Weppner Vetted

When right-wing fascistic talk radio intersects with real-life electoral politics, it usually shines a bright light on just how repugnant the ultra-right tea party is. It isn’t always elections that do it – for instance, Rush Limbaugh’s national sponsors began abandoning that drug-addled ship when he viciously attacked female activist Sandra Fluke

Forget, of course, for a moment that insurers pay for Cialis and Viagra, but the predominately male, Caucasian, baby-boomer, “me-Generation” types who populate hate radio in America are outraged – OUTRAGED – that insurance might pay for contraceptives to prevent the natural outcome of Viagra usage. 

And so it is that Kathy Weppner, a former host of an unlistenable train wreck of a hate radio show, is being asked to answer to a wider audience for a lot of the racist, nativist nonsense that she used to espouse and regurgitate to like-minded resent-porn enthusiasts, with impunity.  When she announced, I wrote that Weppner: 

… is not only going to be a tea partier, but is – quite literally – a low-information WBEN caller. “Kathy from Williamsville” is going to take her fact-free jingoism on the campaign trail. She is a walking, talking anti-Obama chain email, and anyone reporting on her should be sure to haveSnopes queued up on their mobile browsers. Seriously – there will be no point covering her campaign if you’re not able immediately to vet her pronouncements and cross-examine her on the inevitable fabrications and fantasies she’ll discuss. After all, she has a list of known communists, doesn’t seem to be ready or willing to represent Muslim residents of the 26th (hint: it’s the primitive blood lust), has declared “white guilt” to be “dead”, warned against a hyperinflation that never came, and – like Ronald Reagan – opposes Medicare

 The Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremski queued up Snopes and went through her on-air and online pronouncements. I won’t examine the entirety of Zremski’s thorough article here; it speaks for itself. But consider these points: 

1. Weppner refused to be interviewed for the Buffalo News’ article; instead, she would only answer emailed questions. If a candidate for federal elected office cannot muster the courage or mental fortitude to be interviewed by the singular local paper covering her district, she’s fundamentally unqualified for public office of any kind. 

2. She – or someone acting on her behalf – went through her “Straight Talk” website with a fine-toothed comb to remove any odd nonsense and otherwise to sanitize it for a wider audience. Her problem is that the internet doesn’t forget, and the Waybackmachine holds all the embarrassing secrets she sought to expunge from her record.  I’ve written a lot of profane nonsense over the last 10 years, but I haven’t hidden a word of it. If you’re going to take a political viewpoint – even a controversial one – you defend it. You don’t run and hide from it when the rubber hits the road. She cannot defend her views. The expunged parts of her website are precisely what endeared her to the white omniphobes who support her for election. Now she’s trying to poo-poo them all away – all of her treasured opinions about the un-American, Muslim foreignhood of Barack Obama, all of her ridiculous nonsense about Islam being a genocidal religion, all of her promotion of Stepin Fetchit minstrelsy bullshit. Also, socialism on the march!

3. Birtherism – she can run, but she can’t hide. When it mattered, Weppner hosted lunatic birther Orly Taitz on her radio show and promoted her as a serious person. Now she says she acknowledges Obama’s legitimacy, but back then, she took a brown-skinned man with a funny name and single mom and assumed he was part of some half-century-long conspiracy to place a foreign-born person as POTUS. 

I believe, at that time, Mr. Obama’s submission of a ‘short-form’ birth certificate was a topic of conversation nationally as there were many lawsuits attempting to see his long-form birth certificate. I found it interesting that there was such resistance to produce this when it should have been simple. Mr. Obama Is our President.

The demands for the long-form birth certificate were an unprecedented, racist troll. Do you always take the bait and feed the trolls? 

4. Back to the minstrelsy – when asked about a blatantly racist opinion piece about “White Guilt”,  

Asked if she saw that language as racially insensitive, Weppner replied: “I find your question as insulting as the stereotypes printed in this Philadelphia Inquirer editorial titled ‘White Guilt is Dead.’ …I was surprised the Inquirer printed this. Did you pose the same question to their editors?”

Weppner deleted the “White Guilt” article from her site so recently that it still appears in Google’s cache. (It was still online on March 4th). She did not add any commentary to it – she didn’t question the appropriateness of the racism in that article, or query why the Inquirer printed it. She regurgitated it – verbatim – in its entirety. She endorsed it. Nice try. 

Weppner that very special confluence of hatred, bigotry, ignorance, & stupidity. She is, simply put, the prototypical, perfect tea party candidate. To that point, she’s still at it – uncritically regurgitating whatever conspiratorial nonsense she picks up from dubious sources: 

“Should I assume the NEWS supports the Obama administration’s new proposal to have the federal government investigate and monitor how newsroom editors decide topics and how topics affect policy?”

