Saturday, January 17, 2009

Get ready for 4 years of major, unfettered bias?

Probably. http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/surviving-the-obama-comedy-crisis-a-report-from-the-front-lines/

This is a funny article about the dearth of humorous material arising in an Obama administration. After 16 years of the egomaniacal and sexually sociopathic Clinton and the unprecedentedly ignorant and arrogant Bush, comedians, we're told in this piece, are at a loss. Obama's just not that funny. He does his job well, isn't prone to gaffes, and acts the consummate professional. Even though the article lists a bunch of things to make fun of in an Obama administration (in the serious tone of a straight man), all the things listed are really making fun of Obama's followers or the expectations built up around his presidency. There's nothing about the man himself.

The truly ironic thing is there are tons of things to poke fun at Obama about. The media's just ignoring them.

Take, for example, that quintessential sign of arrogance that Obama displays at every press conference: the seal of the Office of the President-Elect. My first thought when I saw that is, "Is this man joking?" The Office of the President-Elect? No such thing exists. It's the end product of one man's gigantic ego, as was his own personal presidential seal during his campaign. There's a massive ego balloon there for any comedian with a needle to burst, but mainstream comedians and op-ed writers seemed to have conditioned themselves to not see it.

This is an example of the naked, unfettered bias we should probably expect from the mainstream press over the next four years. I guarantee you that if a conservative, or even a different liberal (like Hilary Clinton or John Edwards) was regularly parading his ginormously overinflated ego for all to see, you'd hear about it often on late night comedy shows and the Daily Show, and you'd read about it in op-ed pieces. You're probably not going to hear or read anything about Obama, though.

This might be what it takes to move the mass of conservative-sympathizing Americans into open revolt against their handlers, however. Or at least, if it isn't, we'll know it probably can't be done. Either way, there will be some resolution.

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