The Editors' Revenge: hilarity at the expense of politicians

It's an occupational hazard: editors, if the ones I know are representative of the field, compulsively edit. And that includes the often poorly composed political speech. We do it for money, we do it for amusment, we do it because we love picking nits. Vanity Fair decided they couldn't stand it, and provided this priceless edit of Sarah Palin's sayonara speech.

Say I: HAH HA HA HA HA HOO HOO HAR HAR HEE HEE HA HA HA!

Ahem.

Big tip o' the hat to Ross Coen for forwarding this link to me.

The pertinent point

As Progressive Alaska and others have pointed out, Mike Doogan was wrong to out Mudflats. As Mudflats herself says,

The big picture, the thing that should outrage all of us, despite political party or affiliation, is this: an elected official in a position of power and authority utilized state resources to deliberately and with malice, knowing there would be negative consequences, impinged on the free speech and privacy rights of a private citizen.

What matters is not which team is in office, what matters is how they play the game. And Doogan is not playing fair, or with rectitude. This was sleazy.

Of shoes and chimps

As a fellow journalist, my hat is off in a gesture of deepest respect for that shoe-flinging member of our trade, who knows a chimp standing in for a president when he sees one. Well, a dog is what he actually called him, but the same idea holds. (Dogs deserve more respect--chimps too, really.)

With almost any other leader of the free world, I'd say this action was out of line and that Muntadhar al-Zaidi would have lost his sense of perspective, but Bush deserves a big fat waffle stomp print right upside the head. No question. Al-Zaidi obviously did what any sane and sensible person, even a journalist, would do when faced with such outrageous, surreal, and irresponsible behavior as has been demonstrated by King Georgie. Alas, most journalists don't seem to recognize anymore just how outrageous Mr. Bush has been.

This is old news now, two days after the incident. When we heard about this on the radio, both I and my noble spousal unit guffawed, but it was tale of the joke at the end of the story that really made me belly laugh, about it being required now "as a matter of national security" that all shoes be removed before going over the border (or to press conferences, I suppose, as pointed out over on Fiery Blazing Handbasket). Shades of our airport security, and about as sensible, hey what?

The video of the incident (actually several versions) has been seen better than 10 million times, making this one of the more popular YouTube flicks, and has already been made into online games. The joke has become popular with Latin American leaders, too. Middle Eastern shoemakers are claiming that it was THEIR shoe that almost whacked the US (p)resident.

Despite the delightful cultural sense of humor intrinsic to this good solid insult, al-Zaidi is in jail, and his family fears he has been badly beaten or tortured. Not good. Doesn't matter if he threw flaming torches or gunfire at the people on stage--the appropriate response, once you have the person in custody, is most certainly not to beat them up.

Absurdity triumphs over realism

Or optimism, for that matter. Absurdity seems to be the ruling force in the world today. Let's just take a few examples of items found recently on the blogosphere and elsewhere:

• Don Young's mother-in-law quote (but then, this is typical Yon Dungism, so what else is new?)
• DOT is at it again, apparently, this time with the new Elmore Road in Anchorage
• Beavers are biting back in Kodiak (pay attention, Jamie!)
• Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake stuck his foot in his mouth and wiggled his toes energetically at Quinhagak recently on a campaign-cum-factfinding trip with Ted "Torture" Stevens by saying, sagely, that concern about post-traumatic stress and brain injury in Iraq vets was overblown.
• Our detention camp is STILL operating in Guantanamo Bay.
• Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems to think that going nuclear will reduce greenhouse emissions, and seems to have bought the rotten goods that nuclear is "clean". But hey, the French have been advocating this for a long time...unfortunately, this attitude is catching. Some doofus in Chicago seems to think it's a good idea too, and he's not alone.
Don't forget Galena! Yep, nuclear power is just fine, safe in an earthquake and flood zone, too, clean as a whistle.

Every day, there's more! Clean coal and other conundrums...