045 The Erickson Report for December 29 to January 12, Page 3: A Year of Stupid: Clowns of the Year

045 The Erickson Report for December 29 to January 12, Page 3: A Year of Stupid: Clowns of the Year

We are going to skip the Two Weeks of Stupid this time - which in a way is too bad because we had a good one for Clown: Candace Owens, the right-wing talk show host who got owned by Tweetie-pie about vaccines on her own show and then tried to whine it away by tweeting that he's an old guy from before the time people could "do their own research."

Instead, as this is the last show of the year, it's a good time for one of those yearly wrap-ups. So I'm going to use the occasion to give out awards for Clown of the Year and Outrage of the Year. This was a shortened year for various personal reasons so we don't have as many nominees as we normally would, but we still have some worthy winners.

For Clown, there are two categories: Basic Stupid and Total Jackassery. And in the category of Basic Stupid, the Clown of the Year is the man who put the "gomer" in Gohmert - Representative Louis Gohmert of Texas.

At a June 8th hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee he put this question to Jennifer Eberlin, the assistant deputy chief of the National Forest System, quote:

"I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they found that the Moon's orbit is changing slightly and so is the Earth's orbit around the Sun. We know there's been significant solar flare activities and so is there anything the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management can do to change the course of the Moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Obviously that would have a profound effect on our climate."

And apparently this is not sarcastic; he was serious about this. Louis Gomer was actually raising the idea of changing the orbit of the Earth in order to deal with climate change. He is hands down the Clown of the Year, Basic Stupid category.

A quick science aside here because this is just the thing to demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect, where in effect the less you know about something the more you think you know.

It is true the Moon's orbit is changing slightly. That has to do with interaction with the tides on Earth. It's also true that the Earth's orbit is subject to some for lack of a better term wobbling and those cyclical shifts in the Earth's motion and the resulting change in its position relative to the Sun can be a driver of long-term climate change, including things like triggering the beginning or the end of glaciation periods or ice ages.

The thing is, those cycles run on time frames ranging from 24,000 to over one hundred thousand years and the warming we are now seeing is from a time frame of maybe one hundred-fifty years. Those cycles and the warming we're seeing now have absolutely nothing to do with each other and Louis Gohmert really really really is a Clown

Okay, moving to the Total Jackassery category, we have another clear winner: smug transphobe Dave Chappelle.

Chappelle released a new special the beginning of October and got flak over the offensive transphobia it included, up to and including a walkout by some employees of Netflix, where it was streamed.

He responded by claiming he is the actual victim, saying "You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix. Well, it seems like I'm the only one that can't go to the office anymore."

Then, at the November 22 screening of his new documentary, Chappelle tossed around the "f-word," made jokes about people’s use of various pronouns, and pretended to identify as a woman to get a cushier prison cell, proving to one and all that he has learned nothing and doesn't intend to.

Which actually had been clear from the start. Back in October, he supposedly offered to meet with members of the transgender community, but, he said, "You will not summon me. I am not bending to anybody's demands." But he'd meet - under certain conditions. Quoting:

"You cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end. You must come to a place of my choosing at a time of my choosing." (In other words, "You will not summon me; I will summon you.") "And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby" - another comedian and a member of the LGBTQ+ community - "is not funny."

An "offer" which doesn't even attempt to hide the fact that is neither serious nor sincere.

You'd think that growing up as a black person in the US Chappelle had to deal with some issues of personal identity, so he'd be able to have some understanding of the feelings of others dealing with a similar sort of question. But he doesn't and he won't - because he finds it easier and more profitable to punch down with cheap shots. Dave Chappelle is a Total Jackass.