From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Tea Party Protester Says: Late Night Snark = Hitler!!!
"There were tea party protests today. People have been mailing tea bags to members of Congress to, I guess, express their dissatisfaction with taxes and government spending. Nothing shakes a politician up like a complimentary bag of tea. Next year will be crumpets, buddy!"
---Jimmy Kimmel
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"Let me get this straight. To protest wasteful spending, you bought a million tea bags? Are you protesting taxes or irony?"
---Jon Stewart
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"This is coming out today: Rush Limbaugh’s dog says he hopes Obama’s dog fails."
---David Letterman
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"It's baseball season! ... Baseball brings back so many great memories. I love it---the smell of the grass, the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd. I can still remember when my dad got me my first syringe."
---Jimmy Fallon
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"Car sales are down this year, but marijuana sales are up. So today, General Motors introduced a new car made of pot."
---Craig Ferguson
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"I love that [National Organization for Marriage] ad. It's like watching The 700 Club and The Weather Channel at the same time."
---Stephen Colbert (Watch his own version of the ad here)
Weekend on. Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, April 17, 2009
Note: C&J is taking the day off Monday so we can do the Boston Marathon, starting with their self-titled multi-platinum debut, Boston, and working our way up to 2002's Corporate America. When it's over we're gonna be icin' down our cochleas for days.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Memorial Day: 38
Days `til the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan: 15
Percent of American adults who know that humans and dinosaurs didn’t exist at the same time: 59%
Percent who know it takes a year for the Earth to revolve around the sun: 53%
(Source: Harris poll via The Week)
Number of new California gold-mining claims filed with the government during the first three months of 2009: 1,173
Total number of claims in California: 24,583
(Source: USA Today)
Number of U.S. state quarters that feature the Wright Brothers' plane: 2 (NC, OH)
And from the Department of Homeland Security:
Days the color-coded federal terror alert system has been in place: 2,593
Days spent at terror alert level Blue or Green: 0
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Damn...economy's hittin' everyone.
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CHEERS to sensible warnings. The Department of Homeland Security is "right" on the money (ha ha---can't stop me from whippin' out them ideological spectrum puns) for alerting law abiding Americans to the distinct possibility that right-wing groups or individuals might be cooking up some serious crazy. But Republicans, once again, have gone into knee-jerk hissy-fit mode by claiming that the new DHS report was directed at the tea party participants. Umm...not quite. More like neo-Nazi, KKK and paranoid militia groups (the Southern Poverty Law Center's handy state map makes it easy to find the fuzzy wuzzies close to you), and those pesky individuals who sit in their apartments and seethe over phantom threats spread by the conservative media and their own overactive imaginations. So if you're out and about, be alert for these goons. The most common clues: goose stepping, carrying a cross in one arm and a can 'o gas in the other, and a total inability to parallel park. (Don’t ask---even the FBI is stumped by that one.)
JEERS to "Bank Run Burr." So let's say you're a nondescript Republican Senator from North Carolina and you need to make a name for yourself. What will you do? What WILL you do? If you're Senator Richard Burr you come up with a sensible plan for reacting to the economic crisis:
- Panic!!!
- Knock back a few Jagermeisters to calm nerves
- Call wife on Friday night
- Frantically tell wife to withdraw family fortune from ATM over weekend
- Curse madly when you realize ATM withdrawal requests have maximum limit
- Brag to voters that a run on banks via ATMs is a brilliant plan
- Issue lame explanation when media gets wind of your brilliant plan
- Kiss re-election chances goodbye?
Next week he'll speak to a lifeguard convention and demonstrate how he saves drowning victims: "Here, catch this cinderblock!"
JEERS to burying the evidence. I always thought that a basic tenet of journalism was, "If it bleeds, it leads." There was all kinds of bleeding going on as we were torturing alleged terrorists (tell me how many have been convicted so far?), as revealed in the four shocking Bush administration "torture memos" released yesterday by the Obama administration. A bigger bombshell could not have been dropped, and yet in today's USA Today the story appears on page A6, and in the Portland Press Herald it shows up on page A9. As in, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine! (I'm curious to know where your local paper placed the story.) You'd be rather hard-pressed to find a link at the major news sites (as usual, it was the cool media that covered it well). And most people have greeted the story (if they've read about it at all) with a yawn. Mommy, what's wrong with us?
