Fun:Really embarrassing liberals

Sadly, some liberals do a very good job of making other, saner liberals embarrassed to share their side of the political spectrum. Others make us all, liberal, conservative, and patriopsychotic anarchomaterialist alike, embarrassed to be members of the same species. Here's a few:

Sexual antics

• Most male Kennedys of a certain generation.
• Jeffrey Epstein
• Harvey Weinstein
• Barney Frank and his ex-boyfriend's day job as a pimp, whose various shenanigans he covered up for using his congressional office.
• Bill Clinton's unseemly affair with a subordinate.
• Eliot Spitzer, who while governor of New York allegedly consorted with prostitutes (other than politicians) and used state funds to pay for it.

  Upon Spitzer's resignation his successor, David Paterson, almost immediately went into excruciating detail about his extramarital affairs and use of a state credit card while engaging in them, even though he said he paid it all back with his own money.

• John Edwards's denial during the 2008 campaign, and subsequent admission, of an affair with a woman who "worked" for the campaign. Made much worse because the affair went on while his wife had terminal cancer.
• Gary Hart, who blew his electoral chances in 1988 aboard the yacht Monkey Business. Or, rather, his mistress Donna Rice "blew" his election chances (bad pun intended).
• Jim McGreevey, closeted Governor of New Jersey, appointed his boyfriend as his "Homeland Security Advisor". Also in the "Criminal antics" department, due to actions from one of his campaign fundraisers he probably would've been indicted on extortion charges (said fundraiser had already pleaded guilty over it) had he not found God and come out as a "gay American". Now retired from politics, he teaches classes on ethics.^{[No, not The Onion]}
• Anthony Weiner, Democratic congressman from New York, who used Twitter to send a woman a photo of his...honestly, with that surname, the punchline pretty much writes itself. We wish this scandal had never ended, as we solidified our attention as it expanded.
  • A later unrelated sexting incident had him convicted of transferring obscene material to a minor, being sentenced to 21 months in prison and registry as a sex offender.
• The British Liberal Democratic Party, whose members included an adulterer (Paddy Ashdown), and Mark Oaten, who allegedly engaged in coprophilia with male prostitutes.
• François Mitterrand, the former French President, had two illegitimate daughters and a long-running mistress who attended his funeral (he also set up a personal anti-terrorist unit which he used to spy on his rivals and blew up a Greenpeace ship, but who wouldn't do the same?).
  • His nephew Frédéric Mitterrand, for coming in defence of Roman Polanski after it was alleged that he raped a 13-year old.
• The Dutch Pacifist Socialist Party and all the other Green parties following, for putting the P in LGBTP-rights, which took whole decades of protests and scandals to get removed from the word.
• Katie Hill, who resigned after she had an "inappropriate relationship" with at least one, probably two, of her staffers and got caught lying about it.

Criminal antics

• Jeffrey Epstein
• Harvey Weinstein
• Ted Kennedy waiting most of a day before reporting to the police that he drowned his date.
• Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster and 50 other people, and then tried to palm it off as a suicide. Ken Starr, despite his 5-year mission to prosecute Bill Clinton for any crime, didn't think it was worth pursuing. Hint: joke.

  While not criminal, they pretty much singlehandedly turned the Whitewater scandal from a non-issue (as they hadn't actually committed a crime) into a mess that still haunts them.

• James Traficant, former Democratic Congressman from Ohio. Expelled from Congress and convicted of taking bribes and corruption. Compared himself to Maximumus Decimus Meridius Also known for his bad hair and for ending floor speeches with "beam me up."
• William J. Jefferson, former Democratic congressman from Louisiana, who hid bribery money in his freezer.
• The former Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich (we don't know how liberal he is, but he's a Democrat), was arrested on December 9th, 2008 on charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and solicitation of bribery. He was attempting to sell his appointment of the Senatorial seat vacated by President Barack Obama to the highest bidder, thus managing to further embarrass a possibly (hopefully, changefully) more honest politician in the process.
• Former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. As the bumper sticker went when the choice for governor was between Edwin Edwards and David Duke (former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan), "vote for the crook - it's important!" Another favorite is "vote for the lizard, not the wizard." He would also fall handily under the "sexual antics" category and would no doubt prefer to be remembered for such (he once denied having had sex with six women in one night, for example, by saying it was actually seven women), but his actual crimes and time served in federal prison for corruption overshadow that.
• W.A. "Tony" Boyle, who had his rival for the United Mine Workers of America presidency murdered in 1969 after defeating him 2-1 in a rigged election.
• Jeremy Thorpe, British Liberal politician, who probably arranged to have his former gay lover murdered.
• Chris Huhne, prominent British Liberal Democrat, jailed for 8 months after lying to police about a traffic offense and trying to get his wife to take the blame.

