Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 13 (and last)

• TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal)
• The final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner!


Yes, it's Sarah Palin TeeVee!

Crackpot Utopia: A dream world as envisioned by republicans; a manifestation or expression of the deranged, warped alternate universe inhabited by republicans, at least in their minds. See also: Bachmannism, Boehneresque.

by Noah

1. TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel

America's biggest, most strident attention whore (eat your heart out Louie Gohmert) just couldn't get enough. It wasn't enough for her to have ruined any chance (thankfully) that John McCain ever had of becoming president. And it wasn't enough that FOX "News" gave her a platform for her brand of incoherent babble from the republican alternate universe. It also wasn't enough that she'd already had some sort of Sarah Palin's Alaska show that apparently appealed to those who watch things like Gator Boys,Swamp People, and Ancient Aliens. Nope. She had to go and announce the formation of her own Internet TV channel.

Here in New York we already have what is known as Public Access Television, which basically consists of shows like Tele-Psychic, where viewers can call in and get their fortune told. There are also all manner of interview shows replete with ranters and cranks that any of us would quickly sidestep on the sidewalk, but hey, presumably at least a few people do watch these things. On my TV, it comes with my regular Time Warner Cable.

Ah, but Palin doesn't even have her show on cable. She's Internet-only, right along with shows that people run from their back porches and basements where they spout on about everything from how to win millions playing cards to surefire dating tips to having been abducted and the superiority of the "Aryan race."

There is a difference, though. With Palin TV, you have to pay for the privilege! $9.95 a month! Worth every penny? I doubt it, but her channel was launched by TAPP, a backer of online personality-driven programming. Jon Klein, formerly of CNN, is the founder and CEO of TAPP, and he explains the details in this clip from Bloomberg News-



As the clip describes, Palin is doing the show from her own house, with cameras everywhere. Talk about wanting exposure! Anyway, with all of this in mind, and feeling full of compassion, I thought I might try to help Ms. Palin out with some programming suggestions. My idea is to provide her with something she badly needs: focus.

Some concrete, common-sense shows may just make her enterprise a success. If not, she can try being a televangelist next, and get her money by persuading old ladies to send her checks. Frankly, I think that's inevitable, but in the meantime, here's what I've come up with:

If at First You Don't Secede
Sarah revisits her support of the Alaska secession movement.

A Tour of Russia from My House

Sarah's Magazine Club
Remember when she told CBS she gets her news from "all of the magazines"?

My Man Zimmerman
Florida killer gets his own hunting show, where he hunts down Skittles-carrying youth from the channel's helicopter. Or, sometimes, just walks around the neighborhood trying to find someone to provoke a fight with.

The Exxon-Valdez Hoax
Palin hosts a weekly five-hour documentary that claims that the grounding of the Exxon-Valdez and the resulting catastrophic oil spill never happened.

The Weather with Alex Jones
Get up-to-date info on where President Obama is spraying chemtrails to feed the next Sandy-style superstorm.

Snowmobile NASCAR!

Cooking with Sarah!
Get her special recipes: moose chili, Mama Grizzly pepper steaks, baby seal paté, etc.

Sarah Palin Gear
Her version of QVC, where she and Ted Nugent model all the latest in her own line of heavily logoed Alaska outdoor and indoor wear and demonstrate how to kill anything that moves.

Adults Say the Darndest Things
Palin turns the rest of the 24 hours into meth-inflamed viewer content, filed with republican ravings about gays, secret Muslims, birth certificates, and whatever else viewers want to discuss. Brought to you by Reynolds Aluminum Foil!

Well, Sarah, I hope this helps, but you do need to get a grip. Posting those pictures of Trig using the dog as a stepstool and thinking this shows something great? Not a great way to go.




2. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal)

Wait, wait, don't tell us! You're, uh, Falcon9! Are we right?

For a long time Huppenthal, the Arizona superintendent of public instruction, was cowardly, throwing out his vitriolic bigotry behind a secret Internet identity. Calling himself Falcon9 -- among other noms de spam, apparently -- this Internet troll offered, among other genius utterances:

• "The Mexican American Studies classes use the exact same technique that Hitler used in his rise to power. Take an historical example of injustice, cast it in racial terms, and fan the flame of resentment."

Jeez, and all this time I thought it was people like Roger Ailes, Drudge, Breitbart, entire petri dishes of republican congresscreeps, and crazy old Dr. Strangelove Cheney that did that.

• "I don't mind them selling Mexican food as long as the menus are mostly in English."

But Superintendent Neanderthal, what about Italian-restaurant menus? Or French-restaurant menus? Why do you single out Mexican-restaurant menus? Hmmm.

• "We all need to stomp out balkanization. No Spanish radio stations, no Spanish billboards, no Spanish TV stations, no Spanish newspapers."

I can walk a half block from where I'm writing this and buy Italian newspapers, German newspapers, Greek newspapers, Russian newspapers, but you, Superintendent Neanderthal, you single out the Mexican ones. My cable service provides all sorts of TV stations, including some that speak only republican 24 hours a day. How, shall I say it?, how angry white bozo republican of you! You like FOX and CNN idiots that turn English into some sort of fourth-world mental-hospital gibberish, but you can't stomach even the idea of a Spanish TV station? Whatsa matter, moron, did you eat a bad enchilada?

