Monday, November 26, 2012

DA, DA. WE LAUGH! At American Thinker, Thomas Lifson:
Two of the most interesting stars in the world of conservative broadcasting have newly published books timed for the for the Christmas season.  Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld...
Yeah, I know, fellas, but wait:
...Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld are both masters of ridicule, a tool extensively deployed by the left but too little by the right, especially its more respectable regions. The left, after all, was instructed by Saul Alinsky in Rule Number 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."
Once again we're on the Bizarro Alinsky planet, where conservatives tell us that liberals only make fun of conservatives because Alinsky told them to -- which stands to reason, since why else would anyone tease demigods like Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro? Why, it would be like teasing Margaret Dumont! -- and pledge to fight back against this traitorous mockery by cooking up some Alinsky #5 of their own.

But it's an uphill battle, friends. Lifson quotes some Gutfield humor, and in the ensuing uncomfortable silence tells us that "the mix of irony and insight is what makes Gutfeld dangerous to the left. His juxtapositions of liberals' rhetoric with their behavior make them appear ridiculous." If that doesn't have you busting a gut, consider this: "The liberal media, however, is not anxious to increase [Gutfield's] visibility beyond Fox, because he is capable of reaching impressionable young minds that might be questioning the indoctrination they have received in the nation's educational system. " Now it's funny, right?

I'll spare you the Michael Savage encomium, though I must mention that Lifson considers him "the greatest storyteller in modern broadcasting" but quotes none of his allegedly brilliant work -- though he does tell us that Savage tried to get a PhD from Berkeley, "only to discover that because he was not a woman or a favored minority, an academic career would be denied to him," which should be proof enough of his brilliance.

The creepy thing -- well, the creepiest; there are several levels of ick here -- is that Lifson seems to want to tell us what he likes about a couple of artists, but the only attributes he can convincingly describe are their politics and their grievances. I don't know what possibility is more chilling: That he might think that's what art is about, or that he might think that's what everything is about.

95 comments:

  1. gainsayer10:29 PM

    I liked Alinsky's earlier, funnier work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. D. Aristophanes10:41 PM

    'Savage tried to get a PhD from Berkeley, "only to discover that because he was not a woman or a favored minority, an academic career would be denied to him" ...'
    From Savage-nee-Weiner's Wiki entry: 'He obtained a Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley, in nutritional ethnomedicine.'

    Man, who knew the chairs of the national collegiate circuit's many nutritional ethnomedicine departments were only hiring lesbian Miwoks all the way back in the late 70s? This grotesque PC rot goes back way further than I thought!

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Savage tried to get a PhD from Berkeley, 'only to discover that because he was not a woman or a favored minority, an academic career would be denied to him." Mikey's problem was that he didn't think to have Texas A&M as his safety school.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another Kiwi10:54 PM

    Maybe they would attract less ridicule if they weren't so ridiculous. Il est un peu Sauvage on the election conspiracy PWNS the "r" word.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRGewi9Rikk

    ReplyDelete
  5. "the only attributes he can convincingly describe are their politics and their grievances."


    What else is there? Gutfield's idea of wit is to start a sentence with, "The thing about liberals is...." and then paste on whatever hack stereotypical idea seems to fit the moment. It's 1950's sexist comedy--"My wife said for our anniversary she wanted to go to a place she'd never been before. I said try the kitchen--" writ political. Gutfield is a comic the way Pat Robertson is a theologian.

    ReplyDelete
  6. DocAmazing11:30 PM

    Nutritional ethnomedicine? Wow. Hippies for Nixon has a long reach.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Chris Anderson11:41 PM

    Their Alinsky obsession is beyond wierd. How many of us had heard of Saul Alinsky before the conservative movement started in on him?


    They literally found some Jewish guy who wrote stuff down, and made him out to be 21st Century Marx on account of some weak connection to Hillary or whomever.


    They quote him at times, but if you needed a scary Leftist quote, why him?! Why not just fabricate a direct link between the REAL hard left and whomever.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Despite being a horrible asshole, Weiner has a way more interesting history than your average Kulturcamper. Hhe was a Beat hanger-on and worked for Timothy Leary as a grad student - didn't really get into wingnuttery till the '80s.


    The aforementioned Wikipedia page reveals the probable source of Lifson's hilarious mistake about Berkeley: Weiner did get a doctorate there, but 18 years later he tried to sue UC for "discrimination" because they did not make him Dean of their graduate journalism program.

