Douchebag of The Week: Todd Akin...

We here at the Asylum haven't given out a Douchebag of the Week Award for some time now, if only because with Barack Obama winning one every week for the last two years there didn't seem to be any point in it, anymore.

But, like buses, if you wait awhile, another douchebag predictably comes along.

This week's recipient is Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri) who, for some reason which you just KNOW is connected to throwing theRight To Lifers a bit of red meat, finds it necessary to make a fine distinction about "legitimate rape".

There's a specific reason why this sort of ultra-conservative scares the fertilizer out of people, and Akin just reminded everyone of it.


Akin, you see, is running for a Senate Seat in Missouri. Senate seats in Missouri tend to attract a lot of stupidity, in my opinion. Then again, considering that Missourians repeatedly voted for Dick Gephardt. maybe the second biggest asshole in democratic (small 'd' intentional) party politics besides Al Gore, perhaps we should assume that Missouri politics brings out the absolute worst in human beings, regardless of party affiliation.

Why, if I remember this correctly (I believe it was the '98 election), Missourians once reversed long-standing, traditional democratic (small 'd' intentional) party modus operandi vis-a-vis voter fraud, and got real live people to vote for a dead candidate (Mel Carnahan) whose Senate seat then somehow mysteriously passed to his wife, as if it were the second house, the silverware or his Insurance Policy payout.

Missouri politics seems to attract all sorts of strange people, and Akin doesn't seem to be an isolated case.

He's also one of them "real" Conservatives you always hear about; the ones who scream for "propriety" in public life, crow about their "conservative credentials" to anyone who will listen, beat their chest over what they've done or meant to some otherwise insignificant "conservative" (small 'c' intentional) cadre, who fairly advertise their "family values" and wear their religious stupidity on their sleeves, who later get caught porking a hairless Congressional page of ambiguous sexuality in a darkened 7-Eleven parking lot.

You just know that if you're a candidate endorsed by Mike Huckabee, the primary factors weren't your credentials, your intelligence or your political skill, it was your profession of faith. It has been axiomatic in republican (small 'r' intentional) circles (and by that, I mean "outside the Political Establishment", among real people) for the last two decades that whenever the GOP stands a candidate who is designed to appeal to the Religious Right, and to no one else, we lose that election, just as when a candidate has the enthusiastic support of the Country Club republicans, and no one else, he or she, likewise, loses too.

You'd think someone would get around to pointing out that this maybe the wrong way to win elections. But then again, this is the problem -- overall -- with American politics: we give far too much credence to the minorities at either end of the political spectrum, therefore, we normal people don't really have much of a say when the party apparatus pukes up candidates of this apparent caliber.

What you need to do is to chuck the religious bullshit, the single-issue fringe nonsense, and get back to nuts-and-bolts retail politics. This means that you a) stand likable candidates for election, for despite your fervent wishes that everything could be about competence, elections are often about popularity, b) stop trying to appeal to narrow constituencies, like Evangelicals, Gun Owners, Right-to-Lifers, and so forth, and find someone who can appeal to a wider audience, and c) stop finding the worst examples of the unlikable, appeals-to-a-very-narrow-constituency fucktards to put on a ballot.

Oh, right, I forgot: they've earned their right to run because they've been good little apparatchiks. But, I digress...

To insist that conception occurring after a rape is "rare" -- in the course of laying out your mentally-constipated viewpoint on the subject of abortion, and attempting to play both sides of the fence while you do it -- is insensitive. Whether or not this is strictly true is irrelevant, because the assertion is still patently ridiculous, given the context (we're talking RAPE, Asshole!). One wonders what the fuck runs through the tiny mind of someone who could utter such a thing, and it is only made worse by this little gem of pseudo-medical-science that Douchebag probably found scrawled on a Men's Room wall:

"It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin said of a rape victim's chances of becoming pregnant.

One hopes it wasn't a Men's Room wall in the airport in Minneapolis, right former Senator Larry "Right-to-Life-Family-Values-Allegedly-Soliciting-Gay-Sex-in-The-Men's-Room-At-The-Airport" Craig?

Predictably, within minutes of making that ridiculous statement, and one assumes far more of them that just didn't get any attention, the good Congressdouche has his press flack release one of those mealy-mouthed, non-apologetic, attempted-slight-of-hand non-apologies:

"In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it's clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year," Akin's statement said.

Akin also said in the statement he believes "deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action."

That's typically the sort of confession you get from some dude just before he's shuffled off to "rehab" for being a "sex addict". It was an "off-the-cuff" "mispokenish" kind of thing, you know. Joe Biden does it all the time. I'm surprised that Douchebag didn't go for the standard "it was taken out of context" defense that the democrats (small 'd' intentional) have worn out over the last four years. This is also laughable because it insinuates that without a script, teleprompter and fifty two campaign aides, Akin is probably likely to do or say anything which might either get him locked up or lynched. It certainly leaves me doubting his intelligence and sanity; one should not have to be scripted and prepared, you would think, for the comparatively simple idea that rape is a sensitive subject not to be"misspoken" of lightly.

Of course, douchebag's democratic (small 'd' intentional) opponent, Missouri Senator and full-time Obama scrotum licker, Claire McCaskill, leapt at the opportunity to brandish her fake outrage and Right-to-Choose credentials, making remarks which are just as asinine as Akins', only with the stupidity flowing in the opposite direction:

McCaskill, who is seeking a second term, in an emailed statement Sunday called the comments "offensive."

"It is beyond comprehension that someone can be so ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape," McCaskill said. "The ideas that Todd Akin has expressed about the serious crime of rape and the impact on its victims are offensive."

It also gave an opportunity for the menstrual whiners at the National Organization for Women to rear up on their hind legs and howl:

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, on Sunday called Akin's remarks "flat-out astonishing.That kind of rhetoric re-traumatizes sexual assault victims. ... That kind of talk, I believe, is intended to shame women," she told AP Radio.

The only trouble I have with those utterances, other than it came from a democrat (small 'd' intentional) and a feminazi is...that they're both right.You can never give a Libtard such an easy point and expect to win elections. Then again, one gets the impression that Akin didn't so much expect to win the election, probably, as to simply pray hard enough and have God drop it in his lap.'

Just so long as the hairless Congressional page isn't already there when God gets around to the actual dropping.

So, Congressman Akin, for being a completely insensitive ignoramus, a total jerkoff, a  shining example of what happens to a brain that has been marinated in religion and identity politics for far too long, for the crime (at least it should be a crime) of associating with Mike Huckabee, and for the additional offense of giving a democrat who should be on her way out the fucking door already hope that there's a ghost of a chance of at least making it a close election, we present you with your shiny new Douchebag of the Week award.

You may shove it up your ass at your earliest convenience, Dickwad. Apparently, Missouri will not be in the "win" column for the GOP this year.