Tomorrow night, the Fox News Channel rolls out its answer to “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” a fake news program that skews to the far right. The show, called “The
Connect
the 1/2 hour news hour
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It has always seemed like Coulter and Limbaugh have been satirists, drawing our attention, via burlesque, to the evils of our current system. The problem has been that some people just don’t get satire, and they take them seriously.
Quote from Rush Limbaugh, circa 1990, when I was a delivery driver laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of his show: “Don’t make your own opinions. I’ll make them for you.” After some time listening to the Limbaugh show’s callers, I stopped laughing and became fearful of the mechanisms in people’s minds that allow for backward, corrupt and illogical ideas to be lodged within those minds as dogma. And then one of his listeners became President–a puppet one, anyway.
I can’t figure out if the two-party system is the problem, or if it was corrupted by other factors. It has become clear that our two parties have become cult-like, to varying degrees. Yes, it shudders me when I talk with a Neocon-brainwashed person and hear regurgitation instead of thoughtful exploration of ideas. But I’ve heard uncritical, brainwashed Democrat clones, too, who overlook the corruption within their own party as they spout party dogma and point fingers at the other side. Just as Limbaugh and Coulter are scary, so is James Carville. Some of the most intelligent Americans are indoctrinated in one of the two parties, falling victim to the relative blindness that prevents one from seeing the flaws in his or her own group.
The NCAA has an investigating body that roots out corruption in the college sports teams that break the rules. The police have internal affairs policing them. I’m not sure how effective these entities are, but what do we have at the political level? Committees headed by corrupt politicians to investigate corrupt politicians. Absurd. They sacrifice a scapegoat now and then, but that is all part of maintaining the corruption.
What’s wrong with our system, and what’s wrong with us as people who tolerate the system? Is our best option to side with the lesser of two evils, the Democrats, and first put a stop to this Neocon extremism and corruption, with the notion in mind that we will address the corruption in the Democratic Party later? What else can we do?
The latest Neocon trick (can they even be called tricks when they are so transparent?) to find cause to start war with Iran is shameful. We have seen the Neocons continually test the power of their cult’s propaganda and control, always to find out what they can get away with. I can imagine their surprise at private meetings when they exclaim, “Damn, we got away with that one?” If the corporate lobbyists with entrenched money pipelines to our politicians have not jeopardized the democratic essence of our republic, the political powers’ abilities to manipulate, brainwash, anesthetize and indoctrinate the masses has seemingly terminated it.
Maybe I should just embrace the corruption and absurdity–and play with it. Isn’t that what the Daily Show is all about?
Sorry for trolling. I miss blogging.
Dirtgrain-I think you’ve hit the nail on the proverbial head. You’ve pretty much said what I’ve been thinking for quite some time. The Republicrats have our country under so much control that a third party (or fourth, fifth, or ninth for that matter) can’t even be heard by the average citizen.
In 1992 there were 9 people on the ballot for President. I knew about 5 of them, and the only reason I knew about 2 of them was because I was beginning to read alternative press pages that were in abundance around U of M. The third bought his way on and was there for comedic value anyway. I truly believe in a democracy in which everyone who is up for an election should have EQUAL opportunity to be heard. The debates are the biggest part of this process. In the 2000 election Ralph Nader was nearly arrested for simply showing up and sitting in the audience (he should’ve gotten arrested, maybe this would have highlighted the problem, but whatever). He paid for the right to go, they asked him to leave. The press got him back in, they told him to leave or go to jail. That’s draconian.
This only illustrates one part of the problem. The corporate media doesn’t help this. In fact, they actually do more to hurt us by fostering these false and misleading ideas of how our political identity is only bi-polar as they tell us it is. Our political landscape is not that simple. It irritates me to see it presented to the world in such away.
Whew! Ok, back to my regularly scheduled shingles.
“can conservative’s be funny?”
Two words- Mallard Fillmore.
Fuckin’ A Dirtgrain.
There should be a alternative party fake news show, but then, no one would be prepped to know when to laugh.
the problem is—-conservatives are just not funny! it’s part of the definition. liberals are hilarious as a basic part of their personalities. right wingers are uptight, constipated and rigid.i can’t wait to see that fucker die a quick painful death.
They should stick to what the do well, like fucking the poor, building prisons and killing non-Christians.
The odds against other parties forming is tougher now than I would guess back in the day– But it’s always been tough, as the established and tired old horses we have today have always been quick to steal planks from a third party’s original ideas, using those ideas themselves, in a watered down version, sort of stealing the thunder, I guess– Or quick to squash them in various ways such as a primary system that only caters to a two party system, etc…
Conservatives are meant to be laughed at, not with.