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His Philosophy

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Supersuckers Country Western Extravaganza, with Jessie Dayton

I don’t normally buy best sellers or new books at all for that matter. Nor do I typically drink Starbucks coffee. But one day, last week, I did both of those things. My niece’s 6th birthday was coming up and we were in Pittsburgh for my sister’s wedding. So we drove out to Barnes and Noble to buy some books for a birthday present. We were tired so we got some coffee.

Review of Starbucks coffee: good brown water. Overpriced. Coffee shoppish. I like diner coffee. Maxwell House can beat the crap out of that Starbucks lady. Best coffee I ever had was at Ritter’s Diner on Baum Boulevard in North Oakland, Pgh.

So we grabbed a book to read. Joann got something on sustainable agriculture. I picked up comedienne Ann Coulter’s book Treason and read the first paragraph. It was hilarious. It was about how – get this – there’s a whole class of people she calls “liberals” who hate America and support terrorism. It was like Mean Gene Okerlund was holding a microphone to her mouth. I put the book back on the shelf.

Al Franken’s book wasn’t quite as funny as Ann’s, but it was 30 per cent off, and after reading the first chapter I decided to buy it. The title, of course, is a joke at the expense of Fox News, the right-wing entertainment machine with the tagline “Fair and Balanced," which, in itself, is a funny joke on Fox’s part. It was also hilarious when they sued Franken for trademark infringement, giving his book free promotion.

Franken basically shoots fish in a barrel, a term he uses to describe debunking Ann Coulter, by debunking easily debunked arguments by a group of people who have no interest in journalistic integrity in the first place. Franken also takes on Rush Limbaugh (but not much in this book - he covers Limbaugh in Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations), Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

The funniest part of the book is when he challenges O’Reilly on his stance against sex and violence in rap music with passages from a weird little erotic detective novel O’Reilly wrote called Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television. In it, O’Reilly transforms himself into a tabloid news reporter who kills everyone who gets in his way to the top, all the while performing cunnilingus on beautiful women.

To me, it shows how funny O’Reilly can be. He’s deadpan comic who’s obviously being sarcastic with the moral attacks on rappers. I realized this when I watched his show once, and he asked ICP – two grown men in clown make up – “Are you joking?” I fell off my chair.

Which brings me to Franken’s weakness: He takes these people too seriously. What somebody in Franken’s position really needs to do is to depict these people as comedians rather than liars. Then we could all enjoy watching them like we enjoy professional wrestling, and keep our sanity.

But kids will always think pro-wrestling is real.

The problem with political entertainment is that these people aren’t just knocking each other upside the head with steel chairs, they’re dealing with very serious subject matter in the most serious time in American history. They play on the emotions of people who aren’t educated enough realize the difference between politics and political entertainment. They sway the opinions of an uneducated population with half-truths and arguments that are set up to be entertaining rather than intellectually stimulating.

The people of California have demonstrated the merger of entertainment and politics by electing Arnold Swartzgrgrgrgrer. Candidates no longer have to be intelligent, visionary, or experienced. They just have to be entertaining.

Entertainment is fine, if a legitimate point is being made, as with Franken, or Michael Moore, or me. We are funny and at the same time present a serious argument with evidence to back it up. To me, this is what this country needs more of, on the left and right wing, and in the center. Bland politicians like Gray Davis and Al Gore need to be replaced by entertaining characters who are also intelligent and visionary, and preferably with solid military service, not dolts like Arnold and Dubya.

Jean-Pierre McGarrigle, creator of welovearnold.com, puts it in perspective:

"Anyone not interested in the candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger should apply for a time-travel permit. In one phenomenon we encounter the socio-political megatrends that distinguish this era from all that precede it. The merger of politics and entertainment. The irrelevance of a public record or organized body of thought. The popularity of tropes of strength and violence among a citizenry obese and powerless. It is all too wonderful, too rich, too vital to overlook or disdain. Arnold is my dream (or your nightmare) come true.”

The merger of politics and entertainment doesn’t have to be the end of the world, though. Jesse Ventura, to me, is cause for optimism. Before he was governor of Minnesota he was not only in wrestling entertainment and acting, but he was a Navy Seal and mayor. He’s honest and he’s not afraid to risk everything for his honesty (and I’m thinking about the time he said “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers”). He doesn’t represent himself as a know-it-all but has committed himself to learn. He stays away from dirty money from special-interest lobbies. Even if you don’t like Ventura, you still can’t deny that politicians are going to have to be appealing to an uneducated population. Hopefully they can be intelligent enough to use their appeal to educate.

Proof that Ann Coulter is joking

Coulter responds to a passage in Franken’s book where he points out that, in her book Slander, Coulter says Socialist Norman Thomas is the father of Newsweek’s Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, which is untrue. Earlier, Franken accused Coulter of taking parts of information and twisting the meaning to suit her argument in his chapter, “How to Lie With Footnotes.” The joke was that Norman Thomas is actually Evan Thomas’s grandfather, and Franken purposely doesn’t include this important information in his mock argument, then states it plainly on page 379 in an endnote, to demostrate how one can twist the truth by leaving important bits out.

Assuming Coulter is smart enough to be as successful as she is, we have to give her the benefit of the doubt that she read Franken’s book and detected the irony. We’ll assume she isn’t one of those people who looks at the title of Franken’s book and says, “THIS GUY’S A JERK! HOW CAN HE BE FAIR AND BALANCED WHEN HE ALREADY CALLED THEM LIARS!!!!”

So because we rule out the possibility that Coulter is an idiot, no other possibility exists than she was making a joke, which is essentially her job, in her interview with Edward Nawokta in Publisher’s Weekly when she said “Franken drones on and on for a page and a half about how Norman Thomas was not Evan Thomas's father -- without saying that he was Evan's grandfather. This was one of about five inconsequential errors quickly corrected in Slander -- and cited one million times by liberals as a ‘LIE.’ Confusing ‘father’ with ‘grandfather’ is a mistake. Franken's deliberate implication that there was no relationship whatsoever between Norman and Evan Thomas is intentional dishonesty.
I haven't heard so much about this ‘lie’ anymore.”

BA DUM – SPLASH! Funny! Solid, solid political entertainment. More laughs from Ann Coulter can be found in her defense of fellow political entertainer and drug-addict Rush Limbaugh on anncoulter.org.