MAY 2023 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Eminent climatologist MJ Greene enlightened her base this month by tweeting her astute observations about climate change. Here goes:

“If you believe that today’s “climate change” is caused by too much carbon, you have been fooled.”

“We live on a spinning planet that rotates around a much bigger sun along with other planets and heavenly bodies rotating around the sun that all create gravitational pull on one another while our galaxy rotates and travels through the universe. “Considering all of that, yes our climate will change, and it’s totally normal!”

Next, she gets to her comfort zone — conspiracy theories.

“But there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy and that if humans sacrifice enough energy producing things we can actually control the climate.” 

She closes with a warning.

“Don’t fall for the scam, fossil fuels are natural and amazing. They produce an abundance of energy that we all need to survive along with more products than you can possibly imagine”.

Greene finishes with her clincher — a picture that shows a decline in chemicals released into the atmosphere as fossil fuels increase. She is either a moron or a cynic. The decrease in airborne pollution results from ecological policies enacted under the 1970 Clean Air Act and enforced by the newly created EPA. An act and an agency today’s GOP wants to disembowel and diminish.

But far more egregiously, it does not measure the greenhouse gas that Greene is the crux of Greene’s tweet — carbon dioxide, CO2. This omission is not a surprise as the source of this misleading graph is FossilFuture.com— a website that promotes Alex Epstein, a fossil fuel advocate with a computer science/philosophy degree.

If Greene had any intellectual curiosity—or integrity—she would have consulted greenhouse gas charts published by NASA or the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but that’s not what hard-righters do.

2. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. You may not believe it, but Sen. Tuberville told us something this week that we did not know. In fact, you should get incensed over it, because it’s one of the most plainly stated support of racism uttered by an American statesman in quite some time.

Tuberville, speaking on a radio interview with Richard Banks of WBHM, accused Democrats of “attacking” the military, implying that the armed forces lack combat readiness due to recruitment failures. He then goes on to state that a way to improve those numbers would be to rid ourselves of our policy of excluding white nationalists.

Tuberville: We are losing in the military so fast. Our readiness in terms of recruitment. And why? I’ll tell you why, because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in our agenda, as Joe Biden’s agenda. They’re destroying it. This year, we will not reach any recruiting goals in the military. .... We cannot start putting rules in there for one type, one group and make different factions in the military, because that is the most important institution in the United States of America….

The interviewer, surprise evident in his voice, asked Tuberville to clarify his remarks.

Banks:  You mentioned the Biden administration trying to prevent white nationalists from being in the military. Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?

Tuberville: Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.

Equating white nationalists with Americans, and wanting them in the military is bad enough, but that’s not the comment that grabbed me. No, it’s what Tuberville said later:

Tuberville: [O]ur military and Secretary Austin, put out an order to stand down and all military across the country, saying we’re going to run out the white nationalists, people that don’t believe how we believe. And that’s not how we do it in this country.

The next day, the senator was asked by yet another reporter (NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Julie Tsirkin) to place his remarks into further context. In so doing, he revealed something crucial about white nationalism (white supremacy by any other name):

Tsirkin: Do you want to clarify your comments?

Tuberville: The Democrats characterize all MAGA Republicans in the military as white nationalists. Wrong. Okay, we can’t get politics in the military. This has nothing to do with extremists and all that this, you know, my first day here was January 6 had several senators stand up on the Senate floor saying to me we got too many white nationalists, I mean, what the heck is that? We all got different beliefs. You know, I’m a church Christ, Catholics, we got different people. And we all have to make one military. We can’t start distinguishing different types of people. Okay. That’s all I say.

He is clearly putting white supremacist beliefs in the same category as mainstream religion. He’s saying they’re on the same tier, of the same caliber.

Later he further digs the hole for himself as a senator: even after being given a definition of what ‘white nationalist’ is: a Nazi, or a racist, Tuberville exclaims, “I don’t look at it like that. I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican.” So, he goes back to inviting that comparison, not only asking white nationalists to see themselves as Trump Republicans but for Trump Republicans to see themselves as white nationalists.

But beyond that, he keeps circling back to this idea that white nationalism is as protected as a class of beliefs:

Tsirkin: So, what you’re saying is Democrats are painting Trump supporters as white nationalists but that’s not what they are?

