Steve King, Asshole of the Day for September 6, 2015

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has made big news as the last holdout against issuing marriage licenses to gays. To the point that rather than comply, she chose to go to jail, where she currently sits in contempt of court.

And of course when someone uses their religion as a shield to hide their bigotry, there are politicians rushing to her defense as a way to elevate their status in the presidential campaign-- Mike Huckabee has started the #ImWithKim hashtag, and Ted Cruz has said he “unequivocally” supports her right to use her government position to oppress gays per her religion.

What none of these people will acknowledge is that they would not support some government official’s right to impose their religious rules on others if that official had a different religion. 

And among all this steps Rep. Steve King, normally only known for his racist xenophobia.  He tweeted this:

There's really two awful things here:

These are both offensive. Prayer in public schools should be offensive to everyone, because if it's not your prayer, then you wouldn't want some teacher forcing your kid to say it. To imagine that school prayer is OK is to think that your religion will always be the one in charge. And to not care that others have a different religion than you.

But it's the Rosa Parks comment that really bothers me. Bigots of all sorts try to appropriate the righteousness of the Civil Rights movement to their pet causes, but there is always some disconnect which suggests that they don't get why the Civil Rights protesters are heroes.

I saw the other day that people on Twitter were making this Rosa Parks/Kim Davis comparison, but it wasn't until this weekend that I saw a public figure like Rep. Steve King making it. And it's offensive because it switches the oppressor and victim:

Kim Davis is not the Rosa Parks of gay marriage, she's the person who enforced the rule against Rosa Parks sitting in the front of that bus. But Steve King doesn't care about that-- the only oppression he can see is of people like him, not others. And for that, he is the Asshole of the Day.

It is Steve King's second time as Asshole of the Day. His first was for his racist statement about Obama not being raised American.

Is Rep. Steve King Asshole of the Day for using a new racist code word-- "continental origin"?

He claims to reject race-based politics, and then says this about the situation in Ferguson:

So he's not saying "African American", he's saying "all of the same continental origin." It's not racial profiling, it's continental origin profiling!

Photo source: US Congress

Steve King, Asshole of the Day for July 24, 2014

by TeaPartyCat (Follow @TeaPartyCat)

After 6 years almost no one is willing to go "full birther" any more. No one except Donald Trump maybe. You can't come right out and say Obama wasn't born in America without people tuning you out, and everyone knows that. Even the people who deep down hate him and feel he is foreign know it.

Rep. Steve King, the xenophobic congressman famous for suggesting that most immigrants are drug mules with cantaloupe-sized calves, starts a speech saying he won't assert where Obama was born. He's not a birther, you see. But then he plays to his crowd's racism by suggesting Obama is foreign:

Now there's a dog-whistle-- "not raised with an American experience".

It's true that Obama didn't live his entire life in America, but he only lived overseas for 3 years as a child. Other than that he lived here, among Americans. His mother was an American. The grandparents he lived with were American.

Of course Rep. King doesn't even explain what American experience it is that Obama doesn't have, because he doesn't have to-- he knows that his crowd will know what he means.

We're all familiar with the "I'm not racist, but…" statements, and how they are all pretty much racist. Once you start putting people in groups and making them all the same in your head, you're in racist territory. It's like these people think that racism is only lynchings and Jim Crow laws, and not the wider array of discrimination that happens in life. And what is Rep. King doing if not saying "I'm not a birther, but…"? So when he starts claiming Obama doesn't have an American experience, it's obvious what he means. And for that, he is Asshole of the Day.

It is Steve King’s first time as Asshole of the Day.

Full story: Buzzfeed

Rep. Steve King, speaking about the Senate immigration reform bill