Dennis Prager

Dennis Urine and Feces Prager is an American neoconservative radio host, professional tone troll, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist, and human/slug hybrid who believes that the United States is a Christian nation, and that it's under attack from "secular leftists" who control the media, universities, public education system, and other institutions.
Unfortunately, for every reasonable position he has, he seems to say at least ten things that are either blatant lies or mind-fuckingly bizarre. He is also notable for having one of the worst cases of psychological projection ever, even by wingnut standards and for possibly being a worse offender of Jonanism than Jonah Goldberg himself. He is well known for his opposition to "the left" allowing their "feelings" to get in the way of policy, but when policy hurts his "feelings", he loses his freakin' mind. Hmm…
Prager is rarely countered, due to the fact that nobody to the left of the radical right takes him seriously anymore.Prager persuades? Really? freethoughtblogs.com, 21 August 2011. Despite this, he has a small group of very devoted fans.
The Dennis Prager Method For Choosing Viewpoints™® is to take the opposite viewpoint of a leftist, since "the Left lies about everything".Dennis Prager, Assume the Left Lies, and You Will Discover the Truth. National Review, 26 March 2019.
==Anti-environmentalism==
Prager pushes anti-environmentalism through global warming denialism ("leftist hysteria" apparently) and myths around DDT bans.Leading Australian Earth Scientist Debunks Global Warming. Archived from dennisprager.com, 27 April 2009.Dennis Prager, Environmentalism and Human Sacrifice. Town Hall, 26 February 2013. He's also ventured into weird "Environmentalism is replacing God" territory:
==Gay marriage==
Prager is notable for having a history of being extremely homophobic despite denying it every ten seconds in his articles and radio show. He has claimed that the legalization of gay marriage is a greater threat to America than economic depression.Dennis Prager Thinks Gay Marriage Bigger Threat Than Bad Economy. heathr456 on YouTube, 12 April 2009. He claims that this is because legalizing gay marriage will redefine the concept of "gender itself". He is credited with writing the 1993 essay Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism rejected Homosexuality in which he writes:
Imagine his reaction when he realizes that most of today's US Jews vote Democratic (and the state of gay rights in Israel). Moving on:
Which is why in Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, there is perfect gender equality, right? And the crowning gem of the article:
Except he states no evidence for that at all. Also notice how he basically says "I'm cool with lesbians but gays are gross." Many of Prager's fans will cry out "he wrote it in 1993, he could've changed his views since then!" If that is the case, then he certainly shows no remorse over writing it since he has not apologized for the article and rarely brings it up, probably hoping everyone will forget he wrote it. The essay in question is still used by openly homophobic sites such as the Catholic Education Resource Center.Dennis Prager, Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality. catholiceducation.org. Reposts in whole Prager's awful 1993 essay. Besides, even if Prager has completely changed his views since then, he really shouldn't act dumbfounded when people think he's homophobic, since this article is the first result on Google for "Dennis Prager" + "homosexuality". Acting as if he's being persecuted by gay activists for his beliefs when called out for his apparent homophobia is ridiculous.
A glaring problem with Dennis Prager's opposition to gay marriage is the fact he's been divorced twice and married thrice. He actually talks about this on occasion, saying that the argument that divorce threatens marriage is a non sequitur. He goes on to defend his position with a hilariously non sequitur argument himself, saying that "divorce itself no more undermines the institution of marriage than car crashes undermine the institution of driving."The divorce-threatens-marriage lie. dennisprager.com, 12 April 2005. This is, of course, an example of a false analogy, since you don't swear to be with your car til death do you part.
==Ferghtin der Mooslims!==
When Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison was elected to office, Prager decided to harass him in the most assholish way possible, writing an article on Townhall that Ellison should not be allowed to take the oath on the Koran but instead the Bible, which would essentially violate Article VI of the Constitution.
