“Get Out of My Face” (often referred to by the delightful acronym “GOOMF”) is a brilliant parody of the dick-swinging, rapid fire sports pundit barking match shows which have become a staple for ESPN — ones like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.¹ The Onion’s first installment of GOOMF appeared in the summer of 2011, and it laid me out laughing:

[rated NSFW]

Per IMDb, I am pleased to inform you that the stars of GOOMF are Robb Pruitt as Kenny Kennedy and Levan Reid as Doc Brooks.

One of the things I love about GOOMF is the deliberate graphic overload, which is barely an exaggeration of the number of shiny bells and whistles that often clutter up the screen on SportsCenter. It’s impossible to catch all of the silly headlines that scroll by on the bottom-margin news ticker and pay full attention to the characters’ dialogue in a single viewing; if you don’t have time for multiple viewings of the clip, I transcribed them all here for your quick reading convenience.

For the slightly more serious-minded, the style being parodied in this video was recently the subject of a trenchant article in The Atlantic by Patrick Hruby, entitled “The SportsCenter-ization of Political Journalism.” The jist:

Turn on ESPN. There are score tickers and headline crawls, slick graphics and constant teases for upcoming stories, everything creating a sense of urgent immediacy. Now switch to Fox News. Visually speaking, it’s the same eyeball-grabbing formula. (Well, replace scores with stock prices, and garrulous sportscaster Chris Berman with a frosted blonde news babe). This is the SportsCenter-ization of the news, in which coverage of Washington — and the world, really — apes a glossy entertainment product dedicated to spectacular touchdowns, gee-whiz statistics, prefabricated drama, insta-debates waged by a nattering, revolving-door athletic punditocracy and the very latest updates on Brett Favre’s various bodily appendages.

If the Broncos beat the Patriots later today, watch tomorrow for Fox News to start ginning up a Tim Tebow write-in campaign for the remaining GOP primary states.

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. “Is this another satirical sendup of the ludicrous extremity of Republican obstructionism? Is rape the asteroid in this joke? …NO?!? Oh my God. Get me some comic cushioning, stat!”

A legitimate case is often made that there are certain things that cannot be joked about, and that rape is one of them, because rape is not funny. I agree — with the last clause. Rape, in and of itself, is no laughing matter. I respectfully disagree, however, with the statement as a whole. There are times when even things as terrible as rape must be joked about, lest we lose our humanity.

I didn’t even laugh at the above clip when I watched it, but I did find it funny. So funny, in fact, that it kept me from breaking down into unabated primal protest. Losing my shit, as it were. And that, I think, may be the very definition of “pretty goddamned funny.”

I want to keep the health insurance I have—which is no health insurance. I was dropped when I had a heart attack. My insurance company called it a preexisting condition, and they were right. Heart attacks have been around a very long time. The important thing is that I treasure my insurance company’s free market right to maximize profits at all moral and ethical costs. I would willingly die defending that right. And now, finally, I may get that chance.

…Like Sarah Palin, I am against Obama’s death panels. I prefer Liberty Mutual’s death panels, because at least they’re American. I am not impressed with claims of socialized medicine working in countries like Britain, France, and Canada. …Single-payer systems, as we know, just aren’t fair. Why should one person have to pay for everyone else? What if that person runs out of money?

…Bleeding heart liberal commie pinko anti-American leftist homosexual traitors contend there are 47 million uninsured people in this country. But the truth is, 46,999,996 of them are illegal immigrants and the other four are my family.

…I am dead set against government sponsored preventive care. Preventive care not only weakens our natural defenses against disease but also casts our government in the role of parent. My own parents had a different approach to medical concerns. When my right foot hurt, Dad would stomp on my left foot, and vice-versa. Mom said he picked this up while watching old episodes of The Three Stooges, proving once again that we can certainly learn a lot from our forefathers.

I’m pasting more of it than I should, but still, those bits above ain’t the half of it. Get thee over to S&R and read the whole thing. Then, remember that drinking water out of the far edge of the glass is a sure-fire cure for hiccups.

Over at Dissenting Justice, Darren Hutchinson makes a clear-eyed case that the current charges racism in the political health care clusterfuck are acting as a smoke screen:

I am a law professor who teaches Constitutional Law, Civil Rights, Race and the Law and other areas related to equality. I have spent nearly two decades researching and writing about race relations and public policy. With respect to the rightwing attacks on President Obama, however, I find the issue of race largely uninteresting.

…The issue of race has become the latest nonpolicy distraction for the media. Earlier, the media covered violence and mayhem at healthcare town hall discussions — rather than the substance of reform. It then covered the conflicts between moderate and liberal Democrats (rather than the substance of reform). Now, it is exploring whether the opposition to Obama is racist (rather than the substance of reform).

