Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

This blog will pay for itself.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

You can’t love your country only when you win.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Rep. Steve “Pigmuck” King Lets His White-Nationalist Freak Flag Fly — Again

Rep. Steve “Pigmuck” King Lets His White-Nationalist Freak Flag Fly — Again

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Rep. Pigmuck really does want to keep his title as Worst Person in Congress. I was kinda hoping, even in today’s Republican party, he’d be forced to backtrack a little on this. Nope!

… “If you go down the road a few generations, or maybe centuries, with the inter-marriage, I’d like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same,” he said…

King said differences had nothing to do with their humanity, but their backgrounds: “It’s the culture, not the blood. If you could go anywhere in the world and adopt these little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated into America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby.”…

You will be assimilated — what could be more all-American?

Well, not to say ‘condemn’… at least not in person…

… House Speaker Paul Ryan, also a Republican, “clearly disagrees” with King’s comments, a spokeswoman told reporters.

“The speaker clearly disagrees and believes America’s long history of inclusiveness is one of its great strengths,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declined to weigh in on the comments when asked about them during the press briefing Monday….

Iowans: You want to tell the rest of us about Kim Weaver? Has she any chance at all?

Reader Interactions

159Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.

    Assumes Steve King’s civilization is worth restoring.

  2. 2.

    amk

    If we are gonna be outraged by every intentional outrage from the rethugs, we are gonna be here forever.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    Its actually worse for Speaker Ryan. This was his actual, in person, on the record response:

    And here’s where Congressman King’s words have quickly been adopted:

  10. 10.

    Goku

    He’s the Worst Person in the Universe, Anne. He’s on that level. I wouldn’t shed a single tear if King died tomorrow.

  14. 14.

    hovercraft

    Kim Weaver? Has she any chance at all?

    Saw her on TV this afternoon, she say she tripled her twitter followers since he opened his mouth, and she’s raised 50K , she said if she gets it up 100K she’s all in. I don’t know how much of a chance she has though, I think King is like Bachman and Goehmert, no matter how crazy and deranged they get, they’ll never lose. They were Twitler before Twitler.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: We’ve got steady rain. Which is nice as its washed all the oak pollen out of the air and down the drains. Since we’ve had no winter, we’re in a cycle of a few days are like Fall then a few days are like Spring, so the pollen counts have been through the roof. And we’ll have trouble a coming this summer. With no hard freeze, there is going to be a serious mosquito problem. And given that Zika is here and Yellow Fever is on the way, and there’s a global shortage of Yellow Fever vaccine, this should be fun, fun, fun!

  17. 17.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    Someone remind me… which Reich is King fronting for?

    The Fourth, or is he up to the Fifth?

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Ryan is such a worthless coward.

    “Misspoke”. Right, Paulie, you feather bedecked putz.

  28. 28.

    Aleta

    The New York attorney general accused Exxon Mobil Corp. Monday of withholding documents from his office as it investigates whether the energy company misrepresented its understanding of climate change to investors and the public.

    Lawyers for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office said in court documents that Exxon hadn’t disclosed that Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive, used an alias email address to discuss risk-management issues related to climate change. Mr. Tillerson, now the U.S. secretary of state, used the pseudonym “Wayne Tracker” from at least 2008 to 2015, according to the attorney general.

    “Despite the company’s incidental production of approximately 60 documents bearing the ‘Wayne Tracker’ email address, neither Exxon nor its counsel have ever disclosed that this separate email account was a vehicle for Mr. Tillerson’s relevant communications at Exxon,” Senior Enforcement Counsel John Oleske said in a letter to New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager.

    Exxon said in a statement it has provided more than 2.5 million pages of documents in response to a subpoena from Mr. Schneiderman’s office, and will respond to the claims in court.
    …
    Mr. Oleske said in the letter Monday that despite promising to “move heaven and earth” to comply with a subpoena, Exxon had withheld documents related to senior management, including from 34 email accounts assigned to top executives, board members and their assistants.

    from WSJ (this link seems readable w/o account)
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/rex-tillerson-used-alias-email-at-exxon-to-discuss-climate-change-new-york-says-1489450814

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @amk: I’ll have to check with the Special Security Officer to see if you qualify for access. ?

  33. 33.

    PhoenixRising

    as American as any other baby

    Wow. Look for that quote on my teen’s FB profile: “as American as any other baby”, Steve King, R-IA

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    @hovercraft: Her ActBlue thermometer is over $72.3k at the moment.

