Today's column for the Daily Banter is all about Allen West, who, despite losing his congressional seat, is making it clear he's not going anywhere.
You so should've seen this coming.
Here's an excerpt:
"With 100% of the applicable precincts reporting in — keep that in mind: 100% — West’s Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy has come out on top by a total of 2,442 votes. The final tab breaks down with Murphy at 50.4% of the vote and West 49.6%; that’s a stark enough difference to avoid triggering an automatic recount and prolonging the suspense. So, yeah, West is officially out of a job. Now, if you can process everything you just read, fully appreciate its lack of ambiguity and accept it as mathematical reality — congratulations, you’re sane. The same, however, can’t be said for Allen West, who’s refusing to concede the election in spite of, you know, not winning."
"From now on, you will wear two-piece swim suits when on vacations. ... Angela, I need to know, are you committed to being my porn star? ... I do not want to hear ‘no’ or ‘we’ll see about that.’ I want my fantasies to be with you. God has authorized you and you only as my partner for intimacy and that is what I want."
-- Republican Rep. Allen West of Florida, in a letter to his wife written in 2003 while he was serving in Iraq which demands that his sexual requests be "standard" and "non-negotiable"
I swear, I'm beginning to like Allen West. He's so completely psychotic and dangerous that I really think the only way his tenure can end is with some kind of armed standoff.
Once he's finally voted out and it's discovered that he's been stockpiling the bodies of secretaries in the crawlspace of his Capitol office, or he returns home to become a family annihilator, I only hope that Rob Lowe gets to play him in the inevitable Lifetime women-in-peril movie of the week.
My latest piece for the Daily Banter is up -- and it's all about the most recent psychotic nugget to come tumbling out of Allen West's stupid mouth.
Here's the opening:
"Rush Limbaugh is a pompous buffoon — we all know that. When he says something over-the-top, inflammatory and painfully divorced from reality, believe it or not I kind of accept it. I get that there’s an argument to be made that the damage he’s doing through the influence he wields over the Republican party bumper sticker sloganeers and their ostensible leaders makes him a dangerous, dangerous man. But there are plenty of times when I just can’t help thinking, 'Really? This is the asshole we’re all so afraid of — this obese, impotent blowhard? This instantaneous-death heart attack waiting to happen? Fuck this guy.' I think this because while it’s true that his microphone has quite a bit of power, and it’s power that can’t really be voted out of office by a suddenly enlightened electorate, he doesn’t make policy in an official capacity. Again, he indirectly influences policy, but he doesn’t make it himself because in the end he’s just a dumb-shit shock jock.
"Understand it's going to be a brutal bloodbath because this is such an important election cycle."
-- Florida Congressman, Tea Party darling and raving psychopath Allen West on the eventual fate of Barack Obama come November
Is there anything this asshole can say that isn't steeped in violent imagery? Look, I get that it's a comment that would normally be little more than benign, given that people use that particular metaphor all the time -- but this is Allen West we're talking about. The man honestly can't open his mouth without some horseshit-masculine, Peckinpah-esque reference to barbarism tumbling out onto the floor.
By the way, sorry for the low output lately. Got a lot of projects going on right now and still trying to get a handle on how I'm gonna keep things running at East Coast speed now that I'm out west. Things will get back to normal soon enough.
"When I see her next week, I’ll straighten her out about that."
-- Rep. Allen West, responding to his constituency's concerns over a comment made by Michele Bachmann in which she implied a willingness to drill for oil in the Florida Everglades
Well, guess we won't have to worry about Bachmann anymore come next week.
If I were you, Michele, I'd seriously invest in some body armor -- and maybe a security detail made up entirely of ninjas. When Allen West says he's gonna "straighten out" a woman, he means put her in the correct position to fit in a coffin.
"I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility."
