NOVEMBER 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Elect Tommy Tuberville. Alabama has done one good thing in the past few decades: vote for Democratic candidate Doug Jones in 2017 over Roy Moore. Unfortunately, that respite from idiocy was not long-lived as Jones was defeated by a sizable majority by former Auburn University football coach, Republican Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville’s popularity in a state that worships football isn’t shocking. Alabama has been very conservative for some time and Tuberville did defeat former senator-turned Trump-footrest Jeff Sessions.

But being a good football coach doesn’t make you a good senator. In fact, it seems that not knowing virtually anything about laws or voting or the basic layout of our government is now the Republican brand. A few weeks before the election, a recording of Tuberville speaking with the Birmingham, Alabama, Sunrise Rotary Club was reported on. It showed that Tuberville’s grasp of what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was is tenuous at best. Now, in a new interview with the Alabama Daily News, whether or not Tuberville knows what the branches of our government are is in question.

Asked for his thoughts on whether Republicans and Democrats could work more harmoniously this coming 2021, Senator-elect Tuberville explained that government, voting, elections, and stuff is totally gonna happen.

TUBERVILLE: Yeah and that’s how our government was set up. You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three of branches of government. It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and executive.

I guess someone forgot to tell Tuberville about the judicial branch or that the House and Senate are not separate branches. My three-year-old grandson knows that.

Since winning the election, the “X”s and “O”s guy has repeatedly informed the public that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about outside of football. On Thursday, during an acceptance speech in Montgomery, he told that crowd that his father, a WW2 veteran, helped to liberate “Paris from socialism and communism.” 

Yup. Good job, Alabama. Let’s hope you can muster up the sensibility to liberate Alabama from Tuberville in 2026.

2. Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The fact that Ted Cruz is lower than pond scum in the evolutionary chart of morality is not breaking news. The fact that the Republican senator can be best described as what happens when ambition meets zero morals, the excrement of a warthog, and thimbleful of rhetorical training is not a new thought. The reality is that when the history books are written about this era in politics and American history, Cruz will be remembered best for absolutely nothing. He’s been a worthless legislator and a parasite on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s shell for the entirety of his career. End of story.

Since it became clear that President-elect Joe Biden has defeated Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States, and since, as we speak, COVID-19 numbers are reaching their expertly predicted worst heights, news outlets have dug back a couple of months ago into the archives to find some Republican predictions about these two things. Cruz, because he’s a big bowl of bad ideas and statements, made some bold predictions in July to reporters. While standing mask-free in our nation’s capitol, Cruz told the world that not only were Democratic leaders’ public health measures—closing down schools and businesses to flatten the curve—wrong-headed, they were all a part of a political ploy to win the election. In fact, if (and once) Joe Biden won the election, the ruse would be up. Democratic leaders would reveal the COVID-19 pandemic to be a hoax and would reopen everything. There’s video below the fold of him making this very prediction.

This is, verbatim, what Ted Cruz predicted:

SEN. TED CRUZ: If it ends up that Biden wins in November—I hope he doesn't, I don't think he will—but if he does, I guarantee you the week after the election, suddenly all those Democratic governors, all of those Democratic mayors will say, “Everything is magically better, go back to work, go back to school.” Suddenly the problems are solved. You won’t to have to wait for Biden to be sworn in.

A person like this cannot be shamed. The depth of their moral deceit knows no bounds.

3. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. America’s dumbest congressman, Gohmert has made quite a name for himself around these parts and others. Now the House Republican is jumping with both feet into suggesting that, well, maybe if Donald Trump didn't win the election maybe it's time for his Republican voters to rise up and end American democracy, period.

As reported by the Dallas Morning News, Gohmert claimed to a "Million MAGA March" audience near the White House that "this was a cheated election and we can't let it stand." He spoke of the American revolution and the Egyptian uprising: "They rose up though all over Egypt, and as a result of the people rising up in the greatest numbers in history," he said, and "if they can do that there, think of what we can do here."

And in perhaps what passed for an acknowledgement that an armed coup by red hat-wearing bozos would be, ahem, unpopular with the general public, Gohmert was quick to point out that "only about 30%" of American colonists supported that previous revolution. You don't need a majority in these matters, after all. You just need enough ammunition.

