Matthew Vadum, the rightwing butterball savaged in The Daily Show last year for race-baiting, doesn’t like me very much. But he ain’t the type who keeps it to himself. Nuh-uh. America’s favorite little waffendwarf read my last post about him, and fired back an email that can only be described as “Chihuahua-esque” in its yapping-factor. Behold:

from: Matthew Vadum <mvadum@capitalresearch.org>

sender-time: Sent at 5:10 PM (GMT-04:00). Current time there: 12:43 AM. ✆

to: ames@exiledonline.com

date: Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 5:10 PM

subject: Apparently, you are illiterate.

Ah, another fascist-loving Eurotrash wannabe. So tedious, but to each his own.

It’s clear you know a lot about cocaine.

Apparently, you are also illiterate.

On the “Daily Show” segment that aired, I said “community organizers use crack cocaine in exchange for votes.” I didn’t say on the show that ACORN did so but the Wall Street Journal made the allegation Nov. 3, 2006 at http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009189.

I hope you get the help you need.

MATTHEW VADUM

Senior Editor

Capital Research Center

1513 16th Street NW

Washington, DC 20036-1480

Ooch! Ouch! Down, boy! Bad midget! Shoo!

Now some of you might think it’d be better to just ignore Vadum–and believe me, I would if it wasn’t for the fact that Vadum is doing his best to ruin us all. Vadum is a regular guest on FoxNews, specializing in smearing ACORN. And all that work smearing ACORN has paid off in spades: as he boasts on his think-tank website, the Mad Midget was even cited on page 292 of Michelle Malkin’s book! Not page 293 or page 291 like us regular schmoes, but page 292, folks! That was a proud moment indeed. Vadum was also one of the early promoters of the rightwing lie that Obama’s health care reform will mean gassing grandma and grandpa. In a June 25th blog headlined, “Obama Wants To Let Those Pesky Geezers Die,” Vadum summed up President Obama’s health care reform this way:

So, old people: screw you. In the future Uncle Sam will put you on an ice floe and let you float away to your heavenly reward. It gives new meaning to the Latin phrase “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” (In English, How sweet and glorious it is to die for one’s country.)

So you can imagine that I didn’t take his poison emails lightly. But after reading this last one, I realized that Vadum unloaded a bizarre pastiche of accusations at me, that unfortunately canceled each other out: I mean, calling me a “fascist-loving Eurotrash wannabe”? What’s wrong with just calling me “Eurotrash”? That’s painful enough, if only because it cuts so close to my Eurotrash bone. But “fascist-loving Eurotrash” is an oxymoron, and “Eurotrash wannabe” just doesn’t make sense. There is no “wannabe” subset of Eurotrash, because they’re all wannabes. If you wannabe Eurotrash, you’re Eurotrash. All you gotta do is be one of those cheesy “I love to dance and party” sexually-ambiguous fashion victims always Voguing for the camera, and…Here, let me show you an example, like this guy:

H’m, wait a minute. He looks familiar. Forget it, try this guy here, look how he’s surrounding himself with fag-hags:

Nice tats, dude–Whoa! Wait a doggone cottonpickin minute. I know that guy! Hey…that’s Matthew Vadum! And yet… You don’t look like a Mad Midget here. You look more like Truman Capote, with a set of George Washington teeth. Tres cool! In fact there’s a whole video slide show of Matthew Vadum with different chicks, and the video used to run to the song “I’m Too Sexy” until YouTube removed the sound. Wasn’t “I’m Too Sexy” a huge Eurotrash dance hit? Hey, I just realized something: Matthew Vadum is a rightwinger who likes to party and dance and take photos of himself with women…which kinda makes him a fascist-loving Eurotrash wannabe! Too eye-rah-nik for words, ain’t it?

The photos definitely reveal something else: that the world of rightwing thinktanks means even a Mad Midget has a circle of friends. Here’s Matthew Vadum with the Atlantic’s resident libertarian-welfare-queen, Megan McArdle:

…and photographic evidence that Vadum is friends with that Moonie freak Amanda Carpenter, the one who e-mailed me a scary “I’m a-gonna write a column ‘bout y’all!” threat last week (shown here on the right):

What a close, tight-knit community these rightwingers have–a hagfish-feasting-on-ocean-floor-carrion sort of close, if’n you know what I mean. See, Megan McArdle’s fiance, Peter Suderman, worked as a fake-grassroots propagandist for the notorious rightwing monster FreedomWorks, which set up the Tea Party movement, and today is behind the town hall mob violence to stop health care reform. And wouldntchaknowit, FreedomWorks is also the gravy train that Amanda Carpenter’s husband rides! That’s right, the Moonie attack dog Amanda Carpenter’s husband, Chris Kinnan, is or was in charge of “Online grassroots organizing and messaging” for FreedomWorks. In other words: AstroTurfing. (I say “is/was” because Kinnan’s Linkedin page was strangely changed after August 6, 2009, to say that he runs Rally Congress; but we have a google cache of his Linkedin page from August 6 which showed Kinnan listed as working for FreedomWorks since 2001. Interesting too that Rally Congress’s “Meet the founder” omits the 7-plus years Kinnan has spent at FreedomWorks and affiliates.)

Omigod, it’s like, seriously, no way, it’s such a small world! Megan’s FreedomWorks fiance and Amanda’s FreedomWorks husband must be such good friends! And look, here are some photos of Amanda’s and Chris’s wedding:

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus Christ, Amanda Carpenter married her grandpa! That old dude has more gray hair than Barbara Bush!” Well, folks, you gotta stop being cultural imperialists here and understand that Amanda comes from one of those banjo-plucking Red States, where marrying your grandpa is considered a delicacy. Heck, she went to a school called “Ball State.” Seriously, it’s in her bio. I had no idea there was such a thing as “Ball State” except in Butt-head’s dreams. “Ball. Uh-huh-huh.”

So where does the Mad Midget fit into all of this? Welp, his think-tank, Capital Research Center, fits in real nice-like. See, Capital Research Center is funded by the same cast of billionaire freaks like Scaife, Coors, Olin and the rest, along with corporations like Exxon and Philip Morris, that all the other rightwing lairs are funded by–like the Heritage Foundation . Capital Research Center has had an incestuous relationship with the Heritage Foundation going back to its inception in the early-mid 1980s. Capital Research Center’s president, Terrence Scanlon, was the vice president of Heritage Foundation before landing his current gig in 1994, while the founder of CRC also served as a VP at Heritage.

But Vadum’s boss, Terrence Scanlon, has an even more illustrious background. Before he settled in for the easy retirement of life in the rightwing think-tank nomenklatura, Scanlon was a government employee. In the mid-1980s, Ronald Reagan named Scanlon to head the Consumer Protection Safety Commission. Scanlon’s brief reign was described by a Harvard lecturer/researcher this way:

As CPSC chairman, Scanlon did more to undermine consumer product safety than any chairman in the agency’s history, a dubious achievement that holds true to this day.”

Scanlon ran into hot water not only because he promoted a policy of “voluntary safety standards” for businesses, but also because he allowed so many hapless ATV enthusiasts to die or suffer injury on his watch, and did all he could to keep the slaughter-for-profit going as long as possible:

Scanlon’s loyalty to industry and his disdain for government intervention in commerce, regardless of the body count, played out in his battle with Commissioner Stuart Statler over the regulation of All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs).

ATV-related accidents skyrocketed from 29 deaths and 10,000 injuries in 1982 to 156 deaths and 78,000 injuries in 1984. Of greatest concern was that children under 16 years old made up half of those injuries and deaths.

Not a problem for Scanlon–the only lives he wanted to save were little fetus-lives, not the lives of the hicks who rode ATVs, because they were more useful as profit-cows for his sleazy corporate sponsors.

And guess who was aligned with Scanlon and the ATV industry against the last pre-Reagan holdout in the Consumer Protection commission? Larry Craig. The Republican from Idaho. Yup, the guy who liked tapping Morse Code love sonnets in men’s restroom stalls. Here’s the connection between Larry Craig and the Mad Midget’s boss, Terrence Scanlon:

While the GAO was investigating Scanlon, Representative Larry Craig (R-ID), ranking minority member of the House commerce subcommittee and an ATV industry-supporter, sought ways to protect the industry. In November 1985, Craig called for the Justice Department to investigate [Stuart Statler, the lone holdout on the commission] had breached federal law by issuing a CPSC Fact Sheet on ATV-related injuries and deaths culled from the CPSC’s database….[Statler said,] “What really needs to be investigated is why this congressman is so hell-bent to deprive the American public of critical information about one of the most dramatic surges of injuries ever to be associated with a product under CPSC’s authority.” Congressman Craig (R-ID) failed to muster support for his investigation and the Justice Department turned him down.

So there you have it, the Klendathu world where Matthew Vadum thrives: sleazy bosses who helped his friends profit from ATV deaths, mixing with fake-grassroots propagandists and taxpayer-funded libertarians, a world where grandpas marry their granddaughters, and angry midgets are allowed to take photographs with all of them, as though they’re all great friends. It is the cast of Star Wars Bar freaks who ran America under Bush. And they’re planning to take over again before you know it–and they will, too. It’s only a matter of time.

Read more: Amanda Carpenter, Capital Research Center, Heritage Foundation, Matthew Vadum, Megan McArdle, Terrence Scanlon, Washington Times, Mark Ames, Fatwah

Got something to say to us? Then send us a letter.

Want us to stick around? Donate to The eXiled.

Twitter twerps can follow us at twitter.com/exiledonline