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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Do Not Get Out Of The Boat

Do Not Get Out Of The Boat

by Tom Levenson|  September 28, 201111:01 pm| 67 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue

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Daily Kos has recently posted what may be the most eyeball-melting, brain corroding wingnut rap ever.  I’m not going to embed it here.  It’s that bad.  Don’t go watch it if you value any illusions you may yet possess about the possibility of the advance of civilization.  Any action you take from here — on you, my brothers and sisters.

The barbarians over at the GOS even had the sadist’s delight in getting this up at 6 p.m. Eastern time — dinner, or, for me and my family, the start of the new year observances that focus on the contemplation of the twelve months just past.

Talk about harshing one’s mellow.  Seriously, that’s a vid that could curdle any supply of milk within parsecs.

All of which leads to the question:  what is it about wingnuttery that yields such dire, humorless, dispiriting simulacrums of art.  Hell — not even art, but entertainment?  Even the merest of pleasures?

Perhaps this best be considered an open thread.

Image:  Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne,  Altogether Too Stupid, (a peasant woman gets her wits sharpened on the knife-grinder’s whetstone as other are drawn in by the miracle cure), before 1662.  I know I’ve used this one before — but damn, it’s on point.

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Next Post: Gene Lyons of Salon.com cavalierly dismisses racism and calls Melissa Harris-Perry a fool [Updated!] »

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    Spaghetti Lee

    September 28, 2011 at 11:04 pm

    Wingnuts : Pop Culture :: Matter : Antimatter

  2. 2.

    sfinny

    September 28, 2011 at 11:05 pm

    OK, I was feeling a little peeved, but that illustration seriously bucked me right up. What’s a potential tire leaking pressure compared with that. Even if it is the second time in six months and I just bought the darn car.

  3. 3.

    Dave

    September 28, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    It’s simple. To be funny, one must be smart. Republicans are idiots. Ergo, they aren’t funny.

    It must warp your brain somehow. As soon as Dennis Miller switched, he became one unfunny fellow.

  4. 4.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    September 28, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    Isn’t culture in some sense about conveying something to other people in a way that they will get the meaning? If so, then it in part requires understanding how others will receive it. It is this last point – empathy – that conservatives lack.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 28, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    That is the most brilliant campaign ad the Democrats have ever done.

  6. 6.

    lacp

    September 28, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    What’s especially sad is that Austin is the greatest live music city in the world – but these people have nothing to do with that.

  7. 7.

    beltane

    September 28, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Those two women in the video certainly do not possess any empathy or else they would not have inflicted themselves on the world like that. My ears, my eyes, have been permanently damaged by the ten seconds I watched of that crap.

  8. 8.

    gex

    September 28, 2011 at 11:14 pm

    They are angry, bitter, and selfish. Art is ultimately about giving to others. They don’t do that willingly.

  9. 9.

    PurpleGirl

    September 28, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    I can’t believe I watched the whole thing…

    Can somebody please — PLEASE– pass me the brain bleach.

  10. 10.

    Tom Levenson

    September 28, 2011 at 11:15 pm

    @beltane: Can’t say you weren’t warned. I was trying to take one for the team. I lasted about 40 seconds.

  11. 11.

    sfinny

    September 28, 2011 at 11:16 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Here is an idea. Heironymus Bosch paintings as the theme for how the working class feels.

  12. 12.

    James Gary

    September 28, 2011 at 11:17 pm

    I’m pretty sure that video is intended as parody, or something in that general direction…it just feels a bit *too* calculatedly lame to me.

    Cf. the “It’s Raining McCain” video from 2008.

  13. 13.

    Yutsano

    September 28, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    Screw your mangoes. I’m staying in my deck chair.

  14. 14.

    Davis X. Machina

    September 28, 2011 at 11:32 pm

    I didn’t know Dunning and Kruger had done a musical.

  15. 15.

    Mark S.

    September 28, 2011 at 11:33 pm

    @Yutsano:

    That’s wise. It’s just bad bad.

  16. 16.

    Steeplejack

    September 28, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    Okay, I have a pretty strong stomach, but I lasted only a minute and had to quit because I got a nosebleed.

    Need a drink. Big drink.

  17. 17.

    grandpajohn

    September 28, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    @Dave:

    As soon as Dennis Miller switched, he became one unfunny fellow.

    He now has a different set of writers

  18. 18.

    jwb

    September 28, 2011 at 11:38 pm

    @James Gary: Have we really reached the cultural point where we have to question the sincerity of lameness?

    I actually made it through the whole thing. Rather like one of those highway wrecks where you just can’t keep yourself from rubber-knecking.

  19. 19.

    Yutsano

    September 28, 2011 at 11:39 pm

    @Steeplejack: Go directly to the Laphroaig. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.

