Large Children

In my ongoing attempt to build a sense of humor I discovered Samuel Warde's site but am slowly realizing I really am the dour Scotsman of popular myth. Maybe I need to get out of the country like Samuel to see the funny side of American decline. What do you make of this picture? I cannot help but be reminded of relatives and coworkers who call themselves conservative but giggle at their own jokes like this one. "Are the Kennedy's gunshy?" Is a good example of the political dick jokes these overgrown middle schoolers pull out. Indecent exposure of willful callousness in my humble opinion.

Conservative means many things but adolescent jerkyness is a new one. In a way it must be nice to have no conscience so you can honestly and truly laugh at your own tactlessness. Freedom to a conservative seems to mean the freedom to throw shit on someone without fear of reprisal and laugh at your victim. And the laughs are bigger the more defenseless the victim. Every one of these dumbass caricatures are stereotypes of right-wing myth, repeated endlessly. The bully needs a rise out of his victim, otherwise it just isn't entertaining. So to many conservatives being on that team is just a way to act like paunchy, balding bullies taking their playground act to bigger venues. "Hey let's make fun of the girl with braces today!" "Tomorrow we'll make the chubby kid with last year's clothes eat a dog turd and kick dirt in his face, it'll be great!"

It is hilarious when the overgrown children beat up on real children, especially when they have a national tv show to do it. Bob Cesca expressed the bully sense of humor and weasels hiding behind "freedom of speech in analyzing this show on fox news called "The Five."

"It’s [The Five] hugely popular. Naturally. It’s everything far-right viewers enjoy. It’s brainless chit-chat. It’s The View with racist dog whistles and nearsighted conservative antagonism and piles of Schlafy-style agitprop. No facts, no details, all crotchety grousing and puerile superficial bomb tossing.
Last week, the formerly conservative 'whiz kid' Jonathan Krohn announced that he had evolved into a more liberal worldview, the conservative movement predictably flipped its shpadoinkle. Like the group of scavengers they are, The Five piled onto the heap of writhing conservative screeching — and with predictably awful form. [Watch the video here, via Mediaite.]
[supposed comedian Greg] Gutfeld began with one of his Bruno-Kirby-as-Lieutenant-Steve from Good Morning, Vietnam versions of a comedy monologue about Krohn. Mercilessly, he suggested that perhaps Krohn should have been driven into the woods and left for dead for his trespass of — yes — changing his mind. I would have been shocked had I not been accustomed to this kind of bullying against kids, given the historical precedent of right-wing jihads against children and political noncombantants (seriously, read this).
Self-consciously, Gutfeld also theorized that liberals use children as untouchable props so they can’t be attacked by morally ambiguous ruffians like Gutfeld. Tiny human shields, they are. You know, like Trig Palin. Regardless of whether that’s the plan, it clearly has never stopped conservatives from giving childen a proverbial toilet-swirly when they dare step into the crosshairs of right-wing demagoguery. Ask Graeme Frost."

"We" as a society, used to understand this kind of "humor" as mental illness, only funny to other sociopaths. But now it is openly and honestly presented as mainstream. Isn't that funny?