Here’s a thought: Analyze the substance of reform — rather than the subjective emotions that shape its opposition.

If only, huh? The problem with the MSM is that they are constantly seeking new angles to use in their coverage of the health care debate. This plays into the agenda of the anti-reform troglodytes, who have long since resorted to wild, unhinged bullshittery in order to divert focus from actual policy questions. Now it seems that Jimmy Carter, Maureen Dowd and others who have pointed out the implicit racism in the rabid condemnation of all things Obama may have played into the opposition’s diversionary hands.

The anti-Obama political coalition’s opposition to health care reform is indefensible in terms of good governance, hence their unleashing outrageous cries of Marxism, totalitarianism, socialism, Nazism, death panels, child brainwashing, and ostensibly, cooties. Never mind that their position denies cootie spray to all who can’t afford the non-formulary co-payment rate.

At this point I feel compelled to alert you, my esteemed readers, that the remainder of this post will contain expressions garnished with no small amount of profanity. If this does not suit your taste, I hope that you will keep in mind that 1) you were alerted beforehand, and 2) it’s my fucking blog.

As I was saying… today’s attempt to make my head explode comes courtesy of Stephen Hayes and William Kristol at the Weekly Standard:

All week, the Obama administration [has] bent over backwards to avoid questioning the legitimacy of the Iranian regime. In this, Obama became a de facto ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Although Obama finally spoke about the protesters–”the whole world is watching,” he said–he never expressed real support for them…

“On several occasions, I’ve had supporters of Mousavi say we need President Obama,” reported CNN’s Reza Sayah, from Tehran. When Wolf Blitzer asked Sayah directly whether the protesters want Obama to speak out in support of their cause, Sayah responded: “I think they do, but they’re realistic.”

“Realistic” about the weakness, about the foolish and counterproductive “realism,” of an American president. How sad.

You know how they say it’s always a good in a critique to start off by praising something, or saying something positive? I’m subscribing to that theory, because you do have one statement in there that I fully agree with: “How sad.”

Of course, on the question of what is sad, as well as on every other point in this excerpt, you are absolutely and unambiguously fucking wrong. What is sad — distressingly sad — is that you two reactionary neocon fuckwits are so goddamned far down your ideological rabbit holes that when a human tragedy is unfolding in front of our eyes, you immediately try to exploit it for a few cheap political points. Way to win hearts and minds, assholes.

Obama’s statements are foolish, you say. Counterproductive. Counterproductive? Are you fucking serious? OK then, as long as you’re caricaturing yourself, tell us: what would you have him do? Drop the 101st Airborne in there led by Bruce Willis and save the protesters? Point a few cruise missiles at ‘em, maybe fire one across the bow? Have Obama dress in green, complete with face paint, and wave a saber over his head at a special Rose Garden press conference? Well keep it in your pants, you ridiculous jerkoffs, because it ain’t gonna fucking happen.

Were you not suffering from such serious rectal-cranial inversions, you might be aware that (as I mentioned yesterday), we’ve had a few mishaps with Iran in the past. Mainly this one time in 1953 when the CIA had this thing called Operation Ajax, in which we overthrew their democratically-elected leader and installed The Shah? The guy who was a brutal dictator but who gives a shit because he let our corporations tap Iranian oil reserves? Until 25 years later when the people rose up and ousted him, rallying behind the leadership of the current cabal of Islamic fundamentalist nutjobs who have governed the country ever since? The ones who staged a nakedly bullshit sham election to keep themselves in power? The ones who are sending their cops and militia thugs out into the streets today in a bloodthirsty, murderous crackdown against their own people?

See, if you weren’t so hellbent on discrediting Obama at any cost, you might be sentient enough to realize that Iranian ruling junta’s discrediting of itself is accelerating with each blustery protestation of legitimacy, each day of popular unrest, each desperate act of violent suppression of the will of the citizenry. You might even be able to see that perhaps the ONLY WAY Ahmadinejad and the council of imams might regain some credibility is if their fanciful and desperate accusations that the United States and its allies are acting to foment revolution were TRUE.

Why are Mousavi supporters saying they wish they had Obama to intervene, but are “realistic” about it? Because they’re not fucking idiots. They know all of this stuff that I’ve been talking about here. Do I wish we could do more to help them? Of course I do. But unlike you two punditiot troglydytes, I am realistic (there’s that word again — bummer how the real world always gets in the way, huh?) about our track record of installing governments in countries other than our own.

So do us all a favor and just be happy with your honorary PhD’s from STFU. And practice what they teach. Otherwise you start spouting that “Obama is a de facto ally of Ahmadinejad and Khamanei” horseshit, which leads the non-punditiot population to the logical conclusion, “Hayes and Kristol are de profundis assholes.”