He states in the article that allowing Ellison to use the Koran would be more devastating to American values than 9/11. This was a manufactroversy since, according to the Anti-Defamation League: "No Member of Congress is officially sworn in with a Bible. Under House rules, the official swearing-in ceremony is done in the House chambers, with the Speaker of the House administering the oath of office en masse."ADL Statement on Dennis Prager's Attack On Muslim Congressman for Taking Oath of Office on Koran. Anti-Defamation League, 1 December 2006. Only in private ceremonies held after the official ceremony can religious texts be used. Prager also ignores the Establishment Clause, but it's likely the Constitution isn't American enough for Prager. He attempted to bullshit his way out of what he wrote on Hannity,Malik Shabazz Embarrasses Dennis "The Bigot" Prager. Hatalles on YouTube, 1 December 2006. saying that he was merely making a "request" for Ellison to not use a Koran, despite his article explicitly saying "He (Ellison) should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization." He later attempted to state that the liberal media was on Ellison's side, a sign that he was being persecuted for his "Islamophobia". He is probably too stupid to recognize that there is a difference between criticizing Islam itself and targeting the human rights of a single Muslim who isn't breaking the law, hurting someone, or even a fundamentalist for that matter.
Most confusingly, Prager said that Ellison's beliefs were irrelevant, it was the ceremony that mattered since it was an "unbroken tradition" since George Washington. This is incorrect since John Quincy Adams was sworn in on a law book, Franklin Pierce also used a law book and simply affirmed the oath as opposed to being sworn in, LBJ used a Catholic Missal, and Congressman Henry Waxman never used a Christian Bible. Some Jewish officeholders, such as Governor Linda Lingle, have also been sworn in on the Tanakh, but Prager said this was irrelevant since any Jews who used the Tanakh were "secularists who didn't believe what was in it anyway". Of course, this contradicts Prager's claim that the officeholder's belief is irrelevant and that it's only the ceremony that matters.
Prager's comments led to him being criticized by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Only the theocratic American Family Association and Virgil Goode supported Prager.
==Creepiness==
One of the most disturbing articles he's written is "The Rape of a Name Is Also Rape" in which he writes that being falsely accused of rape is just as bad, if not worse, than actual rape. While such a false accusation is a terrible crime, it is obviously not on par with rape, but again that is somehow a "leftist" view.
When it comes to relationships there's no one to go to for worse advice than the Pragernater. This is made especially apparent in his essay "When a Woman Isn't In the Mood: Part II" where he gives eight reasons as to why women should submit to having sex with their husbands even when they’re not in the mood.Dennis Prager, When a Woman Isn't In the Mood: Part II. Town Hall, 30 December 2008. He is just able enough to write it in a way so he can plausibly deny that he was advocating for marital rape. However, he sure as hell wasn't being sensitive to victims of marital rape and at one point calls "childhood trauma" one of the "myriad" of reasons that women try to get out of sex. By the way if you take his advice by constantly pressuring your wife into having sex as opposed to trying to "get in the mood" together the relationship will probably end in resentment and divorce.Sound familiar? Also, having sex with someone who's not in the mood doesn't sound pleasant to most sane people.
Later, in an article on Todd Akin's rape comments, he is impressively hard on Akin, showing some hope that he will be sensitive to rape victims.Dennis Prager, Worse Than Wrong: The pro-life movement must disavow Todd Akin’s comment. Archived from the National Review, 21 August 2012. He ends up blowing this opportunity when he tries to say that some rapes may not really be rape, so long as they're not "forcible rapes." Of course if you point out his borderline sociopathic attitude towards rape victims he will just call you another "leftist" who lets "feelings" get in the way of "logic" (a.k.a. his feelings).
Not as fucked up as the above, but Prager also has bizarre views on sexual harassment. He once claimed that liberal teachers and CBS News (it doesn't make much more sense in context) were responsible for "indoctrinating" young girls with feminism which was making them "oversensitive" to men's advances, which in turn explained the reason higher levels of sexual harassment were being reported by young girls.Dennis Prager, Liberalism and Victimhood. humanevents.com, 3 June 2008. The idea that girls had a better idea of what sexual harassment was and weren't as afraid to report it seems never to have crossed his mind.
