THIS MODERN WORLD

If I had my way, that would be his name, as far as any rational person was concerned. (As in: “I was in my car listening to Crazy Glenn Beck …”) Because Crazy Glenn Beck has carved out his own niche in the talk radio/Fox News spectrum, and it is the Crazy niche. And these aren’t exactly venues known for their non-craziness to begin with.

Glenn Greenwald has a rundown of Crazy Glenn Beck’s latest lunacy — “war gaming” the, uh, coming civil war.

Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air blog links to Crazy Glenn Beck’s discussion of the coming civil war, but even there, the writer feels compelled to note:

There’s something “off” about Beck in a way that’s not true of other chat-show hosts, although that’s not necessarily a criticism: O’Reilly and Hannity can be tiresome in more than small doses but this guy I find watchable even at a stretch. Partly it’s the sheer bravado of the performance, partly it’s the challenge of trying to figure out what’s going on in his head to make him the way he is.

When a right winger is so crazy that one of Michelle Malkin’s bloggers finds it necessary to post a disclaimer, however mild — that’s some serious crazy!

Crazy Glenn Beck had a health incident a couple of Christmasses ago — somehow things went awry with his health care provider and he had at least one incredibly rough night, which he later described to his listeners as consisting of terrible visions, such as — I’m not making this up but I am paraphrasing from memory — children’s faces being chewed off by dogs.

I was listening that morning and I remember thinking, “Wow! Discussing visions of children’s faces being chewed off by dogs on a nationally syndicated morning radio program? That’s crazy, even for Crazy Glenn Beck!”

So to answer the Hot Air blogger’s question, I’ll tell you what’s going on in Crazy Glenn Beck’s head: he’s trying not to react to the invisible people shouting at him, the ones that only he can see and hear, because he knows he’s on camera and he has to hold it together. He’s trying not to let the demons crawl right out of his skin while he’s in front of the microphone, because his livelihood depends on walking up to the crazy line but not crossing over, and mostly he succeeds, but clearly the strain is taking its toll. Bill O’Reilly used to be my leading candidate for right wing blowhard most likely to have an on air meltdown, but since Fox gave him a live tv show, Crazy Glenn Beck has pulled way into the lead.

(Crazy Glenn Beck’s bizarre post-surgery YouTube video is here. And here — at about the fifty second mark — Crazy Glenn Beck “jokes” about specific and graphic ways he would like to kill Michael Moore. Ha ha ha.)

… adding: the week after that plane landed in the Hudson, Crazy Glenn Beck was talking about how it was a sign from God for us to stay calm in these uncertain times. And he didn’t mean it as some sort of metaphor — it was literally a message to Americans from God Almighty not to panic, that He is here with us and we will survive the current economic turmoil.

Kind of a roundabout way for Him to get the word out, but okay, whatever. But then shortly afterwards came the horrible plane crash in Buffalo, which, of course, no one survived. Unfortunately I didn’t listen to Crazy Glenn Beck after that one, so I’m not sure what follow-up message God was allegedly sending us there.

At some point back in 2005 or so, I was exchanging email with a few friends, kicking around this idea that I’d had to start up a parody right wing blog — not actually an outright obvious satire like Jesus’ General, but rather, something that would walk the fine line between plausibility and idiocy, so that readers would never quite be sure if we were serious or not.

And we called it “Red State.”

No, I kid. The idea kind of fizzled out, though somebody at that point — maybe me, but I don’t want to take credit where it’s not due — came up with the name “Freedom Fist!”

In March, 2006 I wrote a cartoon about the “Nitpicking Squad” — based on the prevalent right-wing-blog tactic of, well, nitpicking. You know: “The President never said that specific word, so clearly liberals are completely wrong about everything, nyah nyah nyah.” And that got me to thinking once again about the mighty Fist. And to make a long story short, I snagged a few more people into my little scheme, and for about a month we had a great deal of fun. For instance:

A Bleg

I’m working on an article about the Democrat party’s petty vendetta against Dick Cheney. In my research, I noticed people like Eschaton keep mentioning Haliburton. Does anyone know where I can find out more about this?

posted by Objectivist in CA @ 3:01 PM

Hey Objectivist

Don’t forget how the Dimmocrats tried to make such a big deal out of a simple hunting accident, when Dick Cheney was more concerned with getting his friend to the hospital than with holding a press conference for the spoiled babies in the MSM.

(also, this is a “blog”, not a “bleg.” It is short for “weblog.”)

posted by Patriot Zero @ 4:05 PM

Unleash The Energy!

I recommend Halliburton.com, the company website. As a corporation, they are legally required to make everything you need to know public, something liberal idiors never seem to understand!!

