I am Matt Thomas.

They Gonna Getcha!

November 12, 2005

As if the differences between political persuasions in our country weren’t acute enough, a few of the American right-wing media’s brightest stars have sought to make things ever-more abundantly clear for us since Tuesday’s off-off-year election.

I won’t pretend like I’m not happy that Democrats—and all rational, sane people of all parties—finally had a good election cycle. No matter how “off” the year is, it’s good to finally see the court of public opinion reflect a sense of something other than slack-jawed faith in George Bush and the “top-tier” arch-conservative Republicans currently playing with our country.

In the past five years, Democrats have come to be considerably good losers. We get far too much practice in it. Sometimes there may be legitimate challenges (i.e., a certain hillbilly state run by the brother of a certain hillbilly presidential candidate) to the results. But we’ve lost a lot more than that, and sadly, we’ve become quite good at it.

The Republicans, though—at least the hardcore, holy (or just assholy, in Bill O’Reilly’s case) conservatives—have become terrible at accepting defeat. Following the small, but sweet victory in Dover, Pennsylvania, where every school board member running for re-election and involved in the now-semi-famous “Intelligent Design” controversy was summarily booted from office, hyperconservative wingnut windbag Pat Robertson menacingly announced that Dover had “voted God out,” and warned of things to come…

If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God… You just rejected him from your city, and don’t wonder why he hasn’t helped you when problems begin.

Pat Robertson really fearmongers with the best of them. The best part about his little tirade is that he openly, incontrovertibly admitted that Intelligent Design is, and always has been, Creationism in secular clothing.

He’s still a passive voice, though, and any real Republican worth his salt knows that the key to fear mongering is to threaten a direct, devastating terrorist attack. Anybody up for the job? Oh, hi, Bill O’Reilly. I’ll let you take it away:

From the November 8 edition of The O’Reilly Factor ...

Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I’m not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I’m the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, “Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, ‘look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco.’”

The only thing I like better than the fact that Bill O’Reilly said such an asinine and categorically indefensible thing is the idea of George Bush actually taking his advice. If the president of the United States actually held press conferences in left-leaning cities to grant them sovereign nation status, maybe people would finally realize that Bush is as shitballs crazy as he is.

In the end, it’s clear that Republicans are going to have to get a lot better at losing gracefully. Otherwise, next year, when the losses are even more seriously damaging for the Republicans, Bill O’Reilly is going to strap himself to a dirty bomb and go blow up a gay bar. And we’d hate to lose one of our national treasures like that. The bar, that is, of course.