    I kicked in a little. Kicking Steve King out, or at least making him spend more money in Iowa rather than sending it to help other Teabaggers, is a worthy goal.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Estevan Rey is terrified of chimichangas, shawarma, falafel, sushi, and hummus.

  40. 40.

    Anne Laurie

    @amk: Werner’s a reporter, she reports what people say for those of us who weren’t there.

    For future reference, if you click on the name of the person who sent an embedded tweet, you should get their twitter page — including their self-written bio. (If it’s just a copy of a tweet, not an embed with full graphics, the date at the end of the block should be the link back to the writer’s twitter page.)

  41. 41.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Aleta:

    Mr. Oleske said in the letter Monday that despite promising to “move heaven and earth” to comply with a subpoena, Exxon had withheld documents related to senior management, including from 34 email accounts assigned to top executives, board members and their assistants.

    And who said Tillerson wasn’t qualified for a job in the Putin Trump Administration?

  48. 48.

    PhoenixRising

    @debbie: Got lactose tolerance? Congrats, you’re really white. Because that’s European in origin.

    I’m not making this up. (swigs from carton of lactose-free chocolate milk) Milk used to upset my digestion, and when our pediatrician explained that lactose is a sugar that must be broken down by an enzyme most adult humans can’t metabolize, that explained a lot of problems I’d had from drinking my milk over the years. Lactaid is a conspiracy of the inferior races to let those of us who aren’t truly European by blood enjoy ice cream.

    You’re welcome.

  52. 52.

    Aleta

    (The mayor of Ankara Ibrahim Melih Gokcek) said that he believed that the Islamic State was created by the United States. As proof, he offered President Trump’s assertion that former President Barack Obama had founded the group as well as the observation that the Islamic State had never attacked Israel, which it would have done, he said, if it were truly an Islamic organization.

    -NYT https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/world/europe/turkey-news-media-relations.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feurope&referer=https://www.nytimes.com/section/world?WT.nav=bottom-well&action=click&hpw&module=well-region&pgtype=Homepage&region=bottom-well&rref

  54. 54.

    Anne Laurie

    @debbie:

    That glass of milk in Spencer’s tweet — is that the new symbol for White supremacy?

    Possibly, yes — in a super-ironic all 4 lulz way, of course.

    (Because they’re not the racist bullies, we’re the real bullies for over-interpreting their very double-reverse-ironic sarcasm around performance art and repurposed emojis. Or something like that. Remember the three-parentheses fooferaw?)

  55. 55.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Adam L Silverman: Ah yes…

    One of the great quotes from one of the great scenes in movie history…

    Great whites actually do that… come to the surface, stick their heads out, and look around…

    Somehow, very appropriate for this moment…

  56. 56.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: The expression on Roy Scheider’s face should have got him an Oscar nomination, although it would be a tough decision between him and Robert Shaw, just for Jaws alone.

  60. 60.

    Another Scott

    McClatchyDC – TrumpRyanCare could die on Thursday:

    At least seven Republican members of the Budget Committee have made public statements in the past week indicating they want a full repeal of Obamacare, but it’s unclear whether four of them will decide to go out on a limb and vote no.

    One of them, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, joined Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at a news conference last week to slam the legislation as a dereliction of the Republican Party’s campaign promises.

    4 The number of Republicans it would take voting “no” in the Budget Committee to sink the GOP Obamacare repeal bill

    “Inasmuch as President Trump views many things as a negotiation, I’m quite sure he would rarely take any party’s opening bid,” Sanford said then.

    “The debate that is forming will allow conservatives to enhance and improve what has been proposed,” he said, “and I think this could represent a win for patients, health care providers and the taxpayer alike.”

    Expressing concern is one thing, but a no vote by any GOP member in committee is another – a calculated risk for rank-and-file Republicans.

    A no vote would anger Republican leadership and potentially make it harder to overturn even portions of Obamacare, while a yes vote does not ensure that the final bill on the House floor will appeal to conservatives who want a full repeal.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  61. 61.

    stinger

    I don’t live in King’s district, don’t even drive through it if I can help it, but I’ve signed up for an ongoing contribution to Kim Weaver’s campaign. FSM smile upon her chances! What with King, Grassley, Ernst, and Branstad, it’s humiliatin’ to live here these days. At least I live in a blue county. I’ve GOT to believe a change is gonna come.

  65. 65.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Omnes Omnibus: I do that trip the slow way, with the obligatory stops at the F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica and at Frank & Teresa’s Anchor Bar in Buffalo.

    It’s about the journey.

