T

he stories I’ve nominated for the dubious honor of receiving C-SM’s “Most Ridiculous Story of 2008″ fall into three camps:

Two are about women’s rights.  Gloria Steinem wails that America remains a backward, sexist hell-hole in Women Are Never Front-Runners.  Steinem’s piece, the only anti-Obama piece among the entries, seeths with anger that Hillary Clinton was not just handed the nomination.  Anne Glusker’s She’s A Kennedy, But She’s A Lot Like Us seeths with a similar anger – that a typical stay-at-home mom (that’s Caroline Kennedy) should be asked to have a resume that obviously qualifies her for a job.

Two are Obama worship pieces written during the primaries.  Michael Chabon’s Obama Vs. The Phobocracy posits that America runs on fear (hence, phobocracy), and that any opposition to Obama – any opposition at all – merely constitutes giving into fear and denying hope.  It’s hope-a-dope to the max.  Mark Morford’s Is Obama An Enlightened Being? is New Age wacky-a-dope to the max.  In it, Morford denegrates all religious feelings except those attuned to Obama and posits that The One is a Lightworker, a rare spiritual being who helps the human race to evolve.

And three are paranoid screeds against the Bush admin.  Libby Spencer’s When – Not If – Martial Law Is Declared seizes on an obscure FBI program and huffs and puffs until that program will bring about the imminent fall of freedom in America – and remarkably, she manages to utterly discount the threat of terrorism in the process.  Last year’s winner, Naomi Wolf, is back with another paranoid rant, The Battle Plan II: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse Of The Coming Police State, in which she sees the Cheney/Rove cabal setting up Sarah Palin as the “Frankenbarbie” who will oversee the end of the American democracy.  Finally, Paul Abrams’ Why Rove Attacks Eric Holder: To Provide Cover for Bush’s Pardons supposes that the Bush Admin, fearful of mass arrests and convictions of everyone from Bush on down, is setting up Marc Rich pardoner Eric Holder as the fall guy in a scheme of mass pardons.

These are, by and large, not off-Broadway screeds; only Spencer’s martial law piece appeared in an outlet that could be called obscure (Newshoggers); the rest were published in mainstream outlets:  the NYT (Steinem), WaPo (Chabon and Glusker), the SF Wrongicle (Morford) and Huffpo (Wolf and Abrams).

You can get read more detailed summaries of the entries here.

Now, onto the winners.  Gloria Steinem was at least partially right: Pieces on women’s rights don’t come in first.  As ridiculous as her column and Glusker’s were, they simply weren’t important enough to win the award.  Steinem’s raison d’etre, like Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s, is predicated on an America that doesn’t change and continues to victimize its minorities.  That’s ridiculous, but not ridiculous enough.  Glusker actually makes some great points, but in selecting Kennedy as her standard-bearer, she made a ridiculous choice … but not ridiculous enough.

I know a lot of folks were pushing for Morford’s piece to win, but I’m also discounting both of the Obama-worshipping pieces.  As ridiculous as they are, Morford and Chabon accurately portrayed the motivations of the large part of the electorate that accepted Obama based on feelings and symbolism.  If Obama had lost, I’d be picking between the two, and Morford with his Lightworker blather would certainly have risen to the top, but Obama won, making thier pieces not so much ridiculous but pathetic and troubling.

That leaves the inmates at the paranoia asylum.  Spencer did a masterful job of exploding a tiny FBI program into the crushing defeat of American freedom, thereby doing the best job of showing the left’s utter disdain for America’s resiliency.  Abrams was masterful in turning Holder/Obama negatives into a bug-eyed terror show starring Karl Rove – the sort of extremely deft blame-shifting that only the most paranoid leftist can muster.

But Wolf’s piece was far and away the most ridiculous, earning Naomi a two-fer and the  honor of being the only recipient thus far of C-SM’s Most Ridiculous Story of the Year award.

First, any reader will be awed by the sheer length of the piece and stand in wonder that Wolf was able to sustain her high-pitched wail for so long. Then there is the crazed creativity and ugly woman-hating feminism of the piece.  A lot of radical women embarrassed themselves by denigrating all the accomplishments of Palin – mom, businesswoman, successful politician, corruption fighter, alliance-builder – in a rush to not just reject her but hate her with a viciousness once reserved for male chauvinist pigs, but only Wolf was able to trump this vile intolerance by making Palin a priestess of darkness – or maybe just a Barbie doll – in the Cheney/Rove kabal.

In the course of telling her tale, Wolf embraces news reports of police actions, the goings-on at Palin’s church, Bush code words in Palin’s speeches, and even the quality of her mail delivery service to create a piece that puts the finest work of the 9/11 Truthers Liars to shame.  And to top it all off, the masterminds of this scheme ended up failing miserably – they couldn’t even get their Evita elected! – which makes Wolf’s piece deliciously ridiculous.

So with humility and awe, the 2008 Most Ridiculous Story of the Year award goes to two-time winner, and full-time crazy, Naomi Wolf.  Please keep your comments short, Wolf, or the band will start playing over you.

