Monday, February 06, 2012

IT'S OBVIOUS WHY REPRESENTATIVE FLEMING BELIEVED THAT ONION ARTICLE WAS REAL

You know about this, of course:

Congressman Falls for The Onion's Planned Parenthood 'Abortionplex' Story

Meet John Fleming, the unfortunate Republican U.S. Representative from Louisiana who made that wonderful and all-too-common mistake of thinking that an
Onion article was real and telling his Facebook followers to read it....

The Onion article depicts a preposterously massive complex where abortions are gleefully done in thousands of rooms at once and further abortions are excitedly encouraged. Why would a right-wingers believe we'd build such a thing and goad women on to more and more abortions?

Well, a lot of these folks have started to believe their own talking points, the key one in this case being the one that posits the existence of a "liberal culture of death." It's not clear what the hell wingers mean when they say this -- start Googling it and you find that it manifests itself in, say, Hollywood movies about gay people, or (according to Glenn Beck a while back) a campaign to push a death-oriented sci-fi anthology to the top of the Amazon bestseller list. But primarily the wingers mean a support for abortion rights, sometimes accompanied by belief in a right to euthanasia, or support for stem cell research, or, God help us, opposition to Sarah Palin, which all wingers ascribe to our alleged disgust at the fact that she didn't abort Trig.

The statistic that frequently accompanies discussions of the "liberal culture of death" is that 92% of Down syndrome pregnancies end in abortion -- though how this can be blamed on liberalism I'm not sure, unless America suddenly went 92% liberal and I just missed it.

But the notion is that liberals relish death, savor death, embrace death for its own sake -- we feel about death, according to these folks, the way they feel about God, or Sarah Palin, or Trig, or puppies, or something equally wonderful.

They actually believe this about us. So, sure, they'd think Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood would say, as she does in The Onion's fake story,

"Although we've traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion," said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood's new slogan, "No Life Is Sacred." "And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it's going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day."

It's gone beyond a belief that we're all sluts and slut-lovers with no morals or sense of responsibility (which is Atrios's theory). Now, in their eyes, we're Freddie. We're Jason. We're Hitler. We're nihilists who kill for sport.

7 comments:

debg said...

We embrace our "death culture" the way they embrace their wars.

Anonymous said...

I think it's simpler than that. Fleming saw a headline about a lavish new facility, understood the cues that made the headline resemble news, then bit. He didn't read the piece. He read the headline un-skeptically, probably after someone else flagged it for him.

Cereal said...

As usual South Park nailed this long ago. Check out the WTF episode where the kids start a WWF-style wrestling show. Cartman has one wrestling character, a seven-year-old girl who is addicted to having abortions. And the idiot fans/rednecks totally believe it.

c u n d gulag said...

I've come to the conclusion that we overuse the term "fucking moron."

Therefore, when we come upon a genuine, All-American, fucking moron like this fucking moron, we are left with nothing that distinguishes him from the run-of-the-mill morons on the right.

I know it's some pretty stiff competition.

Maybe someone more creative than I am can come up with a serviceable term, because right now, 'FUCKING MORON" is the best I can do.

Ten Bears said...

nihilists who kill for sport. They're the ones wo start the wars.

BH said...

This Fleming (an M.D., no less) is the same pinhead who publicly whined last year about only having a lousy 400G's per year left after taxes. Thank heaven for Louisiana; its pols provide some competition for my Gov-for-Life Perry et al. in the Stupidity Sweepstakes.

Bluesborn said...

We Liberals of course are salivating at the prospect of yet another aborted "baby" and yet inexplicably once they are born we do everything in our power to see that they are fed and schooled and have a roof over their heads.See?We have our priorities all wrong.Obviously once you are born you are on your own.If you can't make yourself useful well then it's your patriotic duty to turn yourself into cannon fodder.