Friday, January 14, 2011

David Kahane: Once More unto the Breach of Civility

Who’s to blame for Tucson? Why, Sarah Palin and you, of course.
*
Michael Walsh -- aka "David Kahane" -- has boiled over another steaming bowl of his (in)famous satire soup and served it up at NRO:
Like many of us stalwart men of the Progressive-Media-Entertainment Complex, I have never been so beamish. As the president explained so eloquently Wednesday night, what happened in Tucson was a tragedy and all, but watching the wild-eyed Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, pin the Glock on the elephant in the pages of the New York Times was simply wonderful. Based on nothing more than the loud voices coming through the fillings in his teeth, our bearded, pot-bellied superhero leapt into action the day after the Tucson shootings and started pointing the finger of blame where it always belongs: at Sarah Palin and the “climate of hate” she has brought down from Mystery, Alaska, to torment us here in the Lower 48. Naturally, a few of you protested that there was no actual evidence that the hated succubus who haunts our fever dreams and saps our purity of essence had anything to do with the gunman. Nor did any of the other right-wing crazies on our (symbolic!) hit lists — and you Limbaugh-loving teabaggers know who you are.

[...]

In the fantasy world in which we dwell, the only thing that counts is what’s inside our heads, and in our heads is where Sarah Palin lives and where she willfully continues to insert herself into the national conversation. Raised on relativism, psychiatry, and sociology; on values instead of morals; on transactional relationships instead of “absolute truths”; on heavy-metal music, atheism, and abortion on demand — we long ago slipped the moorings of empiricism and have ascended to the rarefied heights of Cockaigne and Cloud Cuckoo Land. Black is white, up is down, in is out — this is our world and you’re not welcome to it. Because it’s not for you to say what you do and do not stand for — we’ll be the judge of that.

[...]

So is it any wonder we immediately assume that you personally are responsible for everything bad that occurs in the world, you and Sarah Palin? Your very existence can only be an encouragement to nutballs, crazies, weirdos, and jackasses everywhere either to pick up a gun and start shooting, or to think about picking up a gun and start shooting, which to us is exactly the same thing. Like the somnambulists in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, we’ve drilled down so far into our dreams that reality and fantasy are indistinguishable, and we figure that if credentialed Ivy Leaguers like ourselves can’t tell the difference, why should you Dogtooth State Teachers College johnnies be any different?

Forget all that stuff we were saying about knives and gunfights and enemies and hanging Joe Lieberman in effigy, killing Henry Hyde, etc.; that was just our typical, high-spirited use of metaphor. Putting aside all the smashed plate-glass windows, the “Days of Rage,” and the photoshopped pictures of %$#@BUSH#$@! as the love child of Dracula and Hitler; we’re just a bunch of pot-smoking, fun-loving pacifist draft-dodgers at heart. This violence thing — we don’t really mean it, and you know it.

[...]

Which is why I’m beaming. Because we lovers finally stood up to you swaggering bullies, who dominate every conversation even if there’s only one of you in the room against a dozen of us. We unleashed “The End Is Near” Krugman, foam-flecked Chris Matthews, dyspeptic Bill Maher, and every other arrow in our quiver to pin you against the wall, fill you full of lead, eviscerate you, decapitate you, burn your houses to the ground, rape your women, loot your treasure, and send your children into slavery. Like Sherman marching through Georgia, we sent our caissons rolling along, brought down the hammer and targeted you for —

Whoops! Got carried away with my martial metaphors there!

[More]
- JP

No comments:

Post a Comment