It shouldn’t be so fun to watch the right wing having slap-fights, but it nonetheless is. Last week, Bill O’Reilly stated that he more or less doesn’t care whether or not gays can get married, but that he generally believes all people should be treated equally, whatever that means. It wasn’t what one would call a ringing endorsement, but more of a shrug of the shoulders. This is actually where a lot of moderate conservatives are these days. But for right-wing talker Steve Deace, O’Reilly’s viewpoint is a “hanging offense.” No, really, he said that. Take it away, Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch:
While discussing the Supreme Court’s handling of the marriage cases with Vander Plaats, who warned that the court could “set off a constitutional crisis,” Deace said that O’Reilly is a traitor to his conservative base: “you stab them in the back, throw them under the bus and use the enemy’s own language against them. To me that’s a hanging offense; that is a hanging offense.”
Vander Plaats: If you usurp the will of the people—we saw it in Iowa, you usurp the will of the people, three justices get removed, there’s a credibility gap with the three justices that continue to serve— if you usurp the vote of the people of California you will set off a constitutional crisis against these United States and it should be a constitutional crisis. People like you and me and others, we’d help do our part to set off a constitutional crisis if that is in fact what they came back with.
Deace: I’ve got a bee in my bonnet big time and it’s Bill O’Reilly at Fox News. I don’t like charlatans, I don’t like frauds; give me Rachel Maddow, at least she’s honest. But when you are trying to profit off of the very people you are betraying and you have tried to condescend them and patronize them for years and then at the moment they probably need you to return the favor of all the money they made you over the last fifteen years the most, you stab them in the back, throw them under the bus and use the enemy’s own language against them. To me that’s a hanging offense; that is a hanging offense.
Deace made clear his opinions on same-sex marriage, which he said is based simply on gay rights activists throwing “a hissy-fit” and a “tantrum.” He even said it is pointless to note that homosexuality is found in other species besides humans since “there’s also the licking of one’s own genitals, the flinging of one’s own feces and the eating of live prey and then puking it up to feed your offspring in nature too.”
A couple things here:
1. Again, isn’t it fun to watch extreme right-wingers react to more moderate conservatives as they evolve on marriage equality? The tone of betrayal in their voices is highly entertaining. “A hanging offense?” So dramatic!
2. Is Steve Deace somehow saying that “the licking of one’s own genitals, the flinging of one’s own feces and the eating of live prey” are somehow moral issues for animals? Because to us, it sounds like he’s just listing animal characteristics that are supposed to make you go ewww and conveniently leaving out anything about them being either cute and/or fluffy. Not an intelligent argument, dude, not at all.
Bill O’Reilly, like most Americans who have been anywhere near the fence on issues of basic equality, has moved to the left, toward decency. The sum total of Deace’s argument seems to be that he’s just upset that his little side of the fence is getting lonelier and lonelier, and well, that’s not really our problem.
