One of the recent propaganda tactics of the right wing has been to appropriate the leftist language of discrimination and civil rights to argue that liberal elites are persecuting white Christian conservatives. The most extreme form of this tactic is the Nazi attack, according to which liberals are portrayed as Nazis or fascists in order to represent them as brutal oppressors of helpless conservative victims. Commentators on the right have revised history to represent fascism as a leftist movement. They have invented or exaggerated associations between Democrats and Nazis.

In his book, What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank documented the emergence of an angry populist movement in the prairielands. Christian fundamentalists and anti-abortion activists had exploited the anxiety of working class midwesterners by fabricating a persuasive myth of persecution. According to the myth, a tyrannical minority of liberal elites in control of the media and judiciary seek to repress the religious practices and traditions of "regular Americans" whom they despise and disdain.

Hello dagsters. I'm happy to announce the marriage of one of our legendary founders, the man who puts the D in dagblog, the blogger with a thousand questions and inordinately large sunglasses: Deadman. He was married to the lovely Mrs. Deadman on Halloween night in Saratoga Springs, New York. There have been reports of widespread despair among eligible women across the nation.

Last month, Glenn Beck accused the Obama administration of deliberately instigating a national emergency in order to justify a totalitarian revolution. No disrespect to Mr. Beck's investigative skills, but his account was short on details. He had not determined what kind of emergency would occur, when it would happen, or whether the revolution would be communist, fascist, or some monstrous hybrid of the two. (Fascmunism?)

One reason that right-wing commentators continue to spout paranoid hysteria is that no one has told them to shut up. OK, Keith Olbermann and a bunch of left-wing bloggers have told them to shut up, and the White House has indirectly implied that they should please keep it down. But the people who really have the power to undermine the conspiracists--the non-paranoid conservative leaders, or what's left of them--have not said a damn word about the wild accusations hurled by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann.

When I worked for a software company, a fellow computer programmer once lamented that the salespeople earned so much more than the coders, despite the fact that the coders were generally better educated, more intelligent, and more essential to the company's core value: its products. The reason for the disparity is straightforward. Salespeople are closer to the money. It is very difficult for executives to perceive the value good programmers, who represent cogs somewhere deep in the machine, but the value of good salespeople is obvious from their sales numbers.

In early August, I began working on a book to document a growing sense of paranoia among right-wing conservatives. At the time, the media was fairly quiet on the subject. With the exception of liberal blogs (ahem), no one paid much attention to the wild rhetoric of the tea parties and occasional paranoid outbursts from commentators like Rush Limbaugh and politicians like Michelle Bachman.

Just because Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell refuses to let interracial couples marry doesn't mean that he's a racist. He just doesn't believe in "mixing the races that way," which raises the question, in what way does he believe in mixing the races? Native American-Tibetan? They both have a brownish hue and wear colorful traditional costumes, so maybe that's OK. Or perhaps he means that the races can mix in other ways. They can be bridge partners, for instance.

Abraham the wandering Jew moved south again to the Negev, where he frequently visited the city of Gerar in the land of the Philistines.

Commentary: The Great Rabbi Ezekiel Bezekiel has written, "The Torah does not say why Abraham visited Gerar, but doubtless it was for a holy purpose known to God." Holy purpose my hairy Hebrew hiney. Read on, friends, read on.

While President Obama's recent Nobel Peace Prize has been attracting media attention, he has been quietly reaping a number of other prizes, including the New York Marathon, the Heisman Trophy, Best Cooking Blog, Sikh Man of the Year, and West Duluth High School's Most Likely to Succeed.

KISS THE DOLLAR GOODBYE

Conservatives reacted with shock and dismay to the Nobel committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. There are reports that some prominent conservatives exploded like Agent Smith at the end of Matrix.

Sometimes I become so enmeshed in the daily dramas of life that I forget to recognize the important milestones of those I hold dear. In such cases of neglect, the sin is not selfishness--I care, I really do--but rather self-absorption. My life is like a gripping suspense film. I...just...can't...turn...away. Not because my life is particularly interesting. It just happens to be mine. In addition, I have an attention absorption problem. I can't even turn away from an episode of Elmo's World. (My nephew and I like to spend quality time with our furry red monster friend.)

Two angels disguised as men came to the town of Sodom one evening. Abraham's nephew Lot met them at the city gate and invited them to stay with him. That night, all the men of Sodom, young and old alike, gathered at Lot's door and demanded that he release the strangers to them so that they could butt-rape* them.

Commentary: Sodom was not a popular tourist destination.

Lot, being a good host, refused this request and offered the mob his two virgin daughters instead.

Three strangers on their way to Sodom stopped at Abraham’s house, and he offered them food and shelter. One of the strangers promised Abraham that Sarah would give birth in one year’s time. Sarah, who was eavesdropping on the conversation, heard the stranger and laughed, for at 90, she was post-menopausal.

John Varvatos is not just a designer. He is a rock-and-roll designer. His ads have featured Franz Ferdinand and ZZ Top. Robert Plant wore three of his suits to the Grammy's.

One of the recurrent themes that contribute to right-wing paranoia is the fantasy that white people suffer from discrimination in Obama's America. This conceit erupted on the talk shows during the Sotomayor hearings and after Henry Louis Gates' arrest, when Rush Limbaugh said, "President Obama is black, and I think he's got a chip on his shoulder," and Glenn Beck exclaimed that Obama "has a deep seated hatred for white people."

You may have heard about Glenn Beck's recent paranoid accusations, but if you are a drive-by voyeur of right-wing hysterics, you might not appreciate the method behind the madness. Relying on out-of-context quotes, tenuous associations, and giant leaps of speculation, Beck has meticulously pieced together the most elaborate, nefarious government conspiracy in the history of cable news. His argument consists of four primary elements:

Part 1: The Czars

A few years ago, I met a young millionaire who had made a fortune buying life insurance policies from the elderly and reselling them to investors. He would offer policy owners cash upfront, and when they died, the companies to which he had sold the policies would receive the benefits. Of course, he earned a percentage. It struck me as a clever but shady operation.

Last week, I wrote about Glenn Beck's paranoid theory that Obama's health care plan would covertly deliver slavery reparations by redistributing health care to African Americans. It turns out that black people aren't the only undeserving minorities after grandma's health care. Filling in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn of the National Review earned his airtime by inventing a whole new health care persecution fantasy: