Jon Stewart

Over the last year or two, my most oft-considered theme on this blog may well be the vital necessity of humor to cope with the world around us. As the adage goes, sometimes there are no words — no literal words, that is. No direct response. There is first the intermediary of wit, whose words are oblique enough to make the matter minimally tolerable. Without this humorous buffer, my unfiltered response would be nothing but screams of rage and despair. That might be cathartic for me, but it would definitely not be constructive. To put it another way: if you ask me a ridiculous question, you’ll get a ridiculous answer.

“Sorry Lucretia, no way is that covered.
I mean… you were already naked.”

For the last decade plus, the agenda and tone of the exchange in Washington (or as I call it, our national miscourse) has been set by the Republicans, largely via their hyper-successful media arm at FOX News.¹ As the feckless Democrats stood by, the effective GOP creed has degenerated from Bush-era exclusionism (“We are the party of patriotism; we don’t work with Democrats for the same reason we don’t negotiate with terrorists”) to reactionary, teabagger-style xenophobia (“If it has Obama-cooties on it, KILL IT!”).

Yesterday, the trusty comedy filter The Onion produced what struck me as a perfectly timed all-purpose riposte, headlined “Republicans Vote to Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed for Earth.” Unfortunately, it turns out that even this wasn’t quite enough to address the day’s most egregious Obama-phobic extreme: the new GOP majority in the House, as part of their absurdly childish insistence on a do-over of the health care reform act, have declared it necessary to redefine the crime of rape.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I wondered. Read the rest of this entry »