Are You Looking For A Spore On A Grassy Knoll? A New Very Real Tyranny of Gotcha Comedy

The spread of abusive gotcha comedy is spreading throughout the right wing society, the John McCain campaign, and now the Bush administration.

We should have known this would finally happen some day.

Limbaugh and other right wing talk show hosts have been using the claim that they were just making a joke.  That claim has allowed them to advance their agenda of extracting money from playing on the hate of their fans, making themselves very rich indeed.

You may remember classic 'jokes' by Ann Coulter in which she called for someone to shoot Lincoln Chaffee and to poison Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens.  And, of course, because she was Ann Coulter nothing happened to her. 

You try threatening any official in Washington in front of a crowd of hundreds, and see how far you get before an officer has you under arrest!

Now you can't get upset about anything the McCain camp says in an ad or talk, apparently, because they will claim its just a joke and so you have no right to comment on it.

Bush has a sense of humor that he mostly brings out to entice the news media and American public, but the McCain camp is now using the idea of humor (of which John actually has little that doesn't involve slamming women, his opponents, and women in that order --no, I didn't make a mistake there) as a truncheon to prevent people from speaking their minds.

They are actually beginning to get scary.

But notice that the Bushies are looking on in awe, and their latest frame up of Bruce Ivins slams people who "don't abdicate their minds" as "spore on a grassy knoll" believers.  I haven't gotten beyond that statement yet.  I just wanted to express my disturbance that freedom of speech and even of mind is under attack, and from all things, "comedy".

It is indeed time to go nuclear.  but that would require more than liberal telling each other jokes.  We tend to rely on the news media to tell the rest of the nation what they need to know, even though we know most of the news media is cowed by the right wing media bashers, whether highly paid professionals, right wing media talk show hosts, or astro turfers.  We need to go beyond the news media and reach out to our friends and extended family, the kind of people who aren't going to be reading blogs, but rely on the sold out mainstream news for their view of the world.  If every one of us just reached 5 other people and made sure to explain what we know to them about reality on a regular basis, the Republicans couldn't steal the next election, even with the vote killing programs they may already have in place.

An go ahead and use humor, as well as all the information we learn through mainstream and other sources.  We're probably generally funnier because we're just not so viscious.  We don't believe people should die so that we can get our way.

In the right hands humor's a good thing, just like water.  Misused they both can become instruments of autocracy.  It's sad, but it's true.  (Link goes to Vanity Fair article by Hitchens and his experience with being waterboarded).

tags: john  mccain  comedy  ann coulter  bush administration  bruce e ivins  sense of humor  

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