The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 60)
March 25, 2002
Second Annual Oscar Special!

Ladies and Gentlemen... The envelope please! It's Oscar time again, so we're giving away our second annual Academy Awards for Excellence in the Field of Conservative Idiocy. In the number one spot, we have Trent Lott, who is still acting like a baby over the Pickering nomination. David Duke (3) has some lovely decorating ideas for white sheets. Bernard Goldberg (7) has a little 'splaining to do about bias. Ann Coulter (9) continues her tradition of bigoted incoherence. And Enron (10) mails 940 boxes of garbage. (Here are the icons.)

Trent Lott
Best Supported Hairpiece in a Losing Role: Waaaaaaaah! Oh boy, it's tough being the Senate Minority Leader these days. Poor Trent "Rugmaster" Lott almost wet his pants with fury after the Senate Judicial Committee struck down the nomination of his close personal friend, Judge Pickering. So what did hypocrite Trent do? Why, the honorable thing of course - he vowed to get revenge. In a thoroughly adult and non-partisan manner, the Mississippi Hair Helmet immediately moved to block the Judiciary Committee from receiving $1.5 million they needed to investigate September 11. How very patriotic. He then obstructed the nomination of a Tom Daschle aide to a position at the FCC, apparently because at 39 years old the aide was too young and inexperienced. (Note that Michael "Son of Colin" Powell, head of the FCC, is 38). "You'll see it in a lot of ways and in a lot of days," threatened the Senate Minority Loser, adding, "I'll be back!" as he turned on his heel, his pants fell down, and he tripped face-first into a cake.

Ken Starr
Best Director of Uselessly Spending Taxpayers' Money: As if heading a fruitless $70 million national cock-hunt wasn't bad enough, Ken Starr is getting a second chance to wreck America. It was announced last week that the former celebrity crotch-sniffer will be leading the court battle to overturn the recently-passed Campaign Finance Reform bill, working closely with Mitch McConnell to make sure that this legislation never sees the light of day. Evidently Starr's predilection for high-powered soft-core extends all the way to enjoying the sight of America being shafted by corrupt corporations.

David Duke
Best Costume Design: Are you tired of arriving at rest-stops in South Carolina, only to be greeted by those pesky banner-waving NAACP types who want you to boycott SC businesses until the Confederate flag is removed from the State Capitol? Well David Duke has a solution for you! Next time you pull over to empty your bladder, purchase a tasty hotdog, or gas up the old SUV, you can swing by one of Duke's new White Power Welcome Wagons. Yes, it seems that some South Carolinians don't like the idea that black people might force them to take down their beloved flag - a few state officials have even played the September 11 card, referring to the NAACP boycott as "economic terrorism" (yawn). So Duke's people will be greeting motorists with friendly banners such as "We love our Flag and We love our State!" and "Stop Hate Against the South!" Of course the good news is that if any of the banners get blown away, they'll have plenty of white sheets to make new ones out of.

Robert Ray
Best Pathetic Display of Supposed Non-partisanship: It must be Former Independent Counsel Week here at Democratic Underground. First we discover that Ken "Spank Me" Starr is trying to smack down Campaign Finance Reform, and now it turns out that his replacement, Robert Ray, may not have been quite as impartial as a good independent counsel should be. As if you really needed any further evidence of the blatant partisanship behind the National Fellatio Crisis, the Associated Press revealed last week that Ray, who wants to run as a Republican for a senate seat in New Jersey, made "get-acquainted calls to leading New Jersey Republicans while serving as independent counsel." Wow, how independent can you get?

Phil Gramm
Best Smoke and Mirrors in a Republican Scandal: Phil Gramm spoke up last week to defend the Bush administration's contact with Enron, and the nation reeled with shock and surprise. But as we all know, Phil Gramm is an upstanding member of Congress who tells it like it is, so he must have a very good personal and moral reasons for defending Bush from these corporate whores. After all, it's not like Phil Gramm's wife was an Enron director. And it's not like Phil Gramm was one of Enron's largest campaign contribution recipients. And it's not as if Ken Lay was regional chair of the Gramm for President campaign in 1996. And it's not like the Gramms did favors for Enron. No - surely a man of integrity like Gramm would not be swayed by the sweet, sweet smell of free corporate cash.