CHEERS to saddle sores for freedom. 234 years ago tomorrow, On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott hopped onto their Segways and scootered from Boston to Concord, Mass., warning the citizens of the approaching British army (Prescott was the only one with enough juice to make it all the way). Their focus group-tested talking point: "The British Are Coming!" The day after, our War of Independence began with a brief skirmish at Lexington, an engagement at Concord's North Bridge (which the Brits would've breached if they'd remembered to bring change for the tollbooth), and then guerrilla warfare as we chased the exhausted redcoats back to Bahston. Shortly after, British General Thomas Gage quietly took down the "Mission Accomplished" banner from the bridge of his frigate.
JEERS to fuzzy crystal balls. The "experts" are at it again. In the business section of today's Portland Press Herald, there are three more examples of whoopsiness in three separate stories:
First-time jobless benefit claims fell more than expected for the second straight week.
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The decline [in housing construction] was worse than economists had expected and February activity was revised lower.
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Nokia led high-tech stocks higher after the world's top mobile phone maker said it was maintaining its outlook for the phone market and had surpassed analyst expectations for mobile phone sales during the first quarter.
You can be an analyst, too! All you need is a penny and a springy thumb. Add a pair of green eyeshades and you can charge an extra 25k.
GOOD LUCK to the conservative ha-ha machine. Gary Andres at the conservative The Weekly Standard admits that the left's brand of political humor---led by The Daily Show---is hugely influential on younger voters, and says Republicans should get back into the comedy game. (Their last effort, Fox's "Half Hour Comedy Hour" died a horrible yet mercifully quick death.) I don’t think they can pull it off in this climate and here's why: political humor needs to start with a basic kernel of truth before it can be twisted into a joke. The left does this quite well. The right does not. Take this editorial cartoon, for example, in which the artist starts with the dishonest assertion that the tea party crowd was right about Congress raising taxes (in fact, they've cut them for the last decade and just passed a huge middle-class tax cut). Or the one in which the artist uses the recent lifting of restrictions on Cuba by referencing nuclear missiles that haven't been pointed at us from that country in half a century to make a statement about Iran, which doesn’t have any nuclear missiles. WTF??? So before the noble opposition tries to mine yucks from reality, they first need to learn how to mine reality from reality. Here endeth the lesson.
P.S. Speaking of Iran, there's some bad news and good news from that wacky place. The bad news: they recently installed 7,000 centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant. The good news: they haven't actually enriched uranium yet. But they have cloned a goat. It glows in the dark!
CHEERS to bawdy Ben. Ol' Benjamin Franklin, who in his day probably did a little teabagging of his own with the mademoiselles in Paris---died on this date in 1790. I guess that explains why he never returns my calls.
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Five years ago in C&J: April 17, 2004
JEERS to the 'Simpsons' cast strike. No TV show in history has been so sharp for so long. C'mon Fox, this ain't the Qwik-E-Mart---stick a crowbar in your wallet and pay `em what they deserve.
JEERS to the super rich. The top 400-richest Americans saw their taxes drop from 30 cents on the dollar to 22 cents between 1995 and 2000, says 'The Week' magazine. Punchline courtesy of Dorothy Parker: "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the Wanker Slayer. Everybody stop by and say "Heh indeedy" to Atrios this evening on this, the Baby Blue Cherub's seventh blogiversary. Few people can reduce the traditional media and punditry's asshattery to one or two lines of witty snark (snarky wit?) like he can. He was especially ahead-of-the-curve on the economic meltdown, and continues to throw well-aimed darts into the weaknesses of the Obama recovery plan. Extra points for his support of SUPERTRAINS!!! Oh, and for those of you just starting your own blogs, take heart: they all begin with nary a peep.
Have a great weekend. Don’t forget to tell your children they can make a difference. Specifically, hand 'em a rake and tell 'em to make a difference in the back yard. Floor's open---what are you cheering and jeering about today?
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