Upwards of two million Latinos live in this idiot's state, the state where he is the superintendent of schools! Children of all backgrounds will learn how to speak English in those schools, just like they always have. They will become bilingual, a definite advantage in today's world. I personally know a young woman who speak eight languages. She lost her job at Sony and applied for a job at the United Nations. They hired her in a heartbeat.

Oh, that's right, you wingnut clowns hate the U.N.; black helicopters and all that. I hear it even promotes peace in the world! What's a munitions manufacturer or war profiteer to do?

Note to readers: No prejudicial insult to Neanderthals was intended in my effort to make a point here about a certain class of people who long to return us to the distant past. A group of people called scientists, not recognized by modern-day republicans, now tell us that Neanderthals had a brain capacity equal to our own. Whether or not they used those brains is another question, and the answer may have something to do with why they no longer walk among us. Or do they?


3. And now, the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner!

Before revealing his identity, let me stress that all of the nominees are honored just by being nominated. And not just the formal nominees. In fact, I considered all of the crazyspeakers I wrote about in all 13 parts of "Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy." They all do their best to represent their plague of a political party.

But this particular nutball went a step farther. He showed what kind of country republicans are aiming for by writing it down in a book: his dream of Reagan's "shining city on a hill." I give you --

Crazyspeak of the Year Award winner:
Former Reagan aide Douglas MacKinnon

Douglas MacKinnon is not only a former aide to one of the worst presidents this country has ever had, he is the author of The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating a Traditional Values Country . . . Now. In his book Mackinnon describes his vision for a new country made up of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It's a country based on the warped, twisted republican definition of Christianity. He even claims to speak for the Founding Fathers when, in full flaming paranoia mode, he bitches about rights for gay people.

His easy fix for all of this? Secession by those three carefully chosen states. Perhaps the only surprise is that he does not include Texas, but he has his reason. Even though he declares himself "a big fan of Texas," he notes, "There have been a number of incursions into Texas and other places from some of the folks in Mexico." Impure! Impure! Mongrelized! Shame on you, Texas! So for him the three nutball states he has chosen will be just fine, thank you.

MacKinnon wants to go back to 1860 and start over. The South should secede once again. After all, for the righties the Civil War never ended. It just became a war without borders, and that is what the republicans are up to. It's not just a culture war as the media would have us believe. It is a war, period. And MacKinnon's solution is to get his parcel of land where all his kind can set up an ideal republican country. Frankly, if they'd all leave us and go there, it might not be an entirely bad idea. Good riddance.

About the first Civil War, Mackinnon says that President Lincoln (a Republican back when being a Republican meant something very different than it does today) --

waged an illegal war that was in fact not declared against the South after the South basically did what we're talking about in this book now, in terms of peacefully, legally and constitutionally leaving the union.

Mackinnon wants his new "traditional values" country to be named Reagan. Let that sink in; a country named Reagan.

I can't imagine anyone not wanting a dollar for every time the word "Reagan" spews out of the mouth of a republican. You can have a debate stage of nine presidential wannabes and all nine will be falling over themselves and each other to say their magic word the most times. You half expect them to have a fistfight just to be the first to say it. To them and their gullible listeners, the magic word stands in for Ronald Reagan's idea of America being a "shining city on a hill."

But what do "shining city on a hill" and the word "Reagan" actually mean, below the surface, to today's republicans?

It's clear from both republican policies and rhetoric that that "shining city on a hill" is a land where the oppression of minorities is the status quo. Any minority is to be kept down. It is a land where there is to be no minimum wage. It is a land where advances in medical science are to be available only to a small but powerful ruling class. It is a land where gay people must shut up and retreat to the nearest closet. It is a land where even voting privileges that have been fought for and died for are to be taken away. It is a land where there is no middle class, only the very rich and the impoverished who are forced to subsist on fast food of ever-lowering quality, the modern-day equivalent of a bowl of gruel. "Please sir, I want some more." No, you can't have more! Hell, no, you can't!



In the republican "shining city on a hill" there are no regulations that might keep beaches clean, keep banks from robbing us, prevent cancers, or even give the lower rungs of society a fair chance. A land of no regulations is a land of anarchy with the ruling class thinking that it will always be above the fray.

That "shining city on a hill" is Crackpot Utopia.

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW --
Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy

Part 1: Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award; "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck; and the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama’s State of the Union speech [12/19/2014]
Part 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award, to ABC "shark" Kevin O'Leary [12/20/2014]
Part 3: Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff; Arizona legalizes crack!; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: Bill O’Reilly [12/21/2014]
Part 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; and the "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370 [12/22/2014]
Part 5: The GOP and the kiss heard 'round the world; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5: Joe the Plumber [12/23/2014]
Part 6: A word about South Carolina; Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid; and I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please [12/24/2014]
Part 7: And so it begins: The running of the buffoons; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup [12/29/2014]
Part 8: Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association [12/30/2014]
Part 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza [12/31/2014]
Part 10: Newsmax -- Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann, Kimberly Guilfoyle [1/1/2015]
Part 11: GOP and FOX whip up the hate over a POW exchange; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 14: Iowa asylum escapee Rep. Steve King [1/3/2015]
Part 12: Arizona Republican protests busload of YMCA campers; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee(s) No. 15: the Impeachment Variations (group nomination); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 16: NM Rep. Steve Pearce [1/4/2015]
Part 13 (and last): TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal); and the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner! [1/5/2015]

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy

For listings and links, see Part 1 of this year's series.

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