Discussing John Kerry’s hunting trip, Hugh Hewitt asks:
Someone was listening yesterday when I asked “How do you ask a goose to be the last goose to die for a campaign stunt? How do you ask a goose to die for a big head fake?”
We don’t know Hugh — but do you happen to know the answer to how do you ask a soldier to be the last one to die for a campaign stunt?
Howard Kurtz writes about The Daily Show and Jon Stewart:
Stewart, who has called the Iraq war a mistake, is more likely than Jay Leno or David Letterman to ridicule Bush while going easy on Kerry, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. “He’s an outstanding comedian, but clearly he does comedy from the Democratic left perspective,” says Republican strategist Mike Murphy.
Kurtz has to be referring to this study:
The opening monologues of the three late-night comedy shows-The Tonight Show, The Late Show, and The Daily Show were studied for the presence of the seven narrative themes. Video tapes of the shows were used for the analysis. Program re-runs aired during the content analysis period were discarded. In all, 33 shows were studied, broken down as follows: The Daily Show-9
Nine fucking shows — did these assholes learn statistics from Trying To Grok?
As we’ve seen many times in the past, there’s a pretty good reason for that as well. James Bowman, a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (we kid you not) gets an easy publication with this bit of manure in OJ*:
But there is a difference. The consumers of TV satire 40 years ago were assumed by the satirists to be pretty well-informed people already. Now there are indications that a lot of people, especially young people, are skipping the regular news and going straight to the satire.
And then begins a rant, to put it kindly, about Jon Stewart being mean to the poor man’s George Will (aka Tucker Carlson,) just because, under the pretense of intelligent political discussion Tucker (like Begala,) does nothing more than partisan hackery. Believe, if you can, that the new conservative complaint du jour about the mainstream media is, are you ready?, political bias at Comedy Central:
And of course it isn’t just the media that are mocked: It is also conservatives, Republicans, the Religious Right and, most of all, President Bush and his administration.
It could be, one imagines, that President Bush gets lampooned because, well, he’s the President. The Daily Show (TDS,) after all, didn’t get its start in 2001. Yet just as quickly as conservatives forgot the little sympathy shown for Clinton by the media, they’ve forgotten that TDS was anything but a Clinton spinning machine during the Clinton years. (TDS’ guest for one of its year-end spectacular was Gennifer Flowers for fuck’s sake.) Then again, someone who can complain about TDS’ coverage of the Iraq war and write (without noticing the irony) this:
offers a combination of real stories from the “wacky” end of the news spectrum–like the one about the Iraqi tourism minister whose job is to prevent tourists from coming to Iraq…
isn’t going to notice the obvious. The Iraqi tourism minister story is funny precisely because it’s real. So real, indeed, that one can read the following in other publications:
The ancient ruins of Babylon are one of Iraq’s treasures Iraq’s tourism chief, Ahmed al-Jobori, has urged visitors to stay at home until the violence there ends. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr Jobori warned tourists that “Iraq could be a one-way trip”. […]
Mr Jobori, an employee of the US-appointed interim Iraqi government, has himself received death threats, and keeps his daily routine secret.
This isn’t the “wacky” news Mr. Bowman. (This is the wacky news.) And yes, that’s what makes it so funny. In addition to the fact that the government’s own tourism minister needing to keep his schedule secret perfectly illustrates how fucked up things remain in Iraq. To Mr. Bowman however, just because the Iraq war is a product of a “conservative” government is no reason to mock conservatives for it.
Mr. Bowman continues his disassembling when he writes:
Mr. Stewart used his appearance on “Crossfire” to make a serious point, yet when it was taken up seriously he tried to retreat into his characteristic pose as a harmless comedian. “You are on CNN,” he said to Mr. Carlson when accused of sucking up to Mr. Kerry; “the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.”
Oh, how sweet it is be to be Tucker Carlson’s “butt boy” to use one of Tucker’s favorite expressions. Tucker’s “defense,” when called on the hackery of Crossfire, was to argue that a satirical news program was insufficiently harsh on John Kerry. However harsh its satires may be however, TDS has never been a place for hard hitting interviews. Only someone who doesn’t watch the show could complain about the “butt boy treatment” received by Kerry. (Unless Bowman is working on a dissertation that includes a discussion of why Jay Leno didn’t ask Schwarzenegger tough questions when he announced his run for Governor on The Tonight Show, we’ll assume Bowman is happy being another partisan hack.)