Tuberville: Every day. Every day on the floor. The first day after I got here on January 6, that night, and that’s not right. Let’s not get into politics and calling people names. The military is about somebody that is fighting for the security of all of us. I don’t care if you’re Catholic, Baptist, it doesn’t make any difference. We’re all in this together. …

Tuberville really is placing white supremacy as a class of beliefs that deserves shielding, even embracing. Whether that embrace is transactional (“Look at our recruiting”), or whether it’s because je share similar beliefs, it’s clear that Tuberville is putting forth the tacit argument that white nationalism—white supremacy, plain old racist belief—should be a protected category.

This is instructive, because it gives us a glimpse into how religious structures supply the bolts and beams for this nascent fascist movement. White nationalists take their racist beliefs exactly how they take their religious beliefs: as though such were eternal truths.

3. CNN’s Chris Licht. Many media outlets—including the once-credible CNN—are puzzling over how to cover Donald Trump during the 2024 election cycle. They’re used to covering these things like horse races, of course—but what do you do when one of the horses is actually a hyena who’s more interested in eating the gobsmacked faces of the spectators who didn’t bet on him than playing by the widely understood rules of horse racing? Well, you treat him like a hyena, not a horse. Yes, he’s in the race somehow, but we all know he shouldn’t be, and so the media's rightful role isn’t to accommodate the face-eating; it’s to helpfully point out that, hey, there’s a hyena on the track, and he’s feasting on Chris Christie’s stinking viscera again.

CNN is getting tons of well-deserved blowback from its ill-conceived Wednesday night Trump town hall. Try as she did, Kaitlan Collins is simply too nice to go up against the rabid dog Trump. You need a vicious attack dog.

My first follow-up to Trump would have been, “Ah, so I see you wore your Pol Pot Underoos today, Donny.” Because the only way to deal with a ridiculous, scornful person is with ridicule and scorn.

CNN’s new CEO, Chris Licht, has tried to defend the town hall with fantasies ab out serving the public interest, but try as he may, it appears to me his main objective was to try to woo MAGA conservatives away from Fox News, “Bonanza,” and the clammy stack of Reader’s Digests piled next to their basement toilets. And he felt the need to say so after one of his reporters called bullshit on his grossly irresponsible decision to platform the one and only 2024 presidential candidate who literally tried to end American democracy.

Writing for Puck, media reporter Dylan Byers revealed that Licht was a bit salty with CNN’s own Oliver Darcy, who trashed the town hall in the network’s Reliable Sources newsletter. In fact, Licht reportedly dressed down Darcy in the wake of the criticism.

Licht summoned Darcy and his editor Jon Passantino to a meeting with himself, CNN comms chief Kris Coratti, editorial executive vice president Virginia Moseley and senior vice president of global news Rachel Smolkin, in which they told him that his coverage had been too emotional and repeatedly stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate when covering the news, be it CNN or any other media organization.

Dispassionate. Right. Because that’s how we should react to a guy who continually incites chaos and violence in service of the same cult of personality that nearly ended America.

Of course, Licht has gone on record as saying that Trump’s odiousness needs to be put on full display (though it goes without saying we’d have gotten the gist if they’d just wheeled him around the studio for 70 minutes in a Hannibal Lecter mask), but he apparently doesn’t extend the same courtesy to his own reporters.

Darcy stood by his work and pushed back on the “emotional” characterization, one source with knowledge of the meeting said. But afterward two sources who heard about the meeting described him as visibly shaken. “They put the fear of God into him,” one source said.

CNN will likely retain very few of the MAGA viewers it was courting with its transparent bid to tickle their crusty nubblies, and judging by the incandescent rage we all witnessed on social media and elsewhere in response to Licht’s grossly irresponsible decision to normalize a cartoon villain, this whole spectacle looks like a giant, flashing neon “L” for the network.

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And the May IGGY winner is:

This may become habitual, but I must give the May IGGY to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. He has clearly pulled ahead of Louie Gohmert as America’s dumbest lawmaker. The fact that this moron won five national coach of the year awards doesn’t speak well for America’s coaching fraternity.