10 Outrages and Crazy Statements by Right-Wingers This Week: Pope Provokes Free-Market Freakout The right freaks out about a compassionate pope and transgendered people, and spews some really bizarre conspiracy theories. November 30, 2013 | Before the Thanksgiving floats, there was the usual parade of right-wing nuts this week, many of whom became apoplectic after Pope Francis’ much-publicized Joy of the Gospel document, which critiqued unfettered capitalism and insinuated that thoroughly discredited trickle-down economics is naïve and just plain wrong. 1. Stuart Varney lectures Pope Francis about capitalism. Not even the pope is safe from the wrath of Fox. How dare the pope attack “deified markets” and the idolatry of money? Who does he think he is? God? Fox Business host Stuart Varney was just stewing about the pontiff’s remarks. “Capitalism, in my opinion, is a liberator,” he lectured Pope Francis from his television pulpit. “The free choice of millions of people is the essence of freedom. In my opinion, society benefits most when people are free to pursue their own self-interest. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it is not.” It isn’t. It just isn’t. Oh, yeah, and another thing. The pope has no business mixing politics with religion. Especially when his political views diverge with those of Fox. Varney again: “I go to church to save my soul. It’s got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics.” Pope John Paul II was much more to Varney’s liking because he was very against communism, and very into private property. He never made rich people feel bad for having too much, while millions of others went without. 2. Cliff Kinkaid: Marxists have infiltrated the Catholic Church. The problem goes a lot deeper than Stu Varney (and Rush Limbaugh) had feared. The Catholic Church itself is infiltrated with Marxists. This conspiracy theory is brought to you by the right-wing, misnamed Accuracy in Media director, Cliff Kincaid. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not here to beat up on the pope,” Kinkaid insisted in a video recently uploaded to YouTube. “That’s not my job. But I can read. I can read this document. I can see what he is saying, and I can tell you right now that this is a very, very disappointing document, and it makes me wonder about the future of the Roman Catholic Church in this world and what they’re heading towards.” Kinkaid says he has proof that there is an evil commie plot in the Roman Catholic Church, that it supports one world government and that Pope Francis is using “flowery language” to camouflage this sinister plot, or “what we might euphemistically call a new world order, a new world economic order.” But he is not attacking the Manchurian Pope. 3. Pam Geller: How dare the Pope actually read the Koran! It’s not the communism that Islamophobic blogger/activist Pam Geller is worried about with Pope Francis. It’s how nice he is to Muslims. It’s downright unChristian of him to imply that there might be Muslims who don’t want to kill the rest of us. He obviously condones the killing of Christians. Talk about a leap of faith. “At a time when Christianity worldwide is under siege by Islamic jihadists, the leader of the Catholic Church claims that the Quran teaches non-violence. As Christians across the Muslim world live in abject terror and fear kidnapping, rape and slaughter to the bloodcurdling cries of ‘Allahu akbar,’ the pope gives papal sanction to the savage,” Geller wrote on her blog. What the pope actually did in his apostolic exhortation, which has sent shockwaves throughout the right-wing wackosphere, was to contrast “violent fundamentalism” with “authentic Islam.” The latter, he wrote, was “opposed to every form of violence.”
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 01:39:26 +0000