Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Welcome to the Fun & Games edition of Discurso. It's Friday (which is my Saturday), I'm feeling too lazy to be properly outraged, and there's just too much amusing stuff to pick just one.

So, now that we've grabbed our drinks and settled in, what should we do?

Carpetbagger knows! "Let's Play 'Imagine if a Democrat Had Said This.'"

Ooo! Let's!

As a rule, insulting U.S. troops trying to keep you safe in Iraq doesn’t seem like an especially good idea. And yet, there was Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), one of Congress’ most right-wing members, reflecting on his recent visit to Baghdad, and calling one soldier* he met a “two-bit security guard.”

Whyever would he do that? Well, kinda it was cuz he tried to go work out but didn't have the proper credentials to get into the gym (this is Iraq, folks, they have this security issue), and the guard told him no dice. So did the supervisor who got fed up and marched McHenry back to his room after he threw a fit.

Yes, poor Patrick McHenry. An American stationed in Baghdad followed orders on Green-Zone security only to get mocked by a conservative lawmaker who never wore a uniform. Classy.

Somehow, I have a hunch that if McHenry were a liberal Dem, and he called an American serviceman or servicewoman serving in Baghdad a “two-bit security guard,” it’d be quite a while until we heard the end of it.

Ya think?

*Things get murky here. Some say soldier, some say contractor, but in the end, it's the same: an insufferable jerk with a supersized ego threw a hissy because a guard was following protocol, and got spanked by that guard's supervisor, and should get spanked by the media for whining about folks doing their dangerous jobs. I expect that "You should break the rules for me because I'm super fucking special" attitude from annoying customers. Lawmakers show know better.

I know! For our next game, let's play "Let the Air out of the Assclown!"

Maybe we should watch some tee-vee first. Oooo, fun with commercials!

If there’s one common thread tying all of John McCain’s campaign videos together, it’s that they tend to be a little odd.

About a month ago, the campaign’s first general-election video made an odd connection between McCain and Churchill, while interspersing images from the Hubble telescope. As Sam Boyd put it, the video “gives you an idea of what it’d be like to be Norman Podhoretz on shrooms.

All you need to know about Norman Podhoretz is, he doesn't need any help divorcing himself from reality.

And then there's the new video...




I'm not sure what I like best: the curling smoke so evocative of opium dens and pot parties, the headless rock star, or the fact that the narrator says one thing while the document he's quoting says another. Should Republicon commercials make you feel like you should've dropped acid before watching them? Because this really seems like the media got it wrong, and it's really been the "War for Drugs."

Heh. I'll drink to that. Smoke it if you've got it - and then tell me if McCain's commericals make any sense.

Moving on, there's a really important question we need to address here: Can Stephen Colbert Save America?

Yes, he can! Haven't I always said that? Well, always since I started watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on a regular basis, right after Colbert launched, but look, I've been saying that for years, and now finally I can wave a book written by an academic in people's faces and prove I'm right! No, wait, left!

An American studies professor at the University of Iowa, [Russell L.] Peterson is a former stand-up comic and political cartoonist who wants to know how we're changed by the act of laughing. Not just any laughing, either, but the kind that happens late in the evening, when the Lenos and Lettermans and Stewarts and Colberts are making merry with the day's carnage.

See? See! He's a professor! A professor is taking this shit seriously! And that's not all:

Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert -- in Peterson's cosmology, these are the true heroes of late-night, because they ground even their harshest commentary in "a faith in the political process." And on that score, nobody has ascended higher than the "Lincolnish" Colbert, whose Gettysburg Address coincided with the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association dinner, a normally inane and self-congratulatory affair prodded into fretful life by Colbert's assault. Afterward, the dragoons of the press corps (Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Richard Cohen) fell over themselves declaring that Colbert had bombed. In fact, he'd been throwing bombs. Right into their laps.

[snip]

Colbert's address perfectly meets Peterson's criteria for genuine satire: It causes its targets either to take umbrage or to "adopt a studied silence." Pseudo satire, by contrast, is often embraced and even co-opted by its purported victims.... "Real satire," growls Peterson, "means it."

So, under all this funny and not-so-funny business, a decidedly moral argument is being advanced.

No shit, Sherlock. I wonder if he mentions Ireland's fierce bards, or any of the other satirists throughout history who could take down a kingdom with one careful, and bone-breakingly funny, piece?

There's more good stuff in Louis Bayard's Salon article. I just wish he'd ended it with a punch to the face rather than PC whining about how late-night's dominated by white blokes. Seriously, Louis, have you watched The Daily Show? Noticed the rainbow of color and gender? Jon headlines, but for fuck's sake, it's not exactly a "lily-white enclave" there. Take your horsie out back and beat it in a different article, would you?

Anyway. Buy Strange Bedfellows. Read it. Know that Dana was right all along.