Kill me now.

There are days where I think the thing I hate most about movement conservatives - more than the bad policy, more than the under-the-table racism, more than the warmongering - is the bloody-minded stupidity. This isn't to say that all conservatives are dumb, but they sure are the vanguard of the revolution. Smart conservatives these days are either staying silent, or actively running away from the movement. (And yes, I've criticized stupid lefties before. Next.)

Latest example, via Ezra, is John Podhoretz, who thought this was witty:

More World Cup Observations [John Podhoretz]
This is astounding: A French player assaulting an Italian player during the finals match. I gather that the incident began when the Italian player said, "You know what? I like Jews."
Posted at 5:20 PM

HAR HAR HAR. DA FROGS HATE DA JOOS. FUNNY NO?

If I were a conservative kool-aid drinker like J-pod, I might not want to cast those anti-semitic stones in the same week that my movement-brothers pogrom-ed a Jewish family out of their homes for doing something unthinkable like asking their public school not to shove evangelical christianity down their kids' throats.

And let's totally ignore the fact that the altercation in question was between Zidane, an Algerian, and a white player. Gee, what could have possibly transpired between them that would have made Zidane lose it? Oh, who cares, we'll just make a joke about the French.

Finally, when did conservatives become convinced that Europe is the last and only anti-semitic place on earth? I don't mean to overplay things by any means, but let's not delude ourselves in to thinking that anti-semitism is dead in America, as the above example proves nicely. What's even more bizarre is how the American right by and large sees Jews in general, and Israel in particular, as mean to an end. Jews in general are seen as by definition an electoral ally in the war against Muslims. Israel in particular is seen as even more so, and then there's the creepy evangelical element that sees Israel as the beginning of their own weird Doomsday Clock. Given that these alleged judeophiles eventually hope that all Jews be converted or killed, it's hard not to see that as long-term anti-semitism.

If you think that American anti-semitism is hard to find, go here and skip to the 2:00 mark and watch the audience reaction as Sascha Baron Cohen sings to a country and western bar in Tuscon. There's an ugly, ugly side to American christianity, and it just needs to be scratched a bit before it starts to stink.