    ReplyDelete
  9. D. Aristophanes12:06 AM

    Disqus blows Gutfelds

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's not that mysterious, it's just the feedback effect of the wingnut movement. Tea Party people used Alinsky approvingly as a reference on organizing, so he was one of the only lefty writers many of those guys would know the name of. The fact that he's not familiar to anyone who's not a nonprofit nerd makes the knowledge more exciting: Hey man, I just found out about this brilliant dude from the '60s, it turns out he like invented activism and he taught the leftists everything they know, but most people don't know that's where it all comes from.

    The demonization came later, and I think it's entirely cynical-- of course they know that he wasn't the devil, and that there's nothing noteworthy at all about Obama and the Clintons having read him, but this way they get to reach out to ignorant bigots who are eager to hear about Jewish(!) Russian(!!) Commie masterminds, while at the same time throwing a knowing wink to the non-idiots among them who think it's a great prank on the hippies.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Chris Anderson12:40 AM

    OK that's good, I sorta heard these points before. Alinsky as wizard organizer, then convenient target, etc. It's just hard to get in their mindset ... I'm too literal, like a dog chasing a stick. The stick looks like a claim, but of course they don't really mean to make one about Alinsky. A defensible claim would be of no interest to them, no offense to the man.

    ReplyDelete
  12. montag212:46 AM

    Well, I do have to admit it. "...Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld are both masters of ridicule..." is pretty fuckin' funny, all by itself.


    Therefore, I don't have to read their tedious, tendentious books. Thanks, Tom Lifson!

    ReplyDelete
  13. montag212:53 AM

    I don't know what induces the more violent shudder--that the Savage Weiner wanted to be the dean of UC Berkeley's j-school, or that he thinks of himself as a journalist.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Let's see some of that "irony and insight":

    The
    network where I work is evil, or so I am told by people who don't watch
    it. Which is why my employer is the only media enterprise exempt from
    the warm hug of tolerance. A half dozen media groups are devoted to
    tripping it up. Endless comedians, bloggers, and talking heads devote
    most of their mental energies to demonizing the network. And why?
    Because out of a media culture that is purely liberal - from newspapers,
    to networks, to music and entertainment - one entity rejects such easy
    assumptions about the world. And for the modern, tolerant liberal, that
    simply cannot be tolerated. Everyone must be in lockstep - before we can
    disagree, apparently.


    I don't know what's better - that Lifson (and Gutfeld, I suppose) thinks that "why aren't you tolerant of my intolerance" is an sparkling witticism, or that Gutfeld can't think of any reason why someone might make fun of Fox News other than "they're scared."

    ReplyDelete
  15. Spaghetti Lee3:10 AM

    No matter how much these guys talk about reclaiming mockery as a weapon (and they sure talk about it a lot) they're still a bit scared of it. Lifson writes like he's picking up Gutfeld's writing with pincers and holding it carefully, inviting his audience to nod and take notes instead of, you know, laugh. That's why his prose is so limp: twice as many words as he needs, and none that wouldn't pass muster on a college thesis. With such tedious fussiness blanketing everything, no wonder the jokes are all D.O.A.


    I think the root cause is that when your whole shtick is about law and order (as well as total passivity when it comes to class conflict) mockery and satire are always going to be a bit double-edged. They can turn on you in an instant. So they use it a a pretext to lead into the arguments they wanted to talk about in the first place, but that's about it.



    When I try to think of satirists who are just as conservative as Savage or Gutfeld but can actually be funny at times, Michael J. Nelson comes to mind, and it's mostly because he's not afraid of his own shtick, and he recognizes there's such a thing as non-political humor. So it can be done. Just not by fusspots like Lifson or Gutfeld.

    ReplyDelete
  16. montag23:26 AM

    IIRC, it was a Fox News affiliate that went to court to (successfully!) establish the legal principle that it was okay for Fox News to knowingly lie to the public (presumably in order to protect its advertising revenues).



    No doubt that Gutfeld thinks this sort of thing has nothing to do with the general acrimony--and ridicule--to which Fox is subject, but, it's central. Gutfeld and Co. lie with absolute abandon, and then are completely stumped about why they're called liars, why they're derided as propagandists.


    That they pretend to be clueless about it should be rich fodder for humor, and is. That they pretend to be clueless about that, too, ought to be cause for a mental health inquiry.

