Ridicule the Ridiculous

To Vice President Cheney: I wish you were singing on American Idol. You'd be just as bad but not as dangerous and we could vote to be rid of you every week. America, you have spoken. The Bush administration sucks.

But seriously, are we taking the Bush-Cheney roadshow too seriously? According to Michael Waller, an expert on communication, "Ridicule strips the enemy/adversary of his mystique and prestige. Ridicule erodes the enemy's claim to justice. Ridicule eliminates the enemy's image of invincibility. Directed properly at an enemy, ridicule can be a fate worse than death." Not too good a fate for the jokes we have running the country. According to Waller, we'd be better off mocking the Republican corruption culture club than demonizing them. God knows there's no better straight man than Cheney. But it's not about jokes, it's about Bushisms and pseudo-Bushisms. See Gary Trudeau's "Doonsbury" for a prime example of ridiculing the Shrub by using his own forms of speech.

We need to extend this: There's a place in the language for "As accurate as a Frist telediagnosis," "a slog of Rumsfeldian proportions", "The Delay center for advancement of ethics," or "The Bush school of unification." Instead of stating that personal bankrupcies, despite the draconian measures implemented by the credit card lobbyists, excuse me, the Congress, are up 30 percent, state that since the Congress gave the credit card business its long-desired welfare package, business among bankrupcy lawyers is up by thirty percent! Bush takes this as a sign the economy is cooking along. Instead of carping about the illegality of Bush's domestic spying program, ask if we can have the conversations between Delay and his legal team caught by the program published. Nobody cares about lawyer-client privilege but tell a joke: Did you hear the one about the lawyer talking to his client? The NSA did....

Joke about them, progressives. Continue to describe the sad truth about Republican Washington and Bush rule in humorous terms, preferably denigrating terms. "How many Republicans does it take to screw in a light bulb? Only one but it'll cost you a hundred thousand." "Bush said the terrorists believe we are weak, flaccid. I don't know Laura well enough to ask her that..." And I bet it was that turbulence on the TV screen that kept his own hands off his joystick during that "mission accomplished" landing he faked. Keep joking about them, even if mine aren't that good. They're ridiculous, they've earned ridicule.

Unfortunately, for three more years, the joke's on us. Understaffing Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq left an opening for sharia law, making converting to Christianity a slightly more serious crime than teaching evolution in Arkansas (You can't handle the truth, children! You can't!). At least the Republicans have finally publicly declared that being offensive is better than being defensive.