It would be politically unacceptable to describe some of the current crop of right-wing bloggers accurately. So I will settle for “mentally challenged.” But you know what I mean. (They used to be called village idiots, but I suppose that’s unacceptable now, too.)
Today they’re quoted by legitimate media and taken seriously by politicians. As we used to say in Jamaica, one fool makes many.
Take, for instance, a dolt named Ed Morrissey, who operates a web site appropriately titled “Hot Air.” He spends his time saying anything bad he can think of about President Obama. And one of his headings is “Obamateurisms.” How cheeky is that?
His latest poke at the president has to do with someone named Snooki (photo above, left). And with the president’s guest appearance on a daytime TV show called The View. I don’t know about you but I had never heard of Snooki until now and I have never watched The View. I am indebted to Salon columnist Joan Walsh for bringing the affair to my attention.
I know about Joan Walsh as she is a regular guest on MSNBC, which I usually watch.
Ms. Walsh took the trouble today to make fun of the Snooki episode. But I am not sure she was right to do so. I don’t think it’s funny, despite Snooki’s funny name. For one thing, I don’t laugh when someone shows disrespect for the nation’s president, which has become all too frequent now that a black family occupies the White House.
And I don’t think it’s all that funny when the underlying topic is skin cancer.
In case you haven’t heard the story, here’s an excerpt from the Salon column:
Asked by “The View’s” Joy Behar whether Snooki of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” should run for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (where a recent mayor is now as famous as Snooki, and shares her fondness for tanning beds), the president told the ladies of “The View” last week he couldn’t answer, because “I don’t know who Snooki is!”
Now, our Alex Pareene caught the president in the lie on Thursday – it turns out that at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the president promised to exempt four people from the tanning-bed tax: “Snooki, J-WOWW, the Situation and House Minority Leader John Boehner.”
OK, so even a president can make bad jokes once in a while. And I think any joke about tanning beds is lame.
Statistics are piling up to suggest that those tanning beds (photo above, right) are partly responsible for a spike in skin cancer and if I were in charge I would ban the damned things altogether. That could be one reason that Congress imposed a 10 percent tax on individuals receiving indoor tanning services to help fund health care reform.
The tax prompted another village idiot, Fox News buffoon Glenn Beck, to accuse the president (again) of racism. His argument was that the tax affects only white people.
Doesn’t that give you some idea of the way right-wing commentators “spin” the facts?
I hope President Obama finds this latest brouhaha “a teachable moment” (as he would phrase it). If I have learned anything in my 76 years, it’s that you don’t joke with people who hate you. You joke among friends.
And President Obama seems to have few friends in America right now.