    ReplyDelete
  17. bstar4:53 AM

    What is it with all these wingnut origin/conversion stories. Is it some sort of christian thing? Or more something coming from the milieu of comic book s?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Pope Zebbidie XIII4:55 AM

    What I think strangest is that they state that they intend to knowingly follow the instructions of somebody they regard as terrorist. It's like smashing a passenger plane into a building would be all right, as long as only left-leaning people are killed.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Pope Zebbidie XIII5:00 AM

    P.J. O'Rourke used to be funny until he realised that only people on the left understood his jokes. So he had to Procrustify his sense of humour to fit the Bed of Wingnut Welfare. Sad really.

    ReplyDelete
  20. aimai7:06 AM

    Jeebus--my personal level of tolerance, qua liberal, has pretty much nothing to do with CAPITALIST COMPETITION which would, of course, lead media personalities and media companies to compete furiously for eyeballs and advertisers--does Gutfield really believe that The Front Page represented the triumph of alinskyite thought police rather than the dog-eat-dog world of the journalistic pursuit of the scoop?

    ReplyDelete
  21. aimai7:09 AM

    Its also that Alinsky has a short book, still in print, while Marx's work is long and complicated and starting to seem old hat. I also think that the idea that there must always be a mastermind, and that the left is super organized rather than composed of a loose group of weirdos who couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the bottom is one of the tenets of the right--I mean, both are simultaneously. Obama, of course, is both incompetent and a mastermind. Jews are both shrewd exploiters and dreamy, liberal fools etc..etc...etc...


    aimai

    ReplyDelete
  22. Here's my take on mockery used by the admittedly simplistic division of humanity into liberalish and conservatoid camps:

    While it can still sting, liberals generally don't take mockery personally. In fact, most liberalish folks I know often self-mock to make a general point about the ridiculousness of human nature. This is probably the greatest difference in the use of ridicule between the two groups. True satire is more often than not intended to be a wake-up call to the recipient, or at least to the general audience, that some particular behavior is perhaps not agreeable to the notion that humans are noble creatures. HUMILITY is the key to satire, parody, and other forms of ridicule being a successful form of comedy. And being less tribal than conservatoids, liberals are less likely to feel personally threatened by this form of humor.

    Conservatoids, on the other hand, have a great deal of trouble with humility. Being reminded of their foibles is not a learning opportunity for them; it is a threat. Conservatoids, by nature, are reactive to what they deem a hostile world, and they live in perpetual fear of that weakness in themselves might hamper their competitiveness. Ridicule from others is particularly potent, as expulsion from the tribe is tantamount to a death warrant to them. They are desperate to avoid being singled out as the "weak link." The "he can dish it out, but he can't take it" individuals sum up conservatoid understanding of satirical humor.

    These differences account for the apparent lack of humor in conservatoids, as well. When they attempt to use satire or ridicule, they feel they are personally attacking the target with the ultimate aim of destroying their place in society, and in the wingnut mindset, ultimately dooming them to exile and virtual death. They lack the compassion that turns ridicule into a tool for improvement. Wingnuts don't believe in human improvement--that would be admitting flaws, which invites hostility from the tribe. They certainly NEVER self-mock, for the same reasons.

    This is why they are obsessed with liberal humor--they are horribly fascinated by the ease with which we handle what to them is a dangerous weapon. They never look to themselves when ridiculed; they only become defensive and hostile, closing themselves off to any hope of understanding or growth.



    While liberals are far from the mature creatures of enlightenment we hope to be, we at least see the ridiculous contradictions in the bizarre creatures human beings have become, and we often use humor to remind us that we have a long way to go.


    Because of fear, conservatoids are incapable.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Leeds man8:11 AM

    If you mean the Monsanto-BGH story, it was the Fox Network which challenged a whistleblower suit, backed by five other media companies. See http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/

    ReplyDelete
  24. Rugosa8:18 AM

    Many mediocre white men were crowded out by excellent women and minorities back in the day.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Michael Savage had a strange dual career, especially during the '90s. While under his Michael Savage pseudonym he was writing The Death of the White Male: The Case Against Affirmative Action and The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language, and Culture, he was also writing herbal medicine books as UC-Berkley ethnobotanist Dr. Michael Weiner, like The Complete Book of Homeopathy: The Holistic & Natural Way to Good Health and Herbs That Heal: Prescription for Herbal Healing.