-- Congressman Allen West (R-Sociopath) comparing himself to a civil rights legend and Democratic politics to a "plantation" that black Americans need to escape from, during an interview with Bill O'Reilly last night
I'll give Allen West this: I'm not sure he's capable of just saying something benign. Remember the days before Jesse Ventura became a professional conspiracy theorist, when he was simply famous for being the one politician always guaranteed to spout indiscriminate nonsense the second anyone put a microphone in front of him (the streets in St. Paul were designed by drunken Irishmen, he was a Navy SEAL, midgets should be kept as pets, etc.)? Well West is like that, cranked to 11. I truly believe he has no idea how thoroughly offensive a good 80% of his rhetoric is, which, as I've alluded to before, is kind of the definition of a narcissist.
While comparing himself to Harriet Tubman is patently ridiculous no matter how you slice it -- and I can think of another widely referenced slavery-era character many African-Americans would call a black guy who obsequiously aligns himself with the largely white ruling-class of the Republican party -- I do actually agree with him on the point he goes on to make about the current model of black "leaders" in this country. "White liberals have turned over to certain leaders -- ‘perceived leaders’ -- in the black community like a Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, a Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee, and said, ‘pacify and keep the black community firmly behind us regardless of the failures of our social welfare policies,'" he argues. He's correct to say that we're past the point where those who subscribe to the traditional model of the perpetually aggrieved and self-appointed representative of all of black America -- a few of whom he cited by name -- should be allowed to be the only, or at least most deafening and powerful, black voices out there. But the idea that a Jesse Jackson or a Maxine Waters is a tool of the white, liberal establishment -- and that an Allen West, who's a member of a party that generally doesn't give a crap about minorities, is some sort of hero come to free black America from bondage -- is flat-out nuts. Preaching the gospel of personal responsibility is one thing; a refusal to accept that there's a very real economic and social disparity between a vast swath of white and black in this country that needs to be taken into consideration is something else entirely.
Regardless, Allen West -- a guy who says that women exist primarily in service to their warrior men, bullets and ballots essentially accomplish the same thing, and those who are currently suffering under the strain of the economic policies his party enacted have to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps -- isn't the guy to lead this fight. The fact that he honestly puts himself on a pedestal beside Harriet Tubman, who risked her life fighting the oppression that many in the modern GOP still look back on with fondness and nostalgia, tells you exactly why.
-- Jon Stewart, reacting to Rep. Allen West's quick and assured response that he was "ready to drive the car" after watching a clip from The Town aimed at pumping up House Republicans during the debt debate
West reportedly stood up and said this after watching a clip of -- prepare to make the disconsolately confused Daffy Duck face -- Ben Affleck's The Town, which House Republicans have apparently watched as a kind of motivational tool during the current debt ceiling debate. The scene in question features Affleck's character approaching Jeremy Renner's character and saying, "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is; you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people," to which Renner responds, "Whose car are we gonna take?"
Get it? Allen West says he'll drive.
So the Republicans are watching a movie about bank robbers to get themselves pumped for battle. And this was leaked presumably to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, so that everyone could know just what kind of testosterone-filled bad-asses the GOP is made of. And Allen West is, of course, assuming the role of the murderously crazy guy in the movie, the one who goes down in a hail of police gunfire. I swear, if this weren't so catastrophically sad it would be hilarious. You just can't make this kind of adolescent crap up anymore.
Still, there's never been a better metaphor than whack-job Allen West being handed the keys to a car -- which he'll then drive right over a cliff, with all of us in it.
"We're gonna hurt some people."
Indeed.
Update: Affleck is now responding to the fact that the House Republicans appear to be his new biggest fans by saying, "I don't know if this is a compliment or the ultimate repudiation." He then goes on to suggest the GOP watch another film he starred in, one he feels is more appropriate for them: The Company Men. I've actually got an even better suggestion, the most obvious one of all.
This week on the podcast I say that I can clearly imagine Allen West as a serial killer. Like I can picture in my mind the cops busting in his front door and finding him sitting quietly on his couch while all over the living room floor is what's left of his family after he's pulled a Delbert Grady. He's that kind of crazy.
