bill kristol digging for the truth.here's my column from saturday. :)
Carpe Diem: Primaries as Entertainment
Kurt Brighton
OK, there is a lot happening in the world of entertainment this week.
First, the biggest entertainment story has to be that of the new “American Idol” contest.
Er, I mean the New Hampshire primaries. Since the national press and the candidates insist on treating this ridiculous process like it’s a grand-scale “American Idol” or “Dancing With the Stars”—only with slightly more talented performers—we should look at it that way too. What’s the difference between the deep and probing analysis we get of Hilary’s tears versus the examination of Marie Osmond’s “faint” on “Dancing With the Stars?”
You enjoy endless blather about Sanjaya’s hair? Hey, how about that Obama guy! He’s got a funny name too! Plus, it turns out that Obama is really Jesus, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy all rolled into one, crushing his cowering opponents with a calm, reassuring smile, preparing to lead an unstoppable, inevitable juggernaut, an inexorable movement that will forever change the face of...
What?
Oh. Turns out he didn’t actually win New Hampshire.
Nonetheless, some of the greatest entertainment value coming out of this outdated, hokey, and endlessly spinning process has been watching major media players crack their vertebrae trying desperately to backpedal on their premature announcement of Hilary’s passing into irrelevance. Polls had given Obama an 8- to 10-point edge going into Tuesday, and there was speculation that Hilary might be forced to drop out of the race. The Boston Herald even ran the headline “She’s So Yesterday.” Whoops.
Even more entertaining has been listening to the wise old grayheads of the D.C. establishment try to explain how they—er, actually, all the OTHER wise old grayheads—could have gotten it so wrong.
Apparently, it’s a chick thing. Bill Kristol, the smiling leader of the neo-conservative loon movement—who also managed to get everything about Iraq spectacularly wrong—summed up the general consensus among Terribly Smart People when he said, “It’s the tears. She pretended to cry, the women felt sorry for her, and she won.”
Ah. Well, no wonder all the serious-minded men had no idea what was going to happen. Those kooky wimmen with their emotions and all. You get them involved and the next thing you know, you’re crocheting doilies, holding hands and singing Kum-Bye-Yah or some damn thing.
This is just getting good, and I’m not talking about the candidates themselves. The fun is going to be watching the media attempt to dust themselves off and reclaim their self-appointed mantle of Wisdom once again. Of course, it’s hard to sound wise when you’re burping around a heapin’ helping of crow.
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And with the accidental hilarity of the real news, it’s truly a shame that the Writer’s Guild of America strike is still going on—the fake news would have a field day with this. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have returned to the airwaves, but without their writers the humor they are squeezing out of what are essentially 23-minute, off-the-cuff monologues is decidedly thin.
But each of them is making a go of it, skirting the Guild’s rules by not even preparing a monologue for themselves. And, as each of them made crystal clear, their sympathies have not changed. In his typically self-deprecating style, Stewart announced that while the show may be back, during the time the strike carries on it will not be “The Daily Show” we have come to know and love, but rather “A Daily Show.”
For his part, Colbert’s blowhard character made light of the situation by insisting that the way the teleprompter worked was by reading his thoughts and putting the words in the little box so he could say them. When he was told that the words were actually written by his missing team of writers, he said, “You mean those guys on the fourth floor smoking opium bongs and playing Guitar Hero? I find that a stretch.”
Here’s hoping they’ll be back soon—their bongs await.
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