I Told You So. They’ve Had a Humorectomy.
Republicans have no sense of humor and no ability to understand satire.
If published today, Jonathan Swifts’s A Modest Proposal would send them scurrying to prayer meetings and put Fox News into overdrive. Ted Cruz, however, would only see it as unreasonable if it were written by Barack Obama. If he thought Newt Gingrich wrote it, he’d be willing to amend it to include his mother.
Republicans have it floored in neutral.
You know that rumor that Chuck Hagel was getting money from Friends of Hamas? It was a joke started by a reporter who operated under the mistaken belief that Republicans would know that he was joking.
Friedman wrote that he was interested in knowing if Hagel’s Republican critics knew the names of specific groups from which Hagel received speaker fees. He contacted a Republican aide and “hypothetically and hyperbolically” asked if Hagel addressed groups such as “Friends of Hamas” or the “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France.”
The Daily News’ Dan Friedman was jacking with them. Nobody in their right mind would think such organizations even existed.
I think the key here is “right mind.”
Friedman also put the question into email form, presumably thinking his joke would not be taken seriously. He was in for a surprise.
The following day, an article appeared on the conservative website Breitbart.com with the headline, “SECRET HAGEL DONOR?: WHITE HOUSE SPOX DUCKS QUESTION ON ‘FRIENDS OF HAMAS.'” Conservative pundits, including Mike Huckabee, and other websites also addressed the rumor. It even came up during a Fox Business segment with host Lou Dobbs.
And then it ended up in Ted Cruz’s mouth in the damn United States Senate.
So a joke ends up in the mouth of a joke.
I would like to make a modest proposal: Ted Cruz has to call David Letterman to run his statements through the joke machine before he’s allowed to say anything else.
Problem is, Ted Cruz and others like him in the Repugnican party will believe anything as long as it is going to make the president or his appointees look bad. They, the Repugnicans, were never ones for facts or truth.
1That’s not the only one. Check out this whopper!
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/mcconnell-office-duped-onion-style-piece-gitmo-140113809–politics.html
The Republican senators should start taking Beano before helping themselves to seconds of the Senate Dining Room’s famous navy bean soup!
2Wow, I think MSNBC (Rachel Maddow maybe) did a similar story on how the Repubs are using rumors from like blogs and then reinforcing them often on Fox News or Conservative Talk Radio and then the politicians quote them as “real” or “truth.” Like that the state department was seeing real-time video of Bengazi as it occurred.
I just hope that Senator Cruz just might be humbled by knowing he was played and starts fact checking before spouting in the future. But then I believe in unicorns and magic too.
3http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/ted-cruz-the-gops-nasty-newcomer.html?_r=0
4So, even if they took the joke seriously they couldn’t even be bothered to look these “groups” up on the internet first to see what they’re about before accusing someone? They totally fail at this internet thing.
5Remember Tail Gunner Joe? How about Tail Gunner Ted?
6The Republican’s have no sense of humor, and few of any other kind of sense as well.
7I used to work with a guy who would come in in the morning with some off-the-wall crazy idea or rumor and we’d all pooh-pooh him for coming up with such BS. But later in the day, we’d repeat his idea/rumor back to him and he’s shout “I knew it!” He never caught on that we were jerking his chain. I understand now that he must have been a Republican.
While we may be vicariously enjoying all the negative press our illustrious junior Senator may be receiving…. trust me….. Ted Cruz is thriving on it. And my question/concern is that 6 months from now if any of those negative stories on the news wires about how Cruz is continuing to be the worst behaved Senator in Congress will even hit our radar screen as unusual. We’ll all just be in a Cruz Coma as we watch the Party of NO continue to keep our Congress and country in a gridlock over petty horsehockey.
8In this day and age, “tail gunner” may have a whole new connotation, HumptyDump.
9Oh, Miss Juanita Jean and fellow clients of TWMDBS,
10I just read all of the last four stories and despite my usual appetite for humor, including parody and satire–I am not feeling cheerful.
This is all getting to be pretty overwhelming and nasty.
@cairocat, Agree.
11Romney’s entire campaign was so gaffe-prone because he kept trying to work in talking points from the far right red-meat-for-the-basest-of-the-base rumor- scare- fearmongers.
Like that 47% remark. That was the biggest. But he repeated a lot of falsehoods that I’m sure he didn’t surf himself, but that somehow bubbled up through the simmering cauldron of sewage and tea to roil noxiously inside their little echo-chamber.
It’s a real Mitt-sandwich.
12Good luck, Miz Juanita Jean.
13A writer at Gawker has set up a “Friends of Hamas” website in order to mock Cruz and Brietbart for pushing this story http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/gawker-writer-creates-faux-friends-of-hamas-site The website itself is amusing and has pictures of kittens
14The best proof of their obtuseness was that several Repug aides hired Stephen Colbert to speak at the big press corp dinner during the Bush Administration. They honestly thought he was a Republican supporter, despite his obvious comedic putdowns. Boy did they change their tune!
15I think Romney tried to tell one joke during his campaign. Even his disciples didn’t get it.
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