This week the nation bore witness to an especially shameful episode for Republicans, even by the right's rock-bottom standards. Right-wing media came together to respond to the story of a 10-year-old rape victim by denying her existence and calling those who provided medical care liars. What was surprising about the whole thing was not that conservative media was reckless, hateful, and mendacious. That's a permanent state of play for Republican propagandists. No, it was that the face of these attacks on a child rape victim and her doctor was not the usual doe-eyed Bible-huggers pretending they want to force fourth graders to give birth for Jesus and "the babies." It was the noxious frat daddy Jesse Watters, the former Bill O'Reilly underlying who is now forever vying for Tucker Carlson's throne as the Fox News host most like a rich boy villain in an 80s movie.
Sadly, there was a choir of jackasses making false, unevidenced accusations against the doctor who terminated the child's pregnancy, but it was Watters and his smirking visage that was really the star of this clown show.
