The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 115)
June 23, 2003
Batten Down The Hatches Edition

This is becoming depressingly familiar: George W. Bush appearing at the top of the list because of the disaster going on in Iraq. But there are some other important areas of conservative idiocy to attend to this week. Take Orrin Hatch (2) for example, caught in a double-whammy of stupidity and hypocrisy. Or John Warner (3), making a fool of himself in Afghanistan. Or Bill O'Reilly (5), who is just a huge crybaby. And that's not all - we've also got Donald Rumsfeld (8) comparing Baghdad to Washington DC, Louis Zizza (9) picking a fight with Pam Anderson, and Tucker Carlson (10) getting ready to eat shoe. Enjoy, and don't forget the key!

George W. Bush
At the time of writing, 54 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since George W. Bush declared Mission Accomplished on May 1. And now the White House is starting to worry. Oh, they're not worried for the dead soldiers or their families - that's a "necessary cost" for the money that Halliburton is going to make off of this invasion thing. I mean, it's a necessary cost to find Saddam's deadly weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it's a necessary cost to provide democracy, freedom and excellent healthcare to the Iraqi people. Or whatever the excuse is this week. No, the White House is starting to worry that the political fallout of all these dead Americans may not be in their favor. Because while men and women of the armed forces swelter in 130 degree heat, being shot at by angry Iraqis and not knowing when they'll come home or even what they're supposed to be doing, Our Great Leader is swanning around the USA holding $2000-a-ticket fundraisers in an attempt to raise $200 million dollars for his election campaign. The fact that he's doing this under the guise of some great flag-waving military leader - while soldiers come home in body bags from Iraq almost daily - is particularly sickening. They've served his purpose, and now their corpses can be swept aside while he campaigns. So much for "supporting the troops."

Orrin Hatch
It's been a long time since Orrin Hatch last made the list - but he's back with a vengeance (literally) this week. The arch-conservative and alleged songwriter said last week that he "favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet," according to the Associated Press. Is that all, Orrin? Surely you don't have to stop there! How about remotely destroying the engines of speeding cars? If they go over the speed limit three times on one trip, the cylinder block melts. Or how about remotely destroying the televisions of people who steal cable? There you are, trying to make out a nipple on the scrambled Spice channel when suddenly Orrin's grinning face appears and blammo! There goes the cathode ray tube. But anyway, it didn't take long before Senator Hatch was revealed to be not merely a top-notch assclown, but a world-class hypocrite to boot. Savvy systems administrator Laurence Simon took a peek at the source code on Hatch's official website and discovered that Senator Computer-Blower-Upper was illegally making use of an unlicensed JavaScript menu system - exactly the sort of crime for which he wants to toast other people's PCs. Shortly after this announcement, hundreds of thousands of Internet users were heard to be individually "Rolling On Floor Laughing My Ass Off."

John Warner
Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (and therefore a very important and presumably knowledgeable man), visited Kabul recently to check up on how things are going over in Afghanistan (answer: poorly, but that's another story). Apparently Warner got a nasty surprise when he arrived at a training camp, only to be greeted by a French soldier. "What are they doing here?" demanded Warner. "They muckin' things up again?" In fact, French soldiers play a substantial role in the International Security Assistance Force which patrols Kabul and the surrounding areas, attempting to keep the peace and assisting with the rebuilding of Afghanistan. Funny, you'd think that as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Warner ought to know about things like that. But then, as Joe Conason so aptly put it in Salon: "Warner does better at looking like a senator than behaving like one."

The Bush Administration
Here's an interesting story: it seems that "dozens of people are showing up every day at a hospital near a defunct Iraqi nuclear plant, suffering from rashes, bloody noses and other symptoms of radiation poisoning," according to the Associated Press. So what? Well, again according to the Associated Press, "The Tuwaitha nuclear facility, 12 miles south of Baghdad, was left unguarded after Iraqi troops fled the area on the eve of the war. It is thought to have contained hundreds of tons of natural uranium and nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons. U.S. troops didn't secure the area until April 7. By then, looters from surrounding villages had stripped it of much of its contents." Um, so this is how we're preventing nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists, is it? Good job. Incidentally, U.S. troops had secured the oil fields by March 21...

Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly is getting a reputation as the thinnest-skinned conservative media personality on the air - which is no small feat, considering the competition. His recent spat with Al Franken (see Idiots 113) showed Bill up for the blustering bully he is. But if you thought that was bad, check out this rant from a recent Talking Points Memo: "Nearly everyday, there's something written on the Internet about me that's flat out untrue. And I'm not alone. Nearly every famous person in the country's under siege ... The reason these net people get away with all kinds of stuff is that they work for no one. They put stuff up with no restraints. This, of course, is dangerous, but it symbolizes what the Internet is becoming." Waaaaaah! Crikey, Bill! I mean, phew, that free speech can be dangerous all right. One minute you're minding your own business, hosting a little talk show where guests with opposing viewpoints are browbeaten into submission and occasionally have their microphones turned off so you can "win" the argument - you know, doing nothing to hurt anybody. And suddenly all these mean people are saying bad things about you, with - horror of horrors - "no restraints." Good grief, it ought to be outlawed! One last thing: it's funny how O'Reilly suddenly seems to be lumping himself in with the "famous people" these days, instead of the little people he claims to represent. Say Bill, perhaps if you hadn't continually encouraged your braindead fans to harrass "famous people" who happened to oppose the war, you wouldn't be getting your butt spanked with the same stick.

Michael Savage
Did I say Bill O'Reilly is the thinnest-skinned conservative media personality on the air? I may have to stand corrected. Michael Savage is suing Thomas and Gunilla Leavitt, the couple behind websites savagestupidity.com and takebackthemedia.com for... well, no reason. "The suit alleges the sites made false and defamatory statements about Savage," according to The Mercury News, but it seems pretty obvious that this is just a nuisance lawsuit designed to quash the Leavitts' freedom of speech. So move over, Bill O'Reilly - from a conservative blowhard who thinks that people should be stopped from saying mean things about him, to a conservative blowhard who is actually doing something about stopping people from saying mean things about him. Incidentally, Savage is clearly taking the high ground when it comes to making false and defamatory statements, referring to the Leavitts on his show as "stinking rats who hide in the sewers." Ah, that conservative distaste for namecalling comes shining through yet again.

The White House
The White House has "removed sections of a report by the US Government's own environmental agency to water down references to global warming" according to BBC News, which pretty much shows a) how much of a priority the environment is for this administration, and b) how much of a damn the White House gives about telling lies these days. Apparently Bush's team wanted to add so many amendments to the section on global warming that it "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change", according to an EPA memo. Yup, this seems to fit the administration's M.O. all right - if you don't like the facts, either change them or get rid of them altogether. Hell, it's still working for weapons of mass destruction...

Donald Rumsfeld
That Don Rumsfeld - he just can't help putting his foot in it, can he? Last week, while trying to mount a defense of the "success" we're having in Iraq, the he suggested that the homicide rate in Baghdad is lower than that in Washington, DC. "You got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month," Rumsfeld said. "There's going to be violence in a big city." What on earth is that supposed to prove? Oh, I see... so all those deaths in Baghdad have got nothing to do with the suppression of protests, rocket attacks, suicide bombings, radiation poisoning from unsecured nuclear power plants... etc, etc. They're just normal, everyday crimes that you would find being committed in any major city around the world. Don, you're nuts. Just let me know the next time you see a roving bunch of rogue lobbyists driving down K Street blowing stuff up with rocket propelled grenades and AK-47s.

Louis Zizza
Just when you thought conservatives couldn't get any dumber, here comes Louis Zizza. Mr. Zizza attacked Pamela Anderson on a flight from Florida to California last week because he mistakenly assumed that she was one of those rotten anti-war celebrities that Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have presumably filled him with hate for. Apparently drunk (although he claims he was sober) Zizza spied the celebrity, his braincell lit up, and he let loose the abuse. He was not arrested, but he later apologized for the mistake and claimed that he thought Anderson was "someone else." Who, Tim Robbins?

Tucker Carlson
And finally, we await with bated breath the television event of the year. A few weeks ago prepubescent pundit Tucker Carlson announced that he would eat his shoes if Hillary Clinton's book sold one million copies, and has been foolishly continuing to make that pledge. To be fair, Tucker's entry on the list may be a tad premature, because the book hasn't sold a million copies - yet. But it's on the way (600,000 copies in the first week) - and when Living History finally does top that one million mark, it's Keds on toast time for bowtie boy! See you next week...