Today’s Morons: Those Obama=Osama Idiots, Part 3

And we have a winner in the stupid racist anti-Obama sweepstakes!

It’s Diane Fedele, head of the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated. This is a GOP booster club based in Riverside, California. The club just mailed out a flyer featuring, and I swear to you this is true, a picture of a fake $10 bill featuring the face of Barack Obama, along with watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken. Yeah. Fried chicken.

“It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else,” Fedele told the Riverside Press-Enterprise. She said she received the image in an e-mail and decided to include it in the flyer because, you know, Obama once said he doesn’t look like other presidents, and she wanted to draw attention to that.

“This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican party,” said a black member of the club.

Let’s examine this for a second. The way I see it, there are two possible situations here.

1. Diane Fedele is a racist. She wanted to mock Obama with a crude cartoon featuring stereotypes older than Amos & Andy.
2. Diane Fedele is a moron. She honestly had no idea that anyone would be offended by images of a black man surrounded by watermelon and fried chicken.

Either way, she sure doesn’t make California Republican women look all that good.

This is part of a series that began here and continued here.

Today’s Morons: The Granny Cremation Scammers (Alleged)

Today’s Morons are Kathleen and Tony, a mother-son team from California who police say tried to pull off a pretty horrible scam.

This is all alleged. Please remember that. Okay: Police say Kathleen, 50, and Tony, 30, shared a house with Kathleen’s mother. When she died suddenly — and police aren’t saying how, only that it was a little strange — Kathleen and Tony allegedly decided they couldn’t live without the income from her pension cheques.

So they didn’t tell anyone.

Police found a pit in the backyard of their isolated home. A human body had been cremated in it, they say. Also, Kathleen’s MySpace page featured a photo (left) of her wearing a necklace police say was made from her mother’s bones. And Tony (below) has some kind of esoteric tattoo on his forehead, which, I don’t know about you, always makes me think ‘Upstanding Young American!’

Inside the house, police found very little furniture. The electricity had been cut off, so generators were running in every room. ‘Anti-social’ messages were written on the walls. All in all, this was a strange, strange place. Police aren’t saying much about what these people were into, but did, strangely, issue a statement that ‘fringe religion is not believed to have played a role.’

Kathleen’s other son tipped off police after he hadn’t seen his grandmother in a long time. He called to speak to her and his mother impersonated her, he said. Badly, he added. He seems to have had a pretty good idea about what kind of people his kinfolk were.

Kathleen and Tony are in jail. Police say they scammed about $25,000 in pension cash before they were caught.

I really have to wonder why people do things like this. It goes beyond stupid, and it goes beyond greedy, into a class of crime all its own.

What is it about people that makes them commit crimes close to home? I will admit to a passing admiration for crooks who pull of spectacular crimes of a non-violent variety, like Frank W. Abagnale Jr. or Dan Cooper. But people like this, or like Josef Fritzl in Austria, really boggle my mind — they commit these acts of evil right in their own homes — allegedly — and just assume nobody will notice.

The problem is, someone always does.

Christopher Walken, WTF?

I worship Christopher Walken. I have for as long as I can remember. Whether he’s spooking up the big screen or cracking up the small, he’s always great. My personal Walken highlights are probably no surprise to you — More Cowbell, True Romance, The Deer Hunter, that watch scene in Pulp Fiction, the entire movie version of The Dead Zone, Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice video … the man, I used to think, could do no wrong. And he’s funny, too — every time I saw his name in the listings for Saturday Night Live, I was ready with the VCR, knowing there would be some comedy gold.

But not anymore.

The last few times he’s hosted SNL, Christopher Walken has just stood there, reading lines off a cue card. Even when the sketch is deadly good — last year’s Walken Family Reunion stands out for me — it’s other people riffing on his idiosyncratic voice and acting style, not him. He just stands there like old drunk uncle you have to leave in a corner.

Movie-wise … well, he turned up in Joe Dirt, that’s a real career move. Oh, he had a small role in Click, that Adam Sandler movie nobody watched. And he was in Balls of Fury … Jesus, the title alone should have caused that script to be pitched out the window.

So I’ve been wondering about Walken for a while now. Last night, he turned up at the Princess Grace Awards Gala in New York. This is a fundraiser for young artists in theatre, dance and film that was set up by Prince Rainier lll of Monaco, a place I still don’t quite understand. But it’s for young artists, so it’s cool.

Christopher Walken was there, along with lots of other famous people. And he looked like he just crawled out of a coffin. My question is this: Is he in character? Is he playing Dracula, or maybe Old Logan in the new Wolverine movie? Maybe he’s doing a Romero zombie flick.

Or is he just a hurting unit? I pray it’s the former, not the latter. Because even though his work has started to slide, we need Christopher Walken in Hollywood. We really do.

So here’s my letter to him:

Dear Mr. Walken

I have some concerns about your appearance. You don’t look so hot. I worry that you’re spending too much time in the big city, being famous and rich and all that sort of thing.
So here’s my idea: why don’t you swing on up here to Canada and crash at my place for a week? We’ll play board games and eat chili, and swap stories. You can tell me about famous people, Hollywood excess and what it’s like to be rich and famous, and I will tell you about the time my kid ate black licorice and it made him cry.
Each night, I’ll make you a hot lemon drink and tuck you in for a good night’s sleep. In the morning, we’ll walk in the autumn forest and you can share with me the scripts you’re being sent, and I will tell you “shit” or “garbage.” Then we’ll sit down together and come up with the right movie for you to do next, which will not involve ping-pong.
When it’s time for you to jet back to La-La Land, I will pack you a basket full of good sandwiches featuring locally grown peppers, some real Canadian bacon and stuff like that so you can stay healthy.
And after that, we can stay in touch via Facebook in case you need a pick-me-up.

Regards,

Weathereye

P.S. I hear you’re up for the role of Ozzy Osbourne in that Motley Crue biopic, and all I can say is what? Do you even know who Ozzy Osbourne is? And do you own a mirror?

I’ll let you know what he says when he answers. Hey, you know, I sent a letter like this to Samuel L. Jackson last year after I saw Snakes on a Plane, and all I got back was a picture of him giving me the finger, and then he made Jumper.