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Red State’s Caleb Howe Takes 1372 Words To Tell Roger Ebert He’s Sorry

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I don’t like Caleb Howe. But I love Twitter. And I use it all the time. To meet people, to form communities, to understand how people think. For me, Twitter is all about people. And every time I hit “enter,” I know every one of those 140-or-less-character messages I send is going to affect some of the 7000+ folks who are following my tweets. So I make sure that what I say has relevance, and even the tweets I send that attack people don’t attack people.

That’s one of my main issues with the thought process on the Right. Ad hominen attacks are how they go about their day. On Twitter, at Tea Parties, on Glenn Beck’s show, on RedState, the Right loves to attack you as a person. Not just your positions, your ideas, your beliefs, but you. And that’s where I draw the line.

I’ve made a lot of tough comments about, and too, a lot of people. But you’d be hard-pressed to find any tweet I’ve sent, or any blog post I’ve written, or anything I’ve verbalized, that attacked a person — how they look, their ethnic background, their orientation, who they are, as a person.

But back to Caleb Howe. As you probably know at this point, Caleb Howe blogs at RedState, one of the most right-wing blogs ever. Howe likes to get down-and-dirty, and, by his own admission, he likes to get down with the vodka, too. I’ll confess I didn’t know who he was until a few days ago, when I read how he had viciously attacked Roger Ebert via Twitter. You’ve read the piece over at Gawker, (or the other piece at Gawker,) or the one at Esquire, or the one at CNN… Yes, Caleb Howe knows how to make a name for himself. See, it was all a test. It was his “plan.”

Caleb Howe, on Saturday, decided to take on Roger Ebert by making fun of his cancer. Media Matters has screenshots of his actual tweets, but I’ll share a few of them here:

CalebHowe: I mean, honestly. How many pieces need to fall off @ebertchicago before he gets the hint to shut the fuck up?

CalebHowe: You know, @ebertchicago, I’m not as expert on flag etiquette as you. Tell me, which do I fly when you die of cancer?

I’ll leave it at that, though there are plenty more.

Caleb Howe represents the tea party movement, the right-wing radical movement, and the right-wing blogosphere perfectly. Don’t like someone’s stance on an issue? Call them a “goat fucking child molester.” What? Yup. That’s what Caleb Howe’s boss, Erick Erickson, who runs RedState but is also a CNN contributor, said on the news that David Souter was retiring from the Supreme Court. In fact, the entire sentence was, “The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter’s retirement.”

So, it should come as no shock that Howe would sink so low as to say of Ebert, “…he’ll be dead really really soon. So fuck him.”

I suppose, one could argue, that’s almost tame by comparison.

Anyway, it’s this type of rhetoric that serves as the daily fare by the RedState crowd.

Howe did, finally, apologize. In “I Don’t Like Roger Ebert,” Howe takes almost all of its 1372 words to actually apologize, saying that he “forgot about humanity.” Damned right he did.

But given the RedState culture of calling a Supreme Court justice a “goat fucking child molester,” of threatening to “pull out a shotgun on a census worker,” suggesting beating a politician “to a bloody pulp for being an idiot,” and demanding Americans “tell Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel,” what can you expect?

Howe decided to appear last night on “The Stage Right Show,” a podcast that promised, “some serious “half hour of hate.” Howe claimed his “plan” to attack Ebert was “How do I hurt him?” The host laughed when Howe recalled his tweets about Ebert dying of cancer. “You were purposely being provocative because you had an end-game.” So? Justified? No.

Howe, on the podcast, mumbled something about how “Twitter’s off the record.” It’s not. (He and Erick Erickson, his boss, certainly should realize that by now.) He claimed his plan was to expose hypocrisy by riling up Ebert’s Twitter followers, by saying terrible things. His plan was to “trap them in their hypocrisy.” And he added, “my bottom line is that everyone’s a douche.”

Evidently, one of those “everybodys” is Oliver Willis, a blogger for the media watchdog Media Matters, which Howe and the host attempted to skewer during the show.

Later, after his Saturday salvo, Howe tweeted to those who criticized his heinous attack on Ebert (including your truly,) saying, “Ahh irony,” and “lol. Irony.” Because those criticizing him, to his way of thinking, were equally guilty as he. Proportion and intent, in Howe’s mind, evidently don’t matter.

