I'm With The Poor Man

Someone who knows from satire.

Kevin Drum is a fine blogger and surely a wonderful person in many ways, but one is advised to file his comedy advice alongside Dom Deluise’s miracle 6-week washboard abs diet. The problem with putting a big Surgeon General’s warning label on this satire reading NO!! NOT REALLY!!! BUT JOHN MCCAIN THINKS SO!!!! is that doing so would make it not a satire; or, if it were a satire, a satire of humorless liberals. (And would presumably fail for the same reason that this satire allegedly fails - many liberals appear to sincerely believe this is a good and necessary correction.) I further suggest that “A Modest Proposal” would not actually be improved by putting the whole thing in the blood-drenched mouth of a Tory industrialist named “Dasterdly McBabyeater von Evil” and/or renaming it “An Absurdly Broad Caricature of Aspects of Contemporary Society which The Author, In Truth, Deplores”. True, the idiots being satired won’t “get” the joke - that’s the joke’s value to those who do. I may be a horrible elitist, but I don’t think jokes are improved by pitching them to people with no sense of humor.

The last thing we should do in this country is make sure we put big flashing letters on every joke that practically scream "LOOK OUT, JOKE COMIN'!" or censor creativity to the point that we can't make anything controversial for fear of what Rush Limbaugh will say about it. The humorlessness exhibited by some is quite shocking and absurd.

Furthermore, in checking Limbaugh and O'Reilly this morning, they're not actually talking about this. O'Reilly is waging some jihad with the AP over what they put in Tony Snow's obit, and Limbaugh is twisting the Fannie & Freddie situation to his own devises. The other thing about this is that smears that have been forwarded around emails and whispered in conservative circles were INTANGIBLE. This cover, actually, makes them both tangible and ridiculous, and provides an opportunity, actually, because every time it's mentioned on the teevee the house Democrat being referred to for comment could easily explain that these are the fevered imaginings of the far right and are actually not true. If we had skilled surrogates out there and not total morons, this could be a win for Obama. As for the idea that Limbaugh can use this to prove that liberals are the real racists, find me one person who isn't a fellow traveler Republican who would believe that and I'll agree with you.