  68. 68.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Another Scott:

    McClatchyDC – TrumpRyanCare could die on Thursday

    And if it does die, hopefully the moment will be somewhat akin to the infamous exploding whale of Florence County, Oregon…

    (If you’ve never seen this, watch it all the way thru…)

  72. 72.

    Mike J

    @PhoenixRising:

    Got lactose tolerance? Congrats, you’re really white. Because that’s European in origin.

    All mammals can digest milk. In Europe, people drank cow’s milk because it’s high in calories and delicious and would help get them through the winter. They continued to drink milk past infancy, and kept their ability to digest milk.

  76. 76.

    Anne Laurie

    @debbie:

    And that stupid frog too.

    Well, you know — us chicks just don’t have the right equipment to appreciate what’s funny.

    Or so angry male virgins of all ages have been telling me, going back as far as I can remember.

  77. 77.

    joel hanes

    @Another Scott:

    I’m a former Iowan.

    I always contribute to anyone running against King.
    He really is a disgrace, surfing on the very worst traits of the very worst voters of the most rural part of the state.

    Please don’t judge all people in Odebolt and environs by his remarks — just the 60% or so of the actual voters who vote for him.

    A google images search on “odebolt iowa” will give you a pretty good idea why those voters don’t seem to be in step with the 21st century — or even the last third of the 20th century.

  79. 79.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: My son was traveling in Bosnia? Croatia? a few years back and set up camp for the night on some dude’s farm (with permission.) Dude came out to greet them in the morning with a couple of big glasses of raki.

  80. 80.

    smintheus

    Well, this is awkward.

    The White House’s own internal analysis of the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare show even steeper coverage losses than the projections by the Congressional Budget Office, according to a document viewed by POLITICO on Monday.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: I have a bottle of Arik someone gave me as a gift when I graduated from college in 1992. I’ve been schlepping it around the country. I do like the stuff, but have yet had a reason to open it up.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    @Gin & Tonic

    Trivia: At one time (may still be true?) Utica held the distinction of having the most bowling alley lanes per capita in the nation.

  92. 92.

    PhoenixRising

    @Mike J: Did I forget the tag that denotes ‘This idiotic, unscientific racist nonsense isn’t my belief merely because I know what it is’?

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @joel hanes: I don’t believe in beating up on most voters these days – not with so much disinformation out there. But I do believe in (metaphorically) beating up on elected people who advocate and push evil policies.

    Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression! :-)

    Best of luck to Weaver and to you and all the other good people of Iowa!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    efgoldman

    @Another Scott:

    A no vote would anger Republican leadership and potentially make it harder to overturn even portions of Obamacare

    Tom Cotton and Mike Lee, certainly in the running for the wingiest of the RWNJs in the senate, both said publicly that the bill ain’t gonna’ pass.
    If I were one of the half dozen Republiklowns that visit reality for a couple of hours on alternate Thursdays, I’d expect it to die.

  98. 98.

    Thadeu

    @Adam L Silverman:

    You guys are too naive. The second class cattle will be stripped of their wealth. The first-class ubermensch will get the plunder. This is why nothing, no atrocity, no lie, will matter. This is the end goal. Paul Ryan will go with it, if it gets him to be president.

    42% of this country are on board with the plan. They know. They expect it. What is a loss of health insurance for 1or 2 years , when the jobs and money that is due to them will be confiscated from the brown cattle and given to them?

    It runs all the way from top to bottom – Too many asian CEO’s (Bannon’s anguish, but come-on aren’t there people in the wings who would like Bannon to fix that) – H1B engineers, brown tradespeople..

    Too many folks stand to benefit from eliminating the competition, and they will not have their greed go unsated.

    What will bring them to their knees is an eventual trade war, when the rest of the world closes off their markets to US companies. We will get there. The world would be a miserable place, and even then these ubermensch wont care. They will be rulers in hell, than serve in heaven

    The rest of the country wont know what hit them. They still are playing by the old rules – it’s like taking a knife to a gunfight.

    And as usual, Jews (me) will be on the receiving end across the world. Ah, the joy of being the chosen ones.

  100. 100.

    danielx

    … “If you go down the road a few generations, or maybe centuries, with the inter-marriage, I’d like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same,” he said…

    And to that end, he will chairing a conference in Des Moines, guest list to be announced later but definitely including David Duke.

  104. 104.