Asked about that purported policy, Debra Gersh Hernandez, spokesperson for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said: “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

No one does. No one has any idea what Kathy Weppner is talking about. She is the tea party’s excreta, and she’s running for Congress. 

28 comments

  • It’s too bad I can’t vote against this right wing troll. I have to settle for voting out my do nothing congressman in NY27

  • I didn’t realize she was such a psycho until I read yesterday’s Buffalo News, and this story, too. In a way, I’m glad Brian Higgins has such terrible opposition, in both the Dem primary and general election. The Weppner nod by Nick Lansworthy also says a lot about the EC GOP. They should be ashamed of themselves.

    • I’ve said it before in other places and I’ll say it here: The Democrats have no balls and the Republicans have no shame.

      • Ridgewaycynic2013

        Call the guy engraving my tombstone! Carl just gave me a new epitaph!

      • So many other words also work though:

        “The Democrats have no balls and the Republicans have no brains”

        “The Democrats have no balls and the Republicans have no conscience”

        “The Democrats have no balls and the Republicans have no moral compass” –which is true and pitifully ironic

  • Ridgewaycynic2013

    We heart Wayback machine. Of course, it’s probably all an invention by them guddamn lie-berals.

    Nice to see Artvoice laid the groundwork for Zremski’s article a few weeks back. I wonder if he would have been as thorough had issues not been raised here first.

  • Kathy Weppner embodies the spirit and values of the Republican Party and the Tea Party. She is batshit crazy, intolerant, small minded, and uninformed. The right needs more like her to get their message out and to demonstrate their true colors and agenda.

    • Go read the BN article about this. She has many batshit crazy, intolerant, small minded, and uninformed backers blogging the article….low information voters are abundant in WNY…..

  • Higgins is no better than Weppner, that is the real problem.

    • Not being a racist is better than being a racist.

    • One is a machine politician that works behind the scenes and is risk averse. One is complete raving moron. I can say with 100% confidence that Higgins is better.

      • Yep…gonna have to go with the 2nd Mr Rebmann’s opinion on this one…….having said that I cannot wait for the first debate ….its gonna be epic….

  • The News article quotes Langworthy as saying he doesn’t agree with all Weppner’s positions. Some press person should make a list of all her weird and bigoted comments and present them to Langworthy to see how many of her positions he really opposes. Even more valuable to the public, take that list to Chris Collins, Tom Reed, and all the state legislative candidates running in districts that are contained in the 26th congressional district. Let’s see how strong the Rep team is for Kathy!

  • “I was surprised the Inquirer printed this. Did you pose the same question to their editors?”

    No, moron. The Philadelphia Inquirer is not running for Congress – you are.

  • She has no business aspiring to the U.S. House of Representatives. She obviously falls far short of the standards set by:
    Cynthia McKinney (The U.S. military killed 5,000 prisoners during Katrina, and dumped their bodies);
    Sheila Jackson Lee (We have operated under the Constitution for 400 years)
    Hank Johnson (A military buildup on Guam could cause the island to “tip over and capsize”)
    Eric Massa (“I tickled him till he couldn’t breathe”, referring to a male staffer in their shared townhouse)
    Mel Reynolds (Deported from Zimbabwe for pornography, following his U.S. conviction for statutory rape)
    Anthony Weiner (You know).

    • Keep on shining on you special star.

    • These are examples of people saying wacky things, or people behaving inappropriately in their private lives. There’s obviously a huge difference between these sorts of offenses and being an evil racist piece of shit.

      • Yeah. In 2003, Sheila Jackson-Lee complained that hurricane names were too “lilly white” and said that “All racial groups should be represented.” She suggested Hurricanes “Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn”. She got the combo of stupid and racist. But that’s ok with you.

        And Charlie Rangel’s racist reference to “white crackers” ought to offend you. But it doesn’t.

    • Lamont Cranston

      So you can’t actually defend anti-American loon Kathy Weppner. What a shock.

    • Certainly puts Kathy in good company! you left out folks like Senate candidates Akin, Mourdock, Angle, O’Donnell, as well as Congressmen Foley and (I paid my taxes) Reed.

      • And let’s not forget Sen. David Vitter, that fine upstanding champion of “family values”…who gets his rocks off from prostitutes while wearing a diaper…or former Sen. Larry Craig, who has a “wide stance” while trying to proposition undercover cops in an airport bathroom…do you REALLY want me to continue?

  • The tea party oriented programming boss at WBEN is on twitter circling the wagons WITH Weppner, apparently. Real journalistic integrity right there. Wasn’t he a “news”guy at one time?

  • I interviewed Ms Weppner on January 19, 2010. She was a hard core Birther at that time. This is an archive of the show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rcr/2013/01/02/rc-radio–replay-of-show-with-kathy-weppner–wben.mp3

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