From Kathy Griffin To Paris To London, A Wild Week For Rightbloggers

Well, that was one hell of a week — an enormous controversy over a comedian’s joke photo, The Leader tearing America out of the Paris accord, and, finally, a terror attack in London. Rather than focus on one thing, let’s shake it all into our kaleidoscope, shall we?

As everyone on Earth knows, last week TV’s Kathy Griffin circulated a photo of herself holding a fake head that looked like The Leader’s, covered in blood, and as result got fired from everything.

Conservatives temporarily abandoned the free speech–loving act they put on whenever bigots get fired and cheered Griffin’s disemployment (though Conservative Review bitched that it took CNN 26 hours to can her — c’mon, by then their rage had almost cooled!).

Inevitably, they tried to blame Griffin on liberals, but their traditional difficulties with sequential thought got in the way.

“Kathy Griffin is just the tip of the liberal violence iceberg,” claimed Kristin Tate at The Hill. At first, she seemed to blame Griffin on antifa street fighters (“The ability to disagree with the politically different disintegrates under red and black flags, and hooded rioters obscuring their faces”). Then she demanded “swift condemnation” from liberals “of the stunt by this ‘comedian,’ ” as if the Griffin picture had appeared in a Democratic campaign commercial. Then she did the now-familiar bit where, because the Portland Muslim-hating murderer Jeremy Joseph Christian spoke positively about Bernie Sanders, Christian had to be a liberal (though by that logic The Leader, who praised Sanders up and down the campaign trail last year, must be a Muslim-hating liberal too. Hey, come to think of it, I can see the similarities!).

In the end, Tate blamed Griffin’s picture on “the atmosphere of delegitimizing an elected government and brushing violence under the rug” — so who knows, maybe she was actually talking about the militia movement.

Later, The Leader claimed on Twitter that Barron, the eleven-year-old son he never sees because he spends his copious free time golfing, had witnessed the photo on TV, recognized his father (I know, that was the weird part for me too), and been traumatized by it, which led to more cries of howdareyou (“Liberals love to pretend that they are the most considerate and kind people on the planet,” etc.).

Some observers found this claim a little rich. One of these was Jeopardy wiz Ken Jennings, and rightbloggers, trying to squeeze a little more juice out of the incident, claimed Jennings had “mocked” the kid rather than his grifter father.

Yet Jennings didn’t apologize. Now, less than a week later, he seems a lot saner than most people were about this nonsense last week. Let that be a lesson!

(Oh, the Griffin picture did eventually appear in a TV campaign commercial — for Republican Karen Handel, or rather against Democrat Jon Ossoff, who is neck and neck with her in a House race in deep-red Georgia; the ad attempts to connect Ossoff with Griffin since Griffin is in show business and “Hollywood liberals” back Ossoff. The hope is apparently that Georgians are as dumb as Kristin Tate fans.)

Speaking of dumb, in a belligerent speech on Thursday, The Leader withdrew the United States from the Paris accord through which most of the civilized world is attempting to avoid global climate catastrophe. Conservatives praised the exit as a way of getting back at liberals for being so high and mighty with their stupid concern for their so-called planet.

“America’s first victory in battle against climate alarmism,” gloated Leslie Eastman of Legal Insurrection. “…The media reaction has been apoplectic and apocalyptic!”

“Their leftist tears made a fine salty seasoning for my afternoon omelet,” said PJ Media’s Andrew Klavan (yuck).

“Today, as ever, the debate over the best course has been marked by all-or-nothing propositions,” tsked Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review. “Believe that climate change is real? Then you must believe New York will soon be underwater. Don’t believe New York will soon be underwater? Then you don’t believe climate change is real.” Clearly, given the snottiness of liberals, the only alternative is to do nothing — or restrict ourselves, as Gracy Olmstead of the Federalist suggested, to recycling and composting and stuff like that.

To be fair, some prominent conservatives did engage the climate science with an intellectual defense: “I worship Jesus, not Mother Earth,” explained Fox News commentator Erick Erickson. “He calls us all to be good stewards of the planet, but doesn’t mean I have to care about global warming.” Well, at least it’s an ethos.

Finally, Saturday night, three suspected terrorists ran people over on London Bridge and attacked diners at nearby Borough Market, killing seven and wounding forty-eight.

London police subdued the attackers in eight minutes. But that wasn’t fast enough for stateside rightbloggers, several of whom seized on a report that some unarmed London “community” police ran from the scene (before armed cops came in and shot the attackers) to call for Second Amendment rights to be restored to citizens — British citizens, that is.

“It’s the portrait of a disarmed people being slaughtered by terrorists while their government insists that they stay disarmed because it can protect them best,” fusilladed The Truth About Guns. “The U.K. has to take this threat seriously….Give citizens back their guns and watch how they defend everything,” gibbered McIntosh at Right Wing News.

“In America — we uncivilized heathens as the Brits believe — have this thing called the Second Amendment,” said Truth and Common Sense. “…But in Britain, their politicians took away their rights for self defense, slowly but persistently, for decades.” The author then went on about a gun-averse British cop he once knew and how he bet he was sorry now (“I wonder about this commander or his replacement, and if their arrogant attitude has changed a little because their world has changed a lot”). Amazing what goes through one’s mind in times of tragedy, especially if one is a sociopath.

This was not to speak of the racism: It’s not hard to guess why The Leader spent the early hours of the tragedy slagging off London mayor Sadiq Khan. The well of conservative hatred for Muslims is very deep — read some of the responses to this recent Sesame Street “Happy Ramadan” message to get an idea — and after the attack the brethren erupted with it.

The alt-right choads did the expected — here’s a charming cartoon explaining that if you welcome people of different races you will be horribly murdered, and here’s one of fame-pie Tomi Lahren’s similarly obnoxious posts (“Maybe when the Left gets over it’s love affair with Islam, they will understand why President Trump wanted a travel ban”). But even some of the more mainstream conservatives went over the edge.

“Islam, like cancer, needs a cure,” wrote PJ Media kingpin Roger L. Simon. (I wonder if he tried “final solution” first?) Simon declared the Paris accord a “deflection from the genuine ‘present danger’ in front of us,” and called instead for an “international terrorism accord — and, unlike the climate accord, a binding one,” in which Islam would be “ultimately made to pledge itself to human rights as accepted by the West.” If you’re thinking this would quickly lead to a global conflagration, congratulations, you uncovered Simon’s agenda.

So in general, while Londoners were doing their best to live up to their “Keep Calm and Carry On” tradition, conservatives half a world away were telling their own suburban and rural constituents to Stay Scared and Shit Their Pants. Hard to say how well it’ll work; probably in a couple of days, their memory of the event will dwindle to a Homer Simpson thought balloon in which sissy Englishmen get killed by scimitar-wielding sheikhs while brave American soldiers shoot up the sky to create a Reagan Star Wars shield of bullets. Maybe a closer disaster will keep them on board. At this rate, we’re likely to get it.