Thankfully, Stephen Colbert is more tasteful than I am. And I have to assume more wisely concerned about being permanently ostracized from society.
I especially like that last one, which seems like a pretty nice sentiment until you realize that Psalm 109:8 essentially translates into a prayer for Obama to die. Man, Allen, you're totally right -- these people with Obama stickers are idiots. What's more, you know they screw a lot and are constantly creating even more uneducated white-trash assholes, making them, as you said, a real danger to the gene pool.
Oh, wait -- you were talking about people with pro-Obama stickers? My bad.
Seriously, is there ever gonna come a point where West's cup of dangerous crazy finally tops off?
No, really, he's terrifying -- an unapologetic misogynist with serious anger issues, a history of violent behavior and an affinity for irresponsible and incendiary rhetoric that's surpassed only by his unnervingly icy demeanor. West can go from zero-to-Bateman in two seconds flat, which is why his beaver-shit crazy reaction to a perceived slight by fellow Florida representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the House floor today shouldn't surprise anyone.
It shouldn't surprise anyone. It should, however, frighten the hell out of everyone.
See for yourself:
"From: Z112 West, Allen Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 04:48 PM To: Wasserman Schultz, Debbie Cc: McCarthy, Kevin; Blyth, Jonathan; Pelosi, Nancy; Cantor, Eric Subject: Unprofessional and Inappropriate Sophomoric Behavior from Wasserman-Schultz
Look, Debbie, I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional ,and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up. Focus on your own congressional district!
I am bringing your actions today to our Majority Leader and Majority Whip and from this time forward, understand that I shall defend myself forthright against your heinous characterless behavior……which dates back to the disgusting protest you ordered at my campaign hqs, October 2010 in Deerfield Beach.
You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!
Steadfast and Loyal
Congressman Allen B West (R-FL)"
Yeah. Totally sane and well-adjusted, that one.
West's complete losing of his shit came after Wasserman Schultz made a reference to his support for the ridiculous dog and pony show that is the "Cut, Cap and Balance" legislation after he had already left the floor, saying that West was essentially selling out Medicare recipients. Was it a slightly low blow? You could argue that, although I personally don't see it as a huge deal and wouldn't even if the roles were reversed. Was West's reaction not simply out of line but completely unacceptable from a United States Congressman; was it a gargantuan breach of congressional decorum; did it violate the implied and explicit code of civilized conduct among House members and should it leave people questioning whether West's apparently uncontrollable temper makes him even fit for office? Yes, yes and yes. He's not a child on a fucking playground; he's an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives. If he can't act like a respectable adult he should be forced to pack his shit into a suitcase and go home to Florida.
There are certain arguments that I try to avoid making, even when the evidence for them is somewhat obvious, if only because they tend to take the fight to an entirely new level and can occasionally be discounted as being unnecessarily inflammatory. Case in point: I'd like to overlook the nagging feeling that a large part of West's problem with what happened on the floor is that he felt like he was being shown disrespect by a woman, and that he needed to put her back in her rightful place. I really don't want to come right out and say that because of course I can't prove it beyond a doubt. But something about West's tone and language with Wasserman Schultz just leaves me thinking that the argument is unavoidable. West has a pretty nice little history of casually asserting his God-given, masculine dominance over women -- and I have to imagine it boiled his blood that Debbie Wasserman Schultz had the nerve to think she had the power to insult him on the House floor when he wasn't there.
Again, do I know for sure that misogyny played a role in West's embarrassingly unhinged e-mail to half the House? No, I don't.
Do I know that Allen West is one scary asshole? Absolutely.
