Exploded Fish Guts and a Guy Named Deroy
Augusta, I don’t mind telling you that I work pretty hard. Between the 45-55 hours per week I bartend here in Wisconsin, planning for a December wedding (do you know how hard it is to get a boxing license in this state?), writing and sending out poems (cue beret and cigarette), and the three minutes to six hours a week I spend on this column, I barely have time to check the website and make sure they’re still running the damn thing. Of course, all these segments of time are just rough estimates. I get so tired that occasionally the only way I can tell day from night is whether they’re building roller coasters out of sugar or sausage on the Food Network.
So this week, I’m picking an easy target: The National Review Online. This is a decision borne from two distinct necessities: 1) Hurricane Isaac is about to flood the Republican National Convention into next week. By their own logic, this is the haymaker of an angry God, and there is no article I could write, no simile or metaphor I could concoct — not even with a thesaurus and all the absinthe in France — that could possible do that bare fact justice. 2) These deep-red nimrods have been getting on my nerves, and sometimes that’s all the justification you need.
Some of you might say that a left-leaning article about The National Review is little more than shooting fish in a barrel, but you’re way off the mark. Making TNR the subject of a left-leaning column is like stuffing a lemon-pepper mahi-mahi with C4. Their contributors are so entrenched in the anti-progress camp of the Republican Party that they refuse to walk upright. They are Neanderthals who think the moon should “get a job” instead of benefitting from all of the sun’s light. They seek to obliterate anything that makes sense or shows compassion to their fellow human beings, and they all have Kid Rock on speed dial. I am here to destroy them.
I made some sacrifices. Namely, actually reading TNR’s website for more than three seconds. You won’t believe the amount of T’ai Chi training I had to undergo before I was able to attempt this — now I speak entirely in bad dubbing and spin kicks. If I had tried to read anything on TNR in the past and make an attempt to not get royally pissed off, there would just be a giant burn mark where my desk used to be.
In any case, I went through and pulled a couple of choice nuggets from the site. As you might expect, I’m going to make fun of them. What you may not expect is that these were written by actual human persons, and not the result of a crazed GOP senator shoving think-tank data and cocaine into an Atari 2600.
1. “The Democrats and the press travel in packs, but never more so than when a cultural issue is involved.” — Rich Lowry
When I meet someone who says this, I always make sure my phone is turned off; they’re mesmerized by anything that rings. What Lowry — who, for the record, looks like two weasels accidentally mated during a lotion fight — and most conservative pundits refuse to acknowledge is that there are three different presses: liberal, conservative and one that doesn’t exist. Fox News and MSNBC are little more than PR firms for their respective candidates during election season. And don’t feed me this “liberals love to harp on cultural issues” nonsense. Barack and Michelle’s “terrorist fist-jab” dominated Fox’s news cycle for half a day. If there were a magic grizzly bear that crapped gold and AIDS vaccines, Fox News would defend Ted Nugent’s constitutional right to shoot it.
2. “Biden’s comments were just a bizarre and crude effort to scare black people into voting Democrat, again.” — Deroy Murdock
I’m not sure how Deroy got his name, but I’d think that letting Larry the Cable Guy name a black child somehow constitutes high treason. Anyway, Deroy’s asinine article is a sloppy mess of fear-baiting, misplaced sanctimoniousness and logic-murdering. I mentioned last week (I think?) that Biden’s comments, semantically misguided though they may have been, were simply the latest example of the great political tradition of hyperbole, and I stand by that here.
There are two things wrong with Murdock’s position: 1) He assumes that black people need to be convinced to vote for Obama. The reasons why are both obvious and multi-layered, but recent polls have revealed that about 97 percent of black Americans support Obama. And if Republicans weren’t so doggedly working to disenfranchise minority voters, the race would be a lot more lopsided than it’s already going to be.
2) He tries to justify his assertion with some context. If Deroy had read my article last week, he’d have known better. Specifically, he explains that Biden’s comments referenced Romney’s plans to loosen restrictions on banks, and how Biden linked that to disadvantaging black folks. Murdock justifies this by citing the unchecked, freewheeling way in which banks were handing out loans, even to, in Murdock’s own words, “dodgy borrowers with little prospect of repaying their loans.” At this point, I’m too exhausted and flabbergasted at one man’s stupidity to engineer an elaborate metaphor, so I’ll just leave it at this: Deroy proved Biden’s point.
Actually, you know what? I’ll give this a shot: to understand the extent to which Deroy utterly boned this situation, you have to imagine that Harry Truman allowed Thomas Dewey to teabag him during his victory speech. It’s like being mauled by a dead dog.
3. “I’m a big fan of the 1 percent… the 1 percent of Congress that take seriously the threat of Islamic-supremacist influence operations against our government.” — Andrew C. McCarthy
HAHAHAHAHAHA, what?!
Holy s**t, this is like a joint gift from the gods of Humor and Head Injuries. Really, Republicans, could you get any more predictable? A crazy, fear-baiting dipshit named McCarthy? That’s like finding out Todd Akin’s real last name is “Hitlerrape.”
If there wasn’t ample evidence that their contributors wholeheartedly believe everything they say, the National Review would be the greatest satirical periodical this side of the The Onion. A finer line between hilarious and depressing, there is not.You Might Also Like:
