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The Bronze to Mike Huckabee of Fixed News. Well, the smooth-talking snake-oil salesman finally jumped the shark in an interview on a right-wing radio station in New York this morning. Insisting he wasn't a birther because if there were anything to birtherism the Clintons would've dug out the dirt in 2008, Huckabee promptly upped the birtherism ante by introducing his own twist to the paranoia:
If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.
President Obama, of course, spent part of his youth in Indonesia, not Kenya (off topic: if there were something to cover up, wouldn't that part have been covered up, too?) A spokesperson later said Huck merely slipped and meant Indonesia.
Regardless, the 'Kenya' reference suggests either a Huckabee dog whistle to the birthers he has heretofore shunned ("wait wait, Huckleby said that? Then denied it? They got to him!"), or a hack politician who couldn't avoid conflating the Glenn "Imperialism Is Good; Obama Is Anti-Imperialist" Beck drivel, with the Obama-Isn't-From-Here drivel.
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The Runner-Up: Megyn Kelly of Fixed News. Lonesome Rhodes Beck, the morning morons, and Billo, and Hannity get the headlines, but Fox's afternoon news actress is as nasty a human being as they've got. Unfortunately for Mistress Megyn, she has gotten herself caught in a slam-dunk lie about Wisconsin. Fox's newest self-martyrdom is the claim that 'correspondent' Mike Tobin was assaulted by protesters in Madison.
Tobin tried to dial it down ("I got punched in the arm") but Kelly would have none of it. "It is an unwanted touching!," she bellows back at him. Unfortunately at the same link, LiveLeak happened to post video of the exact episode Kelly describes as battery and Tobin insists was a punch. The video shows: It was neither.
"She turned me into a newt!...(pause)...I got better!"
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But our winner, John of Orange, Speaker Of The House, who, as the third month of his tenure begins, still hasn't produced any jobs, nor any meaningful legislation, nor any bipartisan compromise, nor anything that wouldn't get vaporized in the Senate or vetoed at the White House.
He has, however, produced this: a promise to introduce legislation to outlaw the FCC Fairness Doctrine!
What? There is no FCC Fairness Doctrine? There hasn't been an FCC Fairness Doctrine since 1987? There isn't one Democratic legislator or liberal commentator seriously pushing for an FCC Fairness Doctrine?
Never mind that! Stop acting rationally and calmly in a situation that calls for panic!
There isn't any Sharia Law in Tennessee either!
Speaker Boehner told the convention of the association of National Religious Broadcasters (that's a fun group) that the threat of a reinstated Fairness Doctrine is very real, and that there are those who want to "even expand" it. "Our new majority is committed to seeing that the government does not reinstate the fairness doctrine. Congressman (Greg) Walden (R-Oregon) has teamed up with another former broadcaster, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, to introduce legislation to help keep the airwaves free. I expect the House to act on this measure."
Boehner insists that The Fairness Doctrine (which next year will celebrate its 25th anniversary of being dead) is "a censorship scheme from the 1940′s mandating that competing viewpoints be offered on controversial topics."
You know: Fair and Balanced.
But never mind. There comes to mind the old story of the wild-eyed inventor who walks into the patent office in Washington with a complicated device straight out of the annals of Rube Goldberg. It has wires, and lights, and tubes, and fuzzy sparks jumping from anode to diode, and it hums – and occasionally blips or bleats. At its top, there is a small rotating dish that spins, sprinker-like, aiming what the man says is an invisible beam towards the sky. "This is my life's work," the wild-eyed inventor explains. "I'm going to sell these for ten million dollars apiece." The patent officer looks through the indecipherable blue prints and finally asks what it does. "I throw this switch here, and it immediately emits a sound that kills every wild elephant on the American Prairie." The patent officer pauses for a moment and stares at the wild-eyed inventor and finally says "But there aren't any wild elephants on the American Prairie." Whereupon the wild-eyed inventor smiles with broad satisfaction, folds his arms proudly across his chest and says "And we aim to keep it that way!"
John Boehner – Wild-Eyed Anti-American Prairie Elephant Inventor – today's Worst Person.