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Bill Maher Explains To The Tea Party Why Michelle Obama is Not Stalin
On his HBO program Real Time host Bill Maher took on the Tea Party’s demonization of First Lady Michelle Obama for her childhood obesity campaign. Maher said, “If you think Michelle Obama is after your freedom because she merely suggests that our kids should exercise more and eat a little broccoli with their lard, you don’t deserve a place in the free market of ideas…”
Here is the video:
Maher said, “If you think Michelle Obama is after your freedom because she merely suggests that our kids should exercise more and eat a little broccoli with their lard, you don’t deserve a place in the free market of ideas, you belong at the cheesecake factory. She’s not Stalin because she notices your kids sweat Mountain Dew. Now, this is bigger than America’s ass. I know that’s hard to believe so indulge me. This is about the Teabaggers fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between freedom, and the freedom to never be told anything. Like avoid food served in a bucket.”
He talked about the tradition of First Ladies and their efforts, “It’s just a tradition that First Ladies get to pick some mundane up until now non-controversial cause to promote. Lady Bird Johnson beautifying America, Barbara Bush had literacy. Betty Ford’s was no hard liquor before 10 AM. Our last First Lady Laura Bush worked tirelessly against illiteracy, so between her efforts and her husband’s, it was a tie. Hillary Clinton did pioneering work in looking the other way…”
Maher moved on to the right wing media’s fear campaign about food, “Now when I look at a Moon Pie, I just see sugar and trans fats, not my constitutional freedoms, but Sarah Palin recently brought sugar cookies to a school as a protest against the government telling the school what to eat, which of course, it wasn’t doing. Sean Hannity warned that we’d soon be paying fines for eating salt, which isn’t a problem for Hannity who mostly eats boogers.”
Maher asked, “When did the right wing become Joe Pesci over every little thing? You sayin’ I use too much salt? What am I salty to you? Fuck you, I use too much salt. Here take some salt right down your throat. I mean 40 years ago when Lady Bird Johnson suggested we plant wild flowers to beautify the highways, the reaction was it sounds like a neat idea, not don’t tell me what I can plant, bitch. Matt Drudge promoted a story saying pedestrian deaths were way up because The Evil One, Michelle Obama had encouraged people to walk more…..directly into traffic. Those were her exact words. Walk into traffic.”
He continued, “Now I’m not saying the right objects to Mrs. Obama’s efforts because the Teabaggers are stupid, or because they’re hysterical, or because they hate black people, though all of that is true, but what does it say about America that even a First Lady’s suggestion has to be controversial? Especially when she picked one no one could disagree with. Maybe we should our kids outside to play? Well, you know who else liked to send people places? Hitler.”
Maher concluded by taking on Rush Limbaugh, “I mean Rush Limbaugh makes a crack about this every week, because who better to get your health advice from than a drug addicted fat man. Rush, I have proof that no one in the government is forcing you to eat right and exercise. YOU!”
Bill Maher hit this one dead center. The Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the right wing terror brigade, are like children who believe that freedom means that they can live in their own reality, and under their own facts. No one is telling the right what they can eat, or what they can’t eat. Frankly, the rest of us don’t care if they all fall over dead tomorrow with Fox News on their television and a handful of Pringles in their mouths, but it takes a very warped set of minds to turn an anti-childhood obesity campaign into a Stalinist plot.
Trying to encourage children to put down the PS3 and go play on the swing set is not the same as Joseph Stalin killing 7 million Russians from 1932-1933 by a forced famine. Rational people can see the difference. The right wing can’t, or won’t. Conservative politics are currently governed by two emotions, anger and fear.
The voices on the right who can most effectively tap into these emotions are the most successful. Maher is right. It does say something very disturbing about the state of America’s political discourse when ideas like children should be healthy, go outside and get fresh air can’t be agreed upon by all.
The right has suffered a collective psychotic break with reality, and while this is good for careers of the Bill Maher’s of the world, it is bad for the rest of who just want sanity restored to our country.
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12 Responses to Bill Maher Explains To The Tea Party Why Michelle Obama is Not Stalin
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crystalwolfakacaligrl
Feb. 5th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Thanks Jason! That was Awesome! :D
proudfoot
Feb. 5th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
This is the same group that criticized the mustard President Obama preferred. So it didn’t surprise me that they would go after Mrs. Obama for encouraging kids to eat more veggies and get more exercise in. Thank goodness there are still sane people in this country who debunked and dismissed the rights preposterous nagging.
Can you imagine if Mrs. Obama was encouraging kids to eat more cookies and drink more soda??
Shiva (Moderator)
Feb. 5th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
Anyone that goes out into public and sees the children around you that are up to 50 or more pounds overweight while mom is packing chips and pop into the shopping cart, and yet can bash Ms Obama for saying something about it has to have their ability to lead AND their commitment to American looked at.
