If You Can't Find a Real Controversy...
by Devilstower
Fri Dec 01, 2006 at 07:05:22 PM PDT
Oh sure, you can always kick off a chorus of "We Hate Hillary," or all seventy five verses of "Democrats are Traitors," but face it: without fresh sheet music, the mighty off-key Wurlitzer of Right Wingnuttery starts to get a little creaky.
During the election season, they were able to distort John Kerry's joke about Bush into an attack on the troops. That's a Republican twofer, scoring on both the "Kerry's a Doofus" and "Democrats Hate the Troops" charts. But since then conservatives just haven't found that seasonal ditty that lets them sip their eggnog with a dash of smarmy self-righteousness. Even O'Reilly's "War on Christmas" rag is sounding a little tired.
So where does the right look for a fresh source of hate? How about Representative-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN)? He's a Democrat, he's the first Muslim elected to congress, and he's an African-America. That's a rightwing triple play of detestability!
The attempt to demonize Ellison started with steaming loads of push polls during the campaign. After Ellison's win, CNN's always slimy Glenn Beck was quick to greet the new congressman with the respect that Republicans always hold in such esteem.
... you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let’s cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."
And if you thought the right was going to back away from Beck's McCarthyite tactics, that was just the start. Wingnut of the air, Dennis Prager, has been advancing the cause of Ellison as the next boogeyman of the right.
Right-wing radio host Dennis Prager wrote a column earlier this week claiming that Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, had "announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran." Prager claimed this "act undermines American civilization," and compared it to being sworn in with a copy of Hitler’s "Mein Kampf."
There are several problems with Prager's hissy fit. Not least among them, he made the whole damn thing up. For one thing, the Bible – or any other religious book – isn't used in the swearing in ceremony. Any pictures of a congressperson waving a Bible after their oath of office were simply publicity shots. The Bible is not, and has never been, used to swear in congressmembers. Like everyone else, Ellison will take his oath with his right hand raised, and that's it.
But as a typical member of the right wing community, Prager's faith in his own self-created fantasies outweighs puny facts. He's insisted that he will "keep up the pressure" on Ellison, even though Prager admits that forcing Ellison to use a Bible in the ceremony "may will be unconstitutional."
"I'm not arguing legality. I'm arguing what you should do," he said, saying that even though he is a religious Jew, he would take an oath of public office using the Christian Bible, which includes the Old and New Testaments.
"The New Testament is not my Bible but it is America's Bible," he said, noting that Jewish officeholders who had insisted on the Hebrew Bible were "secularists" who didn't believe what was in it anyway.
He aims at a Muslim, and gets a shot in at fellow Jews. Is it any wonder this man is a darling of the right?
Prager started off with a lie, leveraged it into a paranoid fantasy, and has moved on to using his own bit of make-believe to promote a violation of the constitution. But hey, at least he's given wingnuts someone to hate for the holidays, and that's the gift that they were all waiting for. (Whoops. Sorry, Bill, I said the "h" word.)
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