Joe Klein Writes Terrible Thing, Is Terrible Person

Your Wonkette does not usually pay attention to Joe Klein, political hack and villager extraordinaire. Something about the guy just sets our teeth on edge. Is it his enormous douchebaggery? Sure, let’s go with enormous douchebaggery.

But boy do we have to tip our hat to this sludge-brained fuckwit today for the epic bit of trolling he pulled off in his cover story in this week’s issue ofTime, which is a thing that still exists so that the Joe Kleins of the world can have a wide audience for whatever poop drips out of their brain pans through their fingers onto a keyboard and thus gets passed onto the world. What did the world ever do to you, Joe Klein, to deserve this?

One would think it would be difficult to piss people off with a story about veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder reintegrating into society and finding peace and a renewed sense of purpose through community service. And most of the story actually gave us a feeling we find it difficult to describe -- sort of the same sense of, like, warmth we get when we venture outside into the sun -- in the pitch-black cavity in our chest where we are told our heart should be. Some material is so good even Joe Klein can’t fuck it up. At least until he gets to the part where he describes spending Memorial Day weekend in Oklahoma with a veterans’ service organization helping victims of the massive tornadoes there and throws in the most unnecessary cheap shot since Hilary Swank got knocked out inMillion Dollar Baby(bolding ours):

But there was an occupying army of relief workers, led by local first responders, exhausted but still humping it a week after the storm, church groups from all over the country --funny how you don’t see organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals-- and there in the middle of it all, with a purposeful military swagger, were the volunteers from Team Rubicon.

Jesus Fuckstick Christ, what does that have to do with anything? At this point you are probably wondering if we are mistaken and this story was actually written by Kathryn Jean Lopez for National Review . Nope! Luckily Hemant Mehta at Patheos jumped in and fact-checked this thing so that we were free to continue sputtering and seeing red with rage:

Klein is simply lying out of his ass. A simple Google search would’ve turned up a number of ways atheists helped in the wake of the Oklahoma tornadoes. But since Klein was too lazy to do it, I’ll do it for him:

• More than 4,300 people donated more than $120,000 for the family of Rebecca Vitsmun (she promised to donate to charity whatever money she doesn’t need).

• Foundation Beyond Belief raised over $45,000 for Operation USA and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma .

• Atheists Giving Aid raised over $18,000 that will be given to local relief groups in Moore, Oklahoma and directly to families that need help.

• Members of the FreeOK atheist group helped families who needed wreckage removed from their property.

And those are just atheist groups . Is Klein seriously suggesting that no secular humanists volunteer for the Red Cross? Because he would also be lying out of his ass about that. In the middle of a crisis, not everyone feels compelled to wear a t-shirt announcing their religious or nonreligious affiliation.* Congratulations, Joe. You have taken what was a very nice story about a very nice thing and made it about you and your epic douchebaggery.

It is too bad Joe Klein is not an elected official so we can nominate him for our coveted Legislative Shitmuffin of the Year Award. So Wonkette will now nominate him for our new Journanalistic Shitmuffin of the Year Award. Competition is expected to be fierce.

*We're also fairly sure that when Rebecca was collecting for Habitat For Humanity at the Wonk Your Brains Out events, the only denominations that mattered were numerical.

[ Time / Patheos ]