Certainly Mr. Stewart’s criticism of “Crossfire” for its resemblance to pro-wrestling is odd coming from an avowed entertainer like himself. Could it be that he wants to corner the market in turning politics into entertainment?
Oh, all that stifling of dissent — all poor Tucker and Paul want to do is be entertainers, and here is a mean entertainer asking them why they don’t want to leave the entertainment… up to the entertainers. CNN’s slogan is “The Most Trusted Name in News,” not “Partisan Hacks Yelling At Each Other Every Night.” Let’s see its programs deliver on that promise.
Those familiar with the Stewart technique won’t be surprised to learn that in this foreword the third president shows his familiarity with the language of the 21st-century streets and recounts the doubts of a certain “Sally” about his taking on such work: “You are the author of the Declaration of Independence. A scholar. A statesman. This is beneath you. It’s not even network.” Then he has “T.J.” sign off with a postscript: “Oh, and is it true Halle Berry is once again single?”
If the only thing he knows about Jefferson besides his authorship of the Declaration is the allegation of his sexual liaison with his slave Sally Hemmings, it doesn’t bother Jon Stewart–or his audience. Just as you don’t have to know the news to watch “The Daily Show,” you don’t have to know anything, really, about American history or government to enjoy “America (The Book).”
Actually, that joke is funny even if you don’t know about the allegation of TJ’s sexual liaison. Not only that, but many of the jokes in the (extremely funny) book make a lot more sense if you do know some things.
Mr. Stewart sounds in his book as he does on his TV show–not affectionate but arrogant, as if he were way too cool to bother finding out the facts of the real history, or news, that he’s sending up. Who can take such stuff seriously?
Main Entry: com?e?dy
Pronunciation: ‘k?-m&-dE
Function: noun
3 : a ludicrous or farcical event or series of events
Does that help at all?
Someone should tell Jon Stewart that partisan hacks are what made this country great.
Mr. Bowman closes with an observation that fails at being funny or interesting.
We’re sure we’ll be seeing him as a guest on Crossfire very soon.
(Link via the incomparable Roy Edroso.)
* Yes, these are the same good people that told us about those hip South Park Republicans! (1, 2 and 3.)
When we let other bloggers do our work (mocking the differently abled) for us:
Den Beste also draws two trend lines for each candidate. However he seem to have constructed his trends by just eye-balling the graph. This is not a good technique for constructing trends since it is far too easy to find the trend you were expecting or hoping to see. To get trends that are not effected by subjective bias you need to use statistics.
Precisely how dense is Sully? He thinks the blogad on his site for the smearumentary Stolen Honor “funnels a few Sinclair dollars to the blog.” He also believes he’s running an “ad from Ann Coulter.”
In fact, both ads are from NewsMax.com. NewsMax is giving away the Coulter book to idiot subscribers.
Of course it’s simple. A Rightwing Nutcase simply finds a subject that he has always favoured but is universally repugnant to the civilised world, and makes an argument of “exceptionalism” for it. Shall we conduct a test? Yes? Okay, think of something unsavoury or wicked in a banal way, first. Ahh, yes, there’s the two subjects mentioned above:
So go over there and add your own suggestion. He’ll give you a prize if it’s any good.
It’s more visible in Philadelphia than anywhere else as of tonight, where the Bush campaign staff attempted a last-minute drive to shuffle around polling places in Philadelphia–again, a predominantly black city in a predominantly white state. The Bush team argued that they wanted to relocate 63 polling places because they allegedly lack sufficient handicapped access, and because of “intimidation.” Said Matt Robb, the Republican leader of the 48th ward in South Philadelphia, “It’s predominantly, 100 percent black. I’m just not going in there to get a knife in my back.” Another gem of a Republican said they were trying to change polling places in black neighborhoods because “The black neighborhoods are the ones that do the funny stuff. What are you supposed to do?”
Terrorists are out to bomb the fuck out of you and you and you. Big Dick speaks:
CARROLL, Ohio – Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept “you’ve got to get your mind around.”
Dick, can you get your mind around the concept that you are pathetic, scaremongering, lying piece of shit? Because the time has come. No, really.