    Mike in DC

    This is the “culture” I’d rather preserve:
    Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
    While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
    But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
    His soul is marching on.
    (Chorus)
    John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
    And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;
    Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,
    His soul is marching on.
    (Chorus)
    He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
    And frightened “Old Virginny” till she trembled thru and thru;
    They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
    But his soul is marching on.
    (Chorus)
    John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see,
    Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,
    And soon thruout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
    For his soul is marching on.
    (Chorus)
    The conflict that he heralded he looks from heaven to view,
    On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue.
    And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,
    For his soul is marching on.
    (Chorus)
    Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
    The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,
    For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,
    And his soul is marching on.

  107. 107.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: You would never get the chance. You are a prop. OTOH, that position is central to rugby. I played wing and flanker. Flanker is one of the positions that is eliminated in Sevens. Wings are figures of fun with lovely hair.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in DC: I’m always partial to Ms. Howe’s variant:

    Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
    He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;
    He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
    His truth is marching on.

    CHORUS:
    Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

    I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
    They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
    I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
    His day is marching on.
    CHORUS

    He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
    He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgement Seat.
    Oh! Be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant, my feet!
    Our God is marching on.
    CHORUS

    In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
    With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
    As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
    While God is marching on.
    CHORUS

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    a well. fucking. oiled. fucking. MACHINE!

    Bradd Jaffy‏Verified account
    @ BraddJaffy
    Breitbart posts audio of Paul Ryan Oct conf call: “I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future”

  115. 115.

    Anne Laurie

    @schrodingers_cat: Thadeau at #98 forgot his sarcasm tags:

    And as usual, Jews (me) will be on the receiving end across the world. Ah, the joy of being the chosen ones.

  116. 116.

    Adam L Silverman

    @schrodingers_cat: I think its an argument that the rest of us are missing the real objective of what Ryan is doing, which the commenter has graphically described. While that is incorrect, that we’re missing Ryan’s objectives, I don’t think the commenter was intending to do anything but graphically depict what he or she thinks Ryan’s ultimate objectives are.

  117. 117.

    PhoenixRising

    @Chet Murthy: Jesus, you assholes. I never said the milk thing was real, or based in fact, I said it was one of the set of idiotic faith statements of white nationalists.

    It was explanatory on my part, not an endorsement. She asked. I told. /eom

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodingers_cat: The self-identification as a Jew signals sarcasm rather than seriousness. To me, at least.

    I think that you lost some ability to recognize snark, sarcasm, and satire since the election. I understand how that could happen, but please consider it before accusing people of being bad. Honestly, SC, I am a bit worried about you. Take care of yourself.

  119. 119.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Omnes is familiar with this version (just a taste, follow link to more):

    He was just a rookie trooper and he surely shook with fright,
    He checked all his equipment and made sure his pack was tight;
    He had to sit and listen to those awful engines roar,
    “You ain’t gonna jump no more!”

    (CHORUS)
    Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
    Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
    Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die,
    He ain’t gonna jump no more!

  120. 120.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Anne Laurie

    The second class cattle will be stripped of their wealth. The first-class ubermensch will get the plunder. This is why nothing, no atrocity, no lie, will matter. This is the end goal. Paul Ryan will go with it, if it gets him to be president.

    42% of this country are on board with the plan. They know. They expect it. What is a loss of health insurance for 1or 2 years , when the jobs and money that is due to them will be confiscated from the brown cattle and given to them?

    It runs all the way from top to bottom – Too many asian CEO’s (Bannon’s anguish, but come-on aren’t there people in the wings who would like Bannon to fix that) – H1B engineers, brown tradespeople..

    Neither ironic nor sarcastic given three hate crimes of the last two weeks. Saying that you are Jewish doesn’t give you a pass. Sorry.

  122. 122.

    debit

    @Anne Laurie: It’s a well known fact that the uterus is a locating device. Otherwise, why would men constantly ask, “Honey? Where’s my toothbrush/socket wrench/car keys/last beer/clean underwear/the remote/our children/John’s mustard/that thing we bought that one time at the place, you know, by your parent’s house? Because I need it.”

    An organ so devoted to inventory and location tracking does not have time for humor.

  125. 125.

    Davebo

    Steve King has been racist garbage for a long time. And every 4 years, every GOP presidential candidate comes to Iowa and kisses his ring

    This is bullshit mostly. Steve King is in Congress because the good people of Iowa’s 4th district keep electing him to congress. I doubt they are swayed by candidates in the GOP primary.

    Honestly, I think they are just impressed that their congressman makes the news regularly and don’t really care why.

  126. 126.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Davebo:

    Honestly, I think they are just impressed that their congressman makes the news regularly and don’t really care why.

