It's a bit early to hand out the award for Worst American, in the wake of yet another act of mass murder on the national stage, but I would be surprised if anyone manages to beat professional conspiracy peddler and continued actual cable news guest Alex Jones. His
contribution to the discourse was a tweet immediately speculating whether it was a "#falseflag" operation, e.g. government-based, which would by itself be merely stupid, but when paired with actually sending a correspondent to troll the first press conference elevates itself straight to
go to hell territory.
The unseen fellow asking Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick whether the Boston Massacre was a “false flag” operation so TSA agents can “put their hands down [his] pants” is apparently Dan Bidondi, a “correspondent” for Alex Jones’s Infowars.
While we have no absolutely evidence to suggest that Alex Jones and his crew personally planted the bombs so that he'd have a new conspiracy theory to sell, hey, let's not let that stop us. Jackass.
Among others whose initial first-twitch reactions come down on the worse side of valor:
- A large contingent of conservative and tea party types who convinced themselves that Wolf Blitzer blamed the tea partiers for the bombings yesterday. He didn't. That didn't stop Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), already well known as a spouter of previous strings of offensive gibberish, from calling on Blitzer to apologize. (For the record, Blitzer's crime was pointing out, correctly, that the 15th was "Patriots' Day". Those who chose to read more into his remarks than that did so of their own choosing.)
- Other speculation, however, was less restrained. Pat Robertson was among those apparently presuming a Muslim perpetrator, commenting: "Don't talk to me about 'religion of peace,' no way."
- The Stupidest Man On The Internet is on the case, noting that an injured Saudi national interviewed by police afterwards was once photographed holding a metal pipe. Not kidding, sadly. Nor is it all. We'll just use TSMOTI here as a case study in the kind of genius that passes for respectable conservative "analysis" nowadays, thus allowing us to skip a bunch of other equally stupid/nasty links I really don't even want to add. As an aside, that Saudi national has now been ruled out as a suspect, not that that will stop anybody. Case in point:
- Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) says the bombing shows we should slow down immigration reform. Why? Because other people are "speculating" on how it might have been a foreigner:
"Some of the speculation that has come out is that yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa. If that's the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture."
Not the stupidest man around, but probably the single meanest man in Congress, and that is saying something.
All right, that's all I can take. Winners, your only prize is national shame. Please collect it quietly and then go away.