You can even login and create your own account under MyHalliburton, right under the picture of three strong men in red hats. I mean, MyHalliburton, what else do you need to know they are acting on our behalf?!?

posted by Falkland Avenger @ 4:06 PM

It kind of went on like that.

The project lasted a few weeks and then sort of fizzled out. I went on a book tour for “Hell in a Handbasket,” which totally killed my own momentum — but more than that, maintaining a blog is actually a lot of work, and blogging regularly under assumed personnas, walking that fine line between parody and freeper-reality, ended up taking more time than any of us expected.

I think it’s probably more fun, at least for now, if I just let you read the thing without revealing who was using which screen name. But one note of explanation is necessary: you will notice that one of our faux-wingnuts posts under the name “Michael Berube.” This is because Professor Berube was, in fact, one of my unindicted co-conspirators, and — I assume because he created a subsequent Google account under his own name — his wingnut identity has been subsumed by his actual identity. So when you see a post by “Michael Berube,” just imagine that it is actually by the “Red Lantern.” Unless you find it more amusing to imagine that a not-very-bright wingnut somehow thought it would be funny to post under the name of “Michael Berube,” in which case, you are free to go with that scenario instead. It’s like a song, or a cartoon — once it’s released into the world, it’s yours to interpret as you please!

The link below will take you to the March archive, which is pretty much the whole archive. But don’t forget to click through to April, where you will find one final post, explaining why the Fist became dormant.

And one other note: sadly, I must report that comments have been lost to time, due to the various Google/Blogger updates. And we actually had a few — from at least one genuine reader who genuinely seemed to be taking us at face value!

So without further ado — Out of the Mouth of Freedom Comes a Mighty Roar! (I recommend scrolling to the bottom and working your way up.)

And just for the record, we definitely did not continue the project under any other name, such as Red State, which, to our knowledge is a 100% genuine blog not being created as a high concept prank by a bunch of left-wing bloggers and cartoonists. Honest!

Why has the Obama administration—including Obama himself and Secretary of State Clinton—started talking about Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” even though U.S. intelligence agencies don’t have any actual evidence that such a thing exists? Because the politicians have reached “consensus.” Charles Davis explains.

Bors:

Who knew a bullet-riddled chimp would end up being the American equivalent of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban? Actually you could probably predict that we were going to be dealing with stuff like this under our first black president. We’ll see more of it as the nearly all-white profession struggles to explain their political metaphors involving primates and Gangsta Rap over the next four years. Socialist Godzilla destroying America? Fine. Comrade King Kong capturing a white woman labeled “American Values.” That’s bad.

To tell you the truth I don’t think Delonas’ intent was to portray the chimp as Obama at all. But when shit blows up in your face this bad, you know you overlooked something in the idea phase.

I didn’t read the Post regularly when I lived in the city, but I do remember Delonas’ work as painfully clunky. I tend to agree with Bors — it’s unlikely that he meant for the chimp to represent anything in particular. It was just the news story of the day, and he was doing that thing that daiily editorial cartoonists do where they take the story everyone’s talking about and slap on a few labels and call it “commentary.” (Bors has a particularly brilliant parody of the genre, here.) My guess is that Delonas simply wasn’t bright enough to understand that “political metaphors involving primates” are going to be perceived differently under the first african american president. (That other cartoonist I linked to in an earlier post, also via Bors — thanks for doing all the heavy lifting, Matt! — is an entirely different story. That cartoon seems to have been pulled from the server, but it had two panels: one with a large scary black man telling a white guy to hand over his money or “I’m gonna put a cap in your ass,” the other with a trim black President of the United States telling a white guy “I’m going to put a cap on your salary.” That one’s hard to justify as a simple oversight, a failure to recognize the changing racial context of the country.)

Incidentally, did you know I am psychic? It’s true! I know without even looking that out there in the vast wilds of the interent, there are right wing bloggers complaining that George Bush was often portrayed as a dumb chimp, so what’s wrong with drawing Barack Obama as a big dead black monkey? And also if black people can use the “n” word when talking to each other, why can’t white people? Yargle bargle blarg snort.

Another example of my eerie ability: without even so much as a google search, I can state with absolute confidence that earlier in the month, Delonas drew at least one cartoon featuring people standing on the wing of an airplane. And maybe the airplane was labeled “the economy,” and the passengers were, I don’t know, “Congress,” or maybe “the American People.” At any rate, you get the idea.

Update: can’t believe I missed this!

Dangle’s on the beat.

… I don’t have much to add, but I do want to note for the record that San Diego CityBeat is not one of the papers which recently suspended cartoons — they’ve supported TMW for a long time, and continue to do so.