Thursday, June 17, 2004
Gay Marriage Kills Ponies
Ah, The Daily Show. Where would I be without the little nuggets they leave on the internet for people like me who choose to live in a country where checkers is deemed to be primetime material and no episode of any TV drama (or sitcoms, for that matter) can go by without some Korean girl dying on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle in a thunderstorm hours before they are due to get married? (This may well be the longest rhetorical question I have ever posed, so I think you should at least do me the favor of actually answering it. Where would I be, huh? Huh?)
The latest clip is something about the State Department's Survey of Worldwide Terrorist Attacks 2003, and the fact that:
(a) It claimed that 2003 had the lowest number of terrorist acts since 1969
(b) This was the result of ignoring November (and I assume December) because the report had to go to the printer at the end of October
(c) In fact, 2003 was one of the worst years on record
(d) There may need to be 8 pages of corrections in the report
Hell, watch the clip, it explains it better than I. But here's the thing: do the American people even care anymore that their government blatantly misrepresents the facts for their own end (or just blatantly change the facts) and then when are found out, shrug their shoulders and claim it's just one of those things.
They have been doing this for over three years now: WMD, Bush's war record, the Mission Accomplished Banner, the CIA/Valerie Plame affair (which many thought was capable of leading to indictments.....basically, all it has lead to is more spekaing engagements for her husband, Joseph Wilson) and so on. Watching from a far, it's difficult to get a true appreciation of what is going on in America, but my outsider view is of an administration that is willingly deceitful, unapologetically ideological, unwilling to admit to mistakes, and generally the kind of government you expect to turn up in the novels of depressed Eastern Europeans. I honestly (and call me naive, idealistic or a whining pinko-leftie), but I just can't fathom how regular people, people who have to go out and work their nine-to-five jobs, feed their families, and basically keep America going, could possibly continue to support something that is resolutely not of them or for them.
Hell, after all of this, he is still leading in head-to-head match-ups with John Kerry. Though if Americans were all historians, then we may not have a problem.
Maybe it's a simple matter of not wanting to admit a mistake. This is a frighteningly strong compulsion in basically every human being ever born, the incredible desire, to always be "right', whatever the hell that entails. I hate having my mistakes pointed out to me, and I'm not just meaning major you-should-have-weighed-the-body-down-with-rocks mistakes, but minor league errors like spelling on message boards (in my defence, I am quite possibly the world's worst typer which, combined with the fact I am the world's laziest proof-reader means I have plenty of opportunity to keep my indignation in working order) and wearing stripes with checks. God knows what it feels like to choose someone to run your country and then find out he has all the intellectual prowess of a bag of hammers. So you decide to stick with him, try to convince others that it was his complete lack of critical thinking, long-term planning and oratory skills that you were attracted to in the first place - you wanted Conan the Barbarian, because he was strong and would frighten people.
Anyway, quite how this devolved into a rant against one man, seeing as all I wanted to do was tell you that The Daily Show was one of the best shows on the planet. I'm going to go away and hone my ranting into something a little more specific and structured and get back to you. Hopefully within the year.
The latest clip is something about the State Department's Survey of Worldwide Terrorist Attacks 2003, and the fact that:
(a) It claimed that 2003 had the lowest number of terrorist acts since 1969
(b) This was the result of ignoring November (and I assume December) because the report had to go to the printer at the end of October
(c) In fact, 2003 was one of the worst years on record
(d) There may need to be 8 pages of corrections in the report
Hell, watch the clip, it explains it better than I. But here's the thing: do the American people even care anymore that their government blatantly misrepresents the facts for their own end (or just blatantly change the facts) and then when are found out, shrug their shoulders and claim it's just one of those things.
They have been doing this for over three years now: WMD, Bush's war record, the Mission Accomplished Banner, the CIA/Valerie Plame affair (which many thought was capable of leading to indictments.....basically, all it has lead to is more spekaing engagements for her husband, Joseph Wilson) and so on. Watching from a far, it's difficult to get a true appreciation of what is going on in America, but my outsider view is of an administration that is willingly deceitful, unapologetically ideological, unwilling to admit to mistakes, and generally the kind of government you expect to turn up in the novels of depressed Eastern Europeans. I honestly (and call me naive, idealistic or a whining pinko-leftie), but I just can't fathom how regular people, people who have to go out and work their nine-to-five jobs, feed their families, and basically keep America going, could possibly continue to support something that is resolutely not of them or for them.
Hell, after all of this, he is still leading in head-to-head match-ups with John Kerry. Though if Americans were all historians, then we may not have a problem.
Maybe it's a simple matter of not wanting to admit a mistake. This is a frighteningly strong compulsion in basically every human being ever born, the incredible desire, to always be "right', whatever the hell that entails. I hate having my mistakes pointed out to me, and I'm not just meaning major you-should-have-weighed-the-body-down-with-rocks mistakes, but minor league errors like spelling on message boards (in my defence, I am quite possibly the world's worst typer which, combined with the fact I am the world's laziest proof-reader means I have plenty of opportunity to keep my indignation in working order) and wearing stripes with checks. God knows what it feels like to choose someone to run your country and then find out he has all the intellectual prowess of a bag of hammers. So you decide to stick with him, try to convince others that it was his complete lack of critical thinking, long-term planning and oratory skills that you were attracted to in the first place - you wanted Conan the Barbarian, because he was strong and would frighten people.
Anyway, quite how this devolved into a rant against one man, seeing as all I wanted to do was tell you that The Daily Show was one of the best shows on the planet. I'm going to go away and hone my ranting into something a little more specific and structured and get back to you. Hopefully within the year.
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