It is hard to choose between these two for being the most indicative of why the right wing ideology is sick, disconnected from factual, objective reality, and verging into the territory of dangerously delusional.
The real tragedy is that they don't only harm themselves, they offend and cause greater pain and suffering to the rest of us, especially those who have already suffered so much - the friends and family who have lost loved ones in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
The two right wing nut - and I do mean nut, in the vernacular phrase for crazy - stories are the National Review online piece that makes the ridiculous and factually inaccurate claim that the shootings occurred because our schools are 'feminized', claiming that had there been males in the school, they would have stopped the shooter. The piece claims women are passive and helpless, promote being victims, and that had their been men present, the outcome would have been different. The author, I'm sad to say a woman, believes that male teachers who played football could have tackled the shooter successfully, or that a male janitor could have knocked him over by throwing a bucket at his knees, or that husky 12 year old boys could have piled on him, knocking him to the floor.
Except that there WERE male teachers, and male janitors present; and the school stopped at grade 4, which is typically attended by 9 year olds, who are generally smaller than adult women - as are most 12 year olds (husky or otherwise). As one commenter noted, our boy children are not expendable; they are as precious as our girl children. The right thing to do was to keep both the sons and daughters attending Sandy Hook safe, which both the men and women who worked at the school did their best to do. Gender had no bearing on courage in that school; there was no passivity in the actions of the women who died or were injured in protecting those children. They did everything humanly possible to keep those children safe.
But the right doesn't let facts get in the way of their ideology; claims of 'feminizing' is one of the new ways the right wing nuts are in denial about gender equality get in the way of acknowledging that we live in a world where the armies are co-ed, and where we have women who are not only our 'top gun' fighter pilots, we put them in charge of whole wings of combat pilots in our air force. Women today have role models like Tammy Duckworth. It was reported in late November that other women in other branches of the military have sued the Defense Department over denying women more combat opportunities. We've come a long way since the WASPS flew in WW II; unless you are a right wing nut who doesn't know history or current events.
The reality is that while testosterone can sometimes drive aggression, it is not the only source of aggression. Aggression which is not well controlled and well directed is what our schools teach students, regardless of gender, because education occurs best in schools that are not violent. We currently have 60 female fighter pilots, products of our school system that teaches BOTH boys and girls not to beat the crap out of each other while they should be focusing on other things in class.
The reality is that there are women as well as men first responders to our mass shootings; there have been women who were heroic in responding aggressively in other mass shootings as well - notably armed civilian police officer Kimberly Munley in the Fort Hood mass shooting, and un-armed 61 year old Patricia Maisch in the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. Women in the 21st century are not the passive victims of anyone, nor does their courage in a crisis undermine or diminish the courage or the performance by men in those crises. Courage and effective response by women does not feminize or the real word that should be used here, to correctly identify the right wing fears - it does not emasculate men in any way. It only empowers women to be more fully human rather than to be limited by artificial - and wrong - stereotypes.
That doesn't sit well with the party that wages culture war on women, so they lie, they make shit up, and they don't give a damn who they demean or dishonor in the process, either male OR female.
Then we have the even more extreme fundie nuts, like our own homegrown hate group organizer in the name of religion, Bradlee Dean, who goes for the conspiracy theory crowd among the right wing nuts - the same group that has the birthers, tenthers, secessionists, truthers, and crazy 'prayer warriors' among other nutjobs and wackos. Bradlee Dean, pulling the notion entirely out of his own capacious track-suit clad backside, fails and flails again. Dean has had a radio show for some years now on the Salem network station WWTC, following our blogger friend Mitch Berg, who is one of the right wing adherents of the fear-mongering propaganda that we are 'feminizing' our public schools; birds of a feather.
Mediamatters covered it all pretty well here. I've written here before about the shady swindles perpetrated by Dean, as have others. He is not really what most of us think of as a legitimate member of the clergy, but more of a cheat and a fraud who makes a lot of money out of misrepresenting himself, his organization and his activities. He and his operation have been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and it appears a well-deserved designation.
