Teh Crazie Get Crazier (With A Local Connection)

I just found this at mediamatters.org.

Here's the setup. This is from June 23:


And a transcript:

This president has a problem with flies landing on him. Then we had the bees that were swarming the White House. And then, I don't know if you saw this -- do we have the rodents? Here's the president giving a speech and the little rat running -- watch this. OK. I don't know if he's Doctor Doolittle or what exactly. Do you remember this from the live interview? I've never seen that before. Hello. Yes. OK. Now flies landing on his mouth as he's speaking yesterday. I'm not sure what to make of it. Might be that there's a lot of BS and flies are -- but the president's ability to attract rodents and insects is kind of creepy.

To be fair (and we are nothing if we are not fair), Beck has claimed he was joking about the bees and flies and rats and Obama. This is from Mediaite:

Glenn Beck was talking about bees – specifically, asking the audience at Saturday night’s “Bold & Fresh” tour if they would be surprised to see Pres. Barack Obama one day walk out of the White House, covered head to toe in bees, hovering around him, then shake them off, and see them form the presidential seal behind him.

It was a good laugh line – and the crowd erupted. But it served as the conclusion to a lengthier Beck ‘theory’ about why flies, rats and other insects and rodents appear to be ‘attracted’ to Pres. Obama. Is it because, as his co-star Bill O’Reilly suggested, he is the Antichrist? Well I’m not necessarily saying that, said Beck, smiling. Later in the show, O’Reilly brought it back up and Beck finally relented. “Oh come on,” he said. “I’m completely joking!”

Saturday Night would be July 31st. By the way, Krakauer isn't buying that Beck was joking:

But as I sat in the audience, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone in the 1,000+ crowd had bought into the complete jokes Beck mixed into his very real, and often convincing, conservative stumping.

And then:

Beck talked about his time at CNN again – “Anderson Cooper was nice to me” he noted. He also recounted his first meeting with Larry King. “So, you’re the Mormon,” he recalled King saying. And then there was the talk about bees and rats and “communist revolutionaries” in the White House. It certainly didn’t sound like Beck was joking about that last one.

Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. But how many crazies in the crowd believed him anyway?

Or crazies elsewhere?

Like our local Rose Tennant of the Quinn and Rose show:


And as Mediamatters described Rose's crazie:

On their June 25 radio program, Pittsburgh hosts Rose Tennent and Jim Quinn read a listener's email that speculated Obama may be "evil," or an "enemy of the USA," citing evidence from Beck's June 23 Fox News show. Tennent then asked: "Isn't there something ... weird about that? Like all the insects and the rodents come out for this man, or something. Like they're attracted to him. You know like those devil movies ... Like they're attracted to the devil or something." Quinn then referred to a scene in The Passion of the Christ in which, he said, an "androgynous devil figure was walking through the Garden of Gethsemane and the worm was coming out of his nose."

And even if Quinn and Rose are as "completely joking" about this as crazie Glenn Beck is, I gotta wonder how many of teh crazies in their audience believe them anyway?

Teh Crazie, Quinn and Rose style.

Quinn and Rose Update

A few days ago Maria got an e-mail from Rose, of Quinn and Rose. She wrote to point out an error I'd made in this posting. Seems that I'd mistakenly posted that Rose had agreed with Quinn when he favorably compared slavery to being on welfare.

He's since apologized, by the way.

To make a long story short, I got into a brief and very cordial e-mail exchange with Rose.

At the end I realized that I had no idea HOW she felt about what Quinn said so I sent this to her:

But I have to ask the question (and THIS IS FOR THE BLOG): What IS your position on Quinn's discussion vis a vis slavery and welfare? Do you agree or disagree?

This is her answer:

There is an update on our page www.warroom.com

I think it will address your concerns.

As for me, I believe that welfare, when used properly is a wonderful tool to help people until they get back on their feet. I also believe that it can be abused, and therefore, ultimately prove to be oppressive. I certainly did not care for the comparison that Jim made. And, apparently, Jim has re-thought his analogy. Please read above link for more info.

So there you have it.