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Bear with me on this one. It’s a long post, but trust me, you’ll be glad you waded through it.

You guys know about Pamela Gellar, right? She’s one of the more colorful and unstable right-wing bloggers. At her blog Atlas Shrugs (no, I refuse to link to it), Ms. Gellar can be found spinning bizarre conspiracy theories, sputtering furiously about various slights against conservatives (some real, but mostly imagined), crusading for the obliteration of Islam (and all who profess its faith), and generally reveling in her own lack of tact. In the pantheon of crazy wingnut luminaries, she’s usually lumped in with Ann Coulter (because they both have ladyparts, they both perform what right-wing extremists apparently perceive to be sexiness, and that’s pretty much it. Well, that and their shared affinity for tastelessness), but she’s really more at home with crackpots like Pastor Grant Swank, Confederate Yankee, and Michael Savage. Y’know, monstrously stupid people with a penchant for fantasy. Gellar adds a heapin’ helpin’ of Michelle Malkin-style spite and sheer, spittle-flying hatred, just for good measure.

Pam’s rise to prominence can probably be attributed mostly to her aforementioned ladyparts (there’s nothing a right-blog dweller likes more than a woman they can imagine both discussing politics and having sex with), but also to the wonderful way she spins clusters of right-wing fantasy into intricate, yet wildly implausible conspiracy theories that, though they bear almost no resemblance to anything found in the realm of the possible, satisfy as many wingnut yearnings as possible. These baroque, almost inspired webs of Grimm Brothers-esque fiction usually follow the same trajectory: Gellar posts an extremely long, poorly sourced, increasingly preposterous story on her blog, claiming definitive proof of the awfulness of some liberal or group of liberals. Her commenting readership immediately posts adulatory paeans to her genius (no doubt typing one-handed), and shortly, her creation ripples throughout the right-wing blogosphere (which seems preternaturally predisposed to turning the spread of every story into a particularly erratic game of telephone). Inevitably, one left-wing blog or another (usually the incomparable Sadly, No!) starts mocking her story, leading her and her acolytes to ratchet up their certainty. A thorough debunking usually follows, though Gellar and her circle only rarely admit their errors, preferring instead to pretend the whole thing never happened (or, increasingly, drop the subject immediately, only to resurrect it later as common knowledge beyond the necessity of argument). A few days or weeks pass, and the cycle begins anew.

All of this is just background to explain why I’m so excited about her latest theory, which blows all the others out of the water. In the span of almost 12,500 words (all in a single post, mind you), she lays out her Grand Wingnut Theory of Barack Obama, which includes most of the conspiracy theories already surrounding the candidate, and accounts for many controversial (and not so controversial) figures lately linked (often only by rumor) to Obama, before introducing a whole new group of right-wing boogeymen supposedly now connected to Obama and his sinister plot to turn America into an Islamic Socialist Republic. You wanna know what the core of this grand theory is?

(more…)

move over, kevin bacon:

The latest right-wing game is to pin controversial figures, who might have said or done anything objectionable at any point in their lifetimes, to Barack Obama. Then make him apologize for them. Then make him denounce and reject them. And then say he hasn’t done enough to “distance” himself from them…
So, let’s play the six degrees of Barack Obama game and see who else he should denounce and reject… I invite all of you to play along. See how many degrees it takes you to get to Obama and how enthusiastically and vociferously he has to denounce you.

as if it wasn’t bad enough that he’s only two degrees away from cenk uygur, there’s more bad news news for obama: since i shook his hand at a campaign stop last year, he is now also directly responsible for every outrageous, unpatriotic, foolish thing i’ve ever said or written. if chris wallace ever finds about about this site, obama is well and truly fucked.

in fact, there’s a good chance that just by reading this post, you too have been tainted, and any political ambitions you may have harbored are henceforth invalidated. sorry! if you feel the need to distance yourself, i’ll understand.

as i’ve said before, i think barack obama has done a fine job of articulating the reasons behind many black americans’ receptiveness to remarks like the now-infamous ones by rev. wright. but here’s a much more succinct explanation:

Three detectives were found not guilty Friday on all charges in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets outside a club in Jamaica, Queens, in November 2006.
…
“The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt” that each defendant was not justified in shooting, the judge said, quickly adding that the men were not guilty of all of the eight counts, five felonies and three misdemeanors against them.

…and yet, every time i turn on the TV i see white faces wearing puzzled expressions, voicing shock and disbelief at the idea that a jeremiah wright or an al sharpton could feel the way he feels and say the things he says. is it really that hard to grasp? honestly, is it just too much intellectual effort to disagree with the “god damn america” sentiment and still admit some inkling of where it comes from? this isn’t rocket science, white people.

with justice like this, what’s remarkable is that black folks in this country are not walking around in a constant state of outrage and despair.