The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (Week 46)
December 3, 2001
Return Of The Idiots Edition

Thanksgiving is over, and we're back! Last week we gave thanks that we didn't have to put up with conservative idiots for a whole seven days, but let's face it - they never rest. And so, once again, it is with great pleasure and pain that we present this week's Top Ten Conservative Idiots. Top of the chart this week is Ollie North, who was last seen cavorting with Inspector Gadget and a crime-fighting dog, among other things. Don Imus (2) makes his first appearance with a lovely bit of religious intolerance, and the Rev. James Merritt (3) has the solution to all the problems in the Middle East (it's a good one.) Meanwhile lucky George W. Bush (4) returns, and J.C. Watts (6) is speaking hispanically. Bottom of the barrel this week are Rush Limbaugh (9), who tries and fails to translate his talk show lies into a Washington Post op-ed, and Gordon L. Baum (10), who is not, repeat not, a white supremacist. Honestly.

Oliver North
My diagnosis: mad as a fish on a bicycle. Oliver North appeared at Anaheim’s Melodyland Christian Center Church recently to fill the fundies in on why radical Muslims hate America. Is it because we're free? Nope. Is it because we're rich? Nuh-uh. Is it because we're after their oil? No siree. It's because they "know what the scripture tells us, which is that the only path to God in heaven is through his son, our savior, Jesus Christ." According to the OC Weekly, North went on to reassure folks that "not all Muslims are evil or hate America." It's just that they won't be going to heaven, you see. So, to recap, not all Muslims are evil, but they won't be going to heaven, and that's why they hate us. So the best thing to do is keep telling them that they're not going to heaven. Oh, but they're not evil. Got that? Aside from North's mind-mangling speech, there was plenty of fun to be had at the event: the OC Weekly also reported that "Children in the audience were treated to a special appearance by a quartet of costumed holy warriors - an Inspector Gadget look-alike, a fat girl with blue hair, an apoplectic kung fu expert, and a human-sized crime-fighting dog. They took the stage to a throbbing techno beat while Evil - represented by a man in a Mexican lucha libre costume - ran around the stage, flailing his arms as the sound system rattled with his maniacal laughter." Man, they really should have been warned about the brown acid. But that wasn't even the highlight of the day: during North's speech, a young woman stood and interrupted with, "Were you being a good Christian when you smuggled drugs into our country and sold weapons to terrorists?" North offered to answer the question, "a little bit later, if that’s okay with you," but wouldn't you know it, the woman was escorted from the room by security before he had a chance to do so. What a stroke of bad luck.

Don Imus
And if Oliver North thinks that not all Muslims are evil, he should probably stay away from Don Imus for a while. Imus appeared recently on Larry King Live and did his bit for uneducated racist morons, um, I mean patriots, everywhere. After King asked Imus what he thought about fighting during Ramadan, Imus responded, "They're worried about - we should drop more bombs during this rama-lama-ding-dong or whatever it is... My position is, I mean, I know it sounds awful, but we should kill them all... You're not going to be able to sit down and have some bigelow tea or whatever they drink and reason with them. It's just not going happen. So the next best thing to do is kill them."

Rev. James Merritt
But wait, there's more! We don't have to reason with Muslims, or even kill them all! Rev. James Merritt of the Southern Baptist Convention has the perfect solution. So what is it, you ask yourselves? Well, it's practically infallible, I must say. Ready? Rev. Merritt recently asked SBC members to "pray and fast that God will miraculously reveal himself through Jesus Christ to Muslims." Yes, you heard right! It turns out that Ollie North was completely wrong when he said that Muslims can't go to heaven - they can, provided they, um, convert to Christianity first. "Just as they can pray and fast, we want to pray and fast that they will find the true way to heaven, and this is through Jesus Christ," announced Merritt, thus solving hundreds of years of religious intolerance in a single swoop. Excellent.

George W. Bush

Greedy Corporate Bastards
Moving on to more light-hearted matters, here's a jolly story that certainly won't have your blood boiling and your teeth gnashing, oh no. A recent study by two finance professors at Florida International University has shed a little more light on the whole "trickle-down" theory of stuffing piles of cash into the pockets of the already cash-overladen. It turns out that multinational corporations managed to swindle their way out of paying $45 billion in U.S. taxes last year - yes, that's $45 billion - by overpricing goods sold to foreign affiliates, and underpricing goods bought from those same affiliates. Overpricing and underpricing by how much, you ask yourselves? Ooh, not by much. Just, say, selling toothbrushes for $5,655. Oh, and buying bulldozers for $528. Nothing major. Presumably George W. Bush will be absolutely horrified to learn this news, and react by figuring out a way to help these poor corporations avoid paying taxes without having to perform such a ridiculous charade. Better get that Social Security lockbox cracked open right quick!