So naturally the right LOVES him, and the further more extreme right the more he is embraced by the likes of Michele Bachmann; more birds of a feather.
It's not just the Sandy Hook tragedy Dean has a conspiracy theory about; it encompasses the tragedies of Columbine and Aurora Colorado mass shooting, and the Oklahoma City bombing too.
In an outlandish column for WorldNetDaily, Bradlee Dean suggests that the mass shooting last week in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged in order to aid the passage of the UN Arms Trade Treaty and gun control legislation, comparing the administration's purported actions to that of the Nazis setting the Reichstag Fire.
Though WorldNetDaily often publishes conspiratorial stories like Dean's column -- the site was the driving force behind the birther movement -- it's still regularly validated by more mainstream conservatives. Last month, the site announced that they had hired former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum as a columnist.
Dean, an "ordained preacher, heavy metal drummer, [and] talk-show host of Sons of Liberty Radio," suggests in his December 21 column that the "timing is impeccable" for both the theater shooting in Aurora and the shooting in Newtown because they happened while the UN was deliberating over the Arms Trade Treaty:
The Sandy Hook shooting occurred just days after Sen. Rand Paul sent out an alert that the U.N. was set to pass the final version of the Small Arms Treaty, supported by Obama the day after election.Aside from its conspiratorial nature, Dean's column is also plainly inaccurate. Contrary to his suggestion that the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty would ban "the trade, sale, and ownership of all semi-automatic weapons" like the one used by Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, it does nothing of the sort. The Arms Trade Treaty is an effort to regulate the international arms trade and overtly affirms the "sovereign right" of countries to regulate the domestic ownership of firearms "pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system."
Part of the treaty bans the trade, sale and ownership of all semi-automatic weapons ... like the one Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and 6 adults.
The "Batman shooting" in Aurora, Colo., also happened to coincide with the same time as negotiations of the U.N. Small Arms Treaty.
The timing is impeccable.
As we have previously explained, the Department of State has stated that it will oppose any treaty that contains "restrictions on civilian possession or trade of firearms otherwise permitted by law or protected by the U.S. Constitution."
Dean also provides links to several "reports" alleging inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts of several recent mass shootings in our country. He concludes that "[e]yewitnesses in all of these massacres said there were more shooters than the media maintain, indicating the shootings were coordinated and planned."
Among the sources for these "reports" are Alex Jones' InfoWars website, a forum posting at a separate Alex Jones affiliated site, and a site called "Conscious Life News." Reliable sources, all. (For a sample of the type of conspiracy-mongering Jones' websites have been engaged in this week, a few days ago they published an article proposing that the presence of the phrase "Sandy Hook" on a map in the latest Batman movie is "bizarre evidence" that the shooting "may have been staged.")
According to Dean, Obama's call for "meaningful action" and the push from others for new gun violence prevention legislation in the wake of Sandy Hook is akin to Adolf Hitler "attacking his own Reichstag to start a world war":
When the "fire" is started, these government gun banners are right there to strip away your rights in an attempt to gain control under the guise of "putting out the fire."Dean's column also includes a video suggesting that the Oklahoma City bombing and the Columbine shooting (among others) were similarly staged.
Adolf Hitler was responsible for attacking his own Reichstag to start a world war. Hitler was also responsible for sending his brownshirts to incite the people so he could play the role of solving their problems. No one believed Hitler was guilty of these crimes until after the fact.
Then it was too late.
Today, these gun banners are doing the opposite of what our forefathers fought, bled and died to give us.
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So you see how difficult it is to come up with a single bad penny award for heinous right wing nut theories about the recent tragedy in Connecticut. I call it a tie, and award them both the Penigma 'pennies' bad penny awards for 2012, and I'm making them extra big ones.
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