Leave None to Tell the Story

I'm not above making fun of people. Actually I do it for sport. So I know that if you are going to mock someone there ought to be some reason for your mockery. Something beyond "I don't like them."

I bring you this site, wherein the author attempts to write a poor man's Onion but ends up writing a vacuous, oversexed, and puerile series of entries that read like they've been cribbed from the back of a bathroom stall. And this entry, approvingly linked by a few buddies, has left me scratching my head. Is it schadenfruede? Reveling in suffering? Or a desire to destroy? What?

You tell me...

LIFE SAVED BY KOS, BORIS JOHNSONS

From the Daily Kos*:

Hello all... I got to meet a bunch of you during the convention and had a fabulous time. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it might save my life.

I just got a call that someone "crashed my gate" and drove through my office and my daughter's room. Had we been home I would have been working at my desk, and she would have been sleeping in bed. Instead, I was here, so the family's fine... I can now honestly say "Thank you for everything, YearlyKos."

The backstory here is that ct, or Jeremy, is the DailyKos tech guy. I saw him in Vegas about 3 hours after he heard that this happened. He looked pretty shaken up.

So here's this assclown's reply:

I am not easily moved to tears, but this post had me crying like a baby. Just think... he could have been... and the little ones are safe?... thank God for that!

Kos once saved my life too. I was reading a post about Senator Joseph Lieberman, and it was so dull that I got up to run my head under a cold tap. Just then this assagai comes flying through the window. Zulus! Fuck! If it hadn't been for Kos, I could have wound up in a cooking pot. I'll always be grateful to him for that.

Anyway, so we formed a laager, called for reinforcements and went all Rorke's Drift on their arses, and it all ended happily with a glorious slaughter of tribesmen. That was the day Boris Johnsons won the Victoria Cross.

Get it?

I make jokes continually, so I'm pretty up on my joke construction. The joke here appears to be "That guy is inflating the importance of how Kos saved his life, and I know something about British colonialism." Everyone's a comedian, I guess, so good on yer. You really "got" ct there! He's making a mountain out of a molehill! Sure, the crib went flying through the yard, and on any other day the baby would be home with the family and in that crib, but so what?

Actually, the post reveals nothing more than the mind of a pre-adolescent. It was this remark in the comments that truly explains conservative "humor":

2. That Daily Kos type is gonna feel pretty fucking stupid when the guy who missed him first time comes back for the second attempt.

dsquared | 12.06.06 - 8:56 am | #

There's a through-line from Ann Coulter's "Tim McVeigh should have blown up the New York Times building" through to this comment, a through-line often recorded by David Neiwart, complete with eliminationist rhetoric like "Liberal Hunting License," "Liberal target Practice," et al. These are considered jokes on the right, and if you object to them you don't have a sense of humor and are told to "lighten up."

If they actually were jokes, I'd lighten up. I'd like to see in human history the comedy routine that consists of "I don't like you, I should murder you, ha!!" Jonathan Swift comes the closest, I guess, but there is no satire in this joke, no greater point made that the logical consequence of policies against the Irish would be for the poor to eat their own children. Just "wouldn't it be funny if our enemies were dead?"

Furthermore, it's directed at ct, who's an enemy, apparently, merely by ASSOCIATING with those seen as the enemy. He's a tech guy whose house got trashed by a drunk driver. The joke says he deserved it, and wishes for "better luck next time."

This is not a joke. This is the rising tide of eliminationist language that I've seen for a lot of years on the right. It starts as chuckles among unformed or unaware or unprocessed minds, and can quickly metastasize into action. In a metaphorical sense it already has, with the cutthroat way Republicans do business in the political arena. Then it turns into jokes that reflect some wishful rage with a wink and a nod. From there it's just a hop and a skip and a jump to calling Democrats "cockroaches" that need to be "stamped out." And then you've got Radio television libre des mille collines, advising conservatives to "leave none to tell the story."