Surber and Daily Mail promote violent rightwing fantasy meme

by: heath_harrison

Thu Nov 19, 2009 at 06:07:56 AM EST

In recent days, conservative blogs and Twitter feeds have been ablaze with the latest craze, the posting of the message "Pray for Obama - Psalm 109:8."

When you look up the scripture in question it reads, "May his days be few, may another take over his position."

While this may seem to some like harmless eliminationist rhetoric used by the extreme right for laughs, the verse immediately following makes the message far more disturbing.

From Beliefnet:

And before anyone excuses this toxic use of scripture as nothing more than the wish that President Obama not be re-elected to a second term of office, the next verse in the psalm reads, "May his children be orphans and his wife a widow".

In fact, the entire chapter is about the prayed for death of an evil person. Not to mention that anyone who knows enough Bible to have thought about this verse in particular, surely knows the entire chapter and appreciates its message. Pretty scary stuff

Bill O'Reilly Hates You

by: Clem Guttata

Mon Feb 23, 2009 at 15:48:11 PM EST

Via the Blue Virginia Blog:

I thought Appalachia was what right wingers like to call the "REAL America." So, why does Bill O'Reilly hate Appalachia and its people - the people that Jim Webb writes about in "Born Fighting" - so much? Here is some of what O'Reilly had to say:

I submit to you that the culture in Appalachia harms the children almost beyond repair... There's really nothing we can do about it," O'Reilly told Sawyer.

She had a different view, of course. She said, "The great opportunity is the information economy... These kids are as smart as the kids in India."

"Sure," O'Reilly agreed. "But their parents are screwed up. That's the thing... Kids get married at 16 and 17. Their parents are drunks. I'm generalizing now. (Gee, ya think?) There's a lot of meth. There's a lot of irresponsibility. There's fear to go. Look, if I'm born in Appalachia, the first chance I get, I go to Miami. Because that's where the jobs are. But they stay there. And the cycle of poverty for 200 years - boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I don't want to sound hopeless about it but I think it IS hopeless."

Last election, we noted that poor whites--in the form of Appalachians--are one group you can still get away with insulting in otherwise "polite company." Bill O'Reilly is picking it up right where many others left off.