Never mind Ike and its devastation of the US landscape -- the hurricane devastating the mindscape of right-wing America at the moment is our own Heather Mallick:"Canadian journalist Heather Mallick is facing an ugly onslaught from the U.S. right-wing media and its fans for an online column she wrote maligning Sarah Palin as "white trash."The Sept. 5 column on CBC.ca, entitled "A Mighty Wind Blows Through the Republican Convention," had already been on the receiving end of vitriol from some Canadian news organizations.
But Fox News picked up on it this week, and unleashed its full fury on Mallick for stating that Palin, the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee, appeals to "the white trash vote" with her "toned-down version of the porn actress look.""
Last week I posted about the double head explosion that Mallick set off with her snarky Viewpoint piece about Sarah Palin -- the janitor is still scrubbing bits of brain and skull from the walls of the National Post. (Okay, more skull than brain. A lot more.) Eleven days is an eternity by the lightning-fast information-moving standards of the internets, yet the article continues to cause a chain-reaction of head explosions on both sides of the border, particularly since Fox News covered it. And are they fucking squealing! Now the article's combox at the CBC website is foaming over with spittle-flecked outrage, and there are still comments being posted even as I type (6 more just now). GET A LIFE, WINGNUTS! Never before has there been so much faux outrage from so many over so little.
It's not just Americans perpetuating the fauxtrage. I happened to turn on the O'Reilly show yesterday, just in time to hear Bill-O take a call from "Lance on Vancouver Island, Canada"... "What say you, Lance?". What said Lance is that he wanted to apologize to "All Americans" on behalf of Canada for Mallick's column, and then add fawningly that "Canada just does what You Guys (the US) do". Pant, pant. A patronizing and scornful O'Reilly scolded Lance, self-appointed Ambassador of Grovelling, and advised Canadians to rise up en masse against the CBC. (Lance whimpered and begged for a cookie.) Wow -- so that's what Canada's conservatives have come to? Simpering lapdogs of the American right?
But I'm getting away from myself here. Back to Saint Sarah, who's disliked (to put it mildly) for a number of excellent reasons apart from her lack of qualifications for the VP's job: she's a proven liar and a Jesus Camp simpleton who has the unmitigated hubris to think she could actually handle the job of VP (never mind that "one heartbeat" thing!). Georgie in a dress. Here in Canada, where polls indicate that 66% of us would vote for Obama if we could, it should come as no surprise that extremist nitwits like Palin are widely loathed. So one of our columnists wrote a negative opinion piece about her -- so what? What part of the word "Viewpoint" don't these people understand?? This isn't news reporting, it's an opinion piece. Ya know -- that free speech thingie?
It's not just Americans perpetuating the fauxtrage. I happened to turn on the O'Reilly show yesterday, just in time to hear Bill-O take a call from "Lance on Vancouver Island, Canada"... "What say you, Lance?". What said Lance is that he wanted to apologize to "All Americans" on behalf of Canada for Mallick's column, and then add fawningly that "Canada just does what You Guys (the US) do". Pant, pant. A patronizing and scornful O'Reilly scolded Lance, self-appointed Ambassador of Grovelling, and advised Canadians to rise up en masse against the CBC. (Lance whimpered and begged for a cookie.) Wow -- so that's what Canada's conservatives have come to? Simpering lapdogs of the American right?
But I'm getting away from myself here. Back to Saint Sarah, who's disliked (to put it mildly) for a number of excellent reasons apart from her lack of qualifications for the VP's job: she's a proven liar and a Jesus Camp simpleton who has the unmitigated hubris to think she could actually handle the job of VP (never mind that "one heartbeat" thing!). Georgie in a dress. Here in Canada, where polls indicate that 66% of us would vote for Obama if we could, it should come as no surprise that extremist nitwits like Palin are widely loathed. So one of our columnists wrote a negative opinion piece about her -- so what? What part of the word "Viewpoint" don't these people understand?? This isn't news reporting, it's an opinion piece. Ya know -- that free speech thingie?
The perpetually fauxtraged jabber about the CBC's taxpayer funding, and Why-is-the-Canadian-Government-paying-for-this-far-left-moonbattery??? SHRIEEEEK!!!
But moonbattery is in the eye of the beholder. Although some of Mallick's remarks may have been intemperate and even petty (the part about the "overtreated hair", hmm -- Palin's caramel and platinum highlights are identical to my own), a lot of what she said is in fact what many of us think... and if we're to believe the non-foaming comments at the CBC website, an opinion also shared by more than a few Americans. More than anything, the Palin pick has drawn so much fire because it shows that even after 8 hideous, disastrous years of Bush, American conservatives haven't learned a goddamn thing. Keeping the GOP in power is more important than proper governance, more important than national security, more important than ending their endless wars and fixing their broken economy. Which would be okay if the USA was some banana republic whose play elections and faux-candidates didn't affect anyone else in the world, but it isn't.
Meanwhile, wingnuts continue to register with the CBC website just to post a vitriolic comment -- honestly, don't these people have anything better to think about? Like their 401ks that were looted by the last gang of petro pimps and warmongers?
But moonbattery is in the eye of the beholder. Although some of Mallick's remarks may have been intemperate and even petty (the part about the "overtreated hair", hmm -- Palin's caramel and platinum highlights are identical to my own), a lot of what she said is in fact what many of us think... and if we're to believe the non-foaming comments at the CBC website, an opinion also shared by more than a few Americans. More than anything, the Palin pick has drawn so much fire because it shows that even after 8 hideous, disastrous years of Bush, American conservatives haven't learned a goddamn thing. Keeping the GOP in power is more important than proper governance, more important than national security, more important than ending their endless wars and fixing their broken economy. Which would be okay if the USA was some banana republic whose play elections and faux-candidates didn't affect anyone else in the world, but it isn't.
Meanwhile, wingnuts continue to register with the CBC website just to post a vitriolic comment -- honestly, don't these people have anything better to think about? Like their 401ks that were looted by the last gang of petro pimps and warmongers?
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