    (I could make an absolutely crass joke about how much Michael Savage loves colons, but that would be exactly the kind of Alinskyite mockery a real American would expect.)

    ReplyDelete
  26. Ow! The Gutfield mockery! It burns!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Halloween_Jack8:33 AM

    I really wonder if Lifson even knows about Wikipedia, or if he just considers it some Alinskyite plot. He might find the Alan Ginsburg connection of interest, given his appreciation of Savage having been "one buffed teen", but there's no mention of Savage (nee Michael Weiner) having spent many years hawking quack cures like homeopathy (you can still find several of his books under the Weiner name on Amazon). Getting into (and making money off of) the woo certainly isn't limited to either end of the political spectrum, although I think that asserting the "freedom of speech" to fleece the gullible for every last cent does lend itself better to the side that pleads for less government regulation and intervention in commercial affairs.

    ReplyDelete
  28. By the way, comrades: How is our destruction of our borders coming along?

    ReplyDelete
  29. I don't understand a word of what you said, aimai, but we're going to discuss it at our socialist task force meeting tonight, right after we practice pouring piss out of our boots.

    ReplyDelete
  30. About as well as our destruction of language. I can only communicate in grunts and vague hand signals now. Thanks, Saul Alinsky!

    ReplyDelete
  31. BigHank539:00 AM

    If you took away Thomas Lifson's grievances, what would be left?

    ReplyDelete
  32. da, da. we pour!

    ReplyDelete
  33. aimai9:05 AM

    I read "only to discover he was not a woman...or a minority" as the plot line of one of those movies of the week (do they still have those?) or a hallmark special.


    "Tragic story: after applying to school as as a poor black child named Helen he was regrettfully informed by the school Geneticist that he was, in fact, an upper class white boy named Myron. Issued with a sansabelt and some penny loafers he was turned away without the degree he so desired."

    aimai

    ReplyDelete
  34. BigHank539:06 AM

    "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building."

    --Ann Coulter

    ReplyDelete
  35. Thomas9:13 AM

    Didn't Greg Gutfeld once have a prominent writing gig at 'even the liberal' HuffPo? And didn't he leverage that into a gig at Fox? Obviously, the 'liberal media' is hell-bent on keeping the highly intellectual humorists of the right shut away from the rest of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  36. actually - and halloween jack hits on this below - savage nee weiner allegedly had a relationship of a sort to allen ginsberg back in the 1970s. one of the notes he sent ginsberg had a section about putting his camera up ginsberg's ass and taking pictures of his "beautiful rectum."

    ReplyDelete
  37. aimai9:18 AM

    I don't think its that. I think that self deprecating humor, like the parodic satires of the weak against the strong, are what liberals think of as humor. These are both "weapons of the weak" and thus, inherently, revolutionary. Self deprecating humor--the humor directed against oneself or one's group--gets there first before the masters and oppressors can get there. I'm thinking here of Woody Allen's jokes, in jokes about the awfulness, laziness, shiftlessness etc.. of one's own kind, the early humor of Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller or Roseanne which each took on the attacks by men against women for their sluttishness or their lack of beauty. These are all ways of defanging or attacking upper class/white/male attacks on one's group and one's identity.


    While the humor that Ann Coulter or other right wing comics prefer is that which attacks and belittles the weak in favor of the strong. They are two different kinds of humor, in service of two different kinds of masters. Ann Coulter's favorite jokes are those which make a straight up comparison between liberal women and "fragrant hippie chick pie wagons" or between Obama and a "retard." In Ann's world ugly, homeless, or retarded people are naturally funny. Thing which are out of place because they buck the natural hierarchy of power are funny and need to be put back in their place.


    I guess, on reflection, that is why I find conservative humor not funny--because real humor is unsettline and leaves the listener caught between states--sympathizing with someone or a situation which is inherently unstable, longing for something to happen which is not going to happen. Conservative humor is all about putting people back in their place, restoring hierarchy, or mourning the loss of authority and power. by attempting, for a moment, to reassert the ability of powerful people to kick the powerless.






    aimai

    ReplyDelete
  38. aimai9:25 AM

    I think its a natural outgrowth of the gullibility of the mark. People are more likely to believe members of their own tribe--that's why cons and scams are so prevalent within communities like the Mormons and why Madoff made so much money off the Jews. On the other hand people like to think that they are receiving insider information and receiving the benefit of your experience when they are venturing into uncharted territory so when it comes to politics a "conversion story" is like showing your passport filled with stamps at exotic ports of call if you are setting out to be a guide to the perplexed. A conversion story says "I was there, I understand this strange world but now I'm one of you so you can trust me."