Prager's creepiness reached its height when he wrote an article that was horribly titled "Sandusky Abused Children, NCAA Abuses History" in which he attacked the NCAA for stripping Penn State of their football wins in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal.Dennis Prager, Sandusky Abused Children, NCAA Abuses History. National Review, 31 July 2012. He accused the NCAA of trying to rewrite history and then went off on a separate rant on how the evil libs in California were "rewriting" history to include minorities. Most of the creepiness came from how callous he was towards the rape victims, thus proving that he's not one of those touchy-feely lefties who are controlled by emotion. For those who believe this to be an exaggeration the article includes this paragraph:
One would think that if the media was as liberal as Prager claimed they are they could've simply used this single, fucked up sentence to destroy his career but instead it was largely ignored and the article itself still managed to get 34 Facebook "likes."
==Fear-mongering==
Prager's greatest enemy is not the gays, or even the feminists, but instead "the left". Who Prager believes the left consists of is unclear since his definition of the left apparently means that Barack Obama is our first leftist president, with the possible exception of FDR.Dennis Prager, Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left. Town Hall, 21 July 2009. This is another blatant lie since JFK, LBJ, Carter, and even Nixon and Eisenhower governed to the left of Obama. The left is also working hard to turn university students into bisexuals.College taught her not to be a heterosexual. dennisprager.com, 19 April 2005. He has even accused the "secular left" of being anti-Semitic (that must be a lot of Jews, then); during a debate Christopher Hitchens confronted him on this claim and Prager couldn't back it up, which led to Hitchens accusing Prager of being "evasive".Part 4 - D'Souza, Hitchens, and Prager. tothesource on YouTube.
Basically, "the left" is based off of overgeneralizations that are built on either straw man logical fallacies or the spotlight fallacy if he bothers to find some left-wing fringe group. Ironically, he repeatedly accuses the pinko liberals of generalizing the poor conservatives.Dennis Prager, For the Left, Opponents Cannot Have Decent Motives: The Ground Zero Example. Town Hall, 24 August 2010.Leftism Makes You Meaner. dennisprager.com, 10 January 2012. Sadly, his fans pretty much buy into whatever he says and seem utterly convinced he is one of the greatest intellectuals of our time, even though he basically just scares them into thinking that everyone (the media, public schools, universities, Hollywood) is out to turn them and their children into liberal homosexuals which can only be avoided by listening to Prager's show or buying his books so he may show you what American values really are. Groupthink at its very best.
==Breakdown==
After Barack Obama's reelection and the repeal of DOMA, Prager grew increasingly crazy. He compared the repeal of California's Prop 8 to the because he believed it was anti-democratic. He blamed the repeal of Prop 8 on the "Supreme Court of the United States, colluding judges and the Democratic Party of California".Dennis Prager, Egypt's coup ... and ours. Wing Nut Daily, 8 July 2013. After all this is the first time courts have overridden the will of the majority.
He went even further off the rails and wrote a column about how efforts to promote LGBT tolerance would lead to a fascist takeover of America.Luke Brinker, NRO's Dennis Prager: LGBT Non-Discrimination Efforts Breed “Fascism”. Media Matters, 27 August 2013. Never mind that fascism is inherently a right-wing ideology; what tolerance has to do with a nationalistic, corporatist, and anti-democracy political philosophy that believes in quashing the rights of minorities, we can't be entirely sure of. He still thinks it's the left that's hysterical, by the way (remember what we said about psychological projection?).
In an article on Intelligent Design, he basically pulled the old "atheists have more faith than creationists",Dennis Prager, Why some scientists embrace the 'multiverse'. Wing Nut Daily, 17 June 2013. and then exaggerates the theory of a multiverse as being more influential than it actually is.
==Fun facts==
Prager constantly spouts something outrageous and batshit crazy. Here are few of his greatest hits:
*Prager wrote an article in 2011 that "predicted" that during Obama's State of the Union address the "Under God" motto in Congress would not be shown based off how it hadn't been seen in recent years due to godless cameramen.Dennis Prager, God and Congress. National Review, 25 January 2011. The first statement was incorrect, since about five minutes into the address the motto is seen several times and the second statement was a blatant lie as seen by a picture of the 2010 State of the Union address.2011 State Of The Union-Enhanced & HD. Michael McIntee, YouTube, 27 January 2011.
