Life is so unfair.
You want to make a joke about a black President being kicked out of public housing when his term expires. It's a good joke. It's funny. You're sure that people will laugh their heads or asses (admittedly, there is not much difference between the two for your intended audience) off at the joke. Don't ask why a politician would want followers who had no heads or asses; we live in strange times.
Imagine your surprise when people are offended. They call the joke "insensitive" and "racist." Under these circumstances, what is a poor comedian to do?
If he lives in the Basket of Deplorables and he happens to be Stephen Moore, Donald Trump's pick to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, he reaches after the second most used excuse in the racist's lexicon (after: "Some of my best friends are..."): "How come they can say that but I can't?"
Why couldn't he just apologize for making an insensitive joke? Because it probably would have come out, "I just wanted to a - wanted to a - a - ap - aaaaaaargh!" As former Homeland Security Secretary Barbie truly said, "Apologies are hard!"
Besides, the kind of person who would put a downpayment on land in the basket of deplorables generally hates to walk away from his investment.
The Frontiers Of Medical Knowledge? More Like The Backwoods...
When Republican Alabama Senator Clyde Chambliss refers to the limits of his medical knowledge, he is being too modest. He clearly knows that leeches are the best cure for heart disease and, when in doubt, a good bloodletting will release the bad humours in a cancer patient's body.
And, we let men like this determine what a woman can do with her body?
If I understand Senator Chambliss' diagnosis, there must be at least...a dozen chromosomes in the human body. Maybe as many as 15. After the...you know, the icky stuff that results in conception happens, it takes time for them to come together to form little fingers and toes. At which point, the chromosomes...send a woman a singing telegramme to let her know she's pregnant?
Sorry, I'm at the limits of my deplorable knowledge.
However this happens, it gives women a window of opportunity: they can get an abortion as long as they don't know they're pregnant. It's a pity Joseph Heller isn't still alive: the basket of deplorables would be an endless source of inspiration for him!
It could be worse, I suppose: Senator Chambliss could be teaching this nonsense to children. No, wait: that's what deplorable basket resident Betsy de Voss is for...
Po Mo, Mo Fo
When he's not suggesting Mein Kampf to his local book club, Republican Representative Mo Brooks explains that rising sea levels are caused by rocks falling into major river systems.
Now, you may think that videos of ice breaking off the Arctic shelf and falling into the ocean show a better explanation for why ocean levels are rising. Fortunately, in the basket of deplorables they know better: those videos are actually played backwards by environmental extremists! That's right: watched the right way round, they depict water spontaneously freezing and jumping onto the Arctic shelf! You would never know this from the mainstream media, but the polar ice caps are actually thicker than they ever have been!
As often happens with denizens of the basket, you have to wonder if Representative Brooks believes the bullshit that comes out of his mouth, or if it is just something he says for political expediency. No doubt polar bears will be debating this distinction long after they go extinct.
* These Words Have Never Been Known To Pass A Right-wing Politicians Lips, But They Are The Third Most Surprising Facial Feature, So Anything Is Possible
Oh, yeah. He went there.
Shelby County, Tennessee, Criminal Court judge Jim Lammey linked to racist and anti-Semitic articles on his Facebook page, including one saying that Jews should "get the fuck over the Holocaust." When he received bad press for it, what was his defence?
He reached for the most used excuse in the racist's lexicon (ahead, even, of "How come they can say that but I can't?"): "Some of my best friends are..."
If he doesn't agree with Holocaust deniers, why does Lammey link to articles on their web pages? A number of intriguing possibilities open up in front of us:
1) "I didn't know that the pages contained Holocaust denial - I thought they contained recipes for blini."
2) "I knew the pages contained Holocaust denial, but I thought the fact that they also contained blini recipes was more important."
3) "I am deplorable."*
Lammey assured everybody that his views would not affect his decisions on the bench. I have no doubt that Jews were comforted by this. As were east European chefs.