If you've read this site for just about any length of time you know that I've gotten used to being a speed bag for the Huffington Post peanut gallery. Whenever something of mine gets published over there, it's usually possible to count the minutes before the HuffPo readers -- some of whom are incredibly bright, some of whom may as well be free-range retards -- begin wondering aloud whether I'm a paid operative for Fox News or just your average Renfield-esque flunkie. This is probably because the pieces of mine that get posted there have tended, especially lately, to be more centrist than the mixed-bag you find here. And for the professionally pissed-off liberal Star Chamber that holds court round-the-clock in the Huffington Post comment section, my attempts at being reasonably moderate mean I may as well be pissing on a welfare baby while eating a Big Mac and plowing a Hummer through the front of a Whole Foods in the Haight.
So with that in mind you can imagine the kind of ire my recent piece on Cenk Uygur and the arrest of Nicole Sandler drew. To be honest, not a lot of people commented on it, but quite a few of the ones who did -- particularly Brad Friedman from the Brad Blog, some of whose work I happen to like but who I wound up getting into a ridiculously drawn-out debate with -- basically took me to task. To say that it doesn't bother me one way or the other and that I'm actually just entertained as hell by it is a pretty gross understatement. But what it proves is that while, no, the left and right are nowhere near the same -- not when it comes to the level of intellectually dishonest hypocrisy they're willing to spew or the incomprehensible lack of shame they regularly display -- blind tribal loyalty is as powerful at one end of the political spectrum as it is at the other. And even a little bit of straying off-message -- even from someone who's obviously, for the most part, on your side -- just cannot stand.
I normally post the best responses here, but to be honest the only thing really amusing is the back-and-forth between me and Friedman -- so I'll just refer you to the post at HuffPo and let you read for yourself.
I watched a segment a little while ago on the always delightful Cenk Uygur's show on MSNBC and to be honest the guy and his producers really deserve to be called out on a couple of things.
Uygur was interviewing Nicole Sandler, the South Florida radio host who managed to get arrested on Tuesday evening at a town hall meeting hosted by Rep. Allen West (R-Psychopath), and during his introduction he did something that was really misleading. He showed a clip of Sandler shouting a question at West -- what some considered a serious disruption but what didn't seem like a huge deal -- and following a very minor amount of resulting chaos, the video cut to images of a Fort Lauderdale cop putting Sandler's hands behind her back and cuffing her. Both the visual and the verbal implication from Uygur's voice-over made it crystal clear: Sandler shouted some questions at West and was arrested just a couple of seconds after and presumably for it.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened.
Sandler has posted the extended video over at her website -- in the interest of full disclosure, she's a member of the Banter Media Network -- and what it shows is that as the officer was escorting her out of the room she was giving him crap the entire way. Getting upset with a cop isn't generally an arrestable offense, but it is if you also don't do what that cop tells you to -- and that's what happened. He very calmly asked her to keep moving, she slowed down then stopped, stuck her finger in his face and yelled at him to get his hands off her and -- surprise, you're under arrest.
Now, did Nicole Sandler deserve to be escorted off the premises to begin with? Maybe not. Should Allen West be forced to answer for the unbelievable horseshit he spews? Absolutely. Is it a crime to shout questions at a congressman at a public town hall meeting? If it were the jails would've been filled with terrified and pissed off Republican old people a couple of summers ago. But you don't get to react with shock when you don't do what a police officer tells you to and he hauls you off to jail for it. You want to make a political statement and purposely get yourself arrested, that's one thing, but don't pretend that some great injustice has occurred -- and that you never saw it coming -- because you didn't follow a cop's instructions and he did his job.
Incidentally, Sandler's defiant act apparently didn't stop at the arrest. She said during the interview that she was maced in jail; when Uygur indignantly asked why, she essentially came right out and admitted that she argued with the officers, questioned everything they told her to do, wouldn't immediately follow their instructions. Again, is this a reason for someone to get maced? I can't say since I didn't see exactly what happened -- but throughout the entire interview I just kept shaking my head and remembering the Chris Rock bit about how you react when a cop tells you to do something: "Yes sir!" Jesus, even if you had made the conscious decision to really stick it to Allen West at his town meeting, consequences be damned, once you're actually in police custody and you've made your point you have nothing to gain by continuing to be antagonistic toward the police. Just who do you think has the upper hand in that test of wills?
