Category: Satirical

From today’s New York Times:

But Alfie’s lackluster o.b.o. wasn’t the only thing to come out of this election. A look at some of November 2nd’s lesser publicized consequences:
DVD sales of Farenheit 911 dropped significantly.
The third season of Reno 911? Totally put on hold.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s drunken boast – “I’m so getting out of this fascist country” – now repeated ad infinitum to friends.
David Blaine’s healing powers significantly diminished. Street magic, however, is promised to continue.
I might have, just totally randomly, you know, just hooked up with this other girl, but it totally stopped before, you know… I can’t believe this election.
Syria? That shit’s on.
And remember how I said you should move in with me? It’s just that after this whole election thing, I don’t know if that’s really a great idea. In light of the election.
John Kerry unlikely to become President on January 20. American government largely overrun by crypto-fascist evangelicals.
I’m in love with someone else. Election.
Related: Yes, And the Story of an Old-Fashioned…

Foxnews.com>O’Reilly Factor
The Weekly Standard
The National Review>The Corner
ABCNews>The Note
Chemistry Store>Loofahs
Peabody Award>Definition
Lucy Liu Pictures high resolution
Boycottliberalism.com>Top Ten Liberal Lies
Funny Stuff>Racist Jokes
The Minor Fall, The Major Lift
Famous Idiot>Alec Baldwin
Barbrastreisand.com
AlFrankenWeb.com>Fox vs. Franken Transcript
Amazon.com>Books>The New Sensual Massage
Dictionary>Bloviate
Opinionjournal.com
Amazon.com>Books>Those Who Trespass
Spectator.net>Chasing the Dream Girls of Bangkok

“Hollywood, with its Jewish roots, did not experience The Passion as a transcendent religious and emotional event, as so many other viewers did. Some haven’t forgiven Gibson for even making the film, let alone forgotten his father, Hutton, and his inflammatory statements about the history of the Jews. ‘I’ll tell you why The Passion won’t be nominated,’ snaps one industry executive. ‘Happily, there are too many people in the Academy who believe the Holocaust actually happened.'”
Will Oscar Listen?, Sean Smith, Newsweek, Oct. 25, 2004.

The Internets are on fire today, man. As they say in Latin, ¡en fuego, hombre!
First comes this excellent article from a newspaper called The New York Sun that not only tells us about blogs, but finally—finally!—explains that “jumping the shark” phrase our 15 year-old cousin always uses. (It has something to do with Happy Days.) There’s also an excellent little primer about a show called Oz, which we’re definitely gonna watch this week.
The article, by a writer named Eric Wolff (remember that name!), is all about a website called Gawker, which we plan to check out after we have our morning coffee! It also answers the age old question: Who gives the best soundbites, Condé Nast editorial assistants, or ‘cyber-hostesses‘? (It’s a draw! They both bring the noise and the bite!)
Then there’s this Tom Scocca piece from The New York Observer about a guy who runs a site called The Minor Fall, The Major Lift (definitely gotta check his stuff out) who was once annonymous but is now going by his real name, Alex Balk! Plus, he’s now writing for The New York Times! Like other bloggers! (Memo to self: Pick up the Times this weekend on the way to brunch!)
What’s exciting about this (and warrants all these exclamation points!!!) is that we can now see that far from being an annonymous wag, this Balk fellow was actually hiding in plain site all along, submitting to a website called McSweeneys and playing along on the Slate News Quiz with Emmy-winning TV writers and producers! Next Major Lift, Hollywood!?!
Phew! This entry has fairly knocked us out (we topped off our exclamation point quota in the second paragraph!), and now we’re off to go figure out how to get one of these blogs set up. Our 15 year-old cousin is great with computers, and we think the “domain” JackieHarvey.com is still available!
As they say in Latin, Excelsior!

Once, years before a hyperbole-prone Graydon Carter pronounced “the end of the age of irony“, the more astute Tom Lehrer remarked that Henry Kissinger’s 1973 Nobel Peace prize rendered political satire obsolete.

One wonders what Tom Lehrer thinks of today’s announcement that the the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the perverted Austrian novelist Elfriede Jelinek. While not an act of cosmic irony on par with Kissinger’s Peace Prize, it is, if nothing else, the last nail in the coffin for kinky books. Even if you are inclined to enjoy nauseating, degenerate art-smut like this (and if you are, you should be ashamed), you have to acknowledge that the authors of these nasty things should not be rewarded for writing and promulgating them. Most of Sade’s horrid output was written in prison, and rightly so. Georges Bataille published the shockingly perverse “Story of the Eye” under a pseudonym and spent his wretched life as a creepy librarian, unwilling to face the well-deserved umbrage that even his fellow Frenchmen would have unleased upon him had he taken responsibility for his “work.”

Of course, we here at low culture regard this kind of cultural output as not merely beneath contempt, but in fact a danger to our American way of life and values, the sort of pernicious decadence that leads to the downfall of great civilizations. But even if we did care for this kind of thing, isn’t it a fundamental element of these naughty books that they and their authors are “transgressive”, that they are breaking the rules of society? And shouldn’t society respond to transgression with censure and condemnation, not fancy medals and prizes? Indeed, in a year in which the world was appalled by images of grotesquely sadistic acts, is it not poor timing — if not a bit perverse — for the Swedish Academy to award its Literature prize to a pornographic writer who celebrates perversity?