  20. 20.

    Ben

    September 28, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    Meh. This is still the gold standard in crazy conservative videos. If only because screwing up the uploading process left thirty seconds of dead air at the end.

  21. 21.

    hamletta

    September 28, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    @James Gary: I thought the “Raining McCain” video was intended seriously. Did I miss a Wonkette exposé?

    I dunno about these girls. They have another video where they’re by the pool in tiny bathing suits reciting Rick Perry “facts” cribbed from the Chuck Norris riff. One of them is that Perry gives straight men erections.

    I think they might be hilarious.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    September 28, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    @Dave:

    It must warp your brain somehow. As soon as Dennis Miller switched, he became one unfunny fellow.

    Rumor I heard was that Miller quarreled with the writers who made him funny, because he fell under the delusion that it was his delivery and not their words that made people laugh. NineElevenChangedEverything bailed out his sinking career, because the wingnuts buy brand not quality — Dennis Miller was known to be a funny guy, ergo, his subsequent humorless attacks are brand-identified as Funny, no matter what us picky lie-brals chose to believe.

  23. 23.

    suzanne

    September 29, 2011 at 12:07 am

    Daily Kos has recently posted what may be the most eyeball-melting, brain corroding wingnut rap ever.

    Fucking magnets, how do they work?

  24. 24.

    Sentient Puddle

    September 29, 2011 at 12:07 am

    @lacp:

    What’s especially sad is that Austin is the greatest live music city in the world – but these people have nothing to do with that.

    I’m pretty sure Perry would have a hard time getting anyone in Austin to make him a music video of any level of quality.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    September 29, 2011 at 12:08 am

    I think the core problem with wingnut humor is that to be really funny, you have to be willing to make yourself the butt of the joke sometimes. Wingnuts just can’t do that because the core of their belief is that they’re better than people who are different from them.

  26. 26.

    Helen

    September 29, 2011 at 12:10 am

    I don’t think the women in the video are Wingnuts or attempting satire. I think they want to be Snookie. They get 4 seconds a day of real news and see that Perry is the flavor of the month so they hopped onto his bandwagon.

  27. 27.

    The Dangerman

    September 29, 2011 at 12:10 am

    Sorry, Sox fans; if you ever wonder what it felt like when Donnie Moore served up a jack top Henderson, well, this is what it felt like.

    Unfuckingbelievavle last 20 minutes for baseball.

  28. 28.

    B W Smith

    September 29, 2011 at 12:11 am

    @Anne Laurie: Dennis was never a liberal guy but at least he used to have a sardonic wit. I’ve never particularly enjoyed him but now I can’t even bear to hear him speak. I’d rather sit through a Rick Warren sermon.

    That rap video is without question the most embarrassing display of stupidity I have ever seen. I made it 30 seconds.

  29. 29.

    cmorenc

    September 29, 2011 at 12:15 am

    We could hire David Allen Coe to do his best to make a shit-kicking rednecks-for-Obama country video that would turn out less hilariously awful than white-rappers-for-Perry. True, David Allen Coe would probably be about the least likely country performer to willingly make a vote-for-Obama video, especially since his core audience would throw him overboard faster than they did the Dixie Chicks. That’s probably analogous to why Rick Perry had to get a bunch of white folks to make a hip-hop vote-for-Perry video, because any self-respecting bona fide hip-hop artists would sooner eat Plutonium than do that.

    BTW: I am a fan of hard-core traditional country/bluegrass music (e.g. Alison Krauss, George Jones) but not the commercialized crap or the stuff that deliberately panders to redneck meanness, prejudice, and stupidity. Such as too much of Mr. Coe’s material.

    ADDENDUM: Now that some of you have suggested that this video may actually be meant to be a parody, you might just be onto something. The line between unbearably awful and hilarious brilliance is sometimes very thin.

  30. 30.

    Mark S.

    September 29, 2011 at 12:15 am

    You guys are all wimps. I watched the whole thing.

  31. 31.

    Yutsano

    September 29, 2011 at 12:18 am

    @suzanne: “HOW DA MOON GET DERE?? HUH? EXPLAIN THAT HIPPIE!!”

    @cmorenc: Allison can do fucking anything.

  32. 32.

    RareSanity

    September 29, 2011 at 12:20 am

    @gex:

    They are angry, bitter, and selfish. Art is ultimately about giving to others. They don’t do that willingly.

    This.

    I find that “conservatives” are too busy feeling superior everyone to honestly enjoy the inherent humor in human imperfection. That’s what true humor is about, making fun of, and empathizing with, being imperfect beings.

    Conservatives don’t do humor, they do ridicule. It can be funny in small amounts, but if it’s your whole act, you come off sounding like a dick.

  33. 33.

