(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
Who are these people who claim to be offended at Barry Blitt's cover for The New Yorker? John McCain, who couldn't be bothered to defend his own daughter against the Bush campaign's slurs in 2000, then embraced the men he should have called out for a duel, but now finds his voice to denounce a cartoon? Me, I've been an Obama guy since the New York Review profile in the fall of 2006, and ruminating over New Yorker cartoons since high school, when I inherited Doc Kerry's collection, and I thought it was funny, at least worth a wry smirk, all the no-neck whispers against the Obamas reduced to the absurd. And giving Michelle an Angela Davis haircut is a nice touch.
The "terrorist fist bump" has already been going around as ironic mockery between friends, losing any power it had, and the people being mocked are Obama's enemies. I hope the hurt feelings expressed by unnamed Obama staffers is pro forma, and if it isn't they need to rediscover the bemused tone that served them well against the Clintons. If the news agencies try to stretch this into more than a half-hour circle jerk on MSNBC, score one more triumph for triviality.
3 comments:
The "triumph of triviality" is a good way to describe the senate campaign (so far) between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. This could be an important seat, but the campaigns have featured Al's elementary school teacher and Norm's wife; Al's tepid stance on former legislators as lobbyists and Norm's success in bringing ptofessional hockey back to Minnesota when he was mayor of St. Paul. War? Energy policy? Naah.
I'm hoping this is the year the electorate rebels against the trivial, but the electronic news gatherers-- the ones with the biggest audience haven't caught on yet.
I hope that we can somdeay rid our government ... and big business ... of the sociopaths that seem to gravitate there. But, shit, would it mean we would have a surge in the number of educational administrators?
-Lewis
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