The Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 128)
September 29, 2003
California Schemin' Edition

The California recall election is just a week away, and it continues to live up to its reputation as a three-ring circus of idiocy. At the top of our list this week is Darrell Issa, the flip-flopping former gubernatorial candidate who started this whole mess in the first place. Further down the list, we've got our typical assortment of Iraq-related idiocy. Colin Powell (2) was caught changing his WMD story, the Bush Administration (3) is anxiously fearing the Kay report, and White House aide Dan Bartlett (4) is spinning that whole "mission accomplished" thing. Meanwhile, we've got college conservatives (7,8) and the head of the RNC (9) showing once again that they're good old fashioned bigots. As usual, don't forget the key!

Darrell Issa
Once upon a time there was an idealistic, principled conservative named Darrell Issa. And Darrell thought that the governor of California, the evil Gray Davis, was doing a terrible, terrible job of looking after the state (despite the fact that all the governors in the country were in trouble because of King George W. Bush's irresponsible fiscal policies). So Darrell decided that he would spend millions of dollars of his own hard-earned money to try and boot the evil Gray Davis out of office, and install someone more suitable, such as himself. Darrell was a good, honest person who hadn't stolen a car in years, and who truly, deeply cared about the people of California. "Like you, I've watched with increasing alarm as Gray Davis has systematically run California into the ground," he wrote on his campaign website in a very concerned manner. But then one day a groping Austrian beefcake arrived in town and declared that he was going to run for governor. Now, Darrell knew that the groping Austrian beefcake was very popular and would eat him for breakfast, so he cried like a little girl and dropped out of the race. But then a strange thing happened. Suddenly, Darrell realized that all the Republicans in California might get so confused between Conservative Candidate No. 1, the groping Austrian dope-smoking gangbanger, and Conservative Candidate No. 2, Mr. Nobody, that they might split their vote and let the evil Democrat Cruz Bustamante win. And Darrell couldn't have that. So, despite being the person who helped initiate, finance, and collect the signatures for the whole process in the first place, Darrell started going around telling people to vote against the recall - and keep the evil Gray Davis in power! Because believe it or not, it wasn't really about taking a principled stand to protect the people of California from a crappy governor after all. No, it was simply Darrell Issa trying to come up with a sneaky way to replace a duly-elected Democratic governor with a Republican. What a rotten bastard. The end. (Note: Our hero flip-flopped again last Friday and endorsed the beefcake.)

Colin Powell was caught out last week when it was revealed that on his first trip to the Middle East back in February 2001 he made these interesting comments: "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place." So how does Colin reconcile this with his own presentation to the UN where he went into great detail about Saddam's supposed "significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction?" Not to mention George W. Bush's pre-war State Of The Union speech, in which Bush read out a laundry list of Saddam's alleged chemical and biological weapons? "A lot changed between February 2001 (and the invasion)," said Powell, "but I don't find anything inconsistent between what I said then and what I've said all along." Oh right. I see. So between February 2001 and April 2003, Saddam Hussein miraculously developed lots and lots of weapons of mass destruction that he didn't have before. That makes perfect sense.

The Bush Administration
Perhaps Colin Powell would have been better off sticking to his original assertion that Saddam Hussein did not "develop any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction" instead of gallivanting off to the UN to claim the contrary. And perhaps the rest of the Bush adminstration would have been better off not rushing the country into an ill-conceived war based on the assumption that these weapons of mass destruction existed. Because the long-awaited Kay Report is due out very soon (David Kay is the chief American WMD-hunter in Iraq), and draft versions of the report released last week reveal that - guess what? - they can't find any. The report also reveals that there is no evidence that WMD were shipped out of the country before the war. Brilliant. Well, I guess now that we have definitive proof that this entire war was based on a giant set of lies, this will be the final nail in the administration's coffin. Surely the media will be outraged, and the public will be out in the streets demanding th... wait, isn't there a new episode of Temptation Island on tonight?

Dan Bartlett
The art of spin just entered a new dimension. Check out White House communications director Dan Bartlett trying to weasel his way out of Our Great Leader's "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln: "The president said exactly the opposite: The mission continues." Uh, right. So why was he standing in front of a big banner saying "Mission Accomplished?" Well, apparently the Lincoln's captain wanted to put the banner there, see. "It is something the troops are really proud of," said Bartlett. "Of course they can hang the banner." Okay, let's just get this straight. The White House communications team, famed for stage-managing every single aspect of Our Great Leader's public appearances down to the absolute tiniest detail - including covering up boxes marked "Made in China" with boxes marked "Made In USA" and telling rich Republicans at a Bush speech to take their ties off so they looked more like "regular people" - just let the Captain put his banner up without raising an objection? I mean, they managed to get the carrier to slow down and sail around in circles, and they managed to stuff Bush into a flight suit and have him land on the carrier by plane instead of helicopter (without soiling himself), but they couldn't bring themselves to ask the captain to take down his banner? Riiiiight. COMMUNICATIONS MINION: "Hey, Dan. That big banner up there says 'Mission Accomplished,' yet our message is 'the mission continues.' What on earth should we do?" DAN BARTLETT: "Heck, let's just leave it there. Sure, it might garble our message and confuse the American people, but that captain just seems like a really nice guy."