    Shamefully anonymous

    September 29, 2011 at 12:24 am

    @Anne Laurie: He definitely wrote some of own material over the years, unless I was completely snookered. I think the SNL tradition has been to have the newscasters be the best writers and the worst actors.

  34. 34.

    Edgar Allahu Akbar Poe

    September 29, 2011 at 12:26 am

    i have to believe that they’re trolling in order to go on living.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    September 29, 2011 at 12:27 am

    @B W Smith: Al Franken, who has never said a bad word about Miller, has said that DM always had some conservative leanings. I suppose we all do, in some regard or some aspect of our lives, so who the hell knows what AF meant, but I saw Miller live and watched his HBO show regularly. Seems to me he used to have Janeane Garofalo on quite a bit, and Molly Ivins at least once IIRC. I’d say pre-9/11 he was pretty much like the pre-Iraq Bill Maher– smug, smart-ass, Dem-voting glibertarian.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    September 29, 2011 at 12:29 am

    @cmorenc:

    We could hire David Allen Coe to do his best to make a shit-kicking rednecks-for-Obama country video that would turn out less hilariously awful than white-rappers-for-Perry.

    Sure, but that’s because he has actual talent. A big part of what makes this video- and a lot of the junk on YouTube- so bad is that the creators obviously have more enthusiasm than talent. I’ll take the product of the unexcited but talented artist over the excited but talentless one any day.

  37. 37.

    Montysano

    September 29, 2011 at 12:30 am

    Don’t go watch it if you value any illusions you may yet possess about the possibility of the advance of civilization.

    Which means that I could watch it with no worries whatsoever, ’cause for me those illusions are long gone.

    Meh…. it was a bad day. I had a “discussion” with a 24 year old self-identified libertarian who despised, DESPISED I tell you, the federal govt. Didn’t need a damn thing from the Feds…..well, except interstate highways. He liked those. And the military is cool. But nothing else, dammit! Oy…

    Monty +4

  38. 38.

    Disco

    September 29, 2011 at 12:34 am

    A parsec is a measure of distance, not time. I suppose your sentence could make sense, but not in the way you probably intended.

  39. 39.

    sublime33

    September 29, 2011 at 12:37 am

    Some people in society have to perform autopsies, and some have to watch bad videos like this one. It is all for the greater good.

  40. 40.

    Bago

    September 29, 2011 at 12:40 am

    @Montysano: Internet. How the f&$k does that work?

  41. 41.

    Bago

    September 29, 2011 at 12:43 am

    Disco, meet the Kessel run. You’re both late 70’s early 80’s, so you two should get along.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    September 29, 2011 at 12:44 am

    @Disco:
    I’m pretty sure Dr. Levenson knows what a parsec is. And suggesting that something could curdle milk in Alpha Centauri is a reasonable way of criticizing it.

  43. 43.

    suzanne

    September 29, 2011 at 12:46 am

    I just saw a clip of Sarah Palin on TDS, and I realized it’s been probably two (totally awesome) months since I’ve seen her picture or heard her voice. She’s so two thousand and late.

    However, she’s wearing the biggest fuckin’ Bumpit I’ve ever seen. FFS, lady.

  44. 44.

    Satanicpanic

    September 29, 2011 at 12:47 am

    @Ben: OMG, WTF? I somehow missed that one.

    Taxes are the subject, and I will spit them verbally

    Isn’t quite “fucking magnets, how do they work?” but it’s close.

  45. 45.

    Wag

    September 29, 2011 at 12:48 am

    I personally really like the apocolypse now quote in the title of the post.

  46. 46.

    Comrade Mary

    September 29, 2011 at 12:48 am

    FYWP. I posted a link to a great dance video, and the bastard spawn would-be CMS ate the fucking thing.

    Anyway: This. Glorious.

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 29, 2011 at 1:03 am

    @Ben:

    Ho. Lee. Fuck.

    That’s just so . . .

    I don’t know, I . . .

    Slackjawed and speechless here. Amazing.

  48. 48.

    Redshift

    September 29, 2011 at 1:05 am

    @Montysano: Yeah, what have the Romans ever done for us?

    Sigh.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    September 29, 2011 at 1:07 am

    @Anne Laurie:
    Never thought Miller was all that funny. Overly caustic, sarcastic insider satire just never did much for me. So maybe it was his delivery. IMHO it was never good, with the bad writing/material it’s just gotten worse.

  50. 50.