Political antics beyond the call of duty

• Pandering to vaccine hysteria promoters by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• Senator Ted Kennedy's opposition to the Cape Wind power generation project because, well, it would spoil his view.
• Al Sharpton, and the whole Tawana Brawley thing.
• Huey Long, who brought free textbooks and paved roads to Louisiana, but at the cost of his becoming a virtual dictator of the state, with one of the most corrupt administrations imaginable.
• Richard J. Daley, mayor of Chicago for 21 years. Daley is said to have been repeatedly re-elected with the women's vote because, "the women of Chicago love their Dick Daily." We all know what happened in 1968.
• Cynthia McKinney for general nuttiness on several counts.
• Jerome Armstrong and MyDD, which for its first few years was an astrology blog trying to pick election winners and hot stock investments by consulting the stars.
• Arianna Huffington and The Huffington Post, for promoting vaccine hysteria, pandering to New Agers, and other batshit views.
• Dennis Kucinich for his UFO sightings and hanging around with Shirley MacLaine, and for suddenly reversing his position on abortion one week before announcing a run for President.
• Governor Richard Lamm (D-Colorado) for declaring that the elderly and terminally ill have a "duty to die".
• Governor Ray Blanton (D-Tennessee) ran a brisk business selling pardons, setting off a moral panic that the lame duck soon-to-be-ex-governor might empty the state prisons entirely in his last few days in office. To prevent this, his successor, Lamar Alexander (R) was sworn in a few days early through some loophole in the state law. His would-be successor, Jake Butcher (D) who lost to Alexander, was caught with his hands in the cookie jar a few years later in a banking scandal. Thanks a lot for turning Tennessee overnight from a solid "D" state to a solid "R" state.
• Jerry Brown is a New Age flake and one of the few perennial candidates to actually get elected to multiple seats. The people of California elected him governor for a third term, after last being in the seat in 1983. Dennis Kucinich, who will never make it higher than congressman, and Richard Lamm, who will never again be elected to anything, could take a few lessons in successful New Age flakery from this guy. Jello Biafra wrote a funny song about him.
• Tipper Gore spearheading the Parents Music Resource Center, though she received help from a few other senator wives of both liberal and conservative persuasion.

  On this subject her husband, in addition to making himself look like a complete jackass during the PMRC congressional hearing, worked with Strom Thurmond (whose wife also helped found the aforementioned monstrosity) to pass a bogus "blank tape tax"; while its ostensible purpose was to combat piracy in the music business, it was in reality a thinly veiled effort to give the major record companies a total stranglehold on the music business. Thank you Frank Zappa!

• Nick Clegg, British Liberal Democrat leader for promising he wouldn't raise student tuition fees just before an election, and then doing exactly that as soon as he entered a coalition government.
• Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the British Liberal Party. After his former gay lover tried to blackmail him, Thorpe paid someone to make a failed assassination attempt on his dog.
• Cyril Smith, corpulent British Liberal with a taste for underage boys.

Racial faux pas

• Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) for joining the Ku Klux Klan as a youngster. Unlike some other people, to his credit he quickly got over it.
• Jeremiah Wright, for various remarks critical of Israel and the American Israel lobby (Wright initially referred to them as "them Jews," for which he apologized) that were pretty anti-Semitic.
• Jesse Jackson, for a long, long list of antisemitic remarks: calling New York City "Hymietown", saying he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust", and claiming Richard Nixon had been inattentive to black poverty because 4 out of 5 of his advisers were "German Jews". He also wanted to cut Obama's nuts off for some odd reason.
• James E. "Billy" McKinney, former Georgia state representative, for giving this reason why his daughter Cynthia lost her congressional seat in 2002: "J-E-W-S". This is true; when his daughter Cynthia went off on an anti-Semitic tirade, her Jewish constituents in the district switched their support to another candidate in the Democratic primary, Denise Majette. There was probably a lesson to be learned here, but both McKinneys did the same thing in Cynthia's loss in 2006 to Hank Johnson, so we can assume it wasn't learned.
• Günter Grass, German voice of liberal decency, who for 50+ years forgot to mention that he'd served in the Nazi Waffen-SS in World War II.
• Ralph Northam, Governor of Virginia, who was found to have posed in blackface next to a guy in a KKK robe when he was in medical school. In rapid succession, he admitted and then denied it was actually him.

