Excerpt Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
Already I've composed seventeen different versions of what I want to say about YearlyKos; I want to do it justice, so please forgive me if I take a little more time to find the right expression. In the meantime, I finally broke out of my writer's block long enough to compose a little rant...
This morning, watching last night's episode of The Daily Show (I tape it -- rare is the evening when I can stay lucid enough to watch television that late, though I'm often awake in an insomniac daze), I became incensed as I watched Jon Stewart's interview with Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Now, it's difficult to compartmentalise the various aspects of the Bush Regime that drive me batshit insane with anger; the incompetence, the mendacity, the cronyism, the graft, the callous indifference to human suffering, the hypocrisy, the -- did I mention incompetence? -- it's ALL so fucking infuriating, isn't it?
But the Mehlman interview sent me over another cliff of rage.
It's the sly wink-and-a-nod way with which Republicans acknowledge to Jon Stewart and his audience the obvious truth -- truth that they refuse to acknowledge in any other venue -- that does it to me. Mehlman and his scumsucking cohorts visit The Daily Show and take the slings and arrows of Stewart's often incisive questions and comments, couched as they are in his inimitable comedic stylings -- as well as the jeers of his patently partisan audiences...
And oh, the smirks! The nods! The winks! It makes me fucking sick. To a man, they ALL sit there and admit the truth with their facial expressions, their pregnant pauses, their goddamned coy refusals to DENY the truth.
Any other interviewer, should she dare to confront them with the same truths as Stewart (THOUGH I HAVE YET TO SEE SUCH A THING), would be met with talking points and obfuscation -- dead serious obeisance to the Bush Regime's policy of lying to the media and the American people with a straight face, the better to continue to convince that remaining credulous 29%.
But on The Daily Show? THEY DON'T EVEN BOTHER. They know full fucking well its audience sees through every lie -- so they just simper and preen, making a show of squirming under the glare of truth. While never actually giving in and just admitting it, these smug motherfuckers give Stewart and all of us a tacit admission of the truth -- because they know goddamned well it doesn't mean a thing until the REAL media -- the CORPORATE MEDIA -- covers it, and they know goddamned well they've got the REAL media -- the CORPORATE MEDIA -- by their corporate balls.
So forgive me, I'm feeling a wee bit fucking furious today. Sometimes I think I'd be better off without The Daily Show, in much the same way as I feel I'd be blissful if only I were ignorant. But ignorance is not an option for me, or for you; one of these days we're going to stop coming across like Cassandra and start looking more like the fucking Oracle we are and have been ALL ALONG.
For now, I'll have to leave you with the one pure piece of optimism I took away from Las Vegas and the Yearly Kos convention:
We are legion. And we WILL overcome this obscenity of an era...
eventually.
UPDATE: With thanks to MLW's gottlieb, here's the Crooks & Liars link to last night's TDS