The full text of my original post on Wolf’s post follows.

Naomi Wolf’s Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps won the inaugural year competition, becoming Cheat-Seeking Missiles most ridiculous story of 2007. Now she’s back with another horror fantasy on the Bush-Cheney-Rove Cabal, The Battle Plan II: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse Of The Coming Police State.

Wolf lives in a perpetual nightmare. On Dennis Prager’s show yesterday, she was complaining about being on the TSA watch list. This from a woman who just penned a book called Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries. She wants to foment revolution, and she can’t understand why she’s on a watch list. With that introduction to her acuity, let’s take a look at why Wolf looks at Sarah Palin and sees Evita Peron.

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand “Palin Power.” A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections — but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don’t have freedom.

There’s a small flaw in her thinking here: Soviet Russia didn’t exactly offer up a multi-party election, and if anyone had such an idea, the KGB would quell it quickly. And they were better at appearances than the rest of the world’s dictators and gangs of thugs. Our elections still mean something.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites (”the heart of America is on display”) and realized Bush’s speechwriters were writing her — not McCain’s — speeches. I heard her tell George Bush’s lies — not McCain’s — to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners — this is Rove-Cheney’s enthusiastic S and M, not McCain’s, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit –but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

How many Clintonistas are on the Obama campaign? Never mind. The reference to supporting torture? I believe it’s this, from Palin’s convention speech:

“Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

The left has been trying to redefine torture so it includes just about everything, and with this, they’ve done it. Not read your rights? TORTURE!!

And the make-up allegations? Women sometimes really do crack me up, even strident hard-left ones. Here in the wind-up of her pitch on Palin as Evita, she takes time to theorize on make-up?

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas –this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women’s shelters — Rove’s style, not McCain’s. I realized what I was seeing.

Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is “dialed in” to the McCain campaign. Rove’s protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain’s vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

You’re beginning to see her theme: John McCain doesn’t matter, he’s not really a part of this election. It’s Palin, and her Rove-Cheney handlers that it’s really all about.

BTW, with Obama unleashing DAs, prosecutors and sheriffs against anyone who mutters something unpleasant against The One, who is Wolf to accuse the GOP of mafia tactics?

What’s the plan? It is this. McCain doesn’t matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future — for a decade perhaps — a puppet “president” for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

There you’ve got the “McCain doesn’t matter” ploy. As for Melanoma survival rates, there are three main measures, with subgroups in each, and it’s how they combine that determines survival rates. The “T” category has 11 subsets, and the “N” and “M” categories each have five. If I remember my finite math right, to determine the amount of possible combinations, you have to do this: 11x10x9x8x7×6×5×4×3×2 + 5×4×3×2 + 5×4×3×2. That yields a very, very large number, so for Wolf to assert that McCain has two to four years to live is … ridiculous.

But again, never mind with the logic. For Wolf to carry out her Palin as Evita scheme – one which truly insults and minimizes women, but never mind about that my feminist friends, this is an Uncle Woman, a GOP woman, so minimize at will – she has to off McCain first. We know what lurks within: If the cancer doesn’t do it, Rove will. If Rove is so brilliant, why is Bush so unpopular? Never mind.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Because you’re ridiculous? Paranoid? Making a lot of money off of book sales to people who are ridiculous and paranoid?

Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain’s America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove’s S and M imagery — and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? “Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing.”

Theater? From the RNC? Hmm. What was that Greek temple in Denver? The footage was buried to avoid confiscation? Why not just put it up on YouTube instead … if it exists?

Journalists were arrested — for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers were arrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down as armed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the black S&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carry in North Korea. All this is not John McCain’s imagery or strategy: it is Karl Rove’s.

I love this stuff. Anarchists take to the streets, violate the terms of their permits and get arrested – then howl in protest about how it’s a police state. If you’re going to be the bait on the hook, Honey, you’d better be prepared for a bite.

And woman that she is, Wolf can’t help commenting on the fashion sense of the riot police. Pity she’s wrong. They were wearing that sort of get-up long before Rove was on the scene.

Wolf then launches into a series of paranoid visions and night-tremors:

• Police are disguising themselves as anarchists and inciting crowds to violence, so the crowds can then be crushed.
• You-Tube is pulled a video clip (no doubt vile and Christian-hating) on Palin’s former church just as it “appeared to be close to having an effect” on the election.
• “Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation.”

That last one is Wolf’s read on this story from Army Times:

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

They freak if our army’s overseas; they freak if it’s at home.

After accusing “them” (the new enemy, Rove/Palin) of messing with her emails and bank transfers, Wolf winds it all up:

I am not telling you this because it’s about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life — whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal, independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a police state. History shows that nothing portects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Scharansky divided nations into “fear societies” and “free societies.” Make no mistake: Sarah “Evita” Palin is Rove and Cheney’s cosmetic rebranding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible “fear society” in this once free once proud nation. For God’s sake, do not let her; do not let them.

And here’s how to do that, Naomi:  Vote for Obama if you feel that way.  It’s a free country, still.

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