If there’s anyone who reads the Worldnutdaily — and a variety of other far-right sources as well — more than I do, it’s the folks at Right Wing Watch. They actually listen to every Glenn Beck and Bryan Fischer show too, which surely must place them in line for some sort of medal. And now they’ve even put together a list of the ten most absurd WND stories of all time, which they rightly call a “Herculean task.” Here are a couple of my favorite, which I’ve linked to here as well:
1. The Bible Code Forecasts a Romney Victory
WND’s “award-winning” executive news director Joe Kovacs just before the election wrote an article based on a YouTube video he saw about how the “Bible Code” prophesizes “bad news for Barack Obama” as apparently the “hidden texts in the Holy Bible indicate Mitt Romney will be America’s next president.” Not only would Romney win, but the Bible Code even predicted Romney will be a “fitting president” who has God’s favor…
3. Obama Building ‘FEMA Concentration Camps’
WND commentator and Faith 2 Action president Janet Porter wondered if President Obama was using the fears about the Swine flu to “round up American citizens” and put them into “FEMA concentration camps.” Porter has also used her WND column to push fears that Obama would enact “jail sentences for those who seek treatment outside the socialized health care system” and create a massive “food shortage” so opponents will be “starved to death.”
4. Obama Plans Negotiations with Osama Bin Laden
Porter in WND predicted that Obama bin Laden will be overjoyed by Obama’s election as President and will even be able to meet with him personally. Like most other predictions in WND, this one turned out to be false.
In fact, their wildly paranoid predictions never actually come true. In the real world, that would discredit them; on Planet Wingnuttia, it helps them.
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Michael Heath
December 9, 2012 at 10:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Adding Rick Santorum to their list of columnists should help mainstream them even further into conservative Christianity.
It’d be very interesting seeing the demographics on those who read the WND. I assume nearly all their readers don’t have a bachelor degree or above from a non-Christian college. I wonder if a disproportionate number of their younger readers were either home-schooled or attended conservative protestant K-12.
dingojack
December 9, 2012 at 10:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eddy: [in WND guise]: Inside me, darling, inside me, are 10 crazy stories struggling to get out!!
Mrs M: What, darling, only ten?
Dingo
[With apologies to Jennifer Saunders].
Didaktylos
December 9, 2012 at 10:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s not at all difficult to find the 10 craziest – just grab the 10 most recent …
otrame
December 9, 2012 at 10:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As Steve Shives* says, the hard part is only picking ten.
*. Check out his YouTube channel, he’s pretty cool.
abb3w
December 9, 2012 at 11:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Specifically, the task would appear a close relative to Hercules’ cleaning of the Augean Stables.
shockna
December 9, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Porter in WND predicted that Obama bin Laden will be overjoyed by Obama’s election as President and will even be able to meet with him personally.
RWW could use a new editor or two, that’s a really unfortunate typo >_>
criticaldragon1177
December 9, 2012 at 11:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed Brayton
I’m not sure that the fact that none of their predictions comes true really helps, them, other than the fact that I wouldn’t want almost any of them to come true and neither would they. But it’s definitely not hurting them like it should. No one should take World Nut Daily seriously as a source. Even if there’s one or two extremely rare instances when their broken clock happens to be right twice a day, the place is full of paranoid conspiratorial garbage and pseudoscience that anyone taking them seriously deserves to be made fun of.
sailor1031
December 9, 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I seem to remember that FEMA was building those concentration camps during the Dubya presidency too. So this is not just an Obama conspiracy. And people wonder why I refuse to become a citizen of the USA….
Nemo
December 9, 2012 at 12:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To really be Herculean, there should be twelve.
John Pieret
December 9, 2012 at 12:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They actually listen to every Glenn Beck and Bryan Fischer show too, which surely must place them in line for some sort of medal.
More like combat pay and treatment for life for PTSD.
pough
December 9, 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair, Obama and Osama did end up having a sort of video conference.
dan4
December 9, 2012 at 1:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
11: Huh? Would you care to elaborate?
yoav
December 9, 2012 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He just used what Anakin Skywalker referred to, in the crappy starwars trilogy, as aggressive negotiations.
Area Man
December 9, 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
” Huh? Would you care to elaborate?”
That’s called a joke. Obama watched a live video feed (among other stuff) of the SEAL attack on Bin Laden’s compound.
caseloweraz
December 9, 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What Yoav said.
It calls to mind a line uttered by Auric Goldfinger (paraphrased): “No, Mr. bin Laden; I expect you to die.”
Olav
December 9, 2012 at 5:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed:
Psychological counsel, more like :-P
ehmm
December 9, 2012 at 6:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
9. Norway Terrorist Attacks a ‘Fabrication’ by the Victims
…
“Disgusting” doesn’t even come close to being a strong enough word.
democommie
December 10, 2012 at 7:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Specifically, the task would appear a close relative to Hercules’ cleaning of the Augean Stables”
I’m thinking Sisyphus.
dingojack
December 10, 2012 at 7:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sisyphus had something in common with their hero;, he too returned from the dead.
Dingo.
eric
December 10, 2012 at 9:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Love the “Bonus” one too – ‘Obama to build the Death Star!!!’
At least with that one, the WND folks are able to understand the petition is a satirical response to secessionist articles.
abb3w
December 12, 2012 at 4:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sisyphus had to roll a rock up a hill, when it kept rolling back down.
The Augean Stables, however, were utterly packed with bullshit.
The latter seems the closer comparison.
yoav
December 12, 2012 at 11:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think it was horseshit.
abb3w
December 15, 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@22, yoav:
No; oxen or other cattle. For example, from Bullfinch:
At least two other texts at Project Gutenberg agree:
Feel free to check back through Google Books; there may have been a variant that cropped up about horses, but the oldest ones I can find are all oxen or other cattle.
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December 20, 2012 at 2:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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