The Stupidest Thing I Have Heard This Week.

There were so many very, very seriously Stupid Things uttered this week about very serious topics. I could devote several pages worth of stuff to just Donald Rumsfeld alone. What a bag of flatulence. And then there was Conrad Burns, who said the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.” And that with Laura Bush right at his side! Racism, much? And who can forget Bill Frist complaining that the Democrats were trying to put a “spotlight on Iraq”? You mean that centerpiece of the Global War On Terror, the Long War, or whatever we are calling it this week? The one that Republicans used to beat their opponents up about, calling them “appeasers” and “traitors”, but would now like to forget about because it is unfolding in exactly the way that many people predicted before we went in? That Iraq, Mr. Frist? And then, of course, there is Mr. Bush, who told NBC’s Brian Williams that he “has read three Shakespeares”. (That must be Bruce, Howard, and Ernie Shakespeare...)

But I will go with one of the more frivolous Stupid Utterings. This one is courtesy of Rush Limbaugh. Now, I wish I had a link to a printed version of this. No doubt, it is out there somewhere if I were to bother to look. (I am not going to go to his website to find the transcript, sorry.) I heard this on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann on August 30.

Rush Limbaugh apparently said something like this on his radio show. He was discussing a recent report that obesity is on the rise in 31 states. His response was to blame it on.... Food Stamps! (Keith’s response was, “Rush, you get food stamps?”)

Now, I am paraphrasing this, so what was really said on his radio show may be somewhat different than what I am reporting here. But, if this is true, then this is a shoo-in for this week’s Stupidest Thing.

Now, for a little commentary. I am constantly amazed about how the Self-Righteous Right of this country will utter the first thing that comes into their head in order to counter an argument or point made the by someone who disagrees with them. It doesn’t matter how stupid or inane that uttering is, or even if it contradicts something that they just said several weeks or months earlier. Just so long as they can say SOMETHING, they somehow feel vindicated. It just tumbles out of their mouths before putting any sort of sanity check kicks in. I don’t really understand if they think that they really have made a valid point, or if they know they are uttering crap but just so long as there is one small iota of a possibility that what they are saying might actually be true, they feel they have answered the challenge.

Again, I ask, why do we let behavior like this go unchallenged when we would really come down hard on our own children if, for example, they were to give us a patently ridiculous answer when we ask them who broke the window? What is it about this country these days? Besides utter stupidity of a large part of the population, rampant tribalism, almost complete control of “traditional” media outlets by conglomerates, and incompetent control freaks at the helm, I mean. Sheesh.