    I just read a blog post about the guy behind the current push to argue that Obama is going to seek a third term, by force. In real life he is not a true believer but a well known con man who made his money selling fake stock tips through a newsletter. He actually was fined millions of dollars for his frauds and now he's taken up a yet more gullible group of "investors" and is offering them basically the same tips and insights into how to navigate an Obama dominated economy just as he once did with precious metals or oil shocks. He's just replaced "fate" or "history" or "OPEC" or "the diamond market" with "OBAMA" and offers "ten proven tips" for investing, or stockpiling armaments, to the same damned rubes.

    aimai

    ReplyDelete
  39. mortimer10:06 AM

    Lifson: Train Tracks also features a collection of pictures from Savage's life, one of which, showing a teen age muscle-builder Savage, was startling.

    Alinsky Rule #13: Never pass up a chance to make your enemies go "eww."

    ReplyDelete
  40. BigHank5310:10 AM

    Fred Clark on Christine O'Donnell and the conversion narrative:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/10/06/why-evangelicals-like-christine-odonnell-sometimes-claim-to-have-explored-becoming-a-hare-krishna-ev/

    ReplyDelete
  41. there's validity to the idea that story has to have a conversion; it makes the "come home to jesus" moment, when the wayward winger finds his or her path to the truth, a more powerful one and also underscores the inherent goodness of the values the movement is supposed to about.

    ReplyDelete
  42. chuckling10:21 AM

    Apropos, this old Woody Allen joke.


    "How am I immature? Intellectually, emotionally, and sexually. Yeah, but in what other ways?"



    The day a conservative can tell that joke will be the day he or she finds enlightenment, or the day monkey's fly out a flying pig's butt, whichever comes first.

    ReplyDelete
  43. chuckling10:28 AM

    Of course once they have achieved oneness, they can move on to twoness.

    ReplyDelete
  44. The one quotation from the "hip and edgy" Gutfield sounded exactly like the very hip and edgy Bernie Goldberg.

    ReplyDelete
  45. glennisw11:04 AM

    "only to discover that because he was not a woman or a favored minority, an academic career would be denied to him,"

    Well, sure. Because it's well known that no man ever got a PhD from Berkeley, amirite?

    ReplyDelete
  46. sharculese11:31 AM

    tolerance? are we still talking about that? I thought we had moved on to 'we don't care about your retrograde worldview, we're going to make sure people have rights anyway'"

    For all their bluster about being the party of defense, when it comes to the culture war wingnuts are the world's shittiest generals. It's either ad hoc sorties of the sort roy highlighted yesterday, where they try to reclaim so tiny scrap of pop territory from the liberal hordes, or desperate rearguard actions: "can't we go back to the old model, and pretend whether or not out groups should be treated as people is something where reasonable white men can disagree?"

    ReplyDelete
  47. M. Krebs11:43 AM

    ...tried to get a PhD from Berkeley...

    That's actually a slight misreading on Roy's part, though it's understandable given the dreadful writing.

    ReplyDelete
  48. There should be a Tickle Me Elmo for Conservatives. You touch its genital area and it giggles and spouts random phrases like, "Saul Alinsky!," "Welfare fraud!" and "Acorn!" Maybe then they would like PBS.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Jay B.12:03 PM

    Yeah, it's clear that what the GOP has been missing is contempt and ridicule in their delivery. Even that pinhead Feminazi slut, Sandra Fluke knows that.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Jimcima12:35 PM

    Or this, from his website:

    My book is called the Joy of Hate for three reasons. One: the original title, “Black, Lesbian and Proud” was already taken. Oddly, by Wink Martindale……

    Although I might be interested in learning what the other two reasons are he leaves us hanging by teasing that this information is only available in a "juicy exclusive essay for my friends at brietbart.com" and this somewhat dampens my enthusiasm for the outrageous mirth that surely must follow if I were to...oh...SHIT!! SHIT!! SHIT!! GET OUT OF MY BRAIN ALINSKY!!!

    ReplyDelete
  51. PulletSurprise12:41 PM

    How quickly they have forsaken Dennis Miller.

    ReplyDelete
  52. I tried to become the starting point guard on the Chicago Bulls only to discover that because I'm a fat, slow 54 year old my preferred career would be denied to me so I didn't bother trying out.

