Daily Briefs: OW, JOURNALISM’S BALLS!
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SHUT UP, JOURNALISM: After eight years of what the French, the crazy Libertarians and George F. Will call “laissez-faire” governance in which the executive branch of the United States government pretty much withdraws from public life, emerging occasionally to declare war, the Washington press corps is totally confused and stumbling around trying to cover an administration that actually, y’know, does shit. Because every newspaper and broadcast anchor and know-it-all basic cable fancydancer is asking: “Is President Obama trying to do too much?” Always framed in the form of a question, as a weaselly method of propagating the idea without taking any responsibility for it. Here’s an example from The Kansas City Star, via corporate parent McClatchy. Regular people, who aren’t lucky or pretty enough to work in the booming industry of the news media, aren’t asking that stupid question, because they actually do have to try and do too much, from working two jobs in order to pay the mortgage, to selling various important organs on the black market in order to pay the second mortgage. Seriously, why so many mortgages? If I had that many, I’d change my name and move to another state, and also my new name would sound like a badass television detective, like “Nick Dethmeister” or “Detective Theo Kojak.”
Fish, barrel, smoking gun: You guys, I have found the Platonic ideal of a liberal blog commenter, seriously, he is too pure to be anything but a perfect abstraction. But, like the films of director M. Night Shyamalan, there’s an unexpected twist that changes everything you thought you knew while simultaneously making you want to punch beaded-choker-wearing douche M. Night Shymalan right in the dick. Instead of Daily Kos, or the forums at High Times, apparently this guy hangs around reading Talking Points Memo, which is basically a pointy-headed policy site for mortarboard-wearing Professor Owls that actually hires professional journalists. OKAY, I know, I know, blog commenters are easy targets, but I swear to the elephant god Ganesh that this one is a Special Snowflake. For starters, his screen name is “tokin librul” — I have no idea what makes hippies think shit like that is funny, but that’s just the Mauwie Wauwie-scented tip of the ice bong for “tokin librul:”
What in the hell? He’s speaking this whole other language, but he seems to think that everybody else is totally on-board with his weird THC-inflected hippie portmanteaus and acronyms. Also, I think “LumpenSheeple” means you guys, you guys. It sounds pretty bad! Either “tokin librul” exists, like math, as an ethereal abstraction of perfected hippie-dom, or else he’s actually the “lop-dog” personal assistant of an AIG executive, trying to make Democrats look like the Weathermen. Anyway, I am hereby a giant fan of “tokin librul.”
