To the Editor:
I just read the AP story about Conservapedia.com, the Bible rewriting project proposing to erase the effects of “liberal academics” who have “watered down” Jesus by studying the ancient languages of the Bible. The linguists, one supposes, are all secret Satanists and cannot be trusted.
The group’s founder, Andy Schlafly, is the son of Phyllis Schlafly. The apple has not fallen far from the tree. These are the same John Birchers and reactionary right-wingers of yore. Conservapedia is just a new offshoot of that poisonous tree, and Schlafly is the fruit of fringe insanity. The poor kid was raised to believe this gorp.
Over the decades, a nebulous root-system of direct-mail lists fed the paranoia of the stupid and informed the world of AM talk radio. Toxic to democracy, this monster has flourished in the age of the Internet and media consolidation. Its tentacles pull the mixing-board levers of Fox News Channel, where Glenn Beck spews that same pollution into the mainstream of public opinion.
Birthers, death panels, black helicopters, lizard people, secret U.N. armies in Nebraska … where do you think these idiots come from? A majority of Republicans today actually believe the president was born in Kenya. How do you think that happened?
Now they want to turn the Bible into a weapon of culture war. This was exactly what Jesus meant when he said there would be many who cry “Lord, Lord!” who are too wicked for him to recognize.
But what I want to know is, given their long record of tinfoil-hat bizzarro fearmongering, how do these wackaloons and hoopleheads still merit the fair-handed attention of “liberal” media?
I would like to see journalists call them by their proper names: shills, hacks and mixed nuts.
