Friday, April 17, 2009

One Born Every Minute

I can't believe I missed this when it first ran, but here's the story:

A poster over at Daily Kos named Bamos crated a fake Twitter account called In the Stimulus, where he/she posted all sorts of outrageous bullshit alleged to be part of the stimulus package. They started off as, in Bamos' words, "believable but unsourced lies," such as
  • $750,000 for an underground tunnel connecting a middle school and high school in North Carolina.
  • $4.7 million for a program supplying public television to K-8 classrooms.
  • $2.3 million for a museum dedicated to the electric bass guitar.
The wingnuts ate it up. So Bam got crazier:
  • $473,000 to Fueled by Ramen, record label for such bands as Fall Out Boy.
  • $4 million for Obama bobbleheads.
  • $104,000 to exhume President Taft.
  • $465 million for massive air conditioners to combat global warming.
  • And finally,

  • $855,000 for the gambling debts Laura Bush incurred on diplomatic trips between 2004-2008.
My personal favorite: "$2 million for Shamwows."

And instead of going "wait a minute, I call shenanigans on this," the indignation grew...and grew...and grew:

  • americanblogstr: @InTheStimulus Is $2 mil in ShamWows the new FEMA emergency backup plan for the next Hurricane Katrina?
  • PreppyPrincess: @InTheStimulus Okay, this is the worst. Worse than the national insect funding. [note: also something I made up, obviously] Shamwows?
  • ScrapDiva: RT @InTheStimulus: is $2 million for Shamwows. <seriously?!>
  • jeffl8n: nice, what congress person promised everyone a Shamwow? - RT @InTheStimulus: "is $2 million for Shamwows."
  • hanktechentin: It's worse than we thought! RT @InTheStimulus is $2 million for Shamwows. #tcot
I guess it shouldn't be surprising that they got so easily punk'd. These are, after all, the people who still buy George Dubbya Bush's snake oil by the family sized barrel, not to mention buying into the notion that the Wassilla Hillbilly was some kind of political heavyweight.

And to be fair, as we'll see in Sunday's newspaper column, it's not just the Right who're susceptible to Twitter-driven outrage. They're just the ones who're most susceptible to mistaking bullshit for reality.

3 comments:

Stacey Cochran said...

There are crazy people in this world.

Anonymous said...

Remember, these are the same people who went to the teabaggin' parties to complain Obama raised their taxes too much AFTER THEY GOT A TAX CUT!!!

Wingnuttery really needs to be added to the list of mental illnesses.

Bill Buckley is dead and PJ O'Rourke only surfaces on Bill Maher occasionally. No wonder they're whining. There's no one left to speak seriously on their behalf, just a drug addict, an idiot construction worker who doesn't have Alan Colmes to beat up anymore, and an anorexic whore who'd love to molest McCarthy's corpse.

Celine said...

There's no one left to speak seriously on their behalf, just a drug addict, an idiot construction worker who doesn't have Alan Colmes to beat up anymore, and an anorexic whore who'd love to molest McCarthy's corpse.Three people, three dismissive attacks. The two men are attacked on the basis of their actions. The woman is attacked on the basis of her appearance and sexuality.

I'm not angry -- but this is Everyday Sexism at its most classic. And it will never, ever go away if people don't point it out when it happens, especially when done unthinkingly by allies.