J.C. Watts
You can always rely on good ol' J.C. for a spot of quality conservative idiocy. Watts recently blasted Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle for jetting off on a jaunt to Mexico. "Today I open the paper and find out the top two Democrats are packing their bags and going to Mexico," said Watts in a press release. "Aye caramba." The release ended, "Hey, Democrat (sic) leaders: No siesta for you." Unfortunately, J.C. missed one or two key facts (c'mon GOPers - you know you love facts!) from his press release - namely that a) everyone on Capitol Hill went home that weekend after they'd finished voting on airport security, and b) that Gephardt and Daschle were on an official trip to visit with Presidente Fox. Goodness, why would J.C. feel obliged to leave that information out? I mean, what could his motive possibly be? Anyway, Rep. Ciro Rodriguez of Texas was really quite annoyed at the sterotypical Spanish phrases used in the press release, and pointed out that it was "particularly interesting that as Congressman Watts criticizes the Democratic leadership, his travel agents are busy planning a bus tour across this country as part of a Republican push to attract more minorities to the Republican party." Well, quite. Although considering his press release, J.C. could do very well: "Hey compadres! Join the Republican party! It's one hot tamale!" Even better - he could borrow the guy from Ollie North's holy warriors. That should go down well.

Parker J. Bena
Scumbag update: we noted back in Idiots 16 that Republican activist and Virginia state elector Parker J. Bena had been arrested on charges of possesion of child pornography and lying to the FBI. His defence? Um, I didn't download that kiddie porn, officer, uh, somebody must have sent it to me. Well unfortunately for Bena, the jury didn't quite see it that way, and the poor fella was recently fined $18,000 and sentenced to thirty months in federal prison. Aw, what a shame. Hope his cellmates don't find out what he's in prison for, eh?

Jim Gilmore
A Jim Gilmore spokesperson confirmed last week that, sorry, financial assistance will not be available to the same-sex domestic partners of those killed on September 11. Peggy Neff, whose partner died in the Pentagon, recently received a letter from the state which read, "Please accept our condolences on the loss of your friend, Sheila M.S. Hein. We regret to inform you that you are not eligible to file a claim for benefits under the Virginia Victims of Crime Act.'' And so Neff, who had planned to scatter her partner's ashes in their garden, will now probably have to give up the house instead. "Our law is pretty clear on who is eligible, and it does not include domestic partners,'' huffed Gilmore spokesman Reed Boatright. ''(Gilmore) can't just rewrite laws with the stroke of a pen. If he could do that, we'd have a kingdom.'' Funny then, that New York Governor George Pataki (note: also Republican) did just that when he signed an executive order allowing gay victims' surviving partners to receive assistance from the state victims' fund. Hmm. Seems like the compassionate thing to do, don't you think? I don't know - perhaps, like Jerry Falwell, Gilmore thinks that it's all their fault in the first place.

Rush Limbaugh
In an op-ed published in last week's Washington Post, the right-wingnuts' favorite windbag, Rush Limbaugh, attempted to claim that Democrats should be supporting Bush's executive-ordered detention program. Why? Because Franklin Delano Roosevelt (every single Democrat's favorite president of all time, by Limbaugh's estimation) instituted a policy of internment camps and military tribunals during World War II. But hang on a second - according to Limbaugh, that "was an outrage." Well look, no kidding pal. Absolutely nobody is arguing with that. So is Bush's policy an outrage? It's hard to tell from Limbaugh's babbling. But here's the big fat lie - what Rush is really trying to say is that all Democrats think FDR's internment program was just super, and now we're being hypocrites for not supporting Bush. Are you on crack, man? What on earth are you talking about? I mean, I can see how your listeners would fall for this kind of rubbish, but I'm afraid that most Washington Post readers have an IQ greater than their shoe size. Please try harder next time.

Gordon L. Baum
And finally, in a letter to the Washington Post last week, Gordon L. Baum, CEO of the Council of Conservative Citizens, expressed his disgust at the CCC's inclusion in a Post article on hate groups. Mr. Baum was particularly annoyed by the suggestion that the CCC is a "white nationalist organization." Wrote Baum, "The article further lumped my organization with other groups described by such undefined but sinister terms as 'white supremacy groups' and 'white nationalist organizations.' We are neither." So if the CCC isn't a "white nationalist organization," what is it, exactly? Why, as Mr. Baum puts it in his letter, they're a "conservative organization of about 20,000 members who are committed to constitutional government, American national sovereignty, the traditional Christian and European identity of our country and civilization, a foreign policy based on America's national interests, halting the massive immigration that threatens our cultural identity as a nation, and resisting multiculturalist and multiracialist policies in government, culture and education." So, um, definitely not a white nationalist organization then. Well that clears that up! See you next week...