*He claimed that feminism and women abandoning marriage for careers were responsible for higher depression rates among women,Dennis Prager, Why Are So Many Women Depressed? Town Hall, 24 June 2008. despite housewives reporting higher rates of depression than working women.Elizabeth Mendes, Lydia Saad, and Kyley McGeeney, Stay-at-Home Moms Report More Depression, Sadness, Anger. Gallpu, 18 May 2012.Livia Gershon, What Really Made 1950s Housewives So Miserable. JStor Daily, 8 June 2017. Whoopsie!
*He persistently claims that his preference for children to be raised by heterosexuals over homosexuals is a perfectly rational one despite studies showing it makes no difference.Marriage of Same-Sex Couples – 2006 Position Statement. Canadian Psychological Association, 2006.Brief Of The American Psychological Association, The California Psychological Association, The American Psychiatric Association, And The American Association For Marriage And Family Therapy As Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff-appellees. Kristen Perry, et. al., v. Arnold Schwartzenegger, Appeal from United States District Court for the Northern District of California, 25 October 2010.Stephanie Pappas, Gay Parents Better Than Straight Parents? What Research Says. The Huffington Post, 16 January 2012.
*Prager took a Dorito adDoritos Commercial - Slap - Super Bowl 44 Spot. wrfilmshd, YouTube, 7 February 2010. way too seriously and believed it to be racist against African-Americans, even though the race of the actors was irrelevant.Dennis Prager, The Doritos Ad Was Not Funny. Town Hall, 16 February 2010.
*Prager managed to anger Randroids and Ron Paul fans in the past, mainly when he raged on Paul for saying that blacks are disproportionately executed.Dennis Prager: "Ron Paul Is A Sickening Liar And Should Leave Office." libertyangel500, YouTube, 17 February 2012. Unfortunately for Prager, Ron Paul was actually right in this case.Race and the Death Penalty. American Civil Liberties Union. Also, the fact that Prager accuses Paul of being a "radical lefty" during his rant makes his definition of a "leftist" even more confusing.
*He is fervently opposed to Obamacare and has used disproven talking points to back his arguments.Cutting the Crap: Dennis Prager's 10 Health Care Lies -- er, Questions. Archived from pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com, 7 August 2009. deconstructs said talking points quite nicely and proves how intellectually lazy Prager is.
*Even the libertarians have taken potshots at Prager due to his anti-marijuana legalization stance.Dennis Prager’s War on Drugs. Archived from Before It's News, 20 March 2013. Plus, he basically lumped them in with "leftists" (again). Wonkette went after him as well, briefly uniting libertarian and liberal bloggers in their disdain for the man.Stegan BC, Dennis Prager Urges Kids To Take Up Tobacco In Place Of Their Marijuana Cigarettes. Wonkette, 12 March 2013.
*He has called COVID-19 lockdowns "the greatest mistake in human history".
*After he contracted COVID-19, he went on a bizarre anti-vax rant in which he said that natural immunity is "infinitely preferable to vaccine immunity"Dennis Prager Coughs Through Saying He Got Covid On Purpose | The Kyle Kulinski Show, Kyle Kulinski, The Young Turks 20 October 2021 and claimed that he wanted to contract the virus the whole time, and said he used hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin (so much for natural immunity).Conservative radio host Dennis Prager announces he tested positive for COVID-19, which he said he was intentionally trying to contract 'the entire time', Azmi Haroun, Business Insider 18 October 2021
*He has accused atheists of supporting incest, or at least having no valid reason to oppose it.Dennis Prager: ‘There's No Secular Argument against Adult Incest.’ Media Matters for America, 11 October 2022. 
==Prager "University"==
Prager runs a non-profit online program called Prager University.PragerU at YouTube. Watch two or three YouTube videos and you'll be assaulted with an ad of theirs. Keeping up with his paranoia around universities turning students into secular bisexual leftists, the "university" has the totally not bizarre motto "Undoing the damage of the University… five minutes at a time." Since it doesn't offer degrees, the "University" does not even rise to the level of diploma mill.
==See also==
*Evil Liberal Science Conspiracy
*Still the Best Hope — His awful book. It's basically an Ann Coulter book but even more smug and paranoid.
*Salem Radio Network — The reactionary right wing radio network that gives him a voice
==Notes==
==References==
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