Remembering “Americans sustained by their faith in the wrongness of other people’s faith.” (Click the pic)
Thanks, “The Daily Show” and Comedy Central.
Tag Jon Stewart
Trump Treats Palin to Pizza Party, Sparks Stewart’s Riotous Rip
I’ve resisted the occasional urge to write something about the pretend politicians Sarah Palin and Donald Trump because I don’t think they’re worth the ink, so to speak. Now, maybe I’m just ignoring reality and pretending that life is the way I wish it were, but in the grand scheme of things what do these people add to the constructive dialogue of American civic life?
Why give them the attention they’re screaming for?
Donald Trump was never running for president, he was promoting his television show…which exists only to promote him. Self-promotion isn’t the worst thing in the world, I grant you, but it’s not especially attractive. Sarah Palin? Well, it’s not her fault John McCain chose her as his running mate, and she’s not the first (or last) ignorant self-involved demagogue to come down the pike. That these two enjoy a certain popularity with self-described conservatives is owed more to the fact that they are not Barack Obama than it is to anything either of them stands for or has ever done. And the fact that we hear so much about them is more evidence of the ongoing betrayal of the public interest that David Shaw identified as “the four horsemen of the journalistic apocalypse: superficiality, sensationalism, preoccupation with celebrity, and obsession with the bottom line.”
But today I can’t resist, because Palin and Trump were the jumping-off point for a(n) hilarious Jon Stewart rant in defense of New York pizza!
Fox News hoisted with own petard (again)
For any of you who had to vote “hypocrite” in the last round, take some solace in knowing that your member of Congress, hypocrite though he/she may be, can’t hope to compete with the people of Fox News. The best part is that, of course, the Fox folk did it to themselves…again. In the category “Who called who a Nazi?” last night The Daily Show nailed them not only for gratuitous and improper use of the term, and not only also for the hypocrisy of being the pot while calling the kettle black, but mostly for flat out lying when confronted about what they say on their air. Click the grey afro below; the Fox fun starts at 1:33 in.
I try not to think of it as piling on; but when I do think of it as piling on, I think, who deserves it more?
Last Call for 2010
I’m cleaning out files and dumping what I’ll never use—some of it because the crummy foreign-made hyperlinks are broken—and while reorganizing the rest I found some things that need to be posted now, as a benchmark, because I’m sure this stuff isn’t over yet.
I’ve been very interested in the growing disaffection with American politics and politicians, and not just what’s coming from tea parties. Back in April Mark McKinnon and Lawrence Lessig called for a constitutional convention if only to shock the legislative classes into understanding that people have had enough of the corruption that has institutionalized itself in Washington, D.C. By fall, of course, Jon Stewart got tens of thousands to rally for simple reasonableness in politics and government, and by the end of the year McKinnon and some other esteemed names were launching the No Labels approach to finding solutions to problems. This could just generate “passionate ambivalence”, but I’m optimistic: the dismissive comments coming out of the loudest mouths on both ends of the spectrum might just mean the center has found a weapon to use against the unreasonable and the extreme.
Inconceivably, the Roman Catholic Church took the disgrace of the priest sex abuse scandal, and made it worse: first a senior official says criticism of the church is like anti-Semitism; then we learn that while in his prior job the man who now leads this church had authority directly from Pope John Paul II to act in these cases, and for 20 years chose not to; and now for Christmas, the pope says western society and its permissive sexual attitudes are partly to blame for many of the church’s celibate employees sexually abusing underage members of their parishes. Like I said before, why aren’t these people in jail?
On the subject of blogging, I recently found some great sites that have helped boost traffic here at the corner idea stand. Take a look at Blogiche, Alpha Inventions, and BlogSurfer if you want to get more eyeballs on your blog; you’ll get a new insight into what else is out there, too.
I’ll wrap up with syndicated columnist Scott Burns and his column from last January which reminded us then (and now) that everything old is new again: there’s always a crisis, we can’t rely on our government to take care of us, and we are getting better as the years go by.
Dear John McCain,
Jon Stewart’s pre-shaming wasn’t enough, so—shame on you, John McCain; for shame. When it came to affirming the civil rights of homosexual Americans by supporting repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell,” you did exactly what you said you would not do.
Dammit, it’s not a question of who soldiers are “comfortable serving with” if enforcing that prejudice denies the civil rights of other Americans. Please tell me you wouldn’t make the same argument for white racists who are “not comfortable” serving with blacks?
This, added to your craven pandering to the worst elements of the body politic in your 2008 and 2010 campaigns, and your well-earned reputation as a man of honor, a man of truth, has at last and forever dissolved into the ether. Although I haven’t agreed with you on every issue I trusted in your judgment and your integrity; now I can’t. You’ve become “just another politician.” How depressing.
HEY, IT'S PAT RYAN'S BLOG! 