IN MEMORIAM: Fox News Dumps Todd Starnes Like An Overflowing Piss Jar
We don't really want to know why, do we?
Fox News has ended its employment of Todd Starnes, the rightwing idiot who turned imaginary victimization of good conservative Christians by mean liberals into a fairly successful career as a pundit. The Wrap reports today that Starnes "will no longer be working at the network, its website, or its premium subscription service, Fox Nation." That has to come as a serious letdown to all 29 or so subscribers.
Fox hasn't said why Starnes was let go, although The Wrap notes his shitcanning (or piss-hosing) comes just days after he said on his Fox Radio program that Democrats do not worship the Christian God , and in fact are probably devotees of the demonic god Moloch. Starnes was riffing on Nancy Pelosi's statement that Dems should approach the impeachment of Donald Trump with a "prayerful" attitude, observing that no one should assume Pelosi meant Democrats were "praying to God [...] I'm not quite sure." He also said that if Trump were removed from office, then little would stop Democrats from "going after Christians," a constant theme for him.
The timing may just be coincidental however, since "Democrats hate God" isn't a particularly out-of-character thing for Starnes to say. Was he rubbing his grotty little privates all over the control room window, maybe? It would be irresponsible not to speculate wildly.
Starnes was never more than a noncommissioned officer in the Culture Wars, but he sure tried. Back in 2014, Starnes popularized a story about a mean lunch monitor who allegedly told a little girl in a Florida kindergarten that she wasn't allowed to pray. The brave little girl supposedly told the mean lady, "but praying is good," and the lunch monitor supposedly replied, "no, it's not." The whole story was based on a now-deleted YouTube video posted by the girl's father, but he was remarkably vague on the details. An investigation by the school district found there was no evidence the event ever happened. Oh, yes, and in one heck of a coincidence, the outraged father of the oppressed Christian tyke just happened to be the head of the Christian publishing house that was preparing to release Starnes's book, God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values . So maybe it never happened, but that doesn't matter, because if Democrats had their way, it sure WOULD.
Along similar lines, Starnes in 2013 published a Fox News story (now vanished, like pee in rain) falsely claiming a public school in Georgia had banned Christmas cards, the school was flooded with angry calls and emails from Good Christians who were certain the godless heathens at the school had napalmed baby Jebus in the War on Christmas. Nobody got shot, so no harm, no foul.
Starnes had a knack for saying dumb things. When Michael Moore said it was weird to lionize rightwing icon Chris Kyle, the American Sniper dude, as a great Christian American Hero, Starnes said, "I suspect Jesus would tell that God-fearing, red-blooded American sniper, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant for dispatching another Godless jihadist to the lake of fire.'" That's where all Muslims go, you know, along with their Moloch-worshiping Democrat buddies. When the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, Starnes fretted , "How long before federal agents haul pastors out of the pulpit?" and "Won't be long before they outlaw the Bible as hate speech." And when Obama's Justice Department sued to overturn North Carolina's You Must Pee Where God Said You Have To bill, Starnes launched a stream of steaming bathroom jokes that splattered all over Twitter.
In 2015, Starnes praised Donald Trump's surely massive penis, explaining that in an age when American leadership has been emasculated (by Barack Obama, probably), Trump was "surging in the polls" because "Americans want leaders with man-parts big enough to do the right thing. When Democrats invited Dreamers to be their guests at Trump's 2018 State of the Union address, Starnes urged Trump to fill the gallery with ICE to show up and "arrest every illegal alien in the House chamber - live on national television."
It's unclear what Starnes plans to do with himself now, although we imagine a self-produced online "radio" show and continued grifting are likely. Starnes couldn't do much worse than the already terrible title of his crappy Fox Radio show, "Fox News & Commentary," or his clever Fox Nation show, "Starnes Country." Maybe he could call his new endeavor the "Starnes National Commentary and News Program," or just "Democrats Want To Kill You."
We bet he'll be just fine, the evil lying fucker. Now it is your open stream. Thread. Whatever.
[ The Wrap ]
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I can't speak to hiring practices in 2019, but in 1984 our local police and sheriff's departments were willing to hire any warm body without bothering to verify their resumes and references. I personally knew several men who were hired by the local police and sheriff's departments in the mid-80's because they were veterans, when in fact they had dishonorable discharges for violent behavior. One of these sheriff's deputies was married to my department secretary and had been dishonorably discharged for assaulting an officer. He was then "terminated" by the Sheriff because he was trading drugs for sex with the female prisoners in the county jail. A month later he was hired by the sheriff's department in a neighboring county. So either they weren't bothering to investigate anyone's background, or they just didn't care about their background.
The young trainee deputy who lived 2 houses from me was so deeply offended that I complained to the police about the truck and boat parked in his driveway so as to block the sidewalk, impeding me from going down the street in my wheelchair (this is illegal on county, state and federal levels), that he came to my house and told me that unless I was a member of law enforcement, I was not legally entitled to read laws and interpret them and present that information to the police or anyone else.
I asked him what country he thought he lived in, and then spent 5 minutes explaining why his statement was bullshit. I then visited the Sheriff and politely suggested that the young man needed additional training. I don't know whether he got any, but he is now a full deputy. He did move out of my subdivision shortly after I spoke to the Sheriff, so maybe I achieved something. Not much, but something.
No, our local police and sheriff definitely do not hire the best people, nor do they train them to be any better.
I love that song. My sister has left bodies in her wake for 50 years, and she doesn't even notice because by the time they fall, she has moved on to 2 new projects. Right now she wants to full-time foster half a dozen Mexican street kids, but within 6 months she will get tired of the responsibility this entails, or the kids will rebel against her obsessive-compulsive rules and run away.