CULTURE

The Infowars Heckler's Impeachment Rant Shouldn’t Surprise Us

Owen Shroyer just live-streamed a racist rant at an impeachment hearing, because what's more American than that?

Infowars host Owen Shroyer attends the 'Stop The Steal Caravan' rally in front of the Virginia State Capitol on November 12, 2020 in Richmond, VA

Photo by Amy Harris/Shutterstock

A heckler from the far-right website Infowars was just forcibly removed from an impeachment hearing after delivering an incendiary and racist rant that took aim at former President Barack Obama.

"Americans are sick of your impeachment scam! Trump is innocent!" Owen Shroyer shouted early Monday morning. "Folks, Obama was emailing Hillary Clinton on her illegal server under a secret name, that came out in emails. And he claimed he didn't know she had it. Barack Obama is a treasonous ... he belongs in jail. He belongs in Guantanamo Bay. I mean look, I'm not saying this should happen but Barack Obama, you know, find the tallest tree and a rope."

Shroyer's comments were delivered in defense of President Trump, who has insofar obstructed the current probe into his attempt to persuade Ukraine to help him win the 2020 election by withholding documents and discouraging witness testimony. Shroyer delivered his rant at the start of the latest impeachment inquiry hearing, accusing Congressman Jerry Nadler and other Democrats of treason. Less than 40 seconds after he started speaking, he was forcibly removed by police.

LIVE: House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Inquiry Evidence Hearingwww.youtube.com

Shroyer is a known conspiracy theorist and instigator who has been banned from Facebook and YouTube, which is really saying something. Along with Infowars, he infamously helped spread the debunked Pizzagate theory, which alleged that the Clintons were involved in a child sex-trafficking ring.

Shroyer's comments at the hearing were, of course, deeply racist, as they concern the first African American president of the United States, but given his website's track record and white supremacist leanings, this shouldn't surprise us. Websites that perpetuate this kind of misinformation present major threats to any form of democracy and justice. Videos with titles such as "Why Impeachment Crisis Is a Textbook Lynching" add insult to injury, co-opting legacies of racist oppression and transmuting the American people's distrust of authority into fake news.

Still, we shouldn't think of Shroyer as a lone wolf or solo extremist gone rogue; rather, he's an unusually visible symptom of a much larger and very complex matrix of problems. Some of the worst perpetuators of racist systems hold positions of power across party lines, and mainstream media sources and politicians can be purchased and influenced by major moneyed influences as well. In all these cases, false information can easily become weaponized as protest and alternative versions of truth when refracted through the right's kaleidoscope of circumstances, rage, and high-profile distraction.

CULTURE

Chris R from Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" Is Running for Congress

Chris R may have lost to Johnny and Mark in The Room, but he can still win big in Texas.

The Room

While Tommy Wiseau's The Room, often considered the best bad movie of all time, might be technically terrible in almost every aspect, one actor's performance stood out from the rest as...almost maybe good?

In a scene so random that it feels baffling even within an already baffling movie, actor Dan Janjigian plays a drug dealer named Chris R who tries to shake down another bit character named Denny (or Danny?) for owed money. Chris R is only in that single scene, and Danny's drug addiction is never brought up again, but that doesn't stop Janjigian from making a meal out of his role. Janjigian's crazed intensity and the seriousness with which he seemed to approach a nothing role in a no-name movie was compelling enough that Zac Efron portrayed him in The Disaster Artist.

WORST acting ever [MUST WATCH!] The Roomwww.youtube.com

Now, over 15 years after The Room, Dan Janjigian has taken on a new role, perhaps his biggest one yet: running for Congress. As it turns out, Janjigian is a man of many talents. On top of his iconic role as Chris R, Janjigian was also a Microsoft employee and an Olympic bobsledder. More recently, however, Janjigian has spent over a decade working in healthcare and raising a family in Texas.

Danjan congresshttps://www.danjanforcongress.com/

According to Janjigian's official campaign website, his experience as a healthcare professional and his family's history escaping the Armenian Genocide solidified his political beliefs. Currently running as a Democrat to represent Texas's 31st congressional district against Republican incumbent John Carter, Janjigian's platform revolves around enacting public healthcare (while allowing private options for those who choose it), streamlining legal immigration, and promoting clean energy solutions to battle climate change.

