I’ve been away visiting family, so it has been hard keeping up with my usual reading. And now I feel really behind. I started to panic, “What am I going to write about?” And then I had a thought, “What about the deer lady?” By that, I mean, Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm, the woman who thought that deer signs were a waste of money for the obvious reasons that (1) deer can’t read and (2) deer have no inclination to follow the law. Now, the tea party idiot has her very own blog over at the Avon-AvonLake Post. And truly: Wilhelm is the gift that keeps on giving.
Her most recent blog post (almost a month old, because gems like “deer can’t read” don’t grow on trees) is about… I don’t know! It has no title. And it really isn’t about anything except her contention that all Democrats are liars. Her ignorance is staggering. It reminds me of when I was a kid. My father would tell me things. I would repeat them to my friends, only to find out that what he told me was either a huge exaggeration or far more complicated than I had been led to believe. Over time, this caused me to be cautious—especially about things that seem outrageous. Wilhelm never learned that lession.
As usual, she starts out with her contention that America has gone crazy:
Delicious, right? I’ll grant that Clinton lied about his creepy sex life. I don’t see what this has to do with with America. But okay. Then she says without the slightest of evidence that Gore lied about global warming. And that he made billions?! Al Gore’s net worth is only $300 million. So clearly, he has not made “billions.” This goes right along with an argument I have heard a frustrating number of times from conservatives: Al Gore invented global warming so he could make money. Not only do these people think that this is all about Al Gore, they seem to forget that in 2011 alone, ExxonMobile made a net profit of $41 billion. That’s one company. Yet people like Wilhelm think the oil companies are the honest brokers when it comes to global warming; scientists making $50,000 per year are just doing it for the money.
But she’s just getting started:
I don’t doubt that Obama lies and craps all over the Constitution as much as any president. But it isn’t clear what she’s talking about. Of course, it never is. Wilhelm basically just structures conservative talking points in paragraph form. But notice the switch: She goes from Clinton to Gore to Obama. What’s missing? Oh! That’s right: that paragon of truthfulness George W. Bush!
Again: I don’t know what details she’s talking about. Clearly, she is referring to the recent scandals. But other than listing them, she adds absolutely nothing. But she does muddy the waters. What “Fast and Furious” murders? No one says Obama was responsible for the murders in Benghazi. The IRS scandal, even in late May was clearly not about Obama. And the NSA scandal is not really about the media, and regardless, she would have been fine with it under Bush. (Just saying.)
Government is beating America to a bloody pulp and it appears there are only a few fighting
A lot of us are screaming about the NSA scandal. But Wilhelm seems only interested in that scandal in as far as it affects Fox News reporter James Rosen. There is nothing to the other scandals, which she would know if she got her news from anything but the most partisan sources.
Kathleen O’Brien Wilhelm is a good example of what is wrong with our political system. Most of those who are interested in politics get their information from the conservative media freak show. At one time, the left had the same thing, but those days are all over. Now, it is pretty much only on the right. And things are so screwed up that people like Wilhelm think that they are safe publicly spouting their shockingly ignorant opinions. And it is done on a very popular website.
Nothing wrong with going back to the well when you just know there’ll always be water there.
Such lunacy is just brand identification at this point. Dos Equiis is imbibed by the Most Interesting Man In The World; Coors, by sexy partying post-teens. Republicans are against government power and for defense; Democrats believe in cowardly supplication to Our Enemies and schemes to enslave us all at the hands of soulless bureaucrats. I do find it odd that most Americans are pretty resistant to advertising claims, but duped by political brandmaking, which is pretty much the same thing.
@JMF – Coors doesn’t have its very own "fair and balanced" news network. And let’s not forget that it isn’t just Fox; right wing hate radio reaches [i]far[/i] more people–especially the younger ones.
But this woman is amazing. While reading her last post, I wondered if she couldn’t be a computer program. If I were so inclined, I know I could write it. All it would take is a few sentence structure templates and maybe a hundred talking points.
Ha — that’s brilliant. I’m sure you could. Maybe somebody already has.
One thing about this — Democrats are also a BS party in terms of what their brand claims to be (pro-worker! pro-minorities!), but at least their demonization of the other side isn’t too far from measurable reality. Dems consider Repubs to be racist jingo corporate toolbags, and that’s more-or-less true (for Repub politicians, at least, not necessarily all Repub voters.) With conservatives, both what their brand claims to be and how they define the other brand are stone BS.
So our side is only half dishonest; alas, it’s dishonest about the most important half.
Good post, thanks.
re:
>> No one says Obama was responsible for >> the murders in Benghazi.
Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and the entire GOP propaganda apparatus pretty much says this, in so many words, all the time. Every Republican I know here in Texas has informed me that Obama personally "murdered" those 4 people in Benghazi. I no longer even attempt to debate these people.
@Marc — Yeah, I’m finding it harder and harder these days to talk with conservatives on any current news topic. They just have information sources which strike me as nonsensical.
I can talk with them on general principles and find a lot of common ground. Really, most of them aren’t "conservative" at all, they don’t hate good government policies, they just buy the Fox idiocy that government policies under the likes of Bush are good and the ones enacted under the likes of Obama are evil.
When it comes to big news stories, though, they buy the official party line, and I can’t counter their "facts" with actual facts. This is a problem, and I don’t know how we’ll resolve it anytime soon.