Comments on: Breaking News

By: philosopher

philosopher — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 14:06:50 +0000

Just to be clear: this isn’t a partisan issue, or even a political one. It’s simply the way that humor and satire work. There’s just no sense to be made of “oh, my italics showed the part where the satire was”. Jokes don’t work that way — for there to be a joke in there at all, there has to be an implicit comparison between the LA blackout and the flooding in Louisiana, which the joke is inviting the reader to make. (Ted Cohen’s marvelous study of jokes, Jokes, has much to say on this issue of implicit filling-in; everyone should check it out, if for no other reason than to see a philosophy book with an index of punch lines.) So you can’t disown the comparison without disowning the joke altogether.
I went out of my way to make clear that I didn’t think you meant to have such an awful comparison in there; and to make clear my objection has nothing to do with the basic political point you are trying to make (even though I do disagree with that point). I did nothing to ‘twist your word’ — your words, in this case, had already twisted themselves. And I am trying to help you see that & give you a chance to retract. You should of course make whatever argument you like against those who think that Pres. Bush should’ve gotten on the spot right away; but don’t try to make it through this type of humor, because there’s just no way to do it without making a comparison that I’m pretty sure you don’t want to make.

By: Sky-Ho

Sky-Ho — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 00:08:55 +0000

Eric,
You screwed up. Accept it and back off. You really look stupid otherwise.

By: JohnS

JohnS — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:37:55 +0000

Well, it appears that this attempt at satire was not a howling success. I'll bet you'd have much better luck with this story: "Commanders Ordered Not To Fire Gays Until War's End."

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 13:46:09 +0000

“I’m satirizing the idea that President Bush should drop all his other activities and personally oversee responses to crises”
Uh, isn’t that the President’s job? By definition of the word, ‘crisis’, shouldn’t that take priority over ‘other activities’? You could use the same ‘logic’ to give Bush an escape hatch out of almost any situation. Don’t you honestly think that maybe Bush was a little slow in the response to Katrina and it’s effects, the largest natural disaster in the US? I’m sure to some people who are rabidly anti-Bush he’s getting the blame for everything, which I don’t think is fair, and maybe that’s what your satire is aiming at counter-balancing. Unfortunately it comes across, unintended or not, that the idea that Bush was slow in responding is a ridiculous point, when other Republicans and Bush himself seem to be acknowledging that there were problems.
As an aside, I see that some posters and commenters like to use words like ‘liberal’ and ‘right-wing’, which add about nothing to the conversation. To criticize Bush does not mean you’re liberal or left-wing. As if ‘liberal’ is even a bad word; I think one of the biggest liberals that ever lived (assuming he did) was Jesus.

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 00:35:02 +0000

phil, I made my point abundantly clear–I even italicized the crux of my satire. Satire is offensive to those who are targeted by it, so I’m not surprised the usual liberal suspects here got their knickers in a twist, but I’m not going to let you get away with twisting my words.

By: vaildog

vaildog — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 22:18:58 +0000

Why do conservatives always have to be the ones to tone down the rhetoric? Tell it people at the dailykos.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 21:50:28 +0000

But that’s just the danger of satire, Eric — you don’t get to stipulate what you were or weren’t trying to make fun of, but the satire must stand (or fall) on its own. The whole thing comes along as a sort of irony gestalt. And, as your post stands, it is effectively declaring the disaster in Louisiana to be of sufficiently low importance that it may be compared to the blackout in LA, in being ridiculous that the president be asked to make it a priority item in his schedule. There’s just no way to pull this piece of satire off without thereby downplaying the horrors in Louisiana. Again, if someone said in my post-9/11 case, “Oh, I’m just trying to satirize [insert anyone who you think reacted the in a ludicrous way to 9/11]“, we just wouldn’t let them off the hook with that.
The point you’re trying to make, about whether it is fair to attack the president for not responding more swiftly & in person to the disaster, is surely a legitimate point to argue for. (I mean, I think it’s wrong, but I don’t think it’s bizarre or inconceivable or anything like that.) But — and I mean this in a friendly way, not as an attack — this is just a poor way to make such a point. Satire is a very blunt instrument, and tends to end up clobbering everything in & around the point that one might be trying to make. In this instance, the club caught some things that you didn’t mean for it to.

By: JohnS

JohnS — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:41:27 +0000

Hey Finlay, if the shoe fits…
BTW, Steve Gilliard just linked to a strikingly similar bit of nonsense bit of nonsense over at:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_09_11_corner-archive.asp#076267
CAN I BEAT KOS AND DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND TO THE PUNCH? [Cliff May]
The power is out in Los Angeles – and where the hell is George W. Bush?
Why hasn’t he said anything empathetic yet? It’s been hours!
Does he even care what the people of Los Angeles are going through? Not everyone in Hollywood can just get into a Range Rover and turn on the air conditioning. Some people only have Mercedes and BMWs and red Corvettes.
How long is the rescue effort going to take? Surely, Bush is not waiting on the mayor and the governor again. Big-foot them now! I’ll bet Bush is playing his silly banjo.
Posted at 05:17 PM
Bet it had Cornerites in stitches.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 18:52:10 +0000

I don’t know… maybe the power outage is Bush’s fault. Maybe those utility workers are political appointees?
No… silly me. Bush saves unimportant posts for his blatant political hacks, like heading FEMA.

By: Finlay

Finlay — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 18:19:51 +0000

Right JohnS, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.