Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Video Reasons for Loving America in Spite of Hillary
Here is the great Marilynne talking about the psalms. And here are the sublime videos at The Onion. I've said enough about Marilynne. But what is striking about The Onion vids is how much better they are as satire than anything on the strangely unfunny Daily Show. The reason is The Onion material is fully written, the characters stay in their parts. But Jon Stewart can't stop himself being Jon Stewart and ponderously drawing attention to the gags. Apparent seriousness is what is funny - check out the regulator with a deranged but perfectly straight-faced obsession with Alyson Hannigan - because it inspires a kind of comic wonder. Stewart can't do serious because he needs to tell you he's funny. Anyway, this morning focus on Marilynne and The Onion, not on the eccentric voters of Ohio and Texas.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Great title as I've just blogged on whether Americans are fickle and Sackerson took me to task for vilifying all Americans.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, thanks for the Onion vids. I would like to add Bob Cesca at the Huffington Post: I have been laughing all morning at the trail of his live commentary. At times like these satire and wit has an extra zing. I find Bob's unapologetically partizan earthy commentary very cheering. (But perhaps I shouldn't.)
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me you should make some youtube clips of yourself holding forth on hedge funders, Jeffrey Archer, Nu Labour, chavs, death, etc., and post them for us to see.
ReplyDeleteI find the Colbert Report consistently funnier than the Daily show. (I think he also coped better without writers.) It may be an illusion caused by his act, but I do at times suspect that the real life Colbert has at least some sympathies to some conservative views and personalities. (His recent interview with Tony Snow indicated some personal warmth, for example. I also see from his Wiki entry that he really was raised in a large Catholic family.) Jon Stewart, on the other hand, keeps inserting his own politics too much into the job, and comes across as smug and condescending.
ReplyDeleteNothing eccentric about the voters in Texas and Ohio, Bryan. Obama's appeal is mainly to the intelligentsia, not ordinary voters. Note that he has also lost in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, California. Where did he win? The Peoples Republic of Vermont. True, the African American vote put him over the top in places like Maryland and Virginia, but that won't be a decisive factor in the general election. That vote also put him over in Louisiana and Alabama, but the Democrats won't win either of those states in the general election.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that Marilynne clip Bryan. She is the most wonderful writer, but hearing her speak makes me want to spend a very long evening with her: Listening.
ReplyDeleteIf it wasn't so damnably sentimental an emotion, one could almost fall in love with her. Agape rather than Eros.
Reminds me there's another smart gem of American satire that I want to identify, if anyone can help. It was on Pick of the Week on R4 maybe 4 or 5 years ago and consisted of a starchy alpha female news anchor attempting to talk to one of her minion reporters, via satellite... cue that familiar routine of simultaneous beginning of sentences followed by simultaneous pauses, apologies and resumption of sentences. The only actual words I can recall were Starchy's, 'you jerk' as she got more irritated (without coming out of character). A genuinely funny work of art.
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ReplyDeleteIt wasn't on Pick of the Week, it was on World in Your Ear, and came from an American radio show.
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