I love the tone of the whole ad. If the voiceover stated: “Bradley Byrne said we shouldna be allowed to use dynamite on the foxholes, even after the fox done got in the coop an’ killed a whole buncha chickens”, it wouldn’t have surprised me. What must it be like to live in Alabama and actually see this kind of thing on TV?

I can’t believe that people take such pride in being an ignorant asshole. What has happened to this country? I know I sound like an angry old man, but really I’m not that old and even I can remember when being smart was something to aspire to.

Quite a confident fellow. Even in American politics, it’s rare to see the Dunning-Kruger Effect deliberately exhibited in TV advert form.

That Bradley Byrne is so stupid, he believes in science!

(By the way, according to TPM he has angrily denied believing in science.)

“trying to look conservative” is relatively easy, just act stupid in public.

Oh come you would totally mock someone who says I’m ignorant but it doesn’t matter because I know what I know. Case in point when those two goons dressed up as clowns started rapping “Fuckin magnets, how do they work and i don’t want to talk to a scientist they only piss me off” you weren’t slow with the jokes.

Whatever the tone of the ad, it worked:  Byrne has issued an angry rebuttal, insisting that he believes every word of the Bible is true, and boasting that he “fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books.”  (link)

“Denying an obvious and settled reality is a way of demonstrating loyalty by going all-in.  You demonstrate that you’re so loyal to the conservative cause you don’t care what kind of jackass you look like to everyone else, or how big a shitpile of stupid you have to swallow.”

“Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink in.

‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’

‘Yes,’ said Winston.

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?’

‘Four.’

The needle went up to sixty.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!’

‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Five! Five! Five!’

‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?’

‘Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’

...

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.’

‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.’” - 1984...

What’s so troubling about this ad is that the people behind it (at least one step removed) are teachers.

And, as BABH notes, this guy just came out and said, “I did so fight against teaching science in the schools!”

Reason #34958734957 why I don’t live in the South any more. There’s lot of wonderful people there. But they are outnumbered.

@7

My sister is stationed at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, AL.  It always seems that I visit her during election season.  I have never seen political advertising like I saw when I was there (and I live in Florida).  The one that sticks out most in my mind is the state congressional race from a couple of years ago where the Democratic candidate (a lady whose name I don’t recall) and the Republican candidate (“Christian Conservative” Jay Love…seriously, that was plastered on billboards all over Montgomery) basically ran on who loved Jesus more.

Of course this being Alabama, “Christian Conservative” Jay Love won.  As we all know, nobody loves Jesus more than Republicans.

The way I read this, it was funded by the teachers union to paint him in to the corner!

From Talking Points Memo

The group behind the ad and others attacking Byrne’s conservative credentials is called the True Republican PAC. Interestingly, as the Montgomery Advertiser reported last month, the PAC has gotten most of its money from the teachers’ union—or, more accurately, from a collection of other PACs heavily funded by the union.

According to the Advertiser, members of the Alabama Education Association have a beef with Byrne for his past attempts to ban the employees of two-year colleges from serving in the state legislature.

So what this is suggesting, is that they did it ON PURPOSE to out him as a creationist!

I think it’s beautiful. I think that creationism is where most people go ‘wh-hwhat???’ on the right wing religious crowd.

I think that creationism is where most people go ‘wh-hwhat???’ on the right wing religious crowd.

Actually, large chunks of Americans are creationists. We’re a stupid country.

Wow. If I were going for the snarkiest, meanest parody of southern redneck stereotypes, I couldn’t have outdone this ad. Stunning.

Is there just something wrong with all the states that begin with A?

Sorry to burst your bubble, nihilix, but Gallup has been polling creationism for 30 years.  45% of Americans consistently say that “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”

Welcome to America.  You don’t even want to know how many people believe that “angels and demons are active on the world.”

“All over the world people are screaming Revolution but in Alabama their screaming ‘Evolution!!’ and ‘We want our thumbs!!’”-Bill Hicks

Mencken! Thou shouldst be living at this hour.

And my girlfriend wonders why I mock the areas bracketed by the mountains so fiercely.

Are we sure that the constitution prevents the break up of this country into 3 pieces?

Only 3? 
East Coast, West Coast and everything else?  Southeast, Northeast, everything else? 
Come on, be serious; you need at least 6 - Northeast (including all the northern teir to what? VT, NY, Chicago?); Southeast; Northern Plains/Midwest/Eastern Mountain (from where to where though?); Southern Central/Gulf Coast (and how do you decide where FL, AL go?); Southwest (include TX, CA? How much?); West Coast/Pacific (How much of CA?  What about AK and HI?  How much or ID and MT that are traditionally considered part of the PNW?)
Nope, not even 6 would be enough.

I think MY part of the country, at least the coastal side, would be PLENTY happy to be annexed to British Columbia.

::pause:: Make that “ecstatic”.

Aw, guys, I like the Union!

Anyway this ad reminds me of the attack ad battles going on in California between Republican gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner.  They come up with new ones about every week saying how much of a Pelosi-lovin’ liberal the other one is, but the other day I saw an attack ad on Poizner claiming that he *GASP!* came out in opposition to “Papers, Please!”  How much of a bleeding heart softie gay liberal could he be??  That’s why y’all should support Meg Whitman—the candidate with REAL racis—I mean, conservative values!

Steve thought of Menken, Mike thought of Orwell, and I thought of Voltaire.

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

If you ignore the first five minutes and the last five minutes, “Idiocracy” is the most prescient movie ever made because I truly think that is where our society headed. Mike Judge’s mistake was to think that our idiocratic future would be the result of eugenics, i.e.  stupid people outbreeding smart people. In fact, it will be the result of deliberate design—years of social policies designed not just to keep the masses ignorant, but to make the masses actually prize ignorance itself as a virtue worth having.  The people from the future of “Idiocracy” aren’t any dumber than Luke Wilson, they are just the logical result of 500 years of relentless assault on the idea of basic intellectual attainment as being desirable. We see the this process happening today. The GOP, which is the chief architect of American anti-intellectualism, is now watching helplessly as its leadership struggles in primaries against troglodytes who spout ignorant nonsense to which the incumbent cannot respond with coherent arguments because a plurality of Republican voters aren’t interested in “fancy book-larnin’.” The GOP, which won two presidential elections by “out-dumbing” the Democrats, is now stuck with moron candidates who think going back to the barter system can reduce health care costs. And some of those moron candidates are going to win!?!

It’s worth noting that this is Roy Moore’s ad. You know, the guy who tried to put the Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Supreme Court. The guy who was kicked off said court for being too much of a douche. The guy who led the effort to oppose an amendment that would have removed segregation and poll tax requirements from AL’s constitution. The guy who thinks Keith Ellison should have been barred from office because of his scary Muslimness.

If wingnuts were trash cans, Moore would be a landfill.