Look, I swear I'm not really trying to beat up on Nicole Sandler; shouting down Allen West is an inarguably good thing if only because everyone will get a couple of seconds where they won't have to hear him. I'm actually more pissed at Uygur's complete and borderline unethical disregard for the truth -- for knowingly twisting events so that it all became "blue meat" for his and his audience's firmly held biases. That's the kind of crap Fox News pulls all the time and it shouldn't be acceptable -- even once in a while -- from those who constantly criticize Fox for it.
Oh yeah, one more thing -- both Cenk Uygur and the lower-third onscreen graphic kept insisting that Sandler had gone to "prison." No, she didn't. She went to jail -- there's a difference.
If Uygur's going to actually be allowed to play pro ball rather than being relegated to the farm league, he'd better start taking his game a hell of a lot more seriously.
Update
Here's the story as presented on Uygur's show tonight:
In the immortal words of the Joker, "And here we... go!":
"FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4) -– Former Air America radio talk show host Nicole Sandler was arrested Tuesday night after a raucous South Florida GOP town hall meeting. The meeting, held at the Calvary Chapel on West Cypress Creek Road, got off to a rocky start when a handful of protesters heckled speaker U.S. Rep. Allen West over Medicare and his requirement that questions had to submitted in writing. Police escorted them out of the room."
Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the summer of town hall karma.
"We need you to come in and lock shields, and strengthen up the men who are going to the fight for you. To let these other women know on the other side -- these planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women, and all of these women that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness -- to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient. That’s what we need you to do."
-- Republican Rep. Allen West of Florida, addressing the members of Women Impacting Nation
I'd run down the list of staggeringly stupid things West has said since emerging onto the political scene and being sent to Congress by the shit-kicking dolts of southern Florida, but we'd be here all day. Suffice it to say that between this bit of unapologetic misogyny and his poetic plea that America needs "Spartan women to make Spartan men," from the same speech, I think it's safe to say that the only one crazier than ex-Colonel West here is Mrs. West.
By the way, that Spartan women comment, as well as the above quote, for some reason immediately made me think of the sign on the parade float in Animal House that read, "When Better Women Are Made, Faber Men Will Make Them." It's worth noting that the way men reacted to the women's movement was still in its bumbling infant stages in 1962, when the movie is set, and that gives you a good indication of where West's mindset remains to this day -- like most Tea Party darlings, still clinging to that hallowed vision of late 50s-early-60s America, where women and minorities knew their place. There's delicious irony, of course, in the fact that West is black is and yet not only seems to long for a world in which he'd be drinking out of his own water fountain but that he takes the side of the Alpha Dog in the equation, believing he's been endowed with special dominion over all creatures by the creator. But when I think of the Animal House comparison, one thing immediately comes to mind, and I'm not sure this can be argued with: Allen West is basically the black Doug Neidermeyer.
Allen West is a freshman congressman from Florida. He's a Tea Party darling who, among other noteworthy achievements, retired from the Army after taking a shot at an Iraqi civilian in order to intimidate him, compared President Obama to Hitler and encouraged people to arm themselves against the government, and named as his chief of staff a far-right talk radio host whose lunatic rhetoric was connected with a credible threat that led police to lock down every single school in Broward County, Florida last November.
In other words, Allen West is a real peach.
So maybe it's not surprising that he sees the AOL-Huffington Post deal as the end of all life as we know it.
"You look out there, you see that AOL has purchased the Huffington Post. Now all of a sudden a very far left liberal blogger such as Arianna Huffington has a huge influence in the Internet world," he said. We cannot allow ourselves to be suppressed. We cannot allow them to take over the Internet."
