Slate’s Timothy Noah is butthurt about the Colbert and Stewart rallies, in a highly contrarian way of course. Wonkette:
Writer Timothy Noah is an old who will be having a bunch of youngs staying over at his house to go to this thing, and he is not happy about this! Don’t these children understand that parodying the teevee newscast or parodying the teevee news opinion show is funny, but parodying the political rally as a vehicle for your satire can never be done? Obviously not. But Dr. Comedy Timothy Noah does, and he also knows that you are not allowed to make fun of Teabaggers for being dumb. That sort of thing is mean!
Ben Smith has a truly execrable piece on the same general topic:
Stewart’s version of sanity is easily confused with condescension. Like donning a tricorn hat and belting country music to celebrate tea party victories last month. A typical shot at Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle earlier this month: “She wants to dissolve the Post Office and send all her messages through angels.”
Surely, Angle has said some questionable things — but it’s probably still bad politics for the Democrats to be seen as “eggheads” (a term of derision used by Adlai Stevenson’s critics in the 1950s) and “pointy-headed liberals” (as they were known in the glory days of Spiro Agnew.)
I actually don’t believe that Ben Smith could possibly believe any of this, given that his work at the Daily News often had a Stewartesque tone to it. But you win the motherfucking morning by cranking out Halperinesque nonsense.
I think with Noah, it’s something different. He seems himself as a proud member of some kind of a club whose status depends on our political system being taken seriously, and this kind of thing undermines that. Also too, these pampered fucks get off on pretending to identify with mythical, serious, humorless middle Americans.
You see, Real Murkans don’t like irony or sarcasm. They like a good Bob Hope joke. Just something to chuckle along with as they leaf through their local Chamber of Commerce brochure and think about how hard their bosses have to work.
ed
Also, too: “Jews.” And other stuff.
a.j.
Nectar. Ambrosia. Ty, I needed that. :)
Zifnab
Concern troll is extremely concerned!
Steve
You know who has real contempt for the working-class people of America? The Galtian idiots who think the Greatest Living Americans consist solely of the awesome “job creators” at the very top of the pyramid, and that people who work hard all day to feed their families should just shut up and be grateful for whatever scraps they’re given. You can’t fluff CEOs all day and then claim you’re the authentic spokesperson for Real American Values, sorry.
oldfatherwilliam
Satire and mockery of the obviously mockable are condescension? Yup and Yup. And?
ed
Get A
BRAIN!
MORANS
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Smith and Noah’s blatherings are relevant to…….
Nobody who seriously watches Stewart or Colbert.
If asshats like Noah don’t believe real ‘Murkins don’t like sarcasm or irony, he should read any of Bill Mauldin’s work from WW2. Hmmm, seems like the so-called “greatest” generation had a keen sense of sarcasm and irony. I guess Noah’s parents or grandparents didn’t pass that along to him.
Or he was dropped on his head as a baby.
Bulworth
Oh, eff that.
Eff this, too. “Questionable” my assteroids. Regressivism needs to be pointed out and ridiculed. Although I know none of the real murican teabaggers ever ridiculed Obama.
Suck It Up!
2012 needs to be the Revenge of The Nerds. I’m tired of this I’m Stupid And Proud Of It nonsense.
I read a snippet on newser that said the rally is wrong because it might upset the tea party. A stream of curse words came out of my mouth. the tea party and their enablers can go fuck off.
Ash Can
Who the hell is Timothy Noah?
Oh, and Ben? There’s a reason “Stewart’s version of sanity is easily confused with condescension.” That’s because IT IS. There. You’re in on the joke now. Feel better?
Gah. Too much obtuseness in the morning for me. Off to do dishes.
Gus
Off topic, and I don’t know if one of my fellow Minnesotans has already pointed this out, but one of the ads on this page states “Let Minnesotans vote on marriage” from NOM with a FUCKING PICTURE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Violet
From the Noah piece (quoted by Wonkette):
Seriously? And after they wave the red cape are the Teabaggers going to charge forward in their scooters?
If anything the Teabaggers should be quaking in their boots. A rally like this one filled with 18-34 year olds is just more proof of the generational black hold awaiting the GOP.
Bulworth
Yes, we must make sure not to upset the delicate feefees of the teabaggers (and the media that love them).
PeakVT
Stewart’s version of sanity is easily confused with condescension
More like Stewart’s version of sanity depends on condescension, because there is really no other way to consider what the teabaggers say and do without becoming a wanker… like Ben Smith.