    You’re probably absolutely right.

  127. 127.

    cynthia ackerman

    As I mentioned in a thread below, Rep. Pigmuck is wrapping himself in the 14th Amendment, claiming the framers championed “birthright” citizenship for white Christian babies only.

    Problem is, the 14th (1868) was about citizenship and civil rights for freed slaves.

    What’s more, immigration at the time was pretty much a free-for-all, so any notion of “birthright” was explicitly inclusive, not about cleansing the browns, the Irish, the Italians, and so on.

    Pigmuck ain’t real bright.

  128. 128.

    NotMax

    One gallon of cabbage soup begun cooking on the stovetop. Y’all ought to be able to smell it where you are in just a little while.

  129. 129.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodingers_cat: Really, I don’t know the commenter, but I am going to stay clear of a commenter who publicly identifies as a Jew and speaks of things like cattle cars. If you want that fight, have fun.

  131. 131.

    Adam L Silverman

    @cynthia ackerman: He’s not smart enough to go back to the stuff from one of the original Amendments that sort of explained what native born American meant.

    ETA: Which is what he probably thought he was doing. I’ve seen numerous white supremacists do just this. Refer back to how native born American was originally defined, or they think it was originally defined, and use it to state that this is why the US is for white people of European descent only.

  133. 133.

    Yarrow

    I wish the Dems would relegate Iowa to has-been status and go somewhere else for the first caucus. New Mexico would be a nice change of pace. I’m tired of lily white Iowa and their farm issues dominating our politics for months on end.

  134. 134.

    efgoldman

    @debit:

    An organ so devoted to inventory and location tracking does not have time for humor

    You sure it’s the uterus and not the ovaries?

    And we’ve had a role reversal at our house for almost 40 years.

  135. 135.

    cynthia ackerman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The sad thing is that neither are the Fox watchers who “get” that what he’s saying is unquestionably true.

    My hope for the ACLU grassroots push is that some fraction of their recruits begin to make a difference with the media and social media, so that some other fraction of the vast misled can begin to get a clue.

    Pure fantasy, I know, but it gives me hope.

  136. 136.

    efgoldman

    @Davebo:

    I think they are just impressed that their congressman makes the news regularly

    Makes no fucking difference. They’re the ignorant, bigoted, racist assholes that vote for him. It’s their fault, every fucking shithead of them, not his. We don’t excuse the WWC ignorant fucking assholes who voted for Peach Pestilence. Why should we cut anybody in his district any slack.
    What Villago usually says.

  138. 138.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Amend mints?

    Sorry, I tried to make a joke and I couldn’t. Despite the fact that I was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

  141. 141.

    BlueDWarrior

    This topic actually lets me jump off just a tad on something that has been bothering me for the last 48 hours. If you are part of internet nerd culture, especially video game culture, you might be familiar with one Jon Jafari (pen-name ‘JonTron’). He made himself Youtube-famous by being one of the co-hosts of Game Grumps (basically a Let’s Play channel that’s as much two best friends dicking around as it is playing video games in front of a camera/video capture card). A couple of years after it started, he and Arin Hanson (pen-name ‘EgoRaptor’) abruptly ‘broke up’ that initial paring, for to this day undisclosed circumstances (most assume it was creative difference brought about by additional hires, and Jon having his own channel he could then devote his time and efforts to instead of splitting between it and GG). Also at the time, he was known for, to put it charitably, off-color humor that would seemingly come out of nowhere, which caused no small amount of consternation for Arin and the other hosts/editors on the site.

    So Jon goes off on his own, and carries forward a lot of subscribers and viewers (his proper review/commentary videos routinely hit 7-digit views and he has 3+M subscribers as of now), and makes a good bit of a name for himself.

    Then enter the GamerGate controversy, and his seemingly pained neutrality toward it; he appeared to want to go to excessive lengths to maintain a both-sides stance, not unlike tote-baggers with politics in general. Additionally, there was also the case of his seeming unwillingness to treat criticism about use of language as being valid; having a major blow up on Twitter when someone asked him to stop using ‘retard’ as an insult. Some people start to see bad signs but can mostly ignore it due to the content he produces.