It’s official, and you read about it here first. Well, we read about it on (Allegedly) Human Events Online:
“Islam is not just a different religion,” argues Professor Schmidt, “but interwoven with it is also a very different culture.” In comparison to the Christian West, he shows, Islamic nations throughout history have been culturally sterile, technologically backward, materially impoverished, prone to barbarism and cruelty, and almost perpetually at war not only with their non-Muslim neighbors but with each other.
Speak the truth to us Professor!
Disturbing but well-documented facts about Muhammad that Muslims themselves are not permitted to hear, read, or talk about in Islamic countries, where he is above all criticism.
Compare that to the Bush White House which starts every day with a “let’s bitch about all that fucked up shit Jesus did” session to honor their the President’s favorite philosopher.
The Crusades: why, contrary to myth, they were launched as defensive (and just) wars against centuries of Muslim aggression.
They turned out so well, no further wars against Muslims have been “needed” since.
How the West gave birth to science largely because of Christian thinkers who saw God as a rational being whose Creation followed His own fixed laws. How Muslim theology, in contrast, is hostile to the concept of scientific laws.
It’s a good thing we’ve managed to evolve in the area of religious based hostility related program activities to scientific laws.
The origins of the Western distinction between church and state in the teachings of Christ Himself.
Yeah, good thing we have that whole distinction thing down.
Because, you know, he’s getting pretty annoying:
Whatever problems Mr. Bush might be experiencing as he comes to the end of his first term, his position continues to be bolstered by concern about terrorism. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said they had a lot or some confidence that Mr. Bush would make the right decisions to prevent another terrorist attack – compared with 62 percent who said they felt that way about Mr. Kerry.
A 6-point advantage in a poll with a margin of error of three points, and Bush is “bolstered?!?”
Mr. Bush is now perceived less favorably than he was earlier this month, which is probably a reflection of the fact that he has fiercely attacked Mr. Kerry recently, erasing an advantage he had had over Mr. Kerry. Typically, candidates who go on the attack pay a price in seeing their own negative ratings rise. [Emphasis added.]
It certainly can’t be because Bush lost debates one, two and three, can it?
(Thanks to Blair for the NYT link. Gallup link via Brad DeLong.)
To quote just one source:
John Kerry should have left Dick Cheney’s daughter in the closet where she belongs.
In 2nd term, Bush must unify nation by admitting errors, seeking remedies
This newspaper endorses George Bush in the coming presidential election because only he is capable of fixing all the things he fucked up during his first term.
Shorter concept inspired by busy, busy, busy, originally launched by Daniel Davies at D-Squared Digest with the original Shorter Steven den Beste. Disclaimer copied in part from busy, busy, busy.
Zev Chavets has jumped on the fake outrage bandwagon:
But that wasn’t the point Kerry wanted to make. He was crying Mary to send a message to presumably homophobic Christian voters: Just in case you hadn’t heard, the vice president harbors a practicing lesbian in the bosom of his family.
Harbors?!? As in “to give shelter or refuge?!?” And practicing? Why, we thought she had retired from lesbianism years ago! If you’re keeping track at home, remember this:
It’s ok for another Republican to call homosexuals “selfish hedonists.” Indeed, it’s entirely ok for conservatives to refer to homosexuality as a lifestyle, a choice or even a sin.
But when dealing with a member of the VP’s family who works on the campaign, is openly gay and has done gay outreach for a beer company, it is not ok to say one believes her homosexuality is no more a choice that one’s heterosexuality. Because if you do, Republicans will be all over you like Ahmad Chalabi at an American Enterprise lunch buffet:
This reaction doesn’t mean that the evangelical community has changed its doctrine, or its mind, on the sinful nature of homosexuality. It does reveal, however, that most born-again Protestants are not nearly as extreme – or as politically one-dimensional – as Kerry evidently imagined them to be. [Emphasis added.]
Such loving, open-minded folks. And boy do they know how to show some love:
Many conservative Christians are for the first time publicly embracing an avowed homosexual.
Nothing says embracing like trying to amend the constitution to deny gays and lesbians anything that might remotely look like formal recognition of their union.
Bonus: It’s also ok to suggest that your primary campaign opponent has fathered an illegitimate black daughter.
