Worst Persons of the Day for February 25, 2011
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Our first Silver winner: U.S. Representative Paul Broun, continuing to set the high standard for Congressional inhumanity at which the Michele Bachmanns and the Steve Kings can only grasp in vain. Dr. Broun's office now confirms that at a town hall in Athens, Ga. the Congressman was asked "who is going to shoot Obama?"
The crowd in the Oglethorpe County Commission chamber roared with laughter. But fortunately Broun was enough of an American to say something like John McCain did when that bag lady tried to claim the then-Senator was a 'terrist.'
Oh, no, sorry, he didn't. Broun didn't say 'don't even joke about such things.' He simply pivoted into "The thing is, I know there's a lot of frustration with this president. We're going to have an election next year... (blah, blah blah, blah blah)."
This, per his press secretary Jessica Morris, was the Congressman recognizing that "obviously, the question was inappropriate. So Congressman Broun moved on."
Would he moved on if the question had been "so who, Congressman, is going to shoot you?"
Here's the deal: we need to stop accepting violent language in our political discourse. Period. I'm still waiting for anybody like Broun to forswear this kind of deadly, poisonous, talk. But he won't, because he doesn't have the guts to stand up to the sub-humans who elected him.
Did Gabby Giffords get a bullet through her brain last month, or a hundred years ago? Sometimes it feels like the latter.
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The bronze: It wouldn't be Worst Persons if we didn't hear from Billo's guilty conscience. Nearly two years after his incessant references to "Tiller The Killer" contributed to the frenzy that led to the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas, The Frank Burns of News is still trying to smear the man, and figuratively use his dead body as part of the Right's new attack on Planned Parenthood:
"We've reported this story fairly here, 'kay?" Bill O'Reilly lied as his Stepford-wife news actress Megyn Kelly played the role of the yes-woman. "The assassination of Tiller – disgraceful, never should happen in America But there are media organizations that are glorifying George Tiller. Making him to be a martyr. It is disgusting, disgusting."
What do you want to inspire now, Billy? You want somebody to dig up Tiller's body and kill him again?
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But our winner: Mike Hogan, the would-be Republican nominee for mayor of Jacksonville, Florida. Sure, he admits he told a candidates' forum that he was so opposed to abortion that the only thing he wouldn't do was bomb a clinic and then added, laughing, "but it may cross my mind" – but it was only a joke!
"If I've got to measure everything I say," he told the Jacksonville Times-Union, "I mean, I'm not going to be politically correct. That was a joke. This was an audience for this. This is a Catholic Church. I guarantee you they are 110 percent pro-life."
So, Mike, you're saying it's ok to joke about blowing up buildings and killing people, so long as you're inside a Catholic Church? How exactly would you feel about a Muslim joking about blowing up buildings and killing people – so long as he did so inside a Mosque? Would that be fine with you, or are you a complete and utter hypocrite?
The would-be Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, Mike Hogan, the Worst Person of the Day.