Remember Sebastian Gorka, the Nazi-insignia brandishing former White House aide, and Breitbart alum? He’s got his own RWNJ radio show, and if you tuned in Tuesday, you got to hear about the latest skirmish in the cultural war — a gay rat got married to a gay aardvark, in a cartoon, and it’s the end of life as we know it, to hear Gorka tell it. Washington Post:
[Gorka] flew into a rage because the season’s Monday premiere [of Arthur] featured a gay wedding. Arthur’s third-grade teacher, Nigel Ratburn, exchanges vows with a local chocolatier, an aardvark named Patrick.
“This is a war for our culture, and that’s why we exist here, on ‘America First,’ on the Salem Radio Network,” Gorka said.
Gorka, who briefly served as a spokesman for Trump on national security matters before he left the White House in the summer of 2017, saw something insidious at work. The diversity showcased on “Arthur” fit a pattern of left-wing demagoguery he identified in everything from the revolutionary Reign of Terror in France to the administration of President Barack Obama.
The ideology on display — in Mr. Ratburn’s nuptials and the rest — was that, “Civil society doesn’t exist, friendship doesn’t exist, family doesn’t exist,” Gorka maintained. “Only permanent revolution.”
Sounds like an existential crisis to me, alright. Nuptials between homosexual anthropomorphic cartoon rodents, inciting rebellion against all that is good and wholesome in life, resulting in complete chaos and the breakdown, nay, the very collapse, of civilization. Okey doke.
Meanwhile, back in the world of the lucid, Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher directly contradicted Gorka’s views, when he told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, “You now have majorities who are for gay marriage. And the polling is fairly clear on, the vast majority of Americans don’t want Roe v. Wade overturned.” RawStory:
If Republicans want to make this about a woman’s choice and a woman’s right to choose an abortion, I think Democrats would be silly not to take them on, looking at the numbers.”
“And also, and this is really important, for the first time in 2018, Democrats won college-educated voters on the backs of college-educated women, which means the suburbs became more competitive,” added Belcher. “If those suburban white women think for one moment that Republicans are going to be the party that overturns Roe v. Wade, it will be a monumental shift.”
That backlash, said Belcher, might even be enough to help Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), widely considered the most vulnerable incumbent senator going into 2020, to hold his seat.
It would indeed be wonderful if Senator Jones is able to hang onto that seat, considering how hotly he fought for it against racist Roy Moore. Alabama is now ground zero in the cultural war, since the passing of the medieval abortion bill, banning abortions even for rape and incest victims.
Now are you sitting down? Because incredibly, none other than televangelist, and dispel-er of hurricanes *, Pat Robertson has gone on record saying that the Alabama abortion law is too extreme. Talking Points Memo:
“I think Alabama has gone too far, they’ve passed a law that would give a 99-year prison sentence to those who commit abortions,” he said Wednesday on “The 700 Club.” “There’s no exception for rape or incest. It’s an extreme law and they want to challenge Roe v. Wade, but my humble view is that this is not the case we want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one’ll lose.”
Pinch me, I must be dreaming. Pat Robertson just told his fundie audience he thinks that this law is not going to pass the Supreme Court, even with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on board?
We live and we learn. Whudda thot that Pat Robertson would align himself with the views of the liberals on the issue of abortion? Or, of anything, for that matter. The mind reels.
Pollster Belcher may be right. If this draconian abortion law is too far out there for the likes of Pat Robertson, this is a watershed moment in our cultural discourse. Keep an eye on Alabama, folks, it’s about to get very interesting.
*hit the link to read snark about Robertson banishing Hurricane Florence. It’s very funny, if you missed it the first time.
Great article. Gorka, scared of an animated show, pathetic. I don’t know what to think about pat, his comments are a complete surprise.
Gorka is a cartoon himself, linking his historical hysteria to a couple of animated rodents. As to Robertson: I think he sees which way the wind blows and knows that this law is indefensible. How can he, even he, get up to the podium and say that this law is good? Rape is okay, incest is okay — because if it results in a pregnancy, then it’s God’s will? I think Robertson doesn’t want to sell something that bizarre. He wants to survive. He’s a cunning old bastard, like Mitch McConnell and he’s weathered a lot of storms.
The fundies buy a lot of strange and bizarre ideas, but incest and rape are so against the laws of nature (not to mention that the bible outlaws incest, I don’t know about rape) that nobody is going to go along with this. At least I hope not. This is the worst law I’ve ever seen, not just with respect to abortion, with respect to anything. Totally inhumane.
I take the above as a sign of the times. Despite their best efforts, this crowd is still unable to repeal the 21st Century and they lack the juice to make this stick.
The culture war nonsense, though…it’s gone on to far more mainstream places in the entertainment industry. You’ll hear those same claims against things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (see Captain Marvel), Star Wars, Star Trek, even the new Twilight Zone series. Funny thing about that…the loudest voices always tend to be a vocal minority that uses Russian bot tactics to spread the discord.
I don’t understand this effort to put the gays back in the closet. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. It’s a done deal, just live with it.
Isn’t it something, Pat Robertson taking the stance he is? I swear, not much surprises me these days, but I did a double take reading that.
I’m surprised Gorka wasn’t screaming over his 70,000 watt pulpit of hate ,” SEE!!!…..WE told you that if you let gays marry it would just be a matter of time before rats are marrying aardvarks!!!”
Dumb bastard.