idiots

A Glenn Beck Without a Voice is Still a Glenn Beck

Kate Bennert · 06/13/13 08:49AM

Glenn Beck lost his voice on Monday. Which is to say, Glenn Beck (as we are led to believe) could not make any physical words come out of his mouth on Monday. But an anger-clown without a voice is still an anger-clown, albeit a sad anger-clown. And this particular sad anger-clown would like you to please feel sorry for him in his state of silence. In fact, Glenn Beck would like you to know that life has always been pretty hard for Glenn Beck, and for the love of God could you please just feel sorry for Glenn Beck? Here is what a mute Glenn Beck told the public (if the public was even watching) on his show this past Monday while aggressively frowning over a reeeeeeeally big stack of hand-written flashcards:

BBC Interview with Alex Jones Ends with Host Calling Him a Crazy Idiot

Cord Jefferson · 06/10/13 03:25PM

The always hermetic Bilderberg Group is currently holding its annual meeting in England, thus making it the perfect time for the BBC to host America's foremost raving lunatic, Alex Jones, purveyor of foil-hat-making message board Infowars.com.

Fox News Is Just Askin': Is Eric Holder a Bigger Threat Than Al Qaeda?

Cord Jefferson · 06/07/13 03:11PM

Disgraced Florida man Allen West, who was forced out of the Army before being voted out of Congress after just one term, is now a Fox News talking head, naturally. One of his first orders of business? Getting to the bottom of this question: Is America's sitting attorney general more dangerous to us than a terrorist leader focused on murdering as many Americans as possible?

Tycoon's Pet Newspaper Thinks For-Profit Citi Bikes Are Socialism

Max Read · 05/29/13 11:39AM

"Just Buy a Bike!" the editors of the New York Observer encourage their readers today. That is, if you must ride a bike—and the only reason the Observer editors can think of that you might want to is "to feel morally superior"—you should not participate in the Citi Bike bike share program, inaugurated this week.

Ken Layne · 05/13/13 06:03PM

"Of the 41 percent of Republicans who consider Benghazi to be the worst political scandal in American history, 39 percent are unaware that Benghazi is located in Libya. 10 percent said it's in Egypt, 9 percent in Iran, 6 percent in Cuba, 5 percent in Syria, 4 percent in Iraq, and 1 percent in North Korea and Liberia."

Howard Kurtz's Shocking Revelation: He Can't Read

Tom Scocca · 05/01/13 04:29PM

How does multi-platform conflict-machine Howard Kurtz crank out so much coverage, people wonder? Maybe it's easier to write a lot of media criticism if you don't read the media you're criticizing. So today Kurtz finds—for two different outlets—a dark shadow in the sunny coverage of NBA player Jason Collins' decision to come out as gay: Collins was at one point engaged to a woman.

Tom Scocca · 04/24/13 01:24PM

In case you had any doubt that the campaign to rehabilitate George W. Bush's reputation was phony and corrupt, Lanny Davis has signed on.

The 13 Most Obnoxious Marathon-Bombing Tweets

Tom Scocca · 04/16/13 12:45PM

What do you do with your instantly publishing short-form social-media account when something big has happened but you don't know exactly what? Correct answer: nothing. But in the absence of reliable information yesterday, reflexive Twitter users filled the time by emptying out the preexisting contents of their heads.

Fox and Friends: We Should Make Congress Take IQ Tests To Make Sure They Know Stuff About Guns

Kate Bennert · 04/09/13 10:35AM

Working off of this column in the New York Post that suggests we should make members of congress take IQ tests—tests which, according to this guy, will quiz people on their knowledge of guns— the gang over at Fox and Friends all chimed in to support the notion. "Nobody'd be in congress!" Steve Doocey says to no one before chuckling at his own joke. Gretchen Carlson, meanwhile, was already busy thinking about the next step: when are they going to mandate IQ tests for the people that make the IQ tests for congress? "Nobody'd be left in the world!" Steve Doocey notices.

World's Wrongest Investment Guru Still Thinks His Big Prediction Might Come True

Hamilton Nolan · 03/07/13 06:11PM

In 1999, James Glassman and Kevin Hassett—two men with actual academic credentials—published the most hilariously wrong investment book of all time, entitled, quite hopefully, "Dow 36,000." (Highly recommended reading for humor value!) The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Dec. 31, 1999 at 11,497—but the authors, for a variety of reasons much too complicated for you to appreciate, postulated that it could hit 36,000 within "between three and five years."

Brooks Drops the Bass, Loses the Thread, in 'D.C. Dubstep' Column

Max Read · 02/22/13 08:20AM

What's the worst thing about chief New York Times pop sociologist David Brooks' new column, which is titled "The D.C. Dubstep" in a vague approximation of cleverness? Is it the insipid central metaphor, by which Brooks has each party doing "dance moves" in advance of the coming sequester and its accompanying deep budget cuts? Is it the names of those dance moves, names so embarrassing my hands are actively attempting to prevent me from typing them out? (For the record: the Democrats are doing the "P.C. Shimmy"—P.C. as in "permanent campaign"—the Republicans, the "Suicide Stage Dive.") Is it his misguided, near-religious belief that Both Parties Are At Fault? Or is it this sentence: "The president hasn't actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible." David. He has. It's right here. It's a banger, I promise. [NYT]

Confessions of a Teenage Word-Bully

John Cook · 01/04/13 03:30PM

It is 1986. We are 13- and 14-year-olds, rank-smelling in unwashed teenager jeans, unsupervised and latch-keyed after school, huddled around the face of the future: The screen of a first-generation Apple Macintosh personal computer. Within the machine's non-dairy creamer-colored casing is a malleable visual playground unlike anything we had seen before: Manic fonts, brick-wall patterns summoned with a mouse-click and distorted at will, spray-paint lines of variable size and density.

Big Tough Politician Has Great Plan to Put More Guns in Our Schools

Hamilton Nolan · 12/18/12 09:16AM

Oregon state Rep. Dennis Richardson (R-Fantasyland) won himself a measure of infamy when he proclaimed after the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings that "If I had been a teacher or the principal at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and if the school district did not preclude me from having access to a firearm, either by concealed carry or locked in my desk, most of the murdered children would still be alive, and the gunman would still be dead, and not by suicide." What a dick. But Dennis Richardson is not just any dick: he is a dick with a plan.