    ReplyDelete
  53. sharculese12:43 PM

    "One: the original title, “Black, Lesbian and Proud” was already taken. Oddly, by Wink Martindale……"


    Lol, so random and wacky. One can only imagine the insights he has on the sinister liberalism of the purple monkey dishwasher.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Lifson quotes some Gutfield humor, and in the ensuing uncomfortable silence...



    At least YOU made me laugh, Roy.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  55. redoubt12:55 PM

    Or, maybe, liberals (tend to) mock, while conservatives (tend to) bully.

    ReplyDelete
  56. I'm a liberal. I went to one of the most liberal colleges in the U.S. in the 1980s. I had never heard of Saul Alinsky until 2009.
    These guys remind me of the old Stalin-era Soviet ideologues. Everything to them is political. They have nothing else. How sad pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
  57. redoubt1:00 PM

    Yeah, there is sort of a "Prot-a-calls of da Elders of Chicaga" about their obsession with Alinsky. . .

    ReplyDelete
  58. slavdude1:15 PM

    Fsking Disqust. I wanted to post as my alias, not as my name.

    ReplyDelete
  59. "One: the original title, “Black, Lesbian and Proud” was already taken."


    Stop. My sides.

    ReplyDelete
  60. redoubt1:50 PM

    Alinsky #5
    (With apologies to Perez Prado and Lou Bega:)

    "A little bit of Lifson on the side/A little bit of Gutfeld cut and dried
    A little bit of Goldberg without truth/A little bit of Savage without youth
    A little bit of Rushbo with a plate/A little bit of GlennBeck with a slate
    A little bit of money for the lie/A little bit of truth makes them all cry. . ."

    ReplyDelete
  61. Gromet1:51 PM

    longing for something to happen which is not going to happen
    This may be the best elaboration I have heard on the old saw "comedy is the flip side of tragedy." From it, I'll infer a definition of tragedy as the story of something longed for and fulfilled--with horrific fallout.

    And it supports Cole's point, too, I think, though that was not your (amai's) intention: Being reminded of their foibles is not a learning opportunity for them; it is a threat. That's the mindset of the guy headed for tragedy.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Al Swearengen1:53 PM

    Lifson saw starbursts.

    ReplyDelete
  63. I would think that being "funny" would be a lot less fun if in doing so, your primary goal was to make other people--in this case, liberals--angry.



    I mean, I enjoy making "jokes" whether it makes a conservative angel lose its wings or not.



    Besides which, they're never going to make us angry. All they're going to do is give us more mockery-fodder. Geez, that must get frustrating after awhile. No wonder they're so angry all the time.

    ReplyDelete
  64. aimai2:04 PM

    OK, sure, if you are going to be pithy about it.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Gromet2:13 PM

    I'm enjoying the parenthetical qualifiers. What a damned Democrat!

    ReplyDelete
  66. hells littlest angel2:44 PM

    Yeah, Rule 5 was nothing compared to Routine 12.

    ReplyDelete
  67. satch3:05 PM

    Aimai, I don't doubt your analysis at all. I remember reading in Ann Coulter's obit for her father that at near the end of his life, John Coulter, an attorney for Phelps Dodge Copper who specialized in labor negotiations and union busting, told Ann to "go out and smite some liberals for me." Now I'm sure she loved her father, as most of us do, and tried to live up to his expectations for her. But reading her own description of him didn't exactly endear him to me, liberal that I am, although it helped me understand where she's coming from. She, and her ilk, would be perfectly comfortable beating up on someone weaker than her, because she would feel that if they were weaker, they were inferior and worthy of a beating. And that's why conservatives would find her screamingly funny

    ReplyDelete
  68. Halloween_Jack3:57 PM

    That would be Porter Stansberry, right? I thought you might be talking about Wayne Allyn Root, the former Libertarian VP candidate who made a big deal out of supposedly not having met Obama at Columbia despite their being in the same graduating class, and who of course predicted a Romney landslide. I swear, we should make up trading cards for these clowns.

    ReplyDelete
  69. Jay B.4:45 PM

    So who took "I'm a Ham-Fisted, Tin-Eared Emotional Cripple"?

    ReplyDelete
  70. wileywitch4:58 PM

    Herding cats has nothing to do with being in lockstep. Sometimes I wish liberals would be in lockstep just long enough to get one or two things done without the night of a thousand better ideas.


