One of the most pervasive themes in right-wing discourse throughout the years has been a fear of infestation -- the notion that non-whites, gays, immigrants, godless humanists, basically anyone deemed "not us" are replicating like the vermin they are and, if left unchecked, will eventually eviscerate the values of "traditional America" via their sheer unholy numbers. It's this amusingly irrational brand of paranoia that haunts the dreams of not only your average semi-literate, Keystone Light-drinking lummox, but equally scares the hell out of ostensibly educated folk who you'd think would know better.
People like Pat Boone.
Sure, Boone's little more than an irrelevant caricature -- admittedly the biggest WASP who's ever walked the face of the earth and Anita Bryant's only slightly more masculine counterpart in espousing the Gospel of Whitey -- but it's still tough to imagine him dabbling in eliminationist fantasies aimed at, of all places, the White House. And yet that's exactly what he's now doing. In a move that's even more painfully embarrassing than that ridiculous metal album he recorded back in the early 90s, Boone's penned a column for Newsmax in which he claims that the home of the president of the United States needs to be tented and fumigated to kill off the "social and political voracious varmints" who've overrun it.
Boone writes, "Experts come in, actually envelope the whole dwelling in a giant tent -- and send a very powerful fumigant, lethal to the varmints and unwelcome creatures, into every nook and cranny of the house. Done thoroughly, every last destructive insect or rodent is sent to varmint hell -- and in a day or two, the grand house is habitable again."
And no doubt Pat's willing to donate his own personal supply of Zyklon B gas to the proceedings. Either way, feel free to take a minute to stop laughing.
Yes, of course this is (no pun intended) the most rat-shit absurd thing you've ever heard, dreamed up by a guy who likely longs for the good old days when "coloreds" couldn't use the same bathroom as him, much less occupy the highest office in his beloved country. But this kind of horseshit is just the latest example of something I've mentioned a couple of times here before: the utter dehumanization of Barack Obama by his political adversaries.
Back in September, I wrote this:
"That's really what it's all about, though -- the fact that Barack Obama's political enemies don't actually accept him as president. They consider him an illegitimate -- his presidency some kind of sham, regardless of the overwhelming majority he won back in November of 2008. They've demonized and marginalized him -- called him a foreigner, a socialist, a threat to the American way of life, a cult leader intent on indoctrinating and enslaving our children through sheer force of personality. They bring guns to places he's speaking; they have so little respect for the man or the fact that he won the office he now holds that they intimate that they're willing to cause physical harm to him and his supporters."
And now, not surprisingly, they refer to him and his family as insects -- "unwelcome creatures" infesting the White House that require quick and absolute extermination so that the natural order of things can be restored.
Newsmax should be wary of printing this kind of crap right now, given that just a few weeks ago they rushed, uncharacteristically red-faced, to take down a post which seemed to advocate a military coup against the president of the United States. I'd have to assume its only Pat Boone's status as a walking punchline that's leading them to leave his own bit of eliminationist wishful thinking up on their site for the moment. Regardless of who says it, though, it's wrong to beat the drum this loudly against a sitting president, to show the office -- not simply the man and his family, but the office -- so little respect.
Not only is it wrong -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- it's flat-out dangerous given the current political climate.
All the way back in August of last year -- long before the Tea Baggers, the Birthers, the death panel rumors, fears of the encroaching socialist menace, conspiracist lunacy about the indoctrination of our children, even the presidential election itself -- I wrote this in response to the rise in right-wing, eliminationist rhetoric and violence:
"It's an agenda which has, admittedly, been proclaimed and perpetuated -- whether in jest or not -- by people like Limbaugh, Coulter and Savage for some time. These three and others like them have honed their talk of zero-tolerance for the people across the aisle to a knife's edge. For years, they've blanketed the airwaves, bookshelves and internet with ultra-nationalist agitprop which asserts that those who don't think like them are not simply to be argued with and voted down, they must be utterly crushed underfoot by any means necessary -- even if it involves, as Coulter once said, taking a baseball bat to them -- because they are nothing less than the enemy of the United States of America. In the words, if not actually the minds, of these seemingly fascist demagogues, liberals are as dangerous and absolute a threat to our way of life as the terrorists they supposedly coddle.
...Whether they mean it to or not, the invective of clowns like Limbaugh does have an impact. Listen long enough to right-wing propaganda and your eyes eventually glaze over, your brain shuts down and you begin to subscribe completely to the alternate reality that it's constructed out of thin air: an America where your new non-white neighbors are terrorists, immigrants are stealing your job, homosexuals want to lure your children into a life of sodomy, and treasonous liberals are plotting against you and your god at every turn. Believe this paranoid fantasy completely and who knows what you'll be capable of doing to defend your way of life."
I have no doubt that Boone's piece is supposed to be a joke -- but it's one that, in context, isn't all that funny.
Which is surprising given that Pat Boone's entire existence is one of the funniest fucking things imaginable.
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