The Muppets Wage War on America!

Jim Tews / Holy Taco

Who knew?

On Fox's "Follow the Money," Bolling alleged that the new Disney installment of the "The Muppets" franchise was evidence of a liberal Hollywood conspiracy to brainwash children....

"This is what they're teaching our kids. You wonder why we've got a bunch of Occupy Wall Street people walking all around the country: They've been indoctrinated, literally, for years by this kind of stuff," Gainor said. "Whether it was 'Captain Planet' or Nickelodeon's 'Big Green Help,' or 'The Day After Tomorrow,' the Al Gore-influenced movie, all of that is what they're teaching, is that corporations are bad, the oil industry is bad, and ultimately what they're telling kids is what they told you in the movie 'The Matrix:' that mankind is a virus on poor, old Mother Earth."

The Fox News "analysts" were outraged that, you know, an oil executive was the bad guy. 

You've got to wonder what kind of fantasy world they're living in where oil executives could be depicted as anything other than amoral and rapacious. What's next, the rehabilitation of Darth Vader and the Empire?

Oh, snap!

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen....

After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order.

Yes, that's right. An evil, genocidal dictator and his magic helmed henchman is peachy as long as they shut up those dirty f*cking hippies.

The funniest thing to come out of this, though, is Salon's SCOTUS scribe Dahlia Lithwick's Twitter feed and the #GOPMuppetHearings hashtag. To wit:

@Dahlialithwick: Maybe instead of sweeping those clouds away, America's toddlers should focus on sweeping schools. 

@Dahlialithwick Talk a little more about this whole "rainbow connection" 

@thisisjohnbrook Mr. The Frog, when you were a newscaster, you used to say "hi ho!". Were you always this sexist in your younger years? 

 @jennygadget: "Mr. Frog, is it or is it not true that you and your cohorts once tried to "take" Manhattan?

The sad thing is that I could picture some House Republicans thinking this is a serious Twitter inquiry.