What Howe didn’t get, and maybe, maybe does now, is that there’s a difference between attacking someone’s political positions, and attacking them as a human being.

But I don’t hold much hope. Given one of Caleb Howe’s most-recent tweets, I’d say he’s back to his old ways…

Ah, irony.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Fox Host Says Democrats Don’t Believe in Heaven So They Play ‘Hard’ to ‘Perfect’ Earth

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June 4, 2023

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Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy blamed the differences between Republicans and Democrats on religious beliefs about Heaven.

On Sunday’s Fox & Friends program, co-host Pete Hegseth argued religion was liberating because people could realize they aren’t perfect. A video clip of the moment was shared on social media.

“It changes the way you look even at politics,” Campos-Duffy agreed. “And sometimes, you know, we look at how hard on the left they play. They really play for keeps. They play in a way that’s very, you know, a lot of times conservatives look at it and go, why don’t we play as hard as them?”

The Fox News host said Democrats were trying to perfect the Earth because they did not believe in Heaven.

“Well, for them, where we live right now, this place, Earth is it,” she opined. “So everything’s on the line here for them. They think, as you said, they can perfect this Earth. Those of us who have faith don’t believe that. And we believe how we act here determines where we go after. And so we had to behave.”

“And so even in politics, we don’t, you know, we act within those moral limits,” Campos-Duffy insisted. “And you know, the ends justify the means is sort of the rules for radicals. That’s not how Christians act.”

Watch the video below from Fox News or at the link.

 

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News

Extremist Group Targets Florida High School’s Yearbook Over Inclusion of LGBTQ Students Section

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June 3, 2023

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The publication of a Florida high school yearbook that included an LGBTQ section has drawn rebuke from a conservative group, The Orlando Sentinel reports.

Lyman High School’s 256-page yearbook includes two pages that highlight the school’s LGBTQ students and features gender identity terms such as “genderfluid” and “nonbinary.”

The Seminole County Public Schools in response to the criticism is offering to issue refunds or reprint the yearbook without the LGBTQ section that the conservative Seminole County Moms for Liberty claims is offensive.

“They shouldn’t have any sexual definitions in a yearbook,” the group’s chapter chair Jessica Tillmann told The Sentinel.

“This is a yearbook that goes to every student as young as 14.”

The school’s yearbook is stirring controversy for a second straight year after the district in 2022 considered putting stickers over photos of a student walkout protesting the so-called “don’t say gay” law, the report said.

The Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher reports that “An LGBTQ+ section in this year’s yearbook includes a picture of members of the student’s Gay-Straight Alliance, definitions of key LGBTQ+ terms, a passage on the evolution of pronouns and a profile of a student who advocates for the LGBTQ+ community.”

Danielle Pomeranz, the school yearbook’s faculty advisor, isn’t on board with the district’s decision to remove the LGBTQ content.

“They are definitions,” Pomeranz told The Sentinel.

“They are not teaching anything about sex at all. … Nobody is teaching anybody about sex acts. It is ridiculous.”

Pomeranz has since resigned from her position in the district, citing in part the Sunshine State’s political climate and an unsupportive district, the report said.

“We’ve always had the LGBTQ+ spread in there,” she said.

“Our job as journalists and members of the yearbook staff is to provide coverage of the entire school and that includes all of the communities, including the LGBTQ+ community.”

Read the full article here.

Image via Shutterstock

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

‘No Longer the Lord’s Chicken’: ‘Christian Woman’ Says She’s ‘Grieving’ Over ‘Woke’ Chick-fil-A Hiring a Diversity Officer

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2 days ago

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June 2, 2023

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A self-described “Christian woman” who is a contributor to the far-right wing students organization Turning Point USA, is being widely mocked for posting a video attacking Chick-fil-A over claims the conservative, privately-owned, faith-based fast food restaurant chain recently hired a diversity officer.

“So I’m grieving,” the video, apparently by Morgonn McMichael (below), begins. “It’s lunchtime. I’m here with Aubrey. And we really wanted some Chick-fil-A but because they decided to hire a diversity, equity and inclusion corporate position, and also bow down to the woke lord because their ESG scores, and also I found out do you know their chicken is funded by BlackRock and Vanguard? Yeah their farms, they use Tyson and this other farm, BlackRock and Vanguard funded chicken.”

