Crossbreed a dumb mistake with wingnuts

Written By: - Date published: 12:23 pm, March 21st, 2010 - 6 comments
Categories: blogs, interweb, us politics - Tags:

In OpenMike yesterday, Pascals bookie said this

Check this out; fuckn hilarious.

I’ve been predicting it for ages, but if the health care bill passes, it may well trigger peak wingnut.

The post “Alert the patriots: Tyrants are ruining our country!” at a US political blog Swamplands details the hilarious results of a mistake by a media wingnut

On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh told his listeners to call Congress and tell them to vote no on health care reform. That’s no small thing. With his millions of fans, this is the kind of advice that could crash the congressional phone system.

But Rush made a critical error in his activism…

He gave his listeners the number for a pro-healthcare reform lobby group FamiliesUSA. This had a message for ideas to talk to their representatives about, then it connected to the capitol.

So many Rush fans called the FamiliesUSA number on Tuesday that it caused a massive spike in call volume, which was immediately noticed by the group’s telephone re-routing vendor. Not wanting to pick up the tab for anti-reform calls, of course, FamiliesUSA immediately shut down the number and got a new one…

But Rush’s callers didn’t understand this whole re-routing thing and many were absolutely and astoundingly enraged. Many of them assumed the pro-reform message they got was a left-wing conspiracy to take over government. Think this is a stretch?

Here’s a Youtube video posted by one such caller, who believed he had discovered a blatant case of ‘Obama propoganda Alert the patriots: Tyrants are ruining our country !’

The video has now been removed by the user. But the stupidity continues.

He’s not alone. After FamiliesUSA turned off their original toll free number, it was bought by someone else who must have known about the mixup. That new person put a pro-reform bulletin on an answering machine and recorded messages left by angry and I mean very angry Rush listeners. WARNING: Many of the message contain obscenities they can be accessed by calling 206-666-6666.

Readers of these pages will be well aware of the breed. Supposedly intelligent people who get some strange ideas fixed inside their heads and will repeat them ad-infinitum regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Immediately jumping to the bad conclusions based on a dog-whistle from one of their gurus. Against rational argument while insisting that their unsubstantiated opinion is the ‘real truth’. Perpetually after the rush of getting angry about something, in fact damn near anything will do.

They’re easy to find in NZ – just look at the comments in the sewer or Cameron Slaters attention seeking site. They’re a danger to any form of rational debate, as National is finding now. The comments in the sewer recently seem to spend a lot of time attacking the government.

6 comments on “Crossbreed a dumb mistake with wingnuts ”

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  1. RedLogix 1
    21 March 2010 at 2:36 pm

    In fact the whole US health care debate seems to have been utterly de-railed by an un-holy alliance between the health care industry and the mad libetarian right, who have ironically been co-opted to serve a corporate agenda. In among all the angry noise and idiocy being spouted, the resulting legislation is so tattered, debased and removed from the notion of universal health care as we know it, that Obama is now damned if he passes it, and damned if he doesn’t.

    We have arrived at a place where having morality and truth on your side; persuasively winning the argument with evidence and reasoned logic is now the loosing strategy. We’ve been seeing this build for some time now; one of Monbiot’s recent essays openly points to the rise of the barbarian mobs with respect to the AGW debate:

    The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.’

    The modern world has become an astoundingly complex place; even scientists in closely neighbouring specialities no longer understand each other completely, while us ordinary folk have little choice but to accept their authority on trust. But in this fractious world, with no universal morality to bind us, where all worship at an alter of our own individuality and personal rights… trust in each other is the one thing in very short supply.

  2. Policy Parrot 2
    21 March 2010 at 10:56 pm

    2011 Oxford Dictionary Update:

    Palinal – latin “to move backward”
    Palinista – latin “one seeking to move backward”
    Palinism – latin “political movement seeking to move backward”
    Palinist – pronounced “Pah-lun-ist” ref. Stalinist, – latin “person or person(s) identifying with a political movement seeking to move backward”

  3. Red Rosa 3
    22 March 2010 at 3:15 am

    Love that stogie-smokin’ dude on the Time cover!

    Is this not our very own Dr Jonathan Coleman, Minister of Broadslashing? I’d bet he’d be thrilled to get Rush down here to spread the word….

  4. Pascal's bookie 4
    22 March 2010 at 11:36 am

    David Frum has a moment of clarity,
    and writes something from a conservative view,
    that dirty hippies have been saying for quite some time.

    http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

    Worth reading.

    I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say but what is equally true is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

    So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

  5. randal 5
    22 March 2010 at 2:26 pm

    the funny thing is here in lil ole new zealand radio ritalin has viagra brands as its major advertisers.
    is this funny or what?