We’re definitely coming up on a midterm election where the right’s been fucking the pooch nonstop, because I can smell the flop sweat and urine from here. It stinks to high heaven, too, guys, please, consider taking a shower every once in a while!
Right now a bunch of dingdongs are trying to organize a moral panic over “incivility” from someone who clearly does care about hygiene, and who has big strong arms, and who is running for United States Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.
El-Sayed is an epidemiologist (!) who was also a Rhodes scholar (!!) and has a history of running health departments (!!!), and he’s part of a younger cohort of Democrats who see what the current system has become and who seem determined to bring about sweeping, long-overdue changes to the American political system.
It’s making right-wingers visibly, gratifyingly freak out and melt down. This past weekend, some heckler named Tommy stood up during one of El-Sayed’s town halls and “challenged” him, in the usual right-wing way, by asking him a question that was clearly bad faith on its face:
The five-minute conversation took place in Caro, Michigan, where a man who identified himself as “Tommy” asked from the audience: “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?”
It didn’t go so good for the would-be heckler, who seemed to think he was going to get a cool sound bite for the right-wing networks, because they’re so used to those quivering, shriveled-up Democrats who have been in power for like 300 years and quail at the thought of being too mean to their shitty racist MAGA buddies and hurting their feelings by telling them not to put little kids in prison.
Instead, El-Sayed handled it like an actual grown-up human being who cares about not putting kids in prison, and who doesn’t care about hurting the feelings of bad faith racist scum, for a very nice change.
After responding, “Sure. Yeah, absolutely,” El-Sayed then pivoted to questioning the man in response. “What are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?”
“I want to protect your right to practice your faith as you choose,” El-Sayed later said. “It seems like you don’t want to protect my right to practice as I choose.”
That caused a real stir among the “unbiased” “adults” in the room, who rushed to call AES “uncivil,” apparently because he spoke to a white man, who was asking a question in obvious bad faith, as an equal! Can’t have that!
Watch for yourself here:
So now the usual suspects are trying to create a moral panic about Abdul El-Sayed’s “incivility,” and ranting away about how he is “disrespectful,” as if any of us have the time of day for that nonsense any more.
But here’s the catch — for them. It seems to have stopped working, and it’s sending right-wingers straight into meltdown. For example, this CBS freak, who is apparently their top justice reporter, did a very bad tweet:
“Tommy,” Jan Crawford farted, “Thank you.”
I had to watch this twice [her bad tweet continued] to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond “yeah, absolutely” response. His subsequent uninterrupted three-minute diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self own most ppl only dream about triggering. Congrats
Except she apparently didn’t watch the video before she commented on it, or else she assumed that the vast majority of Americans would be on her side, or some flavor of both. Either way, she’s shown that she sucks because she’s a shitty reporter and should resign, though of course she won’t. When I was running newsrooms, I would have fired her ass for this embarrassing shit, because what she is showing here, and very clearly, is that sides with the far right and that she is incapable of covering certain segments of the population without bias.
And then she did a dirty delete, because oops, she got caught being herself and it looked too bad even for Bari Weiss’s CBS News:
“Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize.”
What are you apologizing for, Jan? We want to hear you spell it out. Tell us exactly what you did that was a violation.
The funniest part of all is that Tommy here was a right-wing plant all along. Of course he was! The great Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket tracked down the origins of Tommy Peepee or whatever his name really is:
The Handbasket is first to report that Tommy is Thomas Teepell, who, according to his X and Facebook profiles, currently lives in Detroit. Teepell served as Operations Director for Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley until February of this year, according to Legistorm. He then took a job as Political Director for the failed gubernatorial campaign of Philip Sarnecki, a Republican businessman in Kansas.
Tommy’s father is Timmy Teepell, a Republican strategist who worked for congressman and then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal from 2004 to 2011; he also ran Jindal’s ill-fated presidential primary campaign in 2015. He joined the consulting firm OnMessage in 2011, and helped the virtually unknown Hawley get elected Attorney General of Missouri in 2016. Two years later, he helped Hawley become a United States Senator.
But wait! There’s more! It gets better! Was Tommy Peepee a paid protester? Sure sounds like!
What brought the younger Teepell to the small town of Caro and his viral moment with El-Sayed? An October 2nd story in the University of Michigan student newspaper, The Michigan Daily, revealed that a conservative PAC called America Next offered College Republicans $200 to travel to an upcoming El-Sayed town hall in Flint to “boo” him and ask him inflammatory questions—hoping to spark embarrassing viral moments for the candidate.
“If you don’t know, I asked Abdul a tough question during his last town hall meeting, and it generated a VERY negative news cycle for him,” one member wrote in a Michigan College Republicans GroupMe chat, according to the Daily. “We are going to coordinate questions to ask him and spread out to increase the chances we’re called on. We’re gonna boo him. We’re gonna show everyone that ABDUL IS NOT WELCOME IN THE SENATE.”
America Next, LMAO. These guys sure work cheap.
Remember the Red Hen shit, when a bunch of “patriotic” freaks went out of their way to destroy a small American business, simply because they didn’t want to serve human garbage like Sarah Huckabee Sanders? The usual suspects swallowed that shit hook, line, and sinker, and immediately headed to the establishment to harass them and smear shit on their doors just as that same crowd would go on later to smear shit on the walls of the United States Capitol, in the name of getting their way civility.
What is important to understand is that the entire MAGA/far right worldview is predicated on its own impunity, which it demonstrates through inconsistency in its own behavior versus what it demands from those it considers to be “lesser.” That’s why there’s an attempt to stir up a moral panic right now, and it’s great to see it absolutely fail to work.
Now it’s on the rest of us to respond in the only appropriate way: pointing and laughing at all these racist assholes. Let’s go!
I VOTED TODAY!!
IN TEXAS!!
ALL BLUE!!!
AND I DIDN'T EVEN PUNCH THE MORON WAVING A 'REPUBLICANS' SIGN IN THE PARKING LOT!!!
Dr. El-Sayed was more civil to that prejudiced cultist weenie than I would have been.