You Stay Classy, Bill Schmalfeldt!
Posted on | March 9, 2013 | 30 Comments
Bill Schmalfeldt: Proud to be a ‘Brain-Damaged Troll’
It’s been a more than a week since we took notice of Brett Kimberlin fanboy Bill Schmalfeldt, who has been charged in Maryland with Internet harassment of Lee Stranahan. Before examining Schmalfeldt’s latest eruption of obscene idiocy, however, I’d like to treat you to an amusing blast from Schmalfeldt’s disreputable past.
Right Wing Scrambles to Reassign
Blame for Tucson Tragedy
That was the headline on Schmalfeldt’s debut as the self-described “Brain-Damaged Troll” columnist at Technorati in January 2011. Bill’s theme was, as usual, completely wrong — the exact opposite of truth. Even as Schmalfeldt was ranting on about the Tea Party, “Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly” as the culprits in the Tucson massacre, actual reporters were quietly working to determine the nature of the madness behind Jared Loughner’s bloody crimes.
Loughner was not a Republican, not a conservative, not a Tea Party activist. He was a paranoid schizophrenic. Once a promising young musician — he had played saxophone in a high-school jazz group — Loughner got involved with drugs:
Some friends have traced the start of his decline to his sophomore year of high school in 2005, when he broke up with a girlfriend. He dropped out of high school after his junior year and thereafter lost touch with many of his former friends, including Caitlyn Parker. On the day of the shooting which targeted Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, Parker was one of the first of the accused gunman’s acquaintances to push back against speculation that the crime had been perpetrated by a right-winger. No, Parker said in a series of Twitter messages, the Jared Loughner she remembered was “quite liberal,” even “radical” in his politics.
Ah, so the dope-addled crazy was not a Rush Limbaugh listener, not a Glenn Beck fan, not a Fox News viewer. Well, what set him off?
The two-hour video is anti-Christian, anti-American and anti-capitalist, and Jared Lee Loughner became obsessed with it. Zeitgeist, a conspiracy-theory documentary released in 2007, has spawned its own cult following. According to Loughner’s friends, the accused Tucson gunman was one of the cult’s most zealous converts. And many of Loughner’s otherwise inexplicable obsessions — from his fascination with currency to his rantings against illiteracy to his paranoid fears of “mind control” —parallel ideas promoted in Zeitgeist.
The first disclosure of the movie’s influence on the mass murder suspect’s beliefs came in an interview Wednesday with ABC News. “I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in,” Zach Osler, 22, told ABC’s Ashleigh Banfield. Osler’s father confirmed that influence in an interview published Sunday by the Arizona Republic. “He wanted to watch [Zeitgeist] all the time,” George Osler told the Phoenix newspaper. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.”
So, the belief that Bill Schmalfeldt expressed in his Technorati column on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011 — that the Tea Party and conservative media personalities were directly at fault for the Tucson massacre, and that the Right was dishonestly attempting to “reassign blame” — was 180 degrees opposite of the truth. In fact, insofar as the crimes of a madman can be said to have a political motive, Loughner’s motives were those associated with the radical Left, including 9/11 Trutherism, anti-Christianity and anti-capitalist beliefs not unlike those of the “Occupy” movement.
The account of the Tucson gunman’s madness cited above is my own American Spectator column, “Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession” (Jan. 17, 2011), and regular readers will recall how much coverage of the Loughner/Zeitgeist phenomenon I provided here:
- Jan. 12, 2011: ‘Vain in Their Imaginations’ God-Haters and the Tucson Massacre
- Jan. 12, 2011: Salvia, Zeitgeist and the Tucson Shooter
- Jan. 13, 2011: Zeitgeist: Watch the Conspiracy Movie That Had a ‘Profound Impact’ on Tucson Mass Murder Suspect Jared Loughner
- Jan. 14, 2011: How to Talk to a Follower of the Zeitgeist Cult (If You Must)
- Jan. 15, 2011: Tucson, Zeitgeist and Madness: The Obsolete Politics of Jared Loughner UPDATE: Another E-Mail From a Zeitgeist Follower; Movement Leader Issues ‘Message to Members’
- Jan. 16, 2011: Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession: ‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’
- Jan. 17, 2011: Zeitgeist: 9/11 ‘Was an Inside Job’ Also: It Won a ‘Progressive’ Film Award and Is Based on ‘New Age’ Sources
- Jan. 18, 2011: The MSM’s Peculiar Silence on Zeitgeist (Guess Which Network the Progressive Award-Winning New Age 9/11 ‘Truther’ Film Suggests Is ‘Manipulating’ News)
- Jan. 20, 2011: A Liberal Looks at Zeitgeist
- Jan. 20, 2011: Jesse Walker on Loughner and Zeitgeist
- April 25, 2011: Zeitgeist Cult Implodes
So, while I covered Loughner’s actual motive every day for seven consecutive days (Jan. 12-18), Schmalfeldt lost interest in Loughner’s motives as soon as evidence emerged proving Schmalfeldt’s original “pin-the-tail-on-the-famous-right-wingers” smear was false.
And here’s the thing: Bill Schmalfeldt never owned up to the falseness of his accusation. He continued being published at Technorati until November 2011 without ever once acknowledging that his very first column for Technorati was a big, fat, evil lie.
There are many faults and personal shortcomings that can be tolerated in journalism. Deliberate malicious dishonesty is not one of them.
All that is necessary to discredit Bill Schmalfeldt is to quote Bill Schmalfeldt. The vile creep got banned from Daily Kos for his grossly offensive writings about anal sodomy. Schmalfeldt’s penchant for obscene defamation, as Lee Stranahan pointed out last week, includes describing his own ex-wife — the mother of his children, whom Schmalfeldt divorced in 1988 — as a “meth-abusing serial adultress.”
You may ask, how would such a person choose to honor the memory of his recently deceased mother? By accusing his ex-wife of “sucking Stranny Balls” and “sucking Stranny dick,” calling her an “adulterous slut” and a “lower form of life,” and also describing one of Lee Stranahan’s female friends as a “throbbing hemorrhoid” and a “cunt.”
You stay classy, Bill Schmalfeldt!
PREVIOUSLY:
- Feb. 28: Bill Schmalfeldt Praises Kimberlin for ‘Social Justice,’ Then Deletes Tweet
- Feb. 21: And Now, Helpless Victim Bill Schmalfeldt Heroically Suffers Glorious Martyrdom
- Feb. 20: Dishonest Bill Schmalfeldt Got Banned from Daily Kos for Anal Rape ‘Satire’
- Feb. 19: Kooky Tuesday Continues: Is Social Media Breeding Monsters? Oh, Hell, Yes!
- Feb. 19: ‘Beware the Ides of March’: Bill Schmalfeldt Threatens Lee Stranahan?
- Feb. 18: ‘A Particularly Odd Argument’ by the Particularly Odd Bill Schmalfeldt
- Feb. 14: Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Charged With Deranged Cyberstalking
- Feb. 1: News Flash: Crazy People Are Dangerous
- Dec. 9: June 3: Bill Schmalfeldt Begins Cyberstalking Aaron Walker
- Dec. 8: They’re Still Hating Breitbart
- Nov. 25: The Dishonesty of Bill Schmalfeldt
- Nov. 24: Pray for Ten Thousand Angels
- Nov. 4: Monsters on the Internet: Sociopathic Sadism and Bill Schmalfeldt’s Madness

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