The college football bowl season is in full swing here in America. Yes, it seems like every poedunk town or city has a poedunk bowl game sponsored by a poedunk company. Do we really need the TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville Florida or the Foster Farms Bowl in Santa Clara California? Really? What’s more, losing teams are going to bowl games now. Congratulations on your awful 5-7 season; you still get to go to a bowl game! Talk about promoting mediocrity. Oh that’s right…we forgot. College football is a business now, not a sport.It’s all about the money. Gee, do we sound jaded?
Since we’re talking about the gawdawful stupidity of collegiate and professional sports, it’s time for another edition of Helmet Hilarity. We think the funniest thing about football and collegiate sports are some of the school mascots. For instance, the Banana Slugs of the University of California at Santa Cruz or the Artichokes of Scottsdale Community College evoke a hilarious image, especially if you saw a big banana slug or an artichoke depicted on a football player’s helmet. So in this vein we present our feature, Helmet Hilarity, featuring the helmets of obscure collegiate teams and their unconventional, zany mascots.
Today, we present the helmet of the Elmo Hopkins Medical School Fightin’ Ebolas. Everyone’s heard of Johns Hopkins University. Well, Elmo Hopkins was Johns’ less successful third cousin twice removed, who was a ‘doctor’ in the eastern Kentucky hills and founded a ‘medical school’ back in the early 1900s to promote his ‘health elixirs’. Back in 2000, the administrators decided to update their name and mascot to something scarier, more modern and more to do with medicine (or as they put it, ‘mediciniy sounding’). It had been the Elmo Hopkins Moonshiners with their mascot XXX, a big ceramic jug of ‘health elixir’. The powers that be decided against making a fearsome, deadly animal like a bear, lion or tiger their mascot. They also decided against intimidating, murderous humans like warriors, giants or raiders. They even said no to natural, lethal forces like hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes. Instead they chose the smallest, deadliest creature around; the ebola virus. When you think about it, it’s a wonder why more colleges don’t feature more viruses, bacteria and germs on their helmet. The ebola virus is a good example. It’s so frightening, the Republicans used the threat of it coming to America to win the House and Senate in 2014. We know, we wouldn’t want to be facing a fightin’ ebola across the line of scrimmage.
What would the holiday season be without a nod to America’s own, self-appointed ‘culture warrior’ and General in the ‘War on Christmas’, Bill O’Reilly. Yes, let’s look back of one of Bloviator Bill’s finest moments, from our July 7, 2006 issue.
Back in June 2006, the Loofah Master commented that Iraq should be run like it was under Saddam Hussein, because at that time, for those with no memory cells, the Iraq War was a clusterf*ck and going badly, because…well…George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied to America and we invaded a country we never should have invaded in the first place.
At the risk of flouting Godwin’s Law, we’ve noticed how far to the right the Republican party has traveled over the past twenty years; specifically in the years after Dubya left office and with the rise of the Teabaggers. Now that Donald Trump has started to spew forth truly hateful rhetoric in this farce of an election called Con-a-thon 2016, comparisons to the NSDAP party(Nazis) of 1930’s Germany are not only inevitable, but necessary. Make no mistake, it’s not just Trump who believes this filth. Every Republican candidate believes it as well, especially Rubio and Cruz, who both have said some vile, nasty unchristian things toward immigrants, foreigners, gays, women, and non-christians. Although every single high ranking Republican condemned Trump for his words, they would absolutely vote for him and support him in the general election. Yep, Trump is the heart and soul of the current Republican party and it’s pretty ugly.
