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Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Wow

This morning I had the cringeworthy experience of listening to my not-favorite KUOW (NPR) personality, Steve Scher, interviewing one of my new not-favorite entertainer-slash-political-gadflies, Harry Shearer. Among other things, I got to hear
  • an excerpt from Shearer's song "Waterboarding U.S.A." (from what I understand of waterboarding, it is more subtle as torture than this is as satire)

  • Shearer explaining that U.S. condemnation of the Myanmar crackdown was ineffective because of our newly diminished moral standing around the world (a view revealing almost total ignorance, since the state of that country and our zero influence over its leaders long preceded the Bush Presidency, Iraq, 9/11, etc.)

  • special praise for Al Jazeera's coverage of the situation in Myanmar

  • the beginning of an excerpt from Shearer's song "Let's Fry the Flag-Burners on the Fourth of July!" (I'm reminded of something my freshman expository writing instructor told me about not needing to argue "with the ham-fistedness of the Soviet propagandists.")

  • Shearer commenting about David Letterman's post-9/11 remark that if he lived to be a thousand he wouldn't understand the 9/11 attacks (the comment was something like "Do some more reading.")

  • "Your tax dollars paid to flood the city."

  • Shearer, asked whether political satire had lost its edge, or was still effective, or some such thing, responding "if it was really having a political effect , they'd come down on us . . . you can see that we have no effect because we're free."
"You can see that we have no effect because we're free." Think that one over. By the same basic logic, if Hillary wins the general election and "they" allow her to take office, it means presidential politics, like satire, is ineffective. I stand in awe of Harry Shearer, not least for being someone who believes all the things he evidently believes, yet chooses to confront the manifold ills he sees in our country not by taking up arms, but with a thousand little voices and heavy-handed ditties sung to the converted.

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posted at 10:23 AM

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