Three things: First of all, Arianna Huffington just sold her wholly independent, "very far left liberal" blog to the most conservative, milquetoast internet media conglomerate in America -- and pocketed $315 million dollars for herself and her partners in the process. If that doesn't win her some street cred from the big business-fellating crowd, what the hell will?
Second, is there anything more comical than listening to a right-wing blowhard feign victimization at the hands of the supposed liberal juggernaut bent on quashing his or her views? The constant cries of "we will not be silenced or suppressed" from a group whose media bullhorn is positively deafening these days is the stuff of cheap farce. That said, the conspiratorial "encroaching threat" argument is one that's been used by the most unimaginative political talking heads on the right -- to great effect -- for the past few years, so it's not surprising a hack like West would bust it out.
Third, you wanna know why the conservative movement is losing the internet? Media Matters goes on to nail it: What has the avowed right got in terms of new media that's truly groundbreaking? Sure, it owns the talk radio medium and it's correct when it boasts that as of now progressives don't stand a chance of breaking its stranglehold -- and there's even an argument to be made that the left can't put a dent in Fox News's adamantium hull on television. But the internet is an entirely different beast; it's a place where innovation and imagination triumph and it's one that lends itself to the non-linear way the left and center-left tend to think. In much the same way that conservatives look down their noses at any attempt by progressives to match the success of, say, Rush Limbaugh, progressives can rightly claim that their political adversaries haven't even come close to smacking it out of the park on the internet the way HuffPo has. Yeah, there's Drudge, but that's almost 15 years old and it's barely evolved since its inception -- and there's no way in hell a major corporation of any kind would get near Breitbart with a pair of rubber gloves and a cattle prod.
Don't like what you see when you "look out there," congressman?
Maybe you need to take a harder look at who your audience is.
There's something going on in South Florida right now that might be worth paying close attention to.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: Yesterday, every public school in Broward County -- all 300+ of them -- were locked down for most of the day after a "credible threat" was apparently made against them by someone who called in to a local radio show. Turns out that radio show belonged to Joyce Kaufman -- a conservative talk show host who, last July 4th, took to the mic to say that "if ballots don't work, bullets will," and who recently ranted that America is in danger of "losing our culture" to illegal immigrants.
The latest is that the police have the suspect in custody who reportedly made the threat -- according to his wife, his claim was that he was going to shoot up a school or a government building -- and that he's being anything but cooperative.
On the surface, this reads like yet another case of some far-right firebrand with a microphone urging revolution and, not surprisingly, finding that somebody in her audience is willing to take her up on it. We've seen it before -- we know that we will absolutely see it again. But here's the twist: Joyce Kaufman was recently picked to be the Chief of Staff for incoming Florida Republican Congressman and Tea Party darling Allen West (they're pictured above). She was going to Washington, DC with him.
I say was because, as this story began breaking just a couple of hours ago, Kaufman immediately backed out and said that she won't be taking the job.
Let me go back to the beginning. Every kid who goes to a public school in Broward County, Florida had to be locked inside his or her classroom yesterday. For hours. Because one wingnut psychopath may have promised violence at the irresponsible and incendiary goading of a conservative talk show host.
More to come.
Really.
(Update 4:26PM: Here's the official write-up from the AP: MIAMI (AP) — A conservative radio talk show host tapped to be chief of staff for incoming U.S. Rep. Allen West is stepping down from her congressional job a day after 300 Florida schools were locked down when a threat was linked to her show. Joyce Kaufman announced Thursday that she would not be West's aide. Kaufman said on her show that she wants to avoid any repercussions to the Florida Republican, but she didn't elaborate and hasn't returned telephone messages. Kaufman has drawn fire for some of her comments. At a recent tea party rally, she told the crowd that if "ballots don't work, bullets will." Police have said the message to Kaufman from the suspect mentioned gun rights but they have refused to release its contents.)
