This week's poll from the Lester & Charlie Institute of Forward Thinking!
As if it weren't bad enough that conservatives were busy these days hawking amateur "art" depicting President Obama sniffing magic markers and selling oil paintings of "King Obama" trampling the American flag -- now they're going after one of the most iconic and beloved American characters of the last 60 years.
Hold onto your footballs, people. Conservatives just bought Charlie Brown.
Of course, we already knew that despite his iconic status as the world's most famous loser, Charlie Brown -- aka "Chuck" aka That Round-Headed Kid -- has been selling everything from lunch boxes to life insurance for decades. But now the conservative publishing house Regnery, publishing home of profound thinkers like Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter, has licensed him, along with the rest of the Peanuts troupe, for a planned "Little Patriot" series of books for children. Soon, Charlie Brown and his friends will be selling the right-wing agenda.
"Who better than Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang to help teach children about what makes America strong?" reads a press release from Regnery's president, apparently too blinded by the cuteness of the cast to remember that Schulz's strip is mostly about unshakable anxiety and perpetual defeat. "We are delighted to be working with such a trusted and beloved brand."
Wow. "Trusted" and "beloved" are odd words to be used by the publishing house that brought you such "trusted" books as McCarthy and His Enemies and Unfit for Command, the mudslinging "exposé" of John Kerry from a Swift Boat veteran. And The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, sometimes referred to more simply as The Incorrect Guide to Science. Oh, and a book about the Clinton years that was described in The American Prospect as "paint[ing] images of Hillary Clinton hanging crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree."
You get the idea. We can only imagine what the late Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, a self-described shy and withdrawn secular humanist, would think about this. But what we're really wondering is how Regnery plans to use his Peanuts characters to teach kids what it means to be an American.
And, more important, what will the awesome titles be? What do YOU think?
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