If you think that’s a mouthful just wait, there’s more.

“Chick-fil-A,” Morgonn continues, “you are no longer the Lord’s chicken. You’re actually the woke chicken and I’m really upset about it as a Christian woman. All we wanted was some good fried chicken so now we’re gonna go to Cane’s, we’re going to try it out.”

READ MORE: Classified Pentagon ‘War Plans’ Document Trump Bragged About in Audio Recording Is Missing: Report

Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers is a Louisiana-based fast food restaurant with 600 locations in the U.S. and Western Asia.

“This is really difficult because there’s a Chick-fil-A is across the street. Now eating chicken fingers instead of chicken nuggets. I know, first world Christian woman problems, but no one will ever understand the love that I had for Chick-fil-A.”

“You know, we’re taking this boycott Chick-fil-A thing seriously, and it’s really difficult.”

The video was posted to Twitter by the anonymous group PatriotTakes, which has been described as a liberal political action committee. It quickly went viral, garnering over 2 million views in just eight hours. Late Friday afternoon Morgonn tweeted, “sarcasm and satire are things the left doesn’t seem to understand.”

For those who don’t know, Turning Point USA, a far-right Christian nationalist organization, was founded by the ultra-MAGA Charlie Kirk, now a member of the highly-secretive Council for National Policy.

CNP’s membership list also includes former Trump attorney, ally, and advisor Cleta Mitchell, and Ginni Thomas.

“CNP members range from the leaders of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, to the Southern Poverty Law Center designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom,” Documented reported last year.

Turning Point USA was in the news last week after Rolling Stone reported: “Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA Teamed Up With a Registered Sex Offender.”

Meanwhile, over at TPUSA, Morgonn McMichael’s bio says she is “a Gen Z social media influencer from Texas whose effort to empower and inspire America’s next generation of young conservative female leaders through patriotic online video content has amassed over 100,000 unique social media impressions every week on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and more.”

READ MORE: ‘I Don’t Want Reality’: Senate Republican Explodes Over Origin of Concept of Race – Calls to Teach ‘Jesus Loves Me’ Instead

“Morgonn has dedicated the last year promoting freedom of speech, religious liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government both online and across TPUSA campus chapters. Morgonn has also reached tens of thousands of viewers of all ages with her articles and appearances on Newsmax, Real America’s Voice, OAN, and Breitbart, offering insightful cultural commentary into the most pressing issues concerning young conservatives today.”

Apparently, Chick-fil-A’s diversity officer (more on that next) is one of “the most pressing issues concerning young conservatives today.”

Morgonn did claim Chick-fil-A “decided to hire a diversity, equity and inclusion” officer.

Well, stunningly, the company – long known for its hate-filled attacks on same-sex marriage – did, over a year ago.

A USA Today fact check found Chick-fil-A hired Erick McReynolds, its vice president of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, more than a year and a half ago. The company even has a DEI page featuring him on its corporate website.

PatriotTakes also tweeted, “TPUSA Contributor Morgonn, who is now calling for a boycott of Chick-fil-a, previously said, Cancel culture is toxic’ and ‘needs to be canceled.'”

As some social media users pointed out, Cane’s Chicken Fingers is very pro-LGBTQ.

READ MORE: Decision to Not Charge Pence in Classified Docs Probe Is ‘Prelude to DOJ Seeking Charges Against Trump’: Legal Expert

“Since its inception in the early 2000s, Raising Cane’s has been a strong supporter of the LGBT community,” San Diego Gay & Lesbian News (SDGLN) reported in November. “The chicken chain was one of the first companies to offer domestic partner benefits to its employees and has been a vocal advocate for LGBT rights. In 2015, Raising Cane’s was named one of the best places to work for LGBT Equality by the Human Rights Campaign.”

In response to Morgonn’s video, Mississippi Free Press editor Ashton Pittman posted this screenshot from a Raising Cane’s tweet:

Over at TPUSA, Morgonn has written content including a piece titled, “Disney’s Male Employee in a Dress Sparks Outrage,” that begins, “At Disney, anyone can be a princess — even a grown man.”

Also, “Disney in Decline: Company Loses Billions Due to Woke Agenda.”

Noted actor and activist George Takei weighed in, tweeting simply, “They’ve lost their goddamned minds.”

Watch Morgonn below or at this link.

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