14.3 - Clown Award: Ben Carson

Clown Award: Ben Carson

Next up is the Clown Award, given on a regular basis for some act of meritorious stupidity.

I want to say at the top that I try to stay away from the obvious targets, I really do; I don't want to spend our time pointing and laughing at the same fools others are already pointing and laughing at. But sometimes, the clowns are so clowny that they just push themselves, they just launch themselves, at you.

And this week I felt like I was under siege, with three flying bodies coming my way.

Okay, first up. On March 7, TheRump took to Twitter to say that, quoting because it's important, "122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!"

He then posted the same thing again from his official White House account.

Not my president

And of course it was wrong. Only eight of those released under Obama had "reengaged." The others were released by George Bush.

Asked about this, Sean Spicer said "Obviously the president meant in totality the number that had been released." Except, of course, that's not what he said - he said, quoting again, "released by the Obama administration."

But wait - who's the clown here? TheRump for his typical boneheadedness or our favorite Melissa McCarty impersonator for the lamest attempt at a save imaginable?

Maybe we'd better move on to Rep. Jason Chaffetz.

Um, Sean Spicer?

When asked on March 7 about if the GOPpers ruination of the Affordable Care Act would result in fewer Americans having health insurance coverage, Rep. Chuff said "Americans have got to make a choice. Instead of getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare. They've got to make those decisions themselves."

So not only can everyone afford a new iPhone, but it's up to us to choose: an iPhone or health care. Because apparently they cost the same amount.

How far out of touch do you have to be to say something that stupid? And how stupid do you have to be by trying to cover yourself the next day by saying you "didn't say it smoothly" but what you really meant was that people should be "responsible" - in other words, we're not?

Jason Chuffitz

How stupid to you have to be to say that people should be "self-reliant" and if you have a preexisting condition you should "invest" in "a health savings account," and so, what, just save up to get it taken care of?

How out of touch, how stupid, do you have to be? You have to be Jason Chaffetz.

Oh, but when it comes to being out of touch, he can barely hold a candle to our winner. So this week the Big Red Nose goes to the man who thinks Joseph built the pyramids to store grain, the Big Bang is a "fairy tale," and that the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing since slavery, Ben Carson, a man who was a successful neurosurgeon and so just can't be as much of a dunderhead as he seems to be and yet he is.

The man himself

On March 7, taking over as new head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he gave a speech to agency employees. During the speech, he talked about immigrants, saying "They worked not for themselves, but for their sons and their daughters, their grandsons and their granddaughters, that they might have an opportunity in this land."

And then came this: "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less. But they too had a dream that one day, their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters...might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land."

You heard that right: Ben Carson described slaves as immigrants seeking a better future for their descendants.

I truly can't think of a thing to say, so I'll defer to the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, which denounced Carson in a statement which ended this way: "We condemn your statement, and suggest you try this one instead: Black Lives Matter."

To which I can only add: Ben Carson, clown.