It seems, sometimes, as though the United States is, in reality, a giant high school. It has its cliques, like the jocks and the stoners. Remember? The jocks swaggered, blustered, and got in your face. They'd use threats and fear, and they'd beat up the stoners. The stoners, meanwhile, would be all, "Hey, man, just chill, it's cool. Wanna toke?" Then they'd giggle and make off-color jokes about the jocks' sexual preferences and the size of their girlfriends' tits or ass.
This is how I see partisan politics these days. On one side, you have the rather mellow lefty-loons who use comedians as their spokes-media. Colbert, Maher, Groening, "Family Guy's" Seth McFarland, Gary Trudeau. These guys didn't just take a page, they ripped entire volumes from Twain's library, clearly.
Not to be outdone, the right wingnuts have selected the masters of froth to pitch for them. Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, and Malkin. Fearmongers and screechers. The world is ending! The holy of holies of the week is under attack, and only spittle can save us! It's odd, but only right wingnuts seem to be listening seriously. Moderates are hanging back, not too far from the stoners, and laughing.
I wonder when the right is going to realize how stupid they look. If they really want start influencing people, they should stop blustering and fire up their own barbecues.
I'm thinking "South Park" which is screamingly funny and usually WAY right-wing, at least for the humor community...Kyle, the Lonely Jew, taking on the debts of the entire community so that they can be redeemed from the hands of an angry economy, Tom Cruise "In the Closet",Chef getting his brains scrambled by his "fruity little club" (Scientology), the entire town having to turn to Cartman to rid the place of a hippie infestation, the holier-than-thou "Aspen" community standing around smelling their own farts because they don't stink, the whole country literally burying their heads in the sand so they don't accidentally see an offensive cartoon and cause a terrorist incident...
Good stuff.
Oh, yah, forgot about SP. Score one for the extreme righties!
The left always seems better at making fun of the other side. In this instant I wonder if this is because humor works best when it uncovers some intuitive truth, and intuitive truth is what the Left is built on, whereas the rational thought-requiring truths of the Right just don't tickle so many funny bones.
It's a matter of cultural acceptance. The mainstream media has a profound double standard when it comes to criticism. Things that folk find "funny" when directed at people on the right are considered horrible when directed at the left. Bill Maher gets his own show on HBO, while Ann Coulter is a pariah.
The bottom line is that the "jokes" about Sarah Palin would be roundly condemned in the media if she were on the left. Thus, you can draw Michael Steele in blackface and it's OK, but if you mention the word "socialist" you're a racist.