The Forrest Gump "Stupid Is As Stupid Does" Award

Some years ago I wrote to a friend that

[i]n a real sense, the essence of any peace movement is to lose - because once any victory is won, it's time to move on.

The idea, as I explained it, was that the role of peace and justice advocates is

trying to push beyond, whether in the issues we address, the tactics we employ, or even the analysis we present, where society is already willing to go.... We have an obligation to say the things that otherwise wouldn't be said, to raise the issues that otherwise wouldn't be raised, to agitate and educate in ways that otherwise wouldn't be used for agitation and education. We have an obligation to be what others aren't yet willing to be, to perpetually say "We can do better."

Compare that to the right. Because their appeal is not to the hope that things can get better but to the fear that they are getting worse, not to the future but to the past, if they "win" they have nowhere to go. Instead, they have to keep piling on the same topics, the same fears, offering wilder and wilder tales, spinning more and more out of control, trying to reach new heights of fear, dread, and suspicion because the one thing they cannot allow is for people to feel comfortable about their present - because if they do so, they will start thinking about the future and that's where the reactionaries lose. So over time they inevitably become increasingly bizarre in their claims until they reach the certifiably stupid.

Case in point:

On the heels of electoral victories barring same-sex marriage, some influential conservative Christian groups are turning their attention to a new target: the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

Dr. James C. Dobson of the rightwing nuthatch known as Focus on the Family is charging that SpongeBob is part of a "pro-homosexual video" along with Barney, Jimmy Neutron, and other children's television characters. The video, made in the wake of 9/11, is intended to teach children about multiculturalism.

But SpongeBob has apparently become a camp figure among adult gay men, and so the video is, according to Dobson's assistant Paul Batura, "an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids ... a classic bait and switch."

Mark Barondess, lawyer for the We Are Family Foundation, which produced the video, said the critics "need medication."

Word.