.
lacp
Gutfeld eats it raw. And I’m not talking about raccoons.
jheartney
Actually it wouldn’t be that hard to determine. A calorie is a unit of heat, and the number of calories in a given foodstuff is measured in an apparatus that burns it while measuring the amount of excess heat from the process. You might need a slightly larger version of the apparatus, but the process itself is pretty straightforward.
Oh, and the reason the Foxtard said this was that it lets him make a sentence with “Michelle Obama” and “coon” in it. Blackety black black etc.
Nemesis
What has more calories than a burger, fries and shake?
Why not just say her meal was high calorie. Its fail to bring the raccoon into the discussion.
My experience with eating live raccoon is that its hard to get past the fur and there are too many tiny bones.
And yes, its about being a coon. Get it Murika? Funny stuff.
AAA Bonds
Wouldn’t that BURN calories?
dan
Republican comedy. Hyuk yuk yuk.
dpcap
I love Prodigy. Thanks for the memories.
Halteclere
Raccoon meat is greasy and gamey, and not very tasty. Hence one of the reasons raccoons were never hunted that much for food like, say squirrel, rabbit and other small animals. So most definitely this comparison to eating a raccoon has nothing to do with meal choices.
So yes, this is one big dog whistle.
If you don’t recognize the historical racism couched in the term “coons”, or how easily raccoon can be used as a more obscure way of saying coon, then you are lucky to be a young person who didn’t grow up when this ugliness was much more open.
boss bitch
Raccoons? That’s probably what they think their viewers eat.
honus
In West Virginia we have long known that a raccoon includes its own toothpick:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Mtn-Man-tooth-pick-Raccoon-penis-bone-drink-stir-stick-/140438180857?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20b2c493f9
honus
In West Virginia we have long known that a raccoon includes its own toothpick. The link sent me to moderation, so y’all will just have to google it yourself.
daveNYC
Light it on fire and see how much it increases the temperature of a set volume of water.
What’s funny is that my neighbors when I was growing up actually did eat racoons. Shoot one in the course of pest control and it’s free meat. Plus I think you could get a small bit of cash for the pelt.
As far as dog whistles go, this one isn’t particularly well targeted.
ruemara
I love how they assume she’s the one consuming all the fries, burger, diet soda, and a shake. Because the first lady has nothing to do but whizz all afternoon long. She bought take out for a bunch of people, quit trying to say that was her whole meal. And yeah, ‘coon’+obama name=win. Bunch of ass pimples, they are.
JR
I have a cookskin hat, tail and all. WVU’s mascot is a mountaineer in full buckskin rig. My hat is from Neiman-Marcus believe it or not, a gift from my sainted Mom one year when we got to go to a bowl game.
And I do know what you mean when you say the ‘coon comes with his own toothpick.
When I worked in a print shop several of the guys were ‘coon hunters. They go out in the evening, and build a little camp fire, and let their dogs loose to run the woods, howling and looking for ‘coons, and argue about which dog is doing the best job up on the mountain. And Drink.
gocart mozart
There is an epidemic of pathological assholishness at Fox “News”
Bubblegum Tate
I’ve eaten squirrel…is that anything like raccoon?
Also, are they really making Gutfield into Beck 2.0? He used to be Fox News’s Jon Stewart (and yes, he’s every bit as lame as the phrase “Fox News’s Jon Stewart” would lead you to believe) because he’s ostensibly some sort of comedian. Which is a problem because wingnuts are only unintentionally funny.
Jimperson Zibb (formerly Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Freaking 4 year olds… I wrote out my well thought out comment, and then had to step away before I hit post, and my 4 year old daughter thought it would be fun to play on the computer and she erased my comment.
Anyway… So this:
We are also demonizing a great industry. The fast food industry does more to feed people than any government. If McDonalds was in charge of ending starvation in Africa it would have been done in a year.
Yeah, since McDonald’s isn’t looking to make money at all. If only those damned uncivilized, cannibalistic, soçialistic, commie darkie dictators over there would just let McDonald’s do their good work, there woouldn’t be any hunger in Africa. Asshole.
And like everybody else here, I think the “live raccoon” thing was some kind of racial slur, but it sure was a weird one. It was like he was reaching for some kind of “Look at them craaaaazy-ass, wacky negroes, with their watermelon-and-fried-chicken-based diet!” and trying to work “coon” in somehow at the same time, but it just didn’t work out.
And somebody really needs to teach rightwingers what is and is not hypocrisy. To that end, I’ve come up with a short lesson for them:
Telling us that we should eat only salads and fruit, and never ever, under any circumstances, eat big old hamburgers and milkshakes, and then going out and eating a big old hamburger and a milkshake: Hypocrisy
Telling us that we should eat more fruit and more salads and less meat and fewer sweets, and then going out and eating a big old hamburger and a milkshake: Not hupocrisy
What is it about this that’s so hard for wingnuts to understand? I really don’t get it. To quote my new favorite random wingnut commenter on some blog whose name I don’t know: it’s an abstract failure.
gocart mozart
gocart mozart
It’s as if it was a game. “I bet I can use the words ‘Michele Obama’ and ‘coon’ in the same sentence and get away with it.”
gocart mozart
Gutfield is like a fake Steven Colbert.
Bill O'Reilly
Fuck it! We’re Eatin’ it RAW!
Bobby Thomson
What does the hunting license have to do with it?
honus
Hell, JR, You should even know that the present West Virginia Secretary of State used to be the Mountaineer in that buckskin suit, and firing that rifle (not musket) every time WVU scored. And the first female Mountaineer at that.
As Keyser native John Kruk said about fans from W Va. coming to see him the first his Padres team visited Pittsburgh “They’ll be coming to the game, driving pickup trucks, chewing tobacco, cussing, drinking and fighting, and that’s just the women.”
John
It would appear that this is an attempt at humor and maybe viewers of Fox do actually find this funny. I’m not sure what is accomplished by taking it “seriously”.
Kathy in St. Louis
God, I hate these people. Their racism is just out there, but they think they are sooooo sly.
Paul in KY
Werebear, the only time I’ve ever watched Faux News was on election night 2008, bout 1100 to 1145. Did enjoy it, I must say.
Maybe I’ll catch em sometime in November, 2012.
Paul in KY
John Puma, any gormand knows you marinate & then grill the raccoon. Of course with a live one, you’ll need some heavy gloves & bungee cords.
Paul in KY
Bubblegum Tate, squirrel is much better than raccoon, IMO.
Gustopher
I’m still not sure if they are saying “She’s so fat she’ll eat anything, even a live raccoon” or if they just want to call her a coon. Probably both.
Gustopher
I’m still not sure if they are saying “She’s so fat she’ll eat anything, even a live raccoon” or if they just want to call her a coon. Probably both.
someguy
They only said “raccoon” because “spearchucker” would have been too obvious.
David Wardell
Some of the letter writers caught on…but the talking head referenced Ms. Obama and a coon. why aren’t people jumping on this? Only two mentions on Google , so far..this being one of them. Is this guy still on the air? Did FOX issue an apology?
This can’t be allowed.
Feather
I love this post. It is made even more fantastic by the fact that you quote Mrs. White in Clue. Melts heart.
Neutral
In actuality, you can’t eat a live raccoon unless you are very, very fast. Well before you have eaten the last bite from the “live” raccoon, it will already be dead.