General media idiots

• Oprah Winfrey peddles all kinds of New Age woo, and is an uncritical Obama fan.
• Kanye West, a narcissistic loudmouth who's compelled to say something stupid every time he opens his mouth. His politics are all over the place and seemingly change by the minute. It's clear that he does not inhabit the same reality as everyone else.
• Rosie O'Donnell. This year's Roseanne Barr. She praised the "good old days" of war criminal George W. Bush on Twitter (when she was relevant).
• Bryant Gumbel, the Kanye West of journalism. ("What a fucking idiot.") His Olympics rant, while hysterical, was too hot for the public at the time. He also was known for his disastrous performance as commentator during the first couple years of Thursday Night Football.
• Jerry Springer. The ur-limousine liberal, attended a lot of Get Out the Vote events.
• David Icke, the great white hope of the English Green Party. Until he appeared on a chatshow telling people he was the messiah. He's since recanted that claim but he's made worse ones since. Something of a go-to for conspiracy theorists.
• Robert Kilroy-Silk, former British Labour MP, talk show host and TV presenter. No one's quite sure when he swung to the right... On 4 December 2004, a man threw a bucket of manure over Kilroy-Silk before he was due to make an appearance on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions? This was after comments such as "We owe the Arabs nothing" and that Ireland was a "country peopled by priests, peasants and pixies". The latter comment was in 1992, when he was still Labour. In response to accusations of racism, his PA said "He is not a racist at all - he employs a black driver."
• Jimmy Dore, who claims to be "progressive" despite constantly defending Donald Trump by denying that he colluded with the Russian government, no matter how much evidence there is. He also dabbles in 9/11 trutherism and pro-Assad apologetics when he's not wholeheartedly embracing every conspiracy theory that makes the Clintons and the DNC look bad (because that's exactly what liberals needed — more infighting!)
• Richard "When I served in Vietnam" Blumenthal who, in addition to his infamous Senate campaign gaffe, as Attorney General blew $20 million suing over "Chronic Lyme disease" at the behest of alternative medicine purveyors pushing conspiracy theories about Big Pharma. Bonus points for unironically asking a Meta executive "Will you commit to ending FINSTA?"
• Ellen DeGeneres, who despite being a lesbian and being married to her wife Portia de Rossi, is friends/BFFs with former U.S. president George W. Bush, a homophobe who campaigned against same-sex marriage during his 2004 re-election campaign. She is also supposedly a horrible boss.
• Harvey Weinstein, proof that no matter how many decent films you produce, you can still be a horrible person.

Religious antics

• William Jennings Bryan, trust-buster, free silver advocate, populist, pacifist, opponent of big business...and an opponent of Darwinism and advocate of creationism who was the lawyer for the creationist side in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
• Tony Blair for believing that the best way to build a cohesive multi-cultural environment is to promote religiously segregated schooling.
• Hippies & New Age Travellers - have a bath, you long haired pot smoking tie-dyed crypto-Hindu freaks!
• Malcolm X, who discovered the truth about God from Elijah Muhammad, only to discover the truth about Elijah Muhammad costing him his life.
• Tim Farron, devoutly Christian, British Liberal Democrat leader who resigned because he couldn't get over the idea that gay sex was sinful despite being leader of a party committed to LGBT rights.

Batshit craziness

• Ward Churchill calling 9/11 victims "Little Eichmanns".
• Pandering to political cults on the far, far left: New Alliance Party, Lyndon LaRouche, Workers World Party, Maoist revolutionary poseurs, etc.
• Che Guevara worship - particularly those who wear the t-shirts and buy the posters without even attempting to understand the politics of the man.
• Bill Maher for jumping on the anti-GMO/anti-vaccine/pro-PETA bandwagon.
• Zeitgeist, the movie - Trutherism, Fed conspiracy theories, Bullshit theories on religion and just general antisemitic dog whistles
• PETA - proving how good intentions can just go so, so, so wrong...
• Thrive, the movie. Aka "Son of Zeitgeist", libertarian edition.
• Voluntary Human Extinction Movement - do we need to say more?
• Those who give environmental protection a bad name: hard greens (of the sort who see humans as a plague on the planet, and/or want to shut down all industrial and agricultural activity), those who pander to or glorify ecoterrorism, those who make rash predictions of impending ecological doom and gloom (population crash and die-off, oceans rising 20 feet, etc.), and those who favor mysticism over science-based environmentalism.
• Crazy Earth-worshipping heathens that believe in Gaian Theory and other nonsense.
• The Animal Liberation Front, for believing that releasing domesticated lab rats to die in the wild is good for the welfare of the animals or that mink will fit in well with the natural ecosystem of the surrounding areas.
• Allen Ginsberg for allowing NAMBLA to use his name.
• Chris Hedges-for Luddism that goes beyond rational concern over Silicon Valley techbros and into anti-modernity screeds that make the Dark Mountain Project seem reasonable by comparison, and insistence despite all evidence to the contrary that modern democracies are more mendacious and warmongering than the feudal monarchies of the Middle Ages.

Genocide denialists

• Harold Pinter
• John Pilger
• Pretty much anyone in Denk.

Miscellaneous

• Patrick Moore, who made some outstanding contributions to science, and some not so good ones elsewhere. Was a Liberal, once, and then moved to right.
• You, Anonymous user (yeah, you; you know who you are!), for insisting on making deadly weapons illegal (because you're too dumb to learn to use the largely defensive weapons of gun safely) and for suing to make unhealthy personal choices illegal (like smoking and trans fats).
• Anti-royalists in the UK who insist that if the King was removed, then magically, overnight, all world hunger would end, everyone would be equal, murder would stop, wars would end, and so on... when in reality it would just save about 2p each and make London's landmarks considerably more boring.
• Assorted rock stars who fly around the world selling millions of pieces of plastic — and then lecture us about the environment.

See also

• Fun:Really embarrassing conservatives
• Fun:Really embarrassing moderates
• Fun:Left wing bastards
• Fun:Right wing bastards
• Fun:Really embarrassing Brits, of all political stripes.
• Fun:Really embarrassing Australians and New Zealanders

• Inverse stopped clock