Gohmert's persona, which can best be described as "what if a man rented out the space between his ears to a family of tiny rodent acrobats," makes it a bit difficult to take his message seriously. But he's dead serious and his message is that because he, personally, cannot stomach the reality of the American public voting against his party and against their designated Dear Leader, he believes it is time to overthrow democracy and simply re-install Dear Leader as Dear Leader. He believes this is necessary because of a long, long laundry list of conspiracy theories that he believes, and also because if you "take out those two states" of California and New York, Trump would have won the popular vote. (False claim.)

So anyway, that's where we're at now: House Republicans advocating for the overthrow of the United States government based on conspiracy fictions they saw on fringe websites.

Again, it is difficult to take fascism seriously when it arrives in a clown car, and there is nobody in Washington that screams "clown car" more than Louie Freaking Gohmert, a man who could not beat a Texas fencepost in an essay competition if you spotted him 20 words and sharpened his pencils for him so he wouldn't hurt himself. But the message to the "MAGA" base was real: If you don't like the election results, take to the streets and nullify them. If the votes no longer go your way, declare the votes fraudulent and carry on without them.

Gohmert is not saying these things to appeal to a base. Louie-watchers know that this is genuinely who he is. Steve King is a white supremacist, Marco Rubio is a shapeless puddle of ill-defined ambitions, and Louie Gohmert is a conspiracy nut forever demanding other people act out based on his head canons. He would be far more dangerous than Trump himself, if he didn't forever have both feet planted back near his tonsils.

4. Michigan Science Professor Thomas Brennan. Professor Brennan has been placed on administrative leave. Why is this newsworthy? Well, the student newspaper, The Torch, did a pretty deep dive and covered comments made on a Twitter account under his full name about the novel coronavirus pandemic, as well as a number of slurs that allegedly appeared on the same account. According to screenshots, Professor Thomas Brennan allegedly tweeted that COVID-19 was a “stunt” to form “a leftist new world order.” According to MLive, during a virtual meeting for Ferris State University’s College of Arts, Sciences, and Education department in August, Brennan reportedly commented that “COVID-19 death rates in the United States were exaggerated, and the pandemic and rioting were leftist stunts.”

According to The Torch, the Twitter account also allegedly tweeted bizarre and horrifying remarks like “Covid19 is another Jewish revolution” as well as homophobic and racial slurs. An anonymous student in a class of Brennan’s spoke to The Torch and reportedly told the outlet that the professor talks about conspiracy theories related to cellphones during class time. Brennan has shared a statement to his website, and it’s a doozy.

In a statement on his website, dated Nov. 23, Brennan characterized the student newspaper’s article as a “hit piece” and said he is not a racist, science-denier, or anti-Semite. In the statement, he clarified that while he does not believe the pandemic is a hoax, he does believe the “severity is being exaggerated by revolutionary leftists in the media and government who ‘never let a good crisis go to waste.’” Lovely. He went on to describe vivid anxiety about mandatory vaccines and not being able to buy groceries at the market without evidence of receiving one.

In terms of racial slurs, Brennan wrote that he is “not racist against black people,” added that he loves and respects them, and argued, “the ’n-word’ is a mind-control spell designed to make us hate each other.” He went on to say that he used the word in order to “neutralize” its power. Yikes!

In speaking to local outlet WZZM 13, Brennan explained that he didn’t use the N-word “lightly,” and suggested that we’re “heading towards such a crescendo of madness where we're about to all be enslaved because of this COVID crisis." He added to the outlet that he said “some hyperbolic things to draw attention to what it is I wanted to say.”

In a message to the university from FSU President David Eisler, Eisler stresses: “We strongly reject these statements, condemn them and will not tolerate them. We have worked diligently to become a more diverse university, and these statements demonstrate vividly how one person can set back the work of many.” Brennan has been on administrative leave since Nov. 19, though it’s unclear whether the leave is specific to the alleged Twitter remarks, the COVID-19 remarks during the August meeting, both, or neither.

More than 250,000 Americans have died due to the virus, unemployment numbers are skyrocketing, families are facing evictions and food insecurity, and the Trump administration continues to flounder. What can we do? Rally around President Biden and support your local newspapers, including ones run by students.

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And the November winner is:

Because Tuberville and Gohmert are certified morons, I have selected the truly evil Ted Cruz as this month’s IGGY winner.