George W. Bush
Best HMO-job: Just before our last elected president left office, he introduced a federal safeguard which would prevent patients from having their personal information passed around like a hooker at the Republican National Convention. And guess what? Heeeeere's Dubya! Last week George and friends proposed that we might want to change the regulation, just a little bit, you know, just so that doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, insurance companies, and any other interested third-parties can access your medical records at the drop of a hat, without your permission. But don't worry - if people make off with your personal info they will have to inform you "at some point." So there's nothing to be concerned about. Oh, and if that doesn't put your mind at ease, the proposed regulation change has apparently been "hailed by the insurance industry." Feel better now?

Bernard Goldberg
Most Hypocritical Use of the Term "Bias": If you're a card-carrying member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, then you've probably spent the last month reading Bias, the new screed by CBS "insider" Bernard Goldberg that claims to "out" the media as liberal. Even George W. Bush was seen carrying the book recently, which was interpreted as a crystal-clear message to the media. (That message, of course: "Dubya can read.") According to Goldberg, the media "pointedly identify conservative politicians as conservatives," but rarely use the word "liberal" to describe liberals. Unfortunately, it seems that the author need a little lesson on bias himself. Last week a professor at Stanford University announced the results of an informal study, which concluded precisely the opposite of what Goldberg claims. Geoffrey Nunberg did searches of articles from 30 major newspapers, including such alleged bastions of liberalism as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle. His conclusion: "the average liberal legislator has a thirty percent greater likelihood of being identified with a partisan label than the average conservative does." No doubt the liberal media will be all over this story.

Richard Nixon
Lifetime Achievement Award for Paranoid Rants by Dead Presidents: Yeah, I know it's bad form to pick on a dead guy. But c'mon… It's Nixon! Last week the latest set of Nixon tapes was released, and you know how presidents are supposed to seem more presidential and stuff after we have some time to truly consider their contribution the our great country? Well, it's kinda like that, only the opposite. On these tapes, the second-most-corrupt president in the history of the planet gets just plain loony, ranting about Jews, drugs, gays, Catholics, and communists. About Drug Policy, Nixon had this to say: "every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. … What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists." (?) He also explains that pot is worse than alcohol because people drink "to have fun," but people smoke marijuana "to get high." (During which time, of course, they are not having any fun.) Somewhere he gets the idea that Archie Bunker's son-in-law Meathead (yes, the TV character) "goes both ways," and that another TV character is "obviously queer. He wears an ascot, and so forth." This type of nefarious ascot-wearing is the beginning of the end for the United States, because "You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them." Ditto for the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. (You can read more of his paranoid rantings here.) So, next time you're watching "Will & Grace," remember that you're contributing to the downfall of America. Nixon said so.

Ann Coulter
Most Homophobic Rant: Anorexic Ann was in rare form last week, with a homophobic anti-Catholic rant that can basically be boiled down to the following: homosexual=pedophile. How does Ann know? Well, it's very simple: There are currently no sex scandals against the Boy Scouts, who ban gays, but there are sex scandals against the Catholic Church, which, as we all know, has historically been a strong supporter of the Gay Agenda. Of course, the pedophile priest scandal is all liberals' fault, because we think that "celibacy is always bad, sex is always good." Again, the logic is a little sketchy here, but I think she's trying to say liberals are pro-pedophilia. Which is news to such well-known conservative child molesters as Republican activist Randy Ankeney (see Idiots 37), Radio Personality "Republican Marty" (Idiots 15), "Republican of the Year" Mark A. Grethen (Idiots 55), and Mayor Philip Giordano (Idiots, 29, 31, 35).

Enron
Best load of old garbage: If you aren't yet convinced that the folks at Enron are a bunch of arrogant jerks, consider this. On March 11, California received shipment of 940 boxes from Enron, which were supposed to be filled with subpoenaed documents. But according to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, when they opened them up all they found was "discarded Kleenexes, old pizza boxes, garbage," and only one actual document. The judge in the case will decide next week whether to hold them in contempt. Still, the shipment of trash was not a total bust. We hear that startled investigators also found a box of blank letterhead from the Office of the Vice President of the United States; crumpled scraps of paper with bank account numbers in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands; the home addresses, phone numbers, and favorite restaurants of every Republican in Congress; a case of condoms marked "for the French Lieutenants' Women"; and a thank-you card of indeterminate origin, signed "xoxo, George" in green crayon. See you next week!