    This man has either never met liberals nor cats, or is lying, or is pathologically projecting. Or all three.

    ReplyDelete
  71. garbage pail kids, the 4th wave!

    ReplyDelete
  72. AGoodQuestion5:06 PM

    The excerpt that Lifson provides proves that Greg Gutfield can whine like a motherfucker. That is the working definition of "wit", right?

    ReplyDelete
  73. AGoodQuestion5:17 PM

    When they attempt to use satire or ridicule, they feel they are personally attacking the target with the ultimate aim of destroying their place in society, and in the wingnut mindset, ultimately dooming them to exile and virtual death.


    That what they think when they make-um heap shitty jokes about Elizabeth Warren.

    ReplyDelete
  74. KatWillow6:03 PM

    My favorite part was where he grabbed the guy by the hair and threatened to gouge his eye out but then... well, I guess you had to be there.

    ReplyDelete
  75. KatWillow6:04 PM

    Grunts & hand signals beats "faaaaart!" and "Feminazis!" any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

    ReplyDelete
  76. KatWillow6:06 PM

    only to discover he was not a woman...or a minority... He tried to convince them he was gay (Dig that crazy name, Dude!) but they weren't buying it.

    ReplyDelete
  77. KatWillow6:12 PM

    It might be plain old garden-variety PROJECTION. They don't and can't do anything without being carefully taught, have busses come to pick them up for their tea-parties, WITH pre-made (misspelled) signs. And its a good thing, too, 'cause when they DO exercise a little imagination and flair they end up with tea-bags stapled to their ... hats.

    ReplyDelete
  78. KatWillow6:16 PM

    I'll get my Yu-Gi-Oh! loving daughter to create a few. What kind of "monster" would sLimebag be?

    ReplyDelete
  79. KatWillow6:18 PM

    Humor tends to have an element of stinging truth, which makes us laugh, perhaps defensively. But conservatives loathe and fear the truth, or think that "truth" is "NIGGER! Queer! Wetback!" and so on. Then they're hurt because no one laughed.

    ReplyDelete
  80. KatWillow6:26 PM

    Yeah, stupid Libs getting all indignant and angry about factory fires that burn hundreds to death! Why won't they get mat at our insults?

    ReplyDelete
  81. Leeds man6:29 PM

    There is a time dependence in this. It wasn't always so, but conservatism has become the politics of spite.

    ReplyDelete
  82. Julia Grey7:06 PM

    "My book is called the Joy of Hate for three reasons. One: the original title, “Black, Lesbian and Proud” was already taken. Oddly, by Wink Martindale……"



    WHAT?

    ReplyDelete
  83. Julia Grey7:10 PM

    What I want to know is, how come we have piss in our boots in the first place?

    ReplyDelete
  84. It might be plain old garden-variety PROJECTION.


    So what you're saying, KW, is that if we projected the piss beyond the boots, i.e., into the garden, we wouldn't have this problem? By Jove, I do believe you're ... onto something.

    ReplyDelete
  85. wileywitch8:18 PM

    Being a liberal, I can mock the liberals who thing that "creativity" is not "surrending" as artists do

    ReplyDelete
  86. M. Krebs10:51 PM

    I see your Wink Martindale... and raise you a Gene Rayburn!

    ReplyDelete
  87. harumph12:09 AM

    Funny names are funny. I'm surprised he didn't just go all in with Englebert Humperdink.

    ReplyDelete
  88. JoeMax12:58 AM

    Aha! That explains what happened to him. Makes sense. Up until "Eat the Rich" he was pretty funny. But the only people I knew who had even heard of him were all lefties. (Like me, old geezers who remember the National Lampoon from the 70s.)

    ReplyDelete
  89. DocAmazing1:59 AM

    I forget which of his books it was in, but one of them featured a trip to apartheid South Africa, in which he wrote (approximately), "South Africa will never join the ranks of civilized nations until its rulers stand up and lie like white men."


    I can't remember him writing anything that funny since.

    ReplyDelete
  90. MikeJ3:19 AM

    Tunis?! That's near Benghazi!

    ReplyDelete
  91. Lancelot Link6:46 AM

    Emmanuel Goldstein was unavailable.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Howlin Wolfe6:11 PM

    You know who else thought art was all about politics and grievances!

    ReplyDelete
  93. "Who in the fuck is Saul Alinsky?" -- Aristophanes

    ReplyDelete