Brits Charlie Brooker on the American News Media - The smackdown of Fox News is seriously funny. You really don't want to miss this video
Don't miss the Brooker update below - Wish that I could talk pretty like him
Some other observations of Obama derangement syndrome from the across the pond.
Sarah Baxter of the UK Sunday Times thinks that The torrent of ideas flowing out of the White House is raising hackles across the US
Right’s rage at overbearing Obama
A CONSERVATIVE talk show host claims Barack Obama’s policies amount to dousing the American public with petrol and lighting a match. A top adviser to George W Bush calls the vice-president a liar. And a congressman says there are 17 "socialists" in the House of Representatives.
The political invective is turning ugly after the promise of hope and change. Some say it is Obama’s fault for his hyperactivist style of government. Others say it is time the Republicans realised they lost.
The meaning of "Obamaism" – yes, he already has his own "ism" – is being hotly debated. Is it style or substance? The hype about his cool has been overtaken by the realisation on both sides of the divide that Obama meant what he said on the campaign trail about being a transformational president.
Andrew Sullivan thinks that all of the right wing invective against Obama proves that he has won over the middle
Obama’s best friend: a seething, sniping right
The upswing in virulent Republican hostility has been the most marked feature of the first three months of Obama’s presidency. Obama has been called a socialist and a fascist by Fox News’s newest ratings star, Glenn Beck. Another star of the right, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, has warned that Obama intends to force the young into mandatory reeducation camps. Another leading light, the former senator Rick Santorum, has written that Obama "has a deep-seated antipathy towards American values and traditions".
But this, when you come to think about it, is far more worrying for the Republicans than for Obama, if Obama maintains a centre-left course. The right’s strategy is clear: define Obama as a far-left radical, and wait. Offer nothing substantive as policy alternatives, but keep the drumbeat up. It’s a classic strategy – and it was what John McCain and Hillary Clinton tried last year.
In the poll of polls, Obama’s disapproval rate has actually dropped from the high thirties to the low thirties in just the past month. What’s striking is that as Republican hostility has soared, the rest of the country has actually warmed to the new president. When Obama took office, only 26% of Americans believed their country was on the right track. That number is now 40% and rising steadily. In January 23% approved of Congress; now 35% do. Obama’s personal favourable ratings are now higher than when he won the election
UPDATE: I enjoyed Charlie Brooker's video so much that I went searching for more of his work. He wrote this on Nov. 10th
Is Obama really president or am I just watching a fantasy? It's almost too good to be true
On the one hand, you had Obama (Will Smith in admittedly impressive makeup, although the ears never really convinced). He was practically walking on water. No one's that nice. And pitched against him, the Republican campaign, which was so nakedly horrible it could only have been orchestrated by Skeletor. Nudge-wink comments about "the real America", underhand attempts to link Obama with terrorism, automated robo-calls whispering desperate fibs into the ears of voters ... if Obama's grandmother had died while he was at her bedside in Hawaii, they'd have erected billboards claiming he couldn't be trusted around white women. Jesus, guys, why not just change your name to the Bastard Party and march around in long black capes? Vote for us, we're openly despicable
The scriptwriters clearly decided to balance the nastiness by introducing some satirical comic relief in the form of Sarah Palin, but she was scarcely plausible either. And they never really nailed her story arc, instead being content to have her wandering through every scene she was in, screeching inept banalities like a rightwing version of Phoebe from Friends. And what was with the whole Joe the Plumber sub-plot? I mean, c'mon, they invited him on tour and everything. As if. In the real world, no one would've bought that for a second.