Bulworth
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What an imbecile. There’s a lot we actually do understand about the teatards. They’re descendents of the Confederate Party of the USA dusting off regressive John Birch literature from the ’50’s, of which our media elite seems blissfully ignorant.
Tom Q
@Violet: Yeah, if Stewart makes a condescending joke, some of the Tea Partiers might go out and vote Republican…like they’ve been doing for the past 50 years.
MasterD, damn yankee
@Suck It Up!:
I read a snippet on newser that said the rally is wrong because it might upset the tea party.
GOOD!
I hope it causes them to froth at the mouth and spin their little pinheads off!
Oh wait, they already do that.
Sentient Puddle
When someone like Sharron Angle stands a good chance at getting elected to the US Senate, then yes, the condescension is a necessary part of sanity.
Not too hard, Ben.
Tom Q
Oh, and just for the record — listening to the insanity pouring out of Angle and the other Tea Partiers and acting as if it’s sensible political speech is a variety of condescension we call being patronizing.
chopper
if smith thinks that pointing out idiocy is condescending, then he’s going to hate what i have to say about him.
FeFiFo
Don’t have fun and laugh! You might make the 2% of raging hysterical morons that the media has been focusing incessantly on for the last two years EVEN ANGRIER!
wasabi gasp
Stewart would have garnered more respect by hawking gold coin chocolates. Colbert, a step ahead, has already pimped his seed.
Short Bus Bully
pwnt
danimal
In the real world, I’m pretty mild-mannered. That said, anything that kicks the idiot teapartiers in the nuts is a worthwhile endeavor (even if it’s hard to get in a shot while they are driving their taxpayer-funded scooter). The media pays attention to these gaseous windbags because they are a target audience, but their numbers are insignificant in comparison to their command of the airwaves. I hope their feefees are hurt. I hope they are insulted and reviled. They’ve earned all the mockery they can absorb. If they want to have a reasoned, respectable debate, then stop the propagandistic portrayals of the soshalist, corporatist, Muslim, atheist, Hitleristic, Stalin-loving Mao-followers of the LEFT and start engaging in a dialog without a Mute button.
Providing a venue for non-nutcase Americans to show that there are other political and social views out there is an extremely valuable service. If the Beltway crowd is whining, you’re doing something right.
neill
But but, they’re right, of course… just like in the movies, it’s always the smart mouth rebellious jerky guy who gets it first from the thugs or the monster or the serial killer… just to sober up the really good kids, and let them know that… maybe… their turn will come…
or, conversely, the old pointy-headed joke about the kvetching thief crucified beside jesus complaining about the “pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by” BS, and the other thief says to him, “Hey, don’t cause trouble.”
JGabriel
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
If you’re doing it seriously, you’re doing it wrong.
.
Citizen_X
It’s kind of silly to worry about kicking the hornet’s nest when the hornets are all mounted on Hoverounds, and half of them are furiously attacking the garden gnome.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@JGabriel:
Fixed.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Bulworth:
Terry Gross did this piece a little over a week ago:
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=130534982&m=130537112
The author has an article in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_wilentz
Not that the Ben Smith’s of this world read the New Yorker or listen to Fresh Air.
FeFiFo
Seriously though, the real problem these guys have with the Stewart/Colbert rally/performance is that satire is the universal tool for cutting through walls of self-important text. These guys get paid for writing lots of walls of self-important text. The conservative wingnuttery of the last two years has been the main subject of a LOT of self-important text, much of it saying how important it is to write lots of self-important text about them.
The worst part of Ben Smith’s horrid little excuse as to why we should stay home and read Ben Smith’s articles instead is the satire = egghead equation, and certainly being an egghead (or even appearing like one) is bad electoral juju. For a guy getting paid handsomely to flog how Real and Normal a miniscule subset of the population is while they hoist Kenyan Witch Doctor signs, the message that you shouldn’t want to appear smarter than anyone else (especially the group currently drooling over every xenophobic Galtian hero that Breitbart links to) is just insulting.
Bulworth
Also, too, we shouldn’t be asking any of these very silly and Not Serious questions about campaign finance or being impolite to our betters at The Chamber.
JGabriel
Timothy Noah:
Like their migrational patterns and mating habits. We need to fund a federal study to learn more.
For instance, if we want to lower their population in the wild, can we disrupt their mating instincts by broadcasting the call of the muezzin, or will something less agressive, say Belle & Sebastian, do the trick?