    Martin

    September 29, 2011 at 1:35 am

    @Disco: It makes perfect sense:

    Seriously, that’s a vid that could curdle any supply of milk within miles.

    preposition /wiT͟Hˈin/  /wiˈTH-/ 

    Inside (something)
    – the spread of fire within the building

    Inside the range of (an area or boundary)
    – a field located within the city

    Inside the range of (a specified action or perception)
    – within reach

    Not further off than (used with distances)
    – Bob lives within a few miles of Honesdale

    Occurring inside (a particular period of time)
    – sold out within two hours
    – 33% were rearrested within two years of their release

    Inside the bounds set by (a concept, argument, etc.)
    – full cooperation within the terms of the treaty

  51. 51.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    September 29, 2011 at 1:38 am

    First, you need a sense of humor, and second, you have to be able to laugh at yourself. Conservatives are incapable of both. They applaud misery and death thus that is what entertains them. The conservative appetite for entertainment is more like that of the crowds that populated the Colosseum in Rome during the bloodier performances.

    Misery and death makes them smile because they know they have it better than those who are entertaining them.

    One more thing they need: talent.

    Na. Gonna. Ha pin.

  52. 52.

    Arclite

    September 29, 2011 at 2:02 am

    Tom, I think that you used the wit sharpening image before.

  53. 53.

    Triassic Sands

    September 29, 2011 at 2:05 am

    @Dave:

    As soon as Dennis Miller switched, he became one unfunny fellow.

    Admittedly, humor is a very personal thing, but I’d rewrite the above sentence as follows:

    As soon as Dennis Miller switched, he became even less funny, if that was possible.

    But then, I’ve never found humor that depended on the comic being an obnoxious, belligerent asshole to be funny, so maybe I just didn’t get the pre-switch Miller.

  54. 54.

    Triassic Sands

    September 29, 2011 at 2:05 am

    @PurpleGirl:

    I can’t believe I watched the whole thing…

    Fifteen seconds into the video I began to lose the will to live. I had to turn it off. I feel confident it didn’t suddenly get good.

    I admire your courage, if not your wisdom, I just hope you haven’t permanently injured yourself. You should probably watch for signs of PTSD.

  55. 55.

    Steeplejack

    September 29, 2011 at 2:11 am

    @Helen:

    I think they want to be Snookie.

    Nailed it.

  56. 56.

    Jebediah

    September 29, 2011 at 2:17 am

    @RareSanity:

    …they do ridicule. It can be funny in small amounts…

    In my opinion, ridicule usually works best when the ridiculer has less power or prestige than the ridiculed. I think most conservatives reverse that and think its funny. I think they are just being dicks.

  57. 57.

    Helen

    September 29, 2011 at 2:20 am

    @Steeplejack: We will see them being interviewed tomorrow on CNN where they will giggle and say “Oh we don’t really pay attention to politics” And voila; they will have their 15 minutes of Snookiedom.

  58. 58.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    September 29, 2011 at 2:50 am

    As bad as that clip is, I personally think ya’ll are selling the nutters short…

    I suspect that they DO have even worse than that in them, and we will be seeing it soon…

  59. 59.

    gocart mozart

    September 29, 2011 at 2:52 am

    There is a fine line between conservative humor and just being a fucking dick.

  60. 60.

    Yutsano

    September 29, 2011 at 2:56 am

    @Steeplejack: Snookie lost her tax break too. I expect much gnashing of teeth over this. And run mascara. If there’s no run mascara I’m watching something else.

  61. 61.

    Samara Morgan

    September 29, 2011 at 5:41 am

    Are you gettin’ a feel for red/blue genetics yet, Dr. Levenson?

  62. 62.

    Tom Levenson

    September 29, 2011 at 7:52 am

    @Arclite: Well yes. As noted in the credit line.

  63. 63.

    Gilles de Rais

    September 29, 2011 at 10:23 am

    I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Good God, that was awful.

  64. 64.

    replicnt6

    September 29, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    @The Dangerman:

    Heh, heh, the wife and I (both expat Bostonians) happened to watch the end of the game at a pizza joint here in the midwest. We agreed that _these_ were the Sox we know an love: pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory. My wife actually said “looks like they’ve got this wrapped up” in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs. I was like “you’re kidding right? This is the Red Sox.”

  65. 65.

    Al

    September 29, 2011 at 1:25 pm

    Not to go too far off-topic but what the Sam Hill is that painting about? I’ve googled but came up with nothing.

  66. 66.

    Chrisd

    September 29, 2011 at 2:46 pm

    @gocart mozart:

    There is a fine line between conservative humor and just being a fucking dick.

    Given that, you’d think they’d be more nimble, less predictable. Keep changing the schtick.

    Instead you have P. J. O’Rourke writing the same book twenty times.

  67. 67.

    DougW

    September 29, 2011 at 8:22 pm

    @PurpleGirl: Sadly, there is no brain bleach. The only way to clear your head is to go on a 5 mile run while singing the Macarena. As far as I know, that is the only cure for the contagion you’ve been exposed to… Sorry, get well soon!

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