David Kahane: Slayer of Funny
David Kahane pens a “humorous” essay in the National Review:
So what if his deadbeat dad had multiple wives, a new half-sibling pops up every other week and his mom was named Stanley? BO Plenty is a perfectly normal American, and you lot should be proud to anoint — oops! I mean “elect” — him as your next president. Just think how thrilled your bravely aborted children and their heroically murdered offspring would have been to see his face on one of those dollar bills, if they had lived!
So now that everything’s going down the tubes the way it’s supposed to, maybe it doesn’t matter if you reject our premises. As Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute, and if we can just get enough of them to the polls and get them to vote for us four or five times apiece, the way Tammany Hall did in the good old days, then we’ll be O.K.
David Kahane – like Dennis Miller, incidently – seems like someone who thinks he’s really funny, when in reality, he isn’t. And the only reason why he thinks he’s so damn funny, is because his friends don’t have the heart to tell him to “stop it with the goddamn ‘jokes’ already!” But, after all, Kahane is a “conservative” humorist, and so his pathological unfunniness doesn’t really come as much of a surprise. Though, I have to give him credit for his unvarnished honesty; he is pretty openly disdainful – as seen in the quoted paragraph – of efforts at increasing civic participation: registering voters, and getting folks interested in the process of representative government.
One of the “dirty little secrets*” of the conservative movement is its shameless contempt for voting rights. Movement conservatives have been enthusiastic supporters of felon disenfranchisement laws (one of those ugly vestiages of Jim Crow), and efforts to remove anyone too black/brown, or too poor from the voting rolls (see Florida 2000). Indeed, Republicans in Michigan have publicly declared their intention to challenge the registration of folks who have foreclosed on their homes. People who, for a variety of reasons, tend to have a little less wealth and a lot more melanin. Unfortunately, conversatives tend to be evasive about their intentions, and refuse to own up to their disregard for voting rights. Which is why I can appreciate Kahane’s “essay”; yes it’s painfully unfunny, but it is also a pretty honest statement of conservative beliefs.
*By which I mean, stated belief.
It never ceases to amaze me how little protest the disenfranchisement of voters seems to muster. When the Supreme Court ok’ed that heinous voter I.D. law in Indiana earlier this year, I heard nary a peep.
Jamelle, on the other hand, is really funny; just not intentionally.
Jamelle,
You never once refuted David Kahane’s points. Instead, like all good liberals, you immediately call him a racist and make strawman arguments.
The only “dirty little secrets*” of conservatism is that they believe one person one vote is a necessary thing. Of course that just flies in the craw of immoral and criminal liberals who want to cheat at every election they participate in.
Proving you are who you claim you are would just be so horrible to libs. That would necessiate them to play fair.
Criminals have given up their right to vote. Period.
aramkr, How right you are.
Jamelle, I don’t get it. Regarding the humourous tone of the article you first say, “David Kahane – like Dennis Miller, incidently – seems like someone who thinks he’s really funny, when in reality, he isn’t.”, and then in the next paragraph – I realize it’s a long time to keep a liberal diatribe in sync – “Which is why I can appreciate Kahane’s “essay”; yes it’s painfully unfunny…”. Which is it?
You simply want to allow anyone to vote inspite of any pesky little illegalities, because they happen to be a minority or poor, not because of disenfrancisement. They don’t have the privilege to vote if the law prohibits it, as in the case of felons or not residing where you are registered. If you were truly against voter disenfrancisement you might have mentioned Gore’s attempt in 2000 to reject absentee ballots from the military (in your words, see Florida 2000). Your referencing Jim Crow to make a point about conservatives restricting voting rights demonstrates your background as one derived from an “education” of liberal indoctrination as opposed to actual history; since it was southern Democrats who actually passed the Jim Crow laws after the Civil War (see Jim Crow).
Anonymous July 8 Commenter: Totally agree with your comments, especially the strawman arguments. You took most of my words before I could type them.
Um, dude, you clearly don’t know how to read. There isn’t much, if any, incongruity between saying someone isn’t funny, and saying that they’re painfully unfunny. In fact, it’s the exact same thing.
I think I have finally figured out what the problem is with liberals and I have even developed a way to address it. I have always looked at liberalism as a phenomenon associated with politics when, in fact, I am now convinced it is really a medical issue. At some time if their lives people are exposed to an organism that attacks the brain causing the individual to develop a condition medically known as a cranial-rectal inversion. This clouds the mind and substantially dimishes the ability to see clearly, think rationally, and to analyze logically. It also causes certain levels of dillusion such as believing that feeling something is the same as doing something about it. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it seems to impact one’s memory so that rather than learn from one’s past mistakes, they insist on making them over and over again.
You’ll be encouraged to know that I have come up with a cure for the cranial-rectal inversion. It is call a plexotomy. In this procedure a small (approximately 4″ x 6″) window of abdominal wall is removed and a plexiglass panel is surgially implanted in place of the abdominal wall thereby allowing the victim of CRI to once again see clearly.
“Jamelle, on the other hand, is really funny; just not intentionally.”
ZING! Whoa, you got his number! And with a delayed response time of only nine months!
So I’m gonna have to say the funniest thing is amramkr, Luke, and Kent commenting on a months old post. Also extra funny points go to Luke for stringing together a series of unrelated (but on topic!) points and making it sound somewhat like a coherent argument. Ha ha! You guys and your cartoon outrage! You slay me!
@paxamericana
uhh, happy to deflate your bubble here- let’s go a little easy on the tripple-trimester delay.
While trying to defend janelle from attack, you’re simply indicating that if not for the recent Kahane article about Palin …. well, nobody would have even found janelle’s blog entry, leaving it to die in the deserved obscurity of ‘just another pointless blog article.’