More Media Mayhem

Michael Grunwald writes for Time that, by any previous predictive measure, the McCain candidacy ought to be toast. However,

It’s also unwise to underestimate the hunger of the media for an exciting race. … The media will try to preserve the illusion of a toss-up; you’ll keep seeing “Obama Leads, But Voters Have Concerns” headlines.

Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei write for the Politico that “McCain gaffes pile up; critics pile on,” but the fact is that McCain’s “gaffes” — which are about big honking geopolitical matters like where Pakistan is — aren’t drawing nearly as much attention as inconsequential stuff Al Gore didn’t even say back in 2000.

The wingnuts are still hyperventilating about John McCain’s “rejected” op ed about Iraq, in which McCain tried to get by with bashing Obama instead of explaining his own position.

Today I learned that a “humor” piece someone wrote about Netroots Nation was “spiked,” and Michelle Malkin says, “So, not only are we not allowed to make fun of Barack Obama, but it appears that liberals in the media have also made ridiculing the left-wing blogosphere off-limits.”

I didn’t go to Netroots Nation this year, I regret, but had I been there I’m sure I could have written something humorous and fun-poking about it. The problem with the “humorous” piece that was ripped down from the website of the Austin American Statesman is that it wasn’t a bit funny. It was just mean. Right-wing humor, in other words. (IMO actual, unvarnished ridicule is rarely funny.)

Malkin has a big chunk of it on her website. But if you want to get the Cliff’s Notes version, see Greg Mitchell at Daily Kos. My impression is that the “writer” of the piece built it entirely from ancient stereotypes of “leftists” without bothering to pull his head out of his ass long enough to notice if the stereotypes still apply.

Genuine wit reveals something real. As Mark Twain said, “Humor is the good natured side of a truth.”

The part of the spiked piece that most offended me is “Pelosi is so far left her title should include (D-Beijing).” Pelosi has shown more cojones, as it were, in speaking out against Beijing and its Tibet policies than any Republican I can think of.

That’s why it wasn’t funny.

6 thoughts on “More Media Mayhem

  1. “McCain ought to be toast,” reminded me of something I learned recently. The national poll numbers have more import than it would seem. If there is a 4 point gap between candidates, the electoral college numbers can go either way. If there is a gap of more than 4 points, the candidate with the higher number is an electoral college shoo-in.

    Does anybody know if there is anything similar revealed in state poll numbers?

  2. From Harper’s “The Wrecking Crew” article, Aug. ’08. What the rising conservative sensibility of ‘the early ’80’s treasured above all else was a ‘confrontation’ with the left. Civility and fair play were off the table. The new Republican heroes, outrage-courting lib fighters, were (and are) Pat Buchanan and Jack Abramoff.

    One tactic the lib-fighting ‘heroes’ resorted to was bullying, in fact even to this day bullying holds a special, exalted position among the militant conservatives. Two of their master bullies were (and are) Oliver North and Tom DeLay – each proudly going by the nickname, “the Hammer.”

    We may call the type Wingnuts but in truth they’re neither ‘wingy’ nor ‘nuts.’

  3. It’s always intrigued me why wingnut humor universally falls so flat and is so nasty and lacking insight. It’s less of a mystery why wingnuts themselves are often nasty and lacking empathy – many of them simply mirror the treatment they themselves received.

    My theory is that these people are at the very early stages of dealing with a deep emotional hurt. In many ways they’re cases of arrested development – all the hangups they have about sex evidence this. All they feel is unresolved pain and anger and they project it outwards, in ugly humor and nasty attacks. Only when they can have the courage to be honest and go into their pain and really feel what it was about, can they begin to heal and have compassion. But then, they’d no longer be wingnuts…

    Another aspect of this is the amazing amount of BS these people are capable of swallowing, and the extreme lengths they will go to to avoid the truth. This is why they can never laugh at themselves or admit that they’re wrong. It’s why they’re always doomed in the end to look stupid. I guess this is why their humor always misses the mark.

  4. Recently I was reviewing Chogyam Trungpa’s commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (light reading for me these days) and his descriptions of the Six Realms, which are allegorical places people are born into. You can interpret them (as Trungpa did) as psychological states. People born into the Animal Realm are ignorant, fearful, biased and conformist. And, he said, they have no sense of humor or irony. This explains Wingnuts! They live in the Animal Realm.

  5. “Ignorant, fearful, biased and conformist” about says it all. Because I found myself as a teacher having to ‘get over’ my seemingly automatic dislike of the occasional bully in my classroom, or most often in the yard, I did a little delving into the nature of the bully – in hopes that my dislike would turn into understanding. The characteristic most defining him/her is fearfulness. Conformity, self-justifying and self- imposed ignorance are, finally, the results of abnormal fear.

    I didn’t end up liking the bully, but I did end up feeling sorry for him. It’s a miserable way to go through life.

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