My Follow Friday Recommendations

As a supplement to my soon-to-be-published article for Mediaite, “5 Must Read Twitter Feeds,” I’m devoting this space to my favorite Tweeps who didn’t make that list.  To keep up the suspense, I’;m including those 5 here.

The list, you should note, does not represent my 5 favorite Tweeps, or even necessarily the 5 best.  These are just 5 feeds that I think will give people a crash course in what’s good about Twitter.

For Mediaite readers who follwed my link here, these are my secret weapons, the Tweeps who help my Twitter experience be all it can be.  There’s a good mixture here, people from both sides of the aisle, above, and below it, too. 

Victoria Jackson and Sen. Jim DeMint Raise Nazi Spectre

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Senator Jim Demint, in a talk at the National Press Club, compared Obama’s America to Nazi Germany:

Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy.

Whoah, there, Jim, wasn’t Germany’s bigger problem a guy named Hitler?  We don’t have anyone like that, do we?  Actually, DeMint has some pretty credible support on this.  Here’s noted political scientist and SNL alum Victoria Jackson talking about health care reform, and finishing his thought:

Hitler did this. He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like. Hitler also controlled the media. (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”) Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be?

Wingnut comparisons of Barack Obama to Hitler are nothing new.  What I love here is the synchronicity, the juxtaposition.  DeMint tries the time-worn cliche of making superficial, clinical comparisons to the Nazis, and has Victoria Jackson there to (coincidentally) extend the metaphor for him.

Don’t these folks see how simultaneously comical and trivializing these comparisons are?  It’s like saying that mosquitoes are a Holocaust on your arms and legs.

Still, it’s nice that DeMint got Victoria Jackson to stand next to him on this.  Maybe the GOP can get Carrot Top as their next communications director.

I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but maybe these folks are watching too much Star Trek.

Update: Below the Beltway makes a good point, outside my thesis, about a somewhat gentler Nazi reference by Al Gore.