Tuesday November 27, 2012

DA, DA. WE LAUGH! At American Thinker, Thomas Lifson:

Two of the most interesting stars in the world of conservative broadcasting have newly published books timed for the for the Christmas season.  Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld...

Yeah, I know, fellas, but wait:

...Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld are both masters of ridicule, a tool extensively deployed by the left but too little by the right, especially its more respectable regions. The left, after all, was instructed by Saul Alinsky in Rule Number 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."

Once again we're on the Bizarro Alinsky planet, where conservatives tell us that liberals only make fun of conservatives because Alinsky told them to -- which stands to reason, since why else would anyone tease demigods like Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro? Why, it would be like teasing Margaret Dumont! -- and pledge to fight back against this traitorous mockery by cooking up some Alinsky #5 of their own.

But it's an uphill battle, friends. Lifson quotes some Gutfield humor, and in the ensuing uncomfortable silence tells us that "the mix of irony and insight is what makes Gutfeld dangerous to the left. His juxtapositions of liberals' rhetoric with their behavior make them appear ridiculous." If that doesn't have you busting a gut, consider this: "The liberal media, however, is not anxious to increase [Gutfield's] visibility beyond Fox, because he is capable of reaching impