The commercial that made conservative pundits lose their minds.
A brimstoney welcome to our state-mandated look back into the craggy depths of 2014. This year we are compiling the 12 political actions that, above all others, signify the likely end of the planet as we know it. We found our January sign; now on to the next month, which my calendar insists is something called "February." I am skeptical, but we will soldier on.
February was the month House Speaker John Boehner finally lost what little control he had over his caucus. Don't believe me? Believe the Boehner ally who groused "Jesus himself" couldn't get 218 Republican votes for something. More substantively, February was the month John Boehner unveiled a brand-new House Republican website set up to track the party's progress on Benghazi conspiracy theories, part of his new push to placate his party's ever-crabbier base.
Like most of the Republican House's most grandiose plans, the website was updated for about two months before falling into decay. A note on the page informs would-be conspiracy helpers that "the most recent update was made on May 9, 2014."
Oh, and February was the month Rand Paul first placed an angry hold on the nomination of Vivek Murthy, Obama's pick for the next surgeon general, because Murthy had made statements suggesting gun violence was a medical concern. Paul did so on the two year anniversary of the Trayvon Martin shooting.
If we are looking for sure signs that humanity is screwed, though, you might have to go with the Virginia state senator who explained that during pregnancy, women are merely "hosts" to the product of egg and sperm that resides within them.
Please follow below the fold for February's real sign of the apocalypse.
That's a pretty good one, but how does it stack up against Tom Perkins? Oh—who is Tom Perkins? He's the fabulously wealthy venture capitalist who caused a heap of trouble for statements explaining his fresh new ideas on voting.
"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins said.
"But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"
In the end, though, I'm going to give our Sign of the Apocalypse trophy to this story. In the wake of a Cheerios commercial showing—shudder—a biracial family, conservatives went into full meltdown mode over
another commercial, one that committed
an even graver sin.
[M]any conservatives didn't much care for Coca-Cola's one-minute spot, which showcased a rendition of "America The Beautiful" in languages such as English, Arabic and Spanish.
Former tea party congressman Allen West even took time to write a blog post during the game to voice his displeasure.
No, really,
it was a thing.
Fox News' Todd Starnes tweeted "Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border" and that perhaps Coca Cola was "saying America is beautiful because new immigrants don't learn to speak English?"
Yeah, I think that'll do. A Fox News meltdown over a feel-good Coca Cola commercial. There's your sign that we're all doomed, right there.