2007 Wingnut Roundup

I didn't think anything could beat 2006 for conservative lunacy, but this past year was absolutely positively rich and rife with it. Global warming denial, Islamophobic paranoia, persecution complexes, authoritarian interventionism (especially into our S-E-X lives), fetus worship, racist tripe, misogynist garbage, homophobic bullshit by the steaming shovelful... whew. All that and more were evident in that mass of roiling putrescence that was the right-wing rage-o-sphere of 2007.

In an exercise that tested the bounds of my nausea threshold, I've assembled what I recall as some of the highlights of the past year's wingnuttery. In no particular order, here's some of the freaky phenomena they visited upon us:

1. Freeping! The practice of "freeping" online polls really came into its own in the Canadian wankosphere this year. It was especially popular among social conservatives like SUZANNE, who've finally figured out that it's the only way they'll ever get to see poll results that show the majority of Canadians agree with their authoritarian, sexually-obsessed nanny-statism. Through determined freeping campaigns, they succeeded in showing, time and again, that online polls can be manipulated to skew the results. Revelation! It was kind of funny to see them run around all excited, thinking they'd proven that Pierre Trudeau and Henry Morgentaler are Canada's first and third-Worst Canadians when all they've proven is this.

1(a) Facebook Freeping! No mention of the year's freepage would be complete without a nod to that Social Conservative pinnacle of freepiosity, the CBC Facebook Wishlist. CBC formed a Facebook group to ask Canadians what they wished for Canada, the top wish to be given some airtime after the contest closed. Socons desperate for attention recruited every wingnut with internet access, Catholic school kids, non-citizens and that weird guy who stands outside the Parliament Buildings with a dead fetus poster, and feverishly freeped the Wish List, freeped it long and freeped it hard. When it had been well and truly freeped, the results were surprising to say the least. Environics pollsters take note: forget environmental issues, Afghanistan and health care, the Number One wish of all Canadians is that a minor elective medical procedure be banned. Also high on our wish list -- ban gay marriage and install a theocracy. Now, who fucking knew?!

2. Creeping! Conservative wingnut, um, I don't know, "writer"? "commentator"? "entertainer"? "curiousity"? Rachel Marsden found that Old Habits Die Hard, and two of her old habits, stalking creepily and talking stupidly, came back for a bite. Talking stupidly about torture led to her being shit-canned from the Toronto Sun, then Christmas came early for progressive blogging snarkmeisters when Rachel thought "Christmas stocking" meant "Christmas stalking" and she went back to her old standby activity.
3. Anti-semitism! Wingnut pun-dit Ann Coulter suggested that Jews needed to be "perfected" -- a concept eerily similar to one advanced in Germany in the late-1930s. Anti-semite? Nahhh... she just thinks Jews are less perfect than Christians. Kind of like Larry Craig isn't gay, he just likes having sex with men. Okay, well uh... Achtung!, Annie.

4. Racism! It was everwhere this year, but never more expressively oinked out than by Canada's own "Five Feet of Pigshit". Her witty repartee about first nations people (including a sassy little call for more genocide and a denial that the first genocide even happened) was a laugh-riot... isn't she just the edgiest evah? But it was her deranged hypothesis about the poor in America -- and by "poor", FFofPS means "those who are any colour darker than deathly pallid" -- that gave her the 15 minutes of fame she longs for at the able keyboards of USian bloggers TBogg and Sadly No. The evisceration, while fun to watch, was short-lived: she's just not interesting enough to command the attention of anyone who matters for longer than that.

5. Misogyny! In certain conservative circles, a year without misogyny would be like a year without... misogyny. My favourite mind-blowingly misogynist blog post ran December 6, which is of course the anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique tragedy, and was titled "Gamil Gharbi Appreciation Day", after the cool dude that murdered the 14 women. Hyuk! Hyuk! Hyuk! Nothing tickles the funnybone like disrespect for the dead! Especially dead women! Cuz they prolly axed for it, d'yup. Hyuk!

6. Homophobia! 2007 was a banner year for homophobia, not so much on its own than as a springboard to free speech debates. Nitwits like Wartcott, Boissonn and little nazi Jessica Beaumont were all given legal slaps upside their vacuous heads for engaging in incendiary speech against gays, muslims or both... anyone who isn't just like them will do, really. Free Dominion has been plagued with ongoing human rights complaint problems, which they intelligently deal with by posting even longer, more offensive threads and going on the radio to announce that "gay men like to walk down the street naked". Uh yeah. The Great Free Speech Debate goes on, but I'm not so sure it's free speech they're worried about as much as their right to be assholes to minorities.

7. Islamophobia! SHRIEEEEEK! This could go with "Racism", but it's really kind of a category unto itself. It's been on the march for about 6 years -- SHRIEEEEEEK!-- but 2007 was the year Islamophobia bloomed like a putrid skunk cabbage. The paranoia was manifest in the increasing number of right-wingers warning -- SHRIEEEEEEK! -- that "western" society, society "as we know it", our "traditional" society (okay, we get it -- "white" society) is about to collapse and crumble into the dust because we aren't as prolific as Da Moooslims, and are in fact about to be -- SHRIEEEEEK! -- "overrun" by Them. No, their extremists don't help matters, but I'm thinking that their extremists and our extremists are starting to be not that far apart.

8. Global Warming Denial! Oh yeah, this was non-stop. Pictures of weather meters and barbeques abounded in the jerkosphere this year, where genuine Scientists were shunted aside in favour of retired weathermen. And that sentence alone says it all better than anything else I could possibly come up with, although the expression "LALALALALALALA" sort of comes to mind.

9. Conservative Family Values-style Hypocrisy! You knew I wasn't gonna let this one pass by without comment. Senator Larry Widestance "I'm Not Gay (I Just Like Sex With Men)" Craig led the conga line in this always-crowded dance category. The "Stall of Fame" also includes such lavatory luminaries as GOP congressman Bob Allen. But apart from the "public washroom" aspect of things, these at least involved normal gay sex. There was also some genuine conservative depravity: Scuba Sex with the Rubber Reverend, and *gag* child sexual abuse with this piece of crap, a registered republican prosecutor. It got so bad this year that a frustrated GOP strategist lamented,

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up."

No. For purveyors of progressive snark, it was 2007 and the livin' was easy.

And finally...

10. A Miracle! Huh? What? A Miracle? Yes, there was a miracle, a Conservative Christmas miracle, a Doughy Pantload of miracles: Jonah Goldberg's book, "Liberal Fascism", 10 Friedman Units in the making and re-making, was finally published a couple of weeks ago, and *gasp* will be on sale in January. A sneak peak at the contents page reveals snarkbait aplenty; I can hardly wait for the "reviews" of the actual book.

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There's more, of course -- there's always more from these nitwits. But I don't have all day week.
So that's it. The bell has almost rung on this year, and it's definitely rung on this post. Have a merry merry and a happy happy. I'm sure next year will be... oh good god in a go-kart, I almost forgot! Next year there's a Preznitial Election! It'll be just like this year -- except worse!