Recently seen a commercial on TV that had a mentally incompetent mom stuffing pop, and making sure you noticed it was pop into her cart and whining like a trout out of water about the government shouldn’t tell her what to buy her kids. This is no longer a case of RWNJ’s, this is a case of right wing morons hating their own children. Are they fattening up the little rug rats to BBQ? What on earth is wrong with these people? Taking something that someone wants to help you do something good for your family and turning it into a right wing mental disease indicates you should probably not have had kids. Republicans eat their own.
Nasty Liberal
Feb. 6th, 2011 at 9:43 am
Mmm, Compassionate Cannibalism… now, careful with that word commitment!
Anne
Feb. 6th, 2011 at 3:09 am
Tea Partiers have become the poster children for the kind of block-headed stupidity that clouds people’s judgment and blinds them to reality. It’s well-known that obesity brings with it a lot of health problems, many of them life-threatening. The fact that so many American children are obese should be a source of alarm to all of us, and obese children also often face bullying from their peers for their condition.
Many of these are the same people parroting the discredited argument that Palin has more experience than Obama, as if he hasn’t had a turmoil-filled presidency during the past two years. They also like to trot out the ignorant argument that he is a “bad” president whose presidency will prevent other blacks from being elected in the future.
That’s why it’s no surprise that they come down on the First Lady. They cannot deal with a black woman who is so removed from the negative stereotypes they like to project about black women as a group.
Proud white man who married outside his race
Feb. 6th, 2011 at 5:14 am
Honestly do you have any idea how retarded that sounds? Please inform us on what her place is and explain what uppity even means. Lastly who are you to decide what the First ladies place is?
(Note: the post that this person is responding to was deleted for racism)
Henry
Feb. 6th, 2011 at 5:24 pm
As the first white man in my family to marry outside my race, I wanted to say hi to someone in a similar situation. It turned out to be anticlimactic in my case, even my 90-year-old grandmother is decades beyond complaining about “those people.” It’s important to know the world has many rational people in it, no matter how crazy the current political dialog.
Anonym
Feb. 6th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Let’s face it: people like the former, half-term governor of Alaska (what’s her name again?) will criticize President Obama and his family for EVERYTHING. I read just this morning a quote which went something like “if President Obama were to take up hunting as a hobby, Sarah Palin would join PETA.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.
K
Feb. 6th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I dont understand how people look at getting health care, healthier eating in schools so we can lead better lives… I dont understand how people can be convinced these things come from an evil dictator.
How stupid do you have to be to think healthier eating is the same as Hitler. HOW does the right convince people of these things. How..
Im at a loss.
hobnailrose
Feb. 7th, 2011 at 9:44 am
what about the profit angle? there’s less money to be made when children play outside where they might, oh, form a bond with other children and, heaven forfend, all of nature and, horrors, children might learn that they should want to protect their world against the profiteers who would do it harm for a buck. there’s less money to be made when the parents feed their children well and plainly, if that’s even possible anymore. there’s less money to be made when children get the exercise their bodies need to successfully complete their growth, keep them healthy. and, the worst yet, the parents should work themselves into misery to not be poor, or, more aptly, appear poor because they and their children don’t have the latest thing or convenience.
i’ve been watching people with their cell phones. they’re addicted. it’s sad.
the pharmas love that profit line. healthy children aren’t patients being stuffed silly with medication. can’t have that. adults as well. big business isn’t interested in creating any cures, just customers.
it IS all about the money. always. the right wing nut jobs, down to the lowliest peanut in the gallery, have been told what to say, how to act, what to believe by corporatists who are in it for the money and absolutely nothing else. the ones at the top of the pyramid know what they’re doing, the ones at the bottom, the ones actually in harm’s way, are the believers being used.
i think i need a vacation. which costs money. it’s a trap.
Irrelevant - but a true classical republican (advocate of liberalism and pluralism)
Feb. 7th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Well, I think a lot of the “Tea-baggers” are really not advocates of liberty and such citizens rights as freedom of speech for the First Lady, if her views are “unpleasant”. They are corporatist and some are basically fascists. They would of course never admit this, as it is a truly anti-American stance. BUT to claim they are is pretty neat and smart.
It is quite the opposite of a liberal democracy where we have the FREEDOM for the first lady to advocate what the hell she wants. Actually I think freedom is something that truly bothers Tea Baggers if it is unconformable in any way. I think you can compare this political movement to that of the fascists in Italy around 1920. They also felt that they were threatened by other peoples constitutional rights, and they all wanted regulation and an end to social “conflict” (that is people claiming egalitarianism).
The result was a authoritarian corporatist state that was truly Big Government.
Tea Baggers should go here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fas...
Brian
Feb. 10th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
The Holodomor was against the Ukrainians, not the Russians