It is sad to observe that the Republican days of innovation died with the careers of the Thomas Alva Edisons of our day – Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove. It’s a long fall from the glory days of Indian casino scams, redistricting shenanigans and reshaping the entire DOJ in Karl’s image to wheel-spinning by 527 retreads like the Ari Fleischer group Freedom’s Watch.
Really, I had no idea until I read this article how dysfunctional even running a basic astroturf outfit has become for the right these days. Apparently Freedom’s Watch was meant to be more than just another clinic for slanted commercials (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but a full on answer to the MoveOn.orgernaut. Scary. Unfortunately the implementation has been a complete disaster. The managing director quit in the middle of the election season and instead of pulling in millions of small donations from committed members the group mostly lives off $30 million from a dyspeptic control freak named Sheldon Adelson, plus a handful of $100-500k contributors.
Apparently things are not going well for Freedom’s Watch. Blame-shifting permeates the piece, making it read as if Ari Fleischer couldn’t wait to write a Feith-type exculpatory book did so he phoned the Post instead. The erstwhile president gets some blame but the piece seems weirdly focused on Adelson’s refusal to cut the strings to his money. Weirdly because if Adelson is as much of a vindictive, control freak prick as the story’s anonymous sources suggest then it seems like a bad strategy to go whining to the news media about what an asshole he is. Unless this is an innovative new type of expectations management MoveOn probably should not stay up late waiting for their “answer.”
As long as we’re on the topic, some other great moments in rightwing originality come to mind.
* Remember how RedState would answer the freewheeling, incredibly influential community blogs like Daily Kos? It worked out so well that Balloon Juice kicked RedState’s ass this year at the weblog awards, and Daily Kos could squeeze our blog’s traffic on one of its older servers on a busy day. A fair comparison between those two is like a head to head match between a semi and an opossum. Here are some thoughts about what happened.
* Speaking of Daily Kos, this piece on House minority leader John Boehner’s answer to the Democrats’ rampaging Red-to-Blue caucus is hilarious.
* The Daily Show isn’t specifically partisan, but it is funny. The “answer” from FOX was partisan as hell, but even the show’s best friends couldn’t describe it as funny. Steve Benen had a nice summary of reactions at the time.
calipygian
You wrote once that you can’t wait for Glenn Greenwald to become as big a pain in the ass to lefties as he is to the Asshole Right now.
I think people are going to be shocked when Stweart and Colbert take a “rightward” swing after the Dems take two of the three branches of government this fall.
Its not that they will suddenly turn Republican. Satire has to attack the powerful, else its not satire – its just mean spirited humor.
Incertus
The lesson from Freedom’s Watch is that you can’t buy a grassroots organization, not a real one anyway. Moveon has the pull it does because it grew from the bottom up. And while the Great Orange Satan often gets cast as a place where no dissent is allowed, the fact is that there’s often a great deal of dissent on those pages, especially when compared to the heavy-handedness and quick-trigger banning at RedState.
Tim in SF
Good post. (as usual). But, what is the MoveOn.orgernaut? What is an orgernaut? Thnx.
Punchy
I see it differently. Stewart mocks the inanely laughable GOP b/c…well…their grip on “reality” is just too funny to be ignored. Dems, by and large, are much less likely to take to such leaps of logic b/c they’re not forced to use such insane arguments to defend the EPA, FDA, FAA, FEMA, Iraq, Iran, GITMO, etc.
Therefore, I expect him to mock the Dems as necessary, but I foresee much less you-gotta-be-shittin-me comedy disguised as politics coming from the Dem side, if only b/c the Dems need a few years to really fuck things up worse than Bush.
Cain
However, it’s going to be fun to watch MoveOn smack the dems around. MoveOn is not the democratic party’s friend. They’re running candidates that are more progressive than the establishment types. MoveOn is doing exactly what we should be doing. Weeding out the asshats in the Democratic circles and getting some good people in there instead that reflect where the party is. For once there is a party appartus that’s not from the party itself creating a check on things.
cain
D0n Camillo
That’s one of the main reasons that it’s so hard to find a funny conservative. Bashing gays, poor people, immigrants legal and illegal is just not funny.
jrg
What’s happening to the GOP noise machine is what we call in the technology business “disruption”
In a nutshell, when the internet came around, it commoditized punditry, and exposed and debunked bullshit. The internet, in other words, has shown us just how cheap words can be.
At the same time, the pundits on the right continued their outrageous assaults on everything from people with Parkinson’s disease to soldiers that have stood up against the war. In the past, these personal and often petty attacks would have gone ignored or un-noticed. But with smallish internet communities cropping up all over the place, when a right-wing pundit insults one of these groups, it gets “airplay” in that niche community.
I always cite slashdot.org (one of the first big blogs) as the best example. During the Clinton years, if their was partisan bickering at all, the commentators were evenly divided, with libertarians holding the middle. With the assault on the 4th amendment over the past couple of years, it’s hard to find anyone on that site that parrots GOP talking points and does not get flagged as a troll.
That’s how the right has lost the internet. Things will improve for them a bit when a Dem is president, because people on the internet like to complain. The GOP will never have a good hold on the internet, however, because their ideology is too rigid and top-down to deal with it.
WRT the right wing not being funny, it’s because their humor is dependent upon their ideology, which makes it too predictable. Outrage can be funny, but redundancy is not.
Incertus
He’ll also go back to his real bread-and-butter, which is mocking the hapless news media. That’s when he’s at his best, after all–taking a chunk out of the collective asses of Fox News, Wolf Blitzer, etc.
calipygian
Thats why Rush Limbaugh is worse than not funny – he is actually destructive to his audience. He calls himself a humorist and a satirist because he has either tapped into an audience that already had a low self-esteem, self-pitying middle-class Willy Lomans who need someone else to blame for their failures, or, he has convinced his listeners that there is some sort of powerful conspiracy of lesbian/black/librul/latte-drinkers that is oppressing the white man. Instead of building up his audience, he is like an abusive husband, beating the already beaten self-esteem of his wife and the wife not imagining any other way. Its also how Limbaugh gets away with calling himself a satirist. By over inflating the supposed threat and beating down his audience, he can pretend to be skewering the “powerful”.
On the other hand, I feel that Colbert and Stewart are empowering. How much balls did it take for Colbert to get up there, call the President of the United States a liar to his face, and then call the entire Washington press corps assholes to their face for not calling Bush on it? That is fucking inspiring!
D0n Camillo
Rush Limbaugh calls himself a satirist? Making fun of someone’s Parkinson’s symptoms is not exactly speaking truth to power.
calipygian
To Limbaugh’s audience, making fun of someone with Parkinson’s IS speaking truth to power because Michael J Fox is part of that all powerful clique of libruls that is keeping the white man down.
I’m not joking.
See Bill O’Reilly and his white, Christian, male power structure.
--Blue Girl
I love it when agenda whores get virulent syphilis.
b. hussein canuckistani
There was a thread running on some of the right wing blogs a while ago about the “top 100 conservative rock and roll songs” which made it painfully clear that conservatives don’t rock very well either. Painful examples I still recall were “Wake up Little Susie” because it was about good teens feeling shame about appearances, and Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore” because – I shit you not – of the line “The tyrant’s face is red” – which means communism!
You can still see the impression my hand left on my face.
D0n Camillo
I know. I wish you were. The right wing punditocracy has tapped into and in turn fed an incredibly ugly seam in American society. History is not going to be kind to them. The last 30 years or so have been really hard to watch. The Bush presidency allowed all this ugliness to finally come to a head. Let’s hope we can finally lance it.
PeterJ
There was a The Daily Show before Bush, there will be a The Daily Show after Bush.
But it will be interesting to see what will happen with it in 2009. Until then one can always check older clips on its website. Here’s one from 1999 with Stewart, Colbert and Carell.
Carell hasn’t changed one iota, can’t say the same about Colbert and definitely not Stewart…
Fulcanelli
Indeed. Which made Dennis Miller’s defection to the dark side so pathetic, although he tends to focus his AAA battery powered laser on global warming and islamofascist debunkers.
Isn’t he running a game show now? Lame.
This post I ran across pretty much nails it on why GOP Conservative “humor” doesn’t and never will work.
PeterJ
And after everything about 3:00AM calls, here’s Jon Stewart at 4:00AM…
Zifnab
First off, the right wingers – Boehner et al – have been doing such a good job of making asses out of themselves even in the minority that I doubt they’ll run out of new material come November. If anything, Boehner’s “Red to Oh-god-don’t-turn-Blue” list seems to indicate his desire to save the craziest of the crazies at the expense of anyone vaguely moderate. Keep Mean Jean around for another two years, put her in some key leadership positions, and let the good times roll.
Secondly, I doubt Stewart will mock people just for the sake of mocking them. When he or Colbert have opened up on Democrats – and they’ve been doing that a long, if not as often, as they’ve been mocking Republicans – all their jokes have been aimed squarely at people who deserve it.
Mocking the Dems for repeatedly caving on the war, for splitting and in-fighting, and for pulling Hillary-esque bullshit won’t turn off the general Stewart audience at all. The 18-35 college educated demographic that Stewart reigns over isn’t interested in toe-the-party-line politics. They’re relatively smart and sensible people who know when ridicule is deserved.
As the Democrats ascend to power, Stewart will start turning his guns on the party with the most public exposure, John Cole will get more mileage out of his “Democratic Stupidity” tag, and no one will be the least bit shocked or offended unless they just got redirected from Hillaryis44.org
jrg
For sure, but Colbert better have a contingency plan for when Papa Bear finally gets axed. Either he will need to become a more serious (less sardonic) pundit, or he will need to explore a different form of comedy.
shirt
I’m s
PeterJ
Colbert has transcended Papa Bear. He doesn’t need him anymore. Colbert is now an entity of his own.
Like Tucker, Papa Bear will be gone soon, but Colbert will prevail.
He, like Obama, transcends.
shirt
I’m sorry. Carelessly clearing a pop-up resulted in an unguided launch of a briliant submission. Actually, just a bit snarky. The catagory you filed the post under was “republican stupidity”: isn’t that a tautology?
slippy hussein toad
I just checked in on RedState. Used to have an account there, years ago. could tell it was of little or no use to actually use it, as the banhammer was ever-ready for those who stepped out of line.
But what I found just a tad funny just now was how their guns are trained fully on Obama. Every other article was about Barack Obama and his elitism and his ‘problems’ and blah blah blah blah blah. And articles that weren’t about Obama — they weren’t about Hillary either.
The GOP knows who they’re facing in the fall. I wish Hillary would wake up and get the picture.
Ninerdave
Just a random thought, I wonder why Air America never became as dominate as any of the conservative talkers.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Air America showed up with well designed, well-built wind-powered frigates just about the time steam-driven ironclads (Das Blogosboot) came on the scene.
Disruption, as noted above.
Rick Taylor
Yup. You see Hillary supporters talking about how supportive various right wing groups have been towards their cadidate, and they can’t seem to figure out why. The funniest example was over at Taylor Marsh where they played a video of Joe Scarborough fawning over her, and decided he must respect her strength.
jones
wow, you kicked their ass in the weblog awards. I guess that proves conclusively you were right about every thing you ever wrote and they are wrong, and will be from here to eternity.
All this hysterical tantrum throwing by Cole is hysterically funny because it basically shows that the entire “bitter” episode is drawing blood and Cole knows it, so he’s freaking out in frustration.
The bottom line is, Wright may have lost Obama the election a month ago, but this just “ices the cake” as Tim Maguire, who has more wit in his little finger than Cole has in his swollen ass and head put together, put it. Obama always did have an uphill battle to win the election, but now its looking like a possible bloodbath for downticket Dems as well. Why the hell do you think the superdelegates haven’t just gone ahead and anointed Obama? Here’s your reason. They know he’s a stiff, but they can’t afford to cross the blacks, without whom they are no longer a national party, getting only about 35% of the white vote. Whatever is a pandering identity politics party to do?
Go down in flames this year and save the party is the final solution, but all the high poobahs can’t face that fact yet, and are withholding their vote for Obama in the hope of, what? Hillary is too damaged to win. Al Gore? John Edwards? John Kerry again?
I’m loving Cole’s tantrum because it shows Hillary’s people really got his goat. For all his weblog winning ways, do you really think he does anything but preach to the choir? Dems love a traitor, see Andy Sullivan or David Brock. Cole is too stupid to realize that all his acolytes would desert him in a heartbeat if he deviated for a second from far left progressive orthodoxy he has now embraced.
You’re a hack Cole, but its still fun to see you tied up in circles over Obama’s ineptitude. You backed the wrong horse, sporty ;)
Cole is a despicable demagogue who plays to the crowd because he values crap like weblog awards. Congrats hacky, enjoy your award and all the money that came with it.
rachel
And here’s yet another loser who can’t tell Tim F. from John Cole.
jones
What’s the difference?