Best of all, Janjigian is running a grassroots campaign "PAID FOR BY A WHOLE LOT OF TEXANS SUPPORTING DANJAN," meaning that he's not beholden to big money or corporate interests, and possibly even that Danny finally paid him back.

CULTURE

Joey Salads Peed into His Own Mouth and Ran for Congress

He still wants you to know that he didn't swallow.

There's just one year left before the highly anticipated 2020 presidential election.

Some have already chosen their champion, while many more emotionally stable people will ignore the whole thing until the nominations are in and just vote for whoever seems like less of an assh*le. But what often go ignored are the smaller, local races. Who's your representative? Who's your city councilmember? With very few exceptions, nobody has a clue.

Today, we're going to clear up that confusion for two small-time politicians in the New York area, two men who would otherwise be all too easy to confuse: Joseph Saladino and Joey Saladino. Joseph Saladino is the Republican Supervisor of the Town of Oyster Bay in Long Island. Joey Saladino—AKA Joey Salads—is a minor internet celebrity who made a name for himself by pumping out white supremacist "social experiment" videos and by literally peeing up into his own mouth, on camera. After that impressive display of aim, he aimed for a Congressional seat in Staten Island. Are Joseph and Joey related? I don't know. Who cares? Let's talk more about the pee video.

I watched it so you don't have to. He looks…happy. He swishes it around in his mouth before spitting it out. I'm not an expert on this particular type of content, so I can't judge it on its technical merits, but I did once see a lonely gorilla at a zoo drink her own urine, and a zookeeper informed me that she had recently lost her partner. It's actually a common behavior for severely depressed apes, but it's what Joey Salads does when he's living his best life.

He isn't even ashamed of it! He doesn't deny it or claim it was special effects. Is he too stupid to come up with such a simple lie? Maybe. There's very little research on the neurological damage caused by peeing into your own mouth. The only thing Joey wants you to know is that it was just for a jackass-style movie and that he didnotswallow.

Joey Salads Tweeting About Peeing Into His Own MouthTwitter

You might ask, "How could someone who has peed into his own mouth possibly have a high enough opinion of himself to believe he's a member of the master race?" And he does, by the way—see above, where he is pictured wearing a Nazi armband, in his words, "ironically" (just kidding, he doesn't know that word). Well, Joey Salads has his reasons. For one thing, he has firsthand experience with black people acting violently and destroying his property––mainly because he hired them to act violently and destroy his property. You can see their amateur acting in his "social experiment" videos, which generally close with insightful commentary like, "As you can see from this video, the black community is very violent towards Trump and his supporters."

For a long time, Mr. Salads denied the allegation that there was anything fake about these videos. His content used to be a regular feature on Drudge Report and other conservative outlets for people who love racist bullsh*t and have a distinct inability to distinguish fiction from reality. But eventually, Salads got caught on camera hiring a group of men to smash up a car that he'd plastered with Trump paraphernalia, and he's since admitted to some slight embellishment in his blind ambition to accumulate views and subscribers.

He's recently ended his campaign, but he managed to rack up nearly three million subscribers for his channel, and "Saladino for Congress" (@JoeySalads) has over 130,000 followers on Twitter. Too bad not all of his fans live in his district, because he would've been a shoe-in. Instead, Joey tried to win over voters the old-fashioned way, with his inspiring policy proposals. He latched onto a topic that's on a lot of voters' minds these days: the minimum wage.He wanted to lower it.

Noble effort, Mr. Salads! You will always be Congressman Salads in our hearts, and you'll never get that taste out of your mouth.

CULTURE

5 Funniest Moments from Hasan Minhaj Schooling Congress About Student Loan Debt

After all, who better to articulate such a chaotic and dystopian crisis than an Indian-American Muslim comedian who was waitlisted for law school?

Hasan Minhaj at the Film Independent Spirit Awards

Photo by Chris Pizzello (Invision/AP/Shutterstock)

Comedian Hasan Minhaj just delivered some tight stand up to what is maybe the fourth worst audience in the world, following North Koreans, ISIS, and an office Christmas party.

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