Evergreen myths and legends of the conservative corner
by digby
I confess that I pretty much hate twitter these days, which is sad. I used to love it. But lately it's an endless loop of scolding and finger-pointing and denouncing and renouncing and apologizing and after a while I feel like I'm in church. Circa 1692.
Anyway, the upshot is that I pay less attention to it and I miss things. Like this latest from the wingnut corner in emails, Facebook and twitter:
Haiyo! (Or should it be Hooah!?)
That's a fairly typical example of right wing humor. It often features punching a fey liberal in the mouth.
Like this one from the early days of the war, in which bloodthirsty right wing sites sold t-shirts that looked like this, to support the marine NBC journalist Kevin Sites had caught on camera in the act of killing a wounded Iraqi in cold blood inside a Mosque:
This was the sales pitch:
Support our Marine
$17.99
The Marine who killed the wounded insurgent in Fallujah deserves our praise and admiration. In a split second decision, he acted valiantly.
On the other hand, Kevin Sites of NBC is a traitor. Beheading civilians, booby-trapped bodies, suicide bombers?? Sorry hippie, American lives come first. Terrorists don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. This Marine deserves a medal and Kevin Sites, you deserve a punch in the mouth.
Printed on high quality superheavyweight, preshrunk cotton (6.1oz)
Adam Weinstein at Gawker helpfully compiled all the relevant liberal responses to the latest hippie punching hilarity and some of them are really good. Like this one:
Unfortunately, I would guess that the fans of the original might not get that this is a parody. There's a lot of that going around.
It reminds me of back in the day when the right was really feeling its oats after America was attacked. The war porn was everywhere and this kind of puerile mythmaking was all the rage. But it wasn't only macho marines kicking ass. This widely circulated email from 2003 (which sounds as if it came from an older Republican woman) comes to mind:
They call my President a "cowboy"?
It used to tick me off when the liberals called our President a cowboy, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
When I was a kid, cowboys were heroes. You know, the ones in the white hats, not the black hats. There was Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Johnny Mack Brown, Hopalong Cassidy, Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, then later Marshall Matt Dillon. Personally, I think Gene Autry could whip em all, and then sing a song to his girl friend. He was my favorite.
What were common attributes of these legendary cowboys? Here are a
few:
1. They never looked for trouble.
2. When it came, they faced it with courage.
3. They were always on the side of right.
4. They defended good people against bad people.
5. They had high morals.
6. They had good manners.
7. They were honest.
8. They spoke their minds and they spoke the truth, regardless of
what people thought or "political correctness," which no one had
ever heard of back then.
9. They were a beacon of integrity in the
wild, wild west.
10. They were respected. When they walked into a
saloon (where they usually drank only sarsaparilla), the place
became quiet, and the bad guys kept their distance.
11. If in a gunfight, they could outdraw anyone. If in a fistfight,
they could whip anyone.
12. They always won. They always got their man. In victory, they
rode off into the sunset.
Those were the days when there was such a thing as right and wrong, something blurred in our modern world, and denied by many. Those were the days when women were respected and treated as ladies, because they acted like ladies.
They represent something good, something pure that America has been missing. Ronald Reagan was a cowboy. I like Ronald Reagan, he was brave, positive, and he gave us hope. He wore a white hat. To the consternation of his liberal critics, he had the courage to call a spade a spade and call the former Soviet Union what it was -- the evil empire. Liberals hated Ronald Reagan.
They also hate President Bush because he distinguishes between good and evil He calls a spade a spade, and after 9-11 called evil "evil," without mincing any words, to the shock of the liberal establishment. That's what cowboys do, you know. He also told the French to "put their cards on the table" (old west talk), which they did, exposing their cowardice and greed.
The Arabs are wrong. In the old West, might did not make right. Right made right. Cowboys in white hats were always on the side of right, and that was their might.
I am glad my President is a cowboy. He will get his man. Cowboys do, you know.
It's sort of precious, isn't it? Kind of like a 5th grade essay about a little girl's puppy.
I'm not sure why this stuff is making a comeback right at this moment --- maybe it's because they all think the Russians are coming. But it's evergreen. Rand Paul cannot possibly compete.
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