What grinds our gears though, is when right wing blowhards violate Godwin’s by bloviating and showing their ignorance by comparing Obama to Hitler. This is not only laughable but blatantly incorrect. History shows that the leaders of the NSDAP party were overwhelmingly right wing conservatives not leftists (For an excellent, informative read try Richard Evans’ Third Reich trilogy: The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; and The Third Reich at War). They had a well oiled propaganda machine that spewed forth hateful rhetoric about minorities and foreigners who would serve as convenient scapegoats for all national maladies. They were against gays, democratic socialists (they would have killed Obama), immigrants, and unions. Women were second class citizens who would only be useful to provide further citizens for the nation. They promoted eternal warfare and invoked nationalism to incite citizens to join the military. They pushed for a strong military and were very friendly to corporations which fueled the military industrial complex. They would regularly stoke fear in the hearts of the citizenry by claiming the aforementioned scapegoats were going to ruin their nation. They would regularly stifle opposing viewpoints by announcing that anyone who disagreed were enemies of the state and should be eliminated. Hmmmm…notice any similarities? We think Americans must take notice, (Godwin’s Law be damned) and be very concerned about this 21st century neocon Republican party that, according to its propaganda, wants to ‘make America great again’ just as a certain right wing conservative fascist party wanted to make Germany great again in the 1930s.
Amazingly, Donald Trump is still dominating the Republican field in the charade that is Con-a-thon 2016. This, despite some rather recent fascist-like statements, like his wanting to keep all Muslims out of the United States. But this is all going according to plan for the Republicans, who are master con artists, propagandists and media manipulators. The sacrificial lamb Donald Trump, is making the extremists within the party, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, look sane by comparison, thereby setting them up to obtain the nomination next summer as the less dangerous choice. Ahhhh….Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
Speaking of which….just in time for the holiday season, The Donald has come out with a delightful new book, (reminiscent of another book by some 20th century German fascist), explaining his fascist tendencies and his authoritarian vision for the future of the Holy Corporate Empire with its dictator…er…president, Donald Trump (or shall we say Trumpf). It even has a picture of Herr Trumpf dressed in the fascist uniform of the 21st century; the designer business suit. Like the cover says…READ IT! NOW!!!!!
This past weekend, an anti-choice, conservative, religious zealot, Robert Dear, barricaded himself inside a Planned Parenthood clinic and killed three people and injured nine others. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, take into account the aftermath of this tragedy. As one could predict, the media is being incredibly stupid, postulating on what his possible motive could be despite his grumbling the phrase “no more baby parts” as he was being jailed. This was in line with Republicans, who also took the Sgt. Schultz approach. (Christian Terrorists? What christian terrorists?) Probably the most inane comment was by the smuggest Senator alive and GOP candidate, Ted Cruz, who said there was nothing linking him to the anti-abortion stance (pay no attention to the “no more baby parts” statement) and that he was a “transgendered leftist activist” and not a crazed anti-abortionist, right wing, christian terrorist. The wife of Dear even said he was conservative , religious and anti-abortion. But in Ted Cruz’s demented world vision, we need to be very afraid of people like Laverne Cox, Kaitlyn Jenner and Chaz Bono, who seem to be pretty docile and friendly people. And this clown, Cruz, wants to be President.
This was obviously a politically motivated shooting and it shows how the Republican rhetoric toward defunding Planned Parenthood has created a toxic attitude toward the important organization, which provides vital reproductive and counseling services to women. We’ve mentioned before the lies and deceptions by the conservative media and Carly Fiorina concerning Planned Parenthood. When the media and right wing conservative politicians fail to quell the hatred but instead incite it, then they should be held accountable. For instance, Ted Cruz recently crowed about an endorsement for his campaign from Troy Newman,who has openly endorsed violence against abortion providers. Another wack-a-doodle GOP candidate, Mike Huckabee, likened Planned Parenthood to ISIS. Of course, everyone of these ‘pro-lifers’ are totally for starting wars in the Middle East, which will kill thousands of people in the process. Pro-life indeed! And everyone of these ‘freedom loving conservatives’ are for getting government out people’s lives, except when it comes to women’s reproductive systems, then by all means let’s monitor their vaginas and uteri 24/7. Hypocrites indeed!