Cowboy Confessional

It is rumored that Tom Lehrer abandoned his songwriting and performing career because society had gotten so strange he could no longer parody it.

Tom is still alive and is likely praising his own decision given how outright weird the recent news cycle has been.

Last week saw the unsightly scene of a rapidly graying Obama proclaiming that the recession is over (note to Barack – chain smoking contributes to hair pigment loss).  As his party faces a losing election season, threatening Obama’s majority in congress and thus his ability to pass whatever insane legislation crosses his alleged mind, Barack latches onto whatever ray of hope his change failed to produce.  Strictly speaking, a recession ‘ends’ when the economy grows for two or more consecutive quarters, regardless of how weak and uneven the growth is, or the probability of slipping back into recession.  Obama’s stimulus plan didn’t, resulting in sustained high unemployment and many economists predicting a repeat dip into deeper doldrums.

With an election in one month, Obama had to paint on a clowns smile and try to convince the American public the economic corner had been turned, which is a tough sell when you are out of work, have depleted your 401K and see a foreclosure sign in your front yard.

Such showmanship again exposes the perpetual mating of politics and performance art (there was once even a president who had been an actor … a little known fellow by the name of Reagan).  All politics is a stage, and Obama’s recession remission act shows that most of the actors need better scripts and more rehearsal.  It would surprise nobody if politicians recruited performers to carry their message or head a marquee that draws a bigger audience.

Which is why Steven Colbert entertained the clowns last week.

In a political maneuver which has even hardened mavens shaking their collective heads, the Democrat head of the House’s immigration subcommittee invited Colbert to testify on the impact of immigration policy.  This is akin to asking a poet to opine on computer programming, with the exception that Colbert was entertaining.  True to his form and showing he is more audacious than a hopeful Obama, Colbert stayed in character and gave a stand-up act sitting down.  He addressed the serious implications of American job displacement in agriculture by saying “I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.”

If Tom Lehrer were dead, he would be spinning in his crypt.

The parody is not that Obama sought to claim and end to a recession when nearly 10% of the public is experiencing an economic hemorrhoid.  Nor is it utter parody when the clowns in congress think it a smart move to invite a clown from Comedy Central to testify in front of cameras.  The real parody is that the Democrat party has jumped the shark.  In two spasms of ill conceived outreach, Democrats have suddenly made George Bush look like a genius.  They have managed to lower the bar to subterranean levels.

But at least they were not riding Segways when they did so.

Proving once again that Gawd has an evil sense of humor, the owner of the company that makes Segways – those odd little two wheel scooters that look like underpowered personal chariots – drove his off a cliff.  Sadly and yet hilariously, the 62 year old and slightly rotund multi-millionaire owner of Segway piloted his vertically thirty feet into a ravine, which the owner’s manual advises against and which clearly violated the warranty.

Luckily he did not land on any Jewish skinheads.

Every person encounters emotional shocks to their systems.  Some people suffer deaths, others divorces, and way too many people endure childrearing.  But these pale compared to a neo-Nazi couple who thought “that Jews were the biggest plague and the worst evil of this world” and then discovered they were Jewish.  The fact that this disoriented pair were Polish tempts too many Polack jokes, but proves that irony is a more fundamental an element in the universe than hydrogen.

Tom Lehrer must be splitting a rib bone laughing tonight.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Economics, Human Stupidity, Media, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.