    Jump forward another couple of years to the recent election of Herr Trump, and we start get to where I’m at today. When the Women’s Marches first started, he seemed to be constantly spouting off at how trite and useless it all seemed. Which was confusing for the liberal and left-leaning side of his viewer base, but they just thought of it as a young man either A) showing himself to be center-right and just not getting what we saw and felt or B) taking the time to make some badly timed but ultimately ‘harmless’ jokes. Then he starts re-tweeting things from places like InfoWars and Daily Stormer, and the usual alt-right suspects start glomming onto him, especially those in or tangentially related to the Youtube Gaming community. It starts becoming evident that he is either A) almost colossally misinformed about the world and just fell into the wrong crowd or B) has been relatively good at hiding some rather stark right-wing ethno-nationalist politics. Jon tries to soften this with a recent (Jan 2017) Q&A session where he tries to tamp down all of this controversy and portray himself as being center-right at worst, and trying to show that his particular views, whatever they are, will not affect his ability to produce humorous content.

    Then we jump to this past weekend and this tweet from Herr King. He basically posts in agreement to it, citing the usual tripe about keeping Western Europe and America culturally pure (aka dominated by and subservient to the white power structure), which triggered a worse backlash he suffered when he started deriding the Women’s marches in November/December, and actively reposting stuff from InfoWars and the like. He then makes the colossal, and potentially fatal, error of engaging in debate with a Twitch (a site for streaming and talking about video games) vlogger and pro-Starcraft II player Destiny. Jon basically showed his ass as nothing more than a regurgitation machine for right-wing white-nationalist talking points, showing himself utterly incapable of making a cogent argument in defense of his beliefs (Destiny himself is left to center-left, and while not the best of debaters himself, rhetorically ran circles around him).

    At this point, I had gone in 8 months from finding a dude who was kinda awkward but really funny, to wondering who the hell he was (after the Trump election), to finding him utterly morally repugnant and just plain stupid outside of the band of media creation (I can’t say analysis because some of his analysis was banal but still humorous in its delivery).

    Ladies and Gentlemen, I say all of that to justify this simple point: When people show you their asses, treat it for what it is, them you showing you their asses.

  142. 142.

    hovercraft

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):
    The type of people he’d like the rest of America to be made up of.
    From wiki:
    Iowa’s 4th congressional district – since January 3, 2013.
    Current Representative Steve King (R–Kiron)
    Distribution
    50.58% urban
    49.42% rural
    Population (2000) 585,305
    Median income 38,242
    Ethnicity
    95.8% White
    0.8% Black
    1.1% Asian
    2.5% Hispanic
    0.2% Native American
    Cook PVI R+4

    Don’t let that urban fool you.
    The 2001 remap made the 4th district a north-central Iowa district. It could not be said to be the successor of any of the previous districts. It was a primarily rural district, though it included Ames and Mason City. It did not include any of the state’s nine largest cities, and only four of the twenty largest Iowa cities.

    Twitler won it 61 to 34

  148. 148.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Darkrose: Well, except for all those statements from the states seceding about how it WAS about slavery, it’s been about “States’ Rights” ever since!

  150. 150.

    Chet Murthy

    @danielx: I noticed this like a flashing siren. I figure, it’s his way of pre-positioning a fake “decency moment” (“I didn’t mean the people, but just their culture, and only the bad parts, really, really”) in case he needs one.

  152. 152.

    Chet Murthy

    @PhoenixRising: Hey hey, I wasn’t pickin’ on you. Just noting that lactase persistence wasn’t just a Northern European thing. No yellin’, mang, just joggling the elbow. Peace!

  153. 153.

    Thadeu

    @schrodingers_cat:

    My sincere apologies to you. Keep in mind that this is _their plan_ . This is exactly how they see you.

    I feel that people are still expecting them to play nice; Trying to point out logical fallacies and untruths in their statements.

    They don’t do nice. Their plans are evil, and the more power they get, the more brazen they will become. It is time good people stooped being nice.

  156. 156.

    Debbie1

    Anyone who refers to a non-white person as belonging to a “subgroup” does NOT need to put on a white hood for me to get their message. And to think Iowa keeps voting for this pile of something. To this day, I don’t know HOW Pres. Obama was able to carry that state.

  157. 157.

    Ithink

    @Baud:
    Dear God, no. And yes, I’m Afeicsn-American so excuse the blatant Anti-Steve King bias but what a reprehensible David Duke jack off this low-life third rate congressman manifestly is!

  158. 158.

    Ithink

    @Thadeu:
    Ain’t that how all true blue conspiracy theories truly project themselves at the roots and sprouted foliage up? As anti-semitism dressed in the most outlandish yet palatable words-of-mouth fiction? God help us as we attempt to stop America & the world @ large from becoming a fired charcoal briquette.

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