Quote of the Day

"I decided not to post anything about it; instead, I wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax, and Breitbart.com came through! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lavishly paid speech to Friends of Hamas."

-- Paul Krugman on Breitbart's falling for a satirical piece in The Daily Current which claimed that the Nobel Prize-winning economist had filed for bankruptcy

If there isn't an official rule, à la Godwin's Law, that states that in the internet era, if something seems too good to be true in appealing to a journalist outlet's fundamentalist political ideology it should immediately be suspect and should be researched thoroughly before being run, there needs to be. Maybe it can be a codicil of Poe's Law, which deals with the inability to recognize political satire from what it's parodying.

By the way, credit to regular reader John Foley, who created what I'm calling "Foley's Law." It's a little like Godwin's Law, only adapted for modern social media arguments over things like gay issues, race issues, women's issues and cultural difference issues, usually applied when one person is expressing offense and the other isn't. Basically, it dictates that eventually the accusation of "white male privilege" will come up, often brought to bear as a cudgel against the person asking everyone angry over a perceived insult to just calm the hell down. In other words, as Foley said, white privilege is the new Hitler.

Dopecephus

This will probably surprise a few people, but at least no one can accuse me of that whole consistency/hobgoblin thing.

Let me start by saying that Hank Williams, Jr. is a blithering redneck idiot and a national embarrassment whose pride in his own ignorance and self-satisfaction at promoting the worst kind of Ugly American stereotypes are matched only by his complete lack of anything approaching talent. Now let me go on to say that the indignant furor over comments he made yesterday morning on Fox News Channel supposedly comparing Barack Obama to Hitler amounts to a really silly, media-generated overreaction. The reason is that Hank Williams, Jr. wasn't purposely attempting to draw a connection between President Obama and the most infamous mass-murdered in history.

As much as it pains me to defend this boob, anyone who watched the interview -- and it pains me even more to admit that I saw it live -- should have been able to grasp the point Williams was trying to make. See, in his booze-addled mind, not only is a casual golf game between Barack Obama and John Boehner on par with Benjamin Netanyahu yukking it up with Adolf Hitler -- since, obviously, the former two are comparable mortal enemies to the latter two -- but making this analogy on live television proves that Hank Williams, Jr. is just all kinds of clever. He's the thinking man's Larry the Cable Guy, if you will.

What Williams said was unbelievably ill-advised, but not for the reasons a lot of people think. He obviously doesn't like Barack Obama, that's true, and maybe he even thinks he's a threat to America and a danger to the world -- and he certainly proved the political codicil of Godwin's Law -- but that's not what he was trying to get across with his dumb crack. The truth is he's not a hateful fuck so much as he's just a dumb drunk who can't express himself properly. There's a difference.

Still, if all this outrage gets him banished from our culture forever, I guess the greater good is served. And I do have to give him credit for managing to make the regular clowns on Fox and Friends -- that would be the hosts -- look like rank amateurs for a change.

Stupid Is as Stupid Is

Can't wait for the inevitable video of this to pop up somewhere.

Michael Ian Black: Last Night I Kind of Lost My Shit