To read about-to-be-censured Cong. Mo Brooks (‘bama) angrily defending himself from incitement to violence charges is to realize that William Faulkner had a totally unfair advantage over Northern writers. Yes, yes, he was a brilliant prose stylist; but he was also located in that y’all and shut ma mouth land and I tell you it just ain’t fair! They don’t grow em like Mo Brooks ’round these parts! ‘thesdans don’t run their mouths up and down and all around the block when they got something to say – they just, like, say it. Down South, ‘Faulknerian stream of consciousness’ is just another way to say howdy my name is Mo and there is SOOO much I want you to know so hon let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go
[T]he most impressive achievement [Alabama Senator Richard] Shelby leaves behind is the military-industrial complex he supplied with lavish federal aerospace and defense contracts in Alabama’s 5th Congressional district, which sent [Mo] Brooks to Washington to chew off the “Big Government” hand that fed it. The local monument to the senator’s powerful career is the Shelby Center for Science and Technology at the University of Alabama Huntsville. The building is best known as the scene of the 2010 mass shooting in which Amy Bishop, a biology professor denied tenure, pulled a semi-automatic pistol out of her purse during a faculty meeting and executed three colleagues (she pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence).
On the bipartisan gun-safety bill recently signed into law, Shelby voted against even sending it to the Senate floor, leaving his A+ NRA rating unbloodied.
Shelby’s presumptive successor is of course a champion of the “God-given Second Amendment,” but she also sells herself as a “Mama on a mission.” To a future Senator [Katie] Britt, that means that “our children should be taught to love this country” — a nation so exceptional that our children die at their school desks in order to preserve our freedoms.
A second suit was filed by Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, against Mr. Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Giuliani and Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, accusing them of inciting the mob violence…
Mr. Brooks, who wore body armor onstage at a rally preceding the violence as he told the crowd to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” represented himself at Monday’s hearing after the Justice Department declined to do so…
“This was not to inspire people to attack the Capitol,” he said of his speech.
When did the English language decide that the OO sound meant stoopid and/or crazy? Why is it so easy to think of words designating dumb/nuts that feature OO? Rube, yahoo, boob, booboisie, stooge, goon, loon, moonbeam, buffoon, doo-doo, woo-woo, zoo (as in “the zoo at the Capitol building”).
UD wondered about this as she read a wonderful opinion piece from Alabama, where the author, seeking an organizing principle, a leit motif, around which to discuss “our political class in Alabama, … folks too dumb to understand how dumb they are, made that way through self-inflicted repetitive brain injuries,” lights on The Three Stooges (plus Shemp).
Kyle Whitmire works his way down the list of Alabama’s highest-profile idiots, comparing each of them to his Stooge-equivalent:
Mo Brooks “believes sea-level rise is due to rocks falling in the water; he’s called mitigation measures put in place by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey ‘nanny state’ politics and last year, he bragged on the effectiveness of the American healthcare system against the coronavirus… [S]poke to insurrectionists before they stormed the capitol, [and] now faces censure by Congress.”
Rep. Barry Moore: “[T]old Alabamians that, if Trump could get the coronavirus, everybody would wind up getting it, so there was little point to protective measures… [S]upported overturning a lawful election and declared that he was leaving Twitter after the platform had already suspended his account… [S]hared a meme on Facebook defending Kenosha, Wisc., shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, saying he’s ‘fought back.'”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville is “too dangerous to trust around kitchen appliances, much less the power of a United States senator. And he’s prone to slap people he’s mad at and no one assumes he knows what he’s doing.”
[Attorney General] Steve Marshall’s organization “helped organize the pro-Trump march in Washington, but after that march turned into an assault on the capitol, Marshall said he didn’t know anything about the organization’s role in it. Marshall promised to investigate, but when asked whether Trump bore any responsibility, Marshall played dumb. ‘I didn’t see anything about the rally,’ he told the Montgomery Advertiser. ‘I don’t know anything about his remarks.'”
As the massive Trump tide recedes (or, as one observer memorably put it, as “witless ape rides helicopter” out of DC), it leaves in its wake schools of minnows that we hadn’t been able to see before, drowning as we were in the tide.
But now is the time to zoom in – on the fools, the nincompoops, the kooks, the googly-eyed, the stooges – before they try for another insurrection against the republic.
This blog will chronicle their movements.