Bill Janklow
Bill Janklow is very sorry. He's sorry he habitually broke the speed limit. He's sorry he ran that stop sign. He's sorry he hit that motorcyclist and killed him. He's sorry for the man's family. Said Janklow last week, "Saying I'm sorry to some people is rhetoric - there's no way that I know how to express the sadness and the sorrow and the grief that have been brought to Mr. Robertson's family. Let me say I couldn't be sorrier for what's happened." Oh really? Believe it or not, it turned out later that Bill Janklow could be sorrier - because the man he killed was called Randy Scott, not "Mr. Robertson." Yup, Janklow was so sorry for what he did that he got his victim's name wrong. In true conservative fashion it turns out it's not really Janklow's fault though - apparently he's been a bit "foggy and forgetful" since the crash and has been suffering from "blinding headaches," but is improving. As opposed to Randy Scott, who is currently suffering from an acute case of death with little to no chance of recovery.

Fox News
Man-child Tucker Carlson played an amusing prank on Fox News last week, and was promptly given a taste of what Fox News considers to be "humor." During a Crossfire segment on telemarketers, Tucker was challenged to give out his home phone number. Carlson obliged and read out a number, but it turned out to be the number of Fox's Washington news bureau. What a cheeky monkey. But Fox News got their own back in hilarious fashion by - ha ha! - giving out Tucker Carlson's real home phone number on their website. Boy, those guys at Fox sure know how to take a joke, don't they? I mean, what a great way to even the score! Maybe next time they could just punch the guy in the face, or set fire to his house or something. Just by way of comparison, Democratic Underground doesn't even publish the personal information of the morons who send us death threats. But I guess it's not hard to run an operation classier than Fox News.

Update! It appears that after Tucker Carlson's wife and kids received threatening and obscene telephone calls from cro-magnon Fox News viewers, Fox News replaced Carlson's home number with the number of CNN's Washington news bureau. Here's what the original article looked like. Interestingly, the updated article doesn't acknowledge that the original article contained Carlson's home phone number, nor do Fox News apologize to Carlson and his family. Fair and balanced all the way, as usual.

The Young Conservatives Of Texas
And I thought college kids were supposed to be smart. Last week, the Young Conservatives of Texas decided to organize a protest of affirmative action at Southern Methodist University, by holding a bake sale where items were priced differently depending on the race of the person buying. So cookies cost $1 for white male students, 75c for white females, 50c for Hispanic students and 25c for blacks. Unfortunately the Young Conservatives only managed to raise $1.50 before the sale was shut down by the University after a riot almost ensued. See, I think the Young Conservatives got this whole thing backwards, so I've come up with a different bake sale analogy. Here's how it works: to get to the cookies, blacks have to crawl on their hands and knees across broken glass, Hispanics have to walk barefoot across hot coals, white women have to hop backwards, and white males get pushed down a red carpet in a gold-plated wheelchair. Mind you, I live on the liberal east coast where white men are still in charge. I guess in Texas they're really downtrodden and oppressed or something.

More College Republicans
Did I say I thought college kids were supposed to be smart? Here's a bit of recent news which brings to light some activity which took place at the College Republicans National Convention this summer, specifically the selling of T-shirts containing racist and anti-gay messages. Try these on for size: "No Muslims No Terrorism," "Bring back the blacklist," [featuring a picture of Spike Lee] "Mr. (?) and Mrs. (?) Rosie O'Donnell," [featuring a picture of Rosie O'Donnell and her partner] and just for good measure, "The Clinton Legacy," [featuring a picture of the burning World Trade Center]. Of course, a spokesperson for the College Republican National Committee denied all knowledge and pleaded ignorance (which wasn't much of a stretch): "We sold over 50 tables to vendors. We didn't monitor every single product of every single vendor." Really? Cool, then I'll go to the next convention and sell anti-Bush shirts. But look, ultimately if the Republicans want to run on a racist and anti-gay platform, then they are free to continue to do that. I just hope they don't expect normal people to vote for them.

Ed Gillespie
According to the Washington Times, Ed Gillespie, head of the RNC, last week accused gays of "intolerance and bigotry" for - wait for it - "attempting to force the rest of the population to accept alien moral standards." Nice one, Ed! Yup, Ed appears to be one of these people who believes that allowing shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy to remain on television is the equivalent of having men's penises shoved down his throat, if you know what I mean. But his real beef is with gay marriage, and Republicans are now preparing to officially oppose gay marriage in their national platform. Apparently we need a Constitutional amendment to fix the problem. What problem? You know - the problem of homosexual unions causing happily-married straight people to suddenly turn all gay and stuff.

George W. Bush
And finally: yeah, George gave a big speech to the UN last week. But he's getting last place on the list because let's face it, hardly anybody knew what on earth he was waffling on about. I mean, sex slavery? Tsk tsk, George - when will you realize that preventing junkets to the Far East for the purposes of bonking Asian prostitutes begins at home? You really need to have a word in Neil's ear. During the course of the speech, Bush also made this interesting statement: "...there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization." Which was immediately followed by this interesting news story: "Soldiers from Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne Division are providing security for several members of an Iranian paramilitary group that the U.S. State Department lists as a terrorist organization." It's no wonder that Our Great Leader's approval rating is steadily dropping and his recent interview with Brit "Brown Nose" Hume was the least-watched show on broadcast TV - the dude is completely losing his marbles. See you next week!