.
ny nick
Ben Smith is carrying water for his corporate masters. It’s part and parcel with the dumbing down of America. Stupid people are easily mislead which is exactly how our corporate leaders designed it. The last thing they need now is a bunch of satirists pointing out how ignorant our nation has become. That could lead to people thinking for themselves and we simply cannot have that if we wish to remain free!
Bulworth
New category!
Bulworth
The Business and Economics Editor for Balloon Juice is on fire this a.m.
Vindicated
My whole approach to internetual commentary is again vindicated.
I am built on a solid foundation of (what the young distastefully call) butthurt, or -hurts.
Mike G
And what an examplary statesman and man of insight and character Agnew and his boss Nixon turned out be.
Repigs are clueless with irony, which requires a sense of subtlety and ambiguity and a non-concrete skull. Smith needs to flip over to “real comedy” like Jay Leno doing his millionth Lewinsky joke, and then go yell at the kids on his lawn.
Stefan
For instance, if we want to lower their population in the wild, can we disrupt their mating instincts by broadcasting the call of the muezzin, or will something less agressive, say Belle & Sebastian, do the trick?
One of my favorite radio moments ever: a college-radio DJ announcing “and coming up next, the heavy metal thunder of Belle & Sebastian.”
Bill E Pilgrim
No, I think they actually hate sanity.
I’m entirely serious.
Kyle
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Irony and sarcasm mean perceiving the world in a semi-realistic way, and recognizing the difference between the way things are portrayed or “supposed to be” and the way they actually are.
If you walk around stubbornly believing that “Reality is what I want it to be” and fingersinmyears shutupshutupshutup, because you’re rigid belief system demands that you maintain such a facade to defend your unrealistic beliefs from being challenged by reality, then you’re going to be totally blind to irony and sarcasm.
curious
from 30 rock:
Jack Donaghy: San Francisco? I asked you to find an actor from middle America; a real person. You’re not going to find him in the People’s Gay-public of Drug-ifornia.
Liz Lemon: Jeez, relax! I’m also setting up auditions in Toronto…
Jack: Canada? (laughs) Why not just go to Iraq? The television audience doesn’t want your elitist, east-coast, alternative, intellectual, left-wing…
Liz: Jack, just say ‘Jewish’; this is taking forever!
brendancalling
“You Give Me The Creeps”, by the Crucifucks: quoted for Ben and Tim:
Bill E Pilgrim
@Kyle: All true but there’s actually quite a bit of satire around and the Wingnuts don’t hate all of it.
On the other hand it’s got to be the most humiliating thing possible for a comedian to be telling you that you need to make more sense and be less hysterical, especially when most of the country then agrees with him.
My point just being that what this satire is aimed at, i.e. their being completely and visibly unhinged, is what they really can’t stand hearing. In this specific case.
brendancalling
@ny nick:
carryign water? try “drinking their pee-pee”, it’s a bit more accurate.
zattarra
The real problem that they have with this is they don’t know how to cover this rally when more people show up than for a tea party event or Glen Beck. They just don’t know how to spin the fact taht the tea party is the biggest thing ever and a bunch of people from around the country are going to show up pretty much to show the tea party is a joke.
My wife and I are coming in from the midwest. I’ve got family from Virginia that will be there. Family from New York that are coming down on the HuffPo buses. Friends from the west coast are going. All age groups. My 20 year old cousins, my 40 year old cousins and my 70 year old cousins will be there. The village doesn’t know how to spin people from all over, all ages, all races showing up pretty much to announce we are not the tea party and we are not scared.
curious
@zattarra: the spin will mostly involve not devoting their weekend coverage to the rally (as they did with beck’s) and then citing estimates from newsmax that approximately 300-500 people showed up.
nancydarling
As someone who lives in the fly-over country of NW Arkansas, I can assure you that laughter is the only option for reacting to tea baggers. You can’t have an intelligent discussion with people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and we don’t have to do anything about global warming because Jesus is coming before it gets serious. That said, there are plenty of people here who don’t have much formal education, but are not stupid. I have a soft spot for those folks. What drives me crazy are the ones with first rate educations who believe that shit—Tom Coburn of neighboring OK is a perfect example.
This 67 year old plans to be on the Mall on the 30th.
liberal
Actually, I’m more curious about the psychology of non-rightists who issue apologia for Tea Partiers, like the Daily Howler guy Bob Somersby.
News Nag
It should be pointed out that the “pointy-headed” liberal/bureaucrat slur was a segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama slur, not Spiro Agnew’s, who was himself though a walking slur, but only really because Pat Buchanan was putting words in his mouth as his speechwriter ….. nattering nabobs of negativity and such.
So Smith wants us to take seriously the fearmongering and scapegoating tactics of George Wallace, and Spiro Agnew as well, as a signal to STFU and be serious”. Well, STFU yourself, Ben Smith. Your knowledge is sketchy and acontextual, and your opinions are ill-informed and your hectoring banal. Ben Smith, you are the actual prejudicial material that you attribute to others.
bemused
Noah needs to lighten up. How old is he or is just old in outlook? I’m an old and would love to be there.
Colbert and Stewart don’t claim to be serious news outlets but msm does and I sure can’t take them seriously. Funny thing is the Stewart/Colbert inform more with satire.
Alex S.
Every day, Ben Smith gets sucked into the village hive mind a little more. Ezra Klein, too.
BARRASSO
I think it is implied in these pieces that the tea party is actually made up of stupid people, but that stupid people vote and therefore you should not insult the stupid. Which may be accurate in a way, but these stupid people will always vote republican so why the hell would we not point out that they are stupid?
This may be a new form of political correctness, do not point out that the stupid are stupid because it hurts their feelings.
Montysano
To ascertain Stewart’s real issues with the Tea Party, MSM idiots should be forced to watch his conversation with Eric Cantor (the online segments). It was a masterful point-by-point destruction of the GOP “philosophy”, and it was done, of course, it the most congenial and civil way. Once again, it was Stewart doing the job that the MSM should be doing. The dude is lethal.
TTT
it’s probably still bad politics for the Democrats to be seen as “eggheads” (a term of derision used by Adlai Stevenson’s critics in the 1950s) and “pointy-headed liberals” (as they were known in the glory days of Spiro Agnew.
But what about Ed Muskie’s tears?
Sorry, but I ain’t hip to your ’60s lingo, Daddy-O. Tim Noah here is just showing himself to be another member of the goddamned Boomer Baby gerontocracy, spewing out angry editorials at the nerve of those people who dared to try to hang on to the bottom of the ladder as Noah pulls it up.
If he wants to talk about messages from the past, as far as I’m concerned the Tea Party was more honest back when its signs read “Martin Luther Coon.”
Adam Lang
@BARRASSO:
Mmm, I don’t look at it that way.
To me, the idea is that if you point out that what some group of people is doing is stupid, then some of them may actually notice, and stop.
This works better if you aren’t insulting about it, but at the same time you sometimes have to be rather… blunt… to get through the thick layer of cognitive dissonance protection they have built up. (“What? But I did that! So it couldn’t possibly be stupid!”) It’s a fine line, and Stewart and Colbert each try to walk it in their own respective ways.
Alex
@Steve:
You can’t fluff CEOs all day and then claim you’re the authentic spokesperson for Real American Values, sorry.
You can’t? That would be unpleasant (and extremely surprising) news to Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and a few hundred of their imitators.
kc
Aren’t you a big Somerby fan? ‘Cause he’s been clutching his pearls for months over liberal commenters being mean to good salt-of-the-earth heartland tea partiers.
PWL
“Noah…proud member of some kind of club whose status depends on our political system being taken seriously…”
With all the whackjobbery going on out there, you’d be NUTS to take this political system seriously…
stillnotking
I think the fact that “egg-shaped” and “pointy” are synonymous head-directed conservative insults pretty much tells you all you need to know.
Alex M
I don’t know where Ben Smith got his timeline. I was hearing “pointy-headed liberals” in NY from people from the late 1950s onward. George Wallace is associated with labeling “pointy-headed” someones or others in his speeches in the early 1970s. And Spiro’s glory phrase was the “nattering nabobs of negativity” [or “negativism”] that Safire wrote for him. Actually what they called us liberals in Spiro’s glory days is what they still call us, dirty f’ing hippies!
lou
It gets worse. The Villagers are getting their panties in a twist. Now there’s an upcoming column by the Kaplan’s Outlook Editor, urging Stewart to cancel the rally.
Anything that gets them uptight has to be brilliant. My DH’s sister and niece are driving in from Indiana. A friend is flying up from Florida. A good time will be had by all.
petorado
While I’m sure Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity will have its moments of humor, I get the feeling this will also be another Tucker Carlson/ Crossfire moment. I don’t think Jon’s going to be anybody’s monkey for this event and expect his serious side will come out as well.