Satire: dead but it won’t lie down
Short note for people who have a life: The Daily Kos is one of America’s most popular (millions of readers) and (allegedly) influential blogs. It’s also one of its most stupid and humourless.
Read this, then this and then this. And people wonder why the US Democratic Party is knackered. And Harry Hutton must be shagged as well – fighting Zulus while being an right-wing “eliminationist” would take it out of any man.
Posted on June 15th, 2006 at 10:16am under Miscellaneous misanthropy
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• 17 Comments |
This is the rising tide of eliminationist language that I’ve seen for a lot of years on the right. It starts as chuckles among unformed or unaware or unprocessed minds, and can quickly metastasize into action.
Or why the US political scene is so polarized that it sees everything in terms of democrat and republican, and can’t take a bloody joke.
ct. us sophistated British types
sophiscated, muh
sofis… oh forget it.
Hey! Anyone want to buy a shite t-shirt?
Don’t mean to comment spam, but will anyway.
One of these comments… well, is this guy sitting in his house with a rifle waiting for those dammed Republicans to smash through his door?
The right is desperate. They see how credible and organized the progressive blogosphere is and they’re terrified; our bottom up structure will beat the pants off their top down blogs any day.
Oh dear.
Harry merely needs to put a big warning on his blog reading “ATTENTION AMERICANS, THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF THAT ‘QUIRKY BRITISH HUMOR’ [sic] LIKE THAT FLYING CIRCUS GUY, BENNY HILL”
Either that or the Daily Kos should fuck off. Tedious as hell, that site. no wonder so many people vote for Bush – at least he’s entertaining. When the “lefty” alternatives are like Kossacs and Michael Moore (who ceased to be funny shortly after that stunt trying to get a plant elected on TV Nation a few years back), no wonder the country gave Bush more votes than any president in US history.
The holier-than-thou tendencies of some quarters of the left (“Oooh! We care for poor people! That makes us better than you!” etc.) hardly lend themselves to self-deprecation. Let’s face it, and ignoring their politics, who would you rather have a pint with – George Galloway or George Bush? I’d go for Bush every time – at least he’s a laugh. (And doesn’t drink any more, so it’d be a cheap round…)
Don’t be too hard on them.
The culture difference, both in terms of humour (especially sarcasm), and political polarisation (at least on the surface – we are all aware of the factions in both the democratic and republican parties) never cease to amaze me, and catch me out on occasion.
Perhaps it is the difference in political styles, or perhaps just the sheer weight of numbers that hit blogs such as Kos – chances are, if it had been an American blog that had published Harry’s humour, it would have been straight out of FreeRepublic. Very easy to get snippy without thinking, when the blogging weight of even the most extreme minority oppositions number in the thousands.
Anyway, poke a little fun at them some more, perhaps they’ll relax some – but I do believe that sites like Kos are important, however ‘boring’ or unhumourous you find them. I’ve found a fair amount I disagree with there – but plenty of common ground too.
Sophistrycated?
Typical of the jealous rivalry of you lot of UK bloggers. OK Kos is not a favourite, or humourous but UK blogs are often schoolBOY sniggering trivia. No wonder the ‘left’ never gets anywhere with this silly nitpicking about each other, meanwhile the folx who really threaten us slip thro the middle. Bah!!
I’m a big fan of Daily Kos but this is hilarious!
The posts are funny, but beaten hands-down for po-facedness by the comments. Well worth ten minutes of anyone’s time.
Jherad, the Kos crowd are just being pricks here (with a couple of noble exceptions). I don’t buy that it’s because they’re Americans, or because Americans are polarized. An American can write this and expect to be understood.
It is popular and Markos is influential if for no other reason than eyeballs and TV appearances. I can’t dog a man who makes over a mil just for writing a blog, even if the content is of a different opinion.
I believe that satire confuses people and saps the national will and therefore it should be avoided at all costs. What these Kos people are doing is good for America (aside from all the liberal stuff).
Jherad — if it had been an American blog that had published Harry’s humour, it would have been straight out of FreeRepublic : does this mean that only Americans who are Conservatives can be expected to see the absurdity of the author’s attributing his and his daughter’s survival to the Daily Kos because they happened to be at the Daily Kos’s meet (rather than, perhaps, at an all-night prayer vigil held by the First Church of Christ the Survivalist) rather than at home when the accident took place?
SteveG,
I think you missed my (admittedly badly made) point – It was funny, and was meant to be funny, rather than malicious. There is so much real flaming from the far right aimed at sites like Kos, that I’d say it is very easy for them to kneejerk into thinking this was yet another example of that.
Aaanyway. Yes, there was a whole heap of overreaction there, which was pretty amusing.
[...] Well, D-Day, add me to the chorus of “haters,” along with this poster. And this poster. And this one. This one too. Oh, and this post as well. [...]
Don’t be too hard on them.
Balls. To accuse someone of “eliminationist language” is actually pretty nasty – especially if you’ve got a readership of millions. I take the point about cultural differences but still, it was their bad and it was a bad bad. I’d say pompous arse D-Day deserves everything coming to him.