Some good Irish humor on HRC and Tuzla

If only the US press could be as honest and as funny to admit that Hillary just decided to tell a bald-faced lie.  How humorless have we gotten that we're not able to simply laugh at the ridiculousness of the Clinton campaign in its last throes.

While we're treated to the he-said, she-said "misspeaking" of the New York Times, newspaper readers in Belfast actually enjoyed themselves this morning:

Anyone can make a mistake about what happened on a trip, [Hillary] said, and she's right. You might forget the name of the couple you met on the beach, or whether Thursday was the day you came under sustained mortar attack and had to dive behind sandbags and shoot your way out to safety, or was it the day you went to the dolphinarium.

Yes.  Finally!  I mean, she was with Sinbad.  That's a pretty gruesome story right there.  She doesn't have to say she was under sniper fire, but that she had to listen to Sinbad jokes the whole flight over.

Only Hillary could have made Sinbad not only culturally relevant in 2008, but actually a sympathetic figure!

But let me leave the humor to the professionals, below the fold.

This wasn't just a politician's lie, it was the pointless lie of someone who sits on their own in pubs and leans across to grab you and lie compulsively. Her next round of soft-focus adverts will probably feature her soothingly saying, "My fellow Americans, I drank a pint of walrus milk once for a bet. I speak fluent Eskimo. I once ate all the gherkins in Belgium. My brother's got a yak in his loft. I fell asleep on a night bus once and woke up in Munich, and had to get a lift back on a camel. I used to live on an iceberg. I've got a waffle-maker that works underwater."

All of these things, if true, would have made me more likely to vote for Hillary.  And, someone tell Mark Penn, the Gherkin line will score big in Pittsburgh.

Of course, like all good Irish humor, the author has a point that is simultaneously ridiculous and yet remotely conceivable.

Maybe it's part of a pact.  Her husband only seems reasonable now because the idiot that followed him is so much worse. So to even things up, as president she'll talk such twaddle that in a couple of years people start pining for Bush.

Of course, I don't really believe that she's giving GWB a break here.  But after seeing her sad performance on Leno, trying to get more mileage out of this lie, it's difficult to imagine that she'd spend four years in the White House speaking truth to power.

I'm tired of truth being in short quantity in the White House, and I'm tired of humor being in short supply here.  So read the whole piece when you have the chance.

•  tip jar

  On this day in particular, this terrible anniversary, it's not a bad idea to meet the gloom with humor.

  by zenbowl on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:07:32 AM PDT

  •  Thanks for the chuckle

    ...those Irish have a way of finding the gleam of humor even in the darkest of corners. Likely from too damn many generations having not much else to look at....

    by zzyzx on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:14:05 AM PDT

    •  You're welcome

      I think I've been so wrapped up in the campaign I've lost some of my ability to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.  I mean, here's a candidate who lies about something, pretty badly, despite lots of testimony and video evidence, and finally says that, you know what?  I talk all the time, so sometimes I'm bound to lie.  It's so preposterous that it should be funny.  But the media takes her seriously here, so we're kind of forced to be seriously outraged.  If the evening news had just laughed at her, now, that would be healthy for all of us.

      by zenbowl on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:23:08 AM PDT

      •  This is hilarious

        Her response to being caught lying to a military audience, when she invented a story about being under sniper fire in Bosnia, was to say it wasn't surprising she got some things wrong, seeing how she spoke millions of words every day. What a magnificent idea, that if you say lots of words some of them are bound to be fantastic lies. So if you listen carefully to horse-racing commentators they say things like "And it's Teddy's Boy still leading three furlongs out as they come up to the fourth last fence with Nip and Tuck two lengths behind by the way I fought a tiger once, punched it clean out and they're all safely over."

        And auctioneers say, "Three-fifty, three-sixty, three-seventy, three-seventy man in the hat three-eighty here, my dad invented cornflakes, going once going twice, and magnets, he invented them straight up – gone."

        Oh God, stop it, I'm lawling to death!

        by autoegocrat on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:31:37 AM PDT

        •  I loved the magnets line

          just because my dad happened to be the real inventor of them.  Also, he invented eggs.

          by zenbowl on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:39:29 AM PDT

•  I'd be more likely to support Hillary

  if she promised she'd go and live on an iceberg. Right now. And stay there.

  by elmo on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:13:16 AM PDT

  •  With her personality, the iceberg wouldn't melt!

    by daliscar on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:23:55 AM PDT

•  American Media

  The American media has been atrocious as usual during this election.  A perfect example is the story going out that the Clinton camps saying Richardson said Obama couldn't win, the Richardson having to come out and say he didn't say that.  Or the story by an ABC reporter that Obama may have LIED about quitting cigarettes...huh?

  Yeah, someone trying to quit smoking who is now under a lot of pressure may have strayed?  Yeah, that's pretty amazing....

  by MrWinky on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 07:38:20 AM PDT

  •  Hey!

    As an ex-smoker, Obama backsliding on quitting makes me like him MORE!  How well I remember the many failed quit attempts before I finally did it.

    Seems to me that cigarette story ought to win him votes among the trying-to-quit and finally-quit demographics.

    by ETF on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 08:39:15 AM PDT

    •  I agree

      ...with everything you said.  Of course this tool was trying to pass it off as the "Obama's a liar" story.

      by MrWinky on Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 11:14:27 AM PDT