Cases in point:
Fox front man Bill O'Reilly was beside himself over the handshake, indignantly claiming that former President Richard Nixon never met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Perhaps O'Reilly would benefit from a refresher in Political History 101, because it's a well-established fact that Nixon met with Mao in 1972, a point Keith Olbermann drove home in naming O'Reilly "Worst Person" on Thursday for his historically challenged comment.
Conservative leader and radio host Rush Limbaugh asserted, "If you look at what we are calling torture, you have to laugh," said that "if somebody can be water-tortured six times a day, then it isn't torture," and claimed that "appeasers" have "water[ed] down" definition of torture like "NOW gang" did with definition of domestic violence.
County Fair, the official Media Matters blog, last week called out the conservative Washington Times for its bizarre, fact-free editorial that claimed President Obama's job approval ratings were "in the basement" and that he was historically unpopular. True Alice-in-Wonderland stuff since recent polling data suggest the exact opposite about the president's popularity. Well, it took a whole week, but the Times finally walked back that nonsense retracting the entire editorial noting, "We hereby retract our April 28 editorial 'Barack's in the basement' because we misapplied several polling comparisons of various presidents after their first 100 days in office." That's being generous when you consider the entire piece was completely made up.
[W]hen Gov. John Baldacci (D) signed a marriage equality law, Maine became the fifth state to allow legal same-sex marriage. On the Christian Broadcasting Network today, Pat Robertson responded by claiming that the “ultimate conclusion” of legalizing same-sex marriage would be the legalization of polygamy, bestiality, child molestation and pedophilia. “You mark my words, this is just the beginning in a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent,” said Robertson.
Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Mark Steyn criticized the president as an elitist because he ordered a burger with "spicy mustard" or "Dijon mustard." Hannity claimed that Obama ordered a "fancy burger" with a "very special condiment," while Steyn asserted Obama is trying "to enlighten us" through his order. Ingraham asked of Obama: "What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon mustard? ... The guy orders a cheeseburger without ketchup? What is that?" In their discussions of Obama's burger order, Hannity, Ingraham, and Steyn all referenced a Grey Poupon commercial featuring actors portraying wealthy British men expressing desire for the mustard.
David Feherty, in an essay for a Dallas magazine wrote, "From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."
As Olbermann has explained, the point would not be to watch Hannity suffer. Rather, it would be to prove to him — and perhaps his viewers — that waterboarding is in fact “cruel, inhuman” torture — that it is what an adviser on terrorism to the departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations, and Intelligence called “slow-motion suffocation.”
Indeed, the 2005 torture memo written by Steven Bradbury required the CIA to have a tracheotomy kit on hand to revive a detainee who had effectively drowned:
[A] detainee could suffer spasms of the larynx that would prevent him from breathing even when the application of water is stopped and the detainee is returned to an upright position. In the event of such spasms, a qualified physician would immediately intervene to address the problem, and, if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy. …we are informed that the necessary emergency medical equipment is always present - although not visible to the detainee — during any application of the waterboard.
A footnote to the memo warns, “for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways,” and “aggressive medical intervention” may be required to restore breathing. And yet Hannity continues to insist, “It’s not drowning.”
Indeed, the fact that conservatives and the Task Force in particular feel the need to lie about the history and traditions surrounding the NDP [National Day of Prayer—ew!] suggests that they are less concerned with promoting prayer in America than they are with taking every possible opportunity to “slam Obama” for political gain.
I wish it were true that Obama was in some way—any way—anti-religious, but unfortunately that’s just not the case. In fact, as I suggested about Bobby Jindal’s necessary conversion to an Anglo-religion, so too did Obama need the sanctification and protection of J.C. to win the White House. Half black? Sure. Absentee father? Well, OK. Muslim absentee father? Ummm… Community organizer. What’s that? But (god forbid) had Obama ever waiver in his devotion to some imaginary Father and his ghost-Son—not to be confused with “Ghost-Dad,” the ridiculously horrible Bill Cosby movie—he could have forgotten about the presidency.
Why? Because the equally ridiculously horrible reality in this country, indeed most the world, is that, even as religion slowly ebbs from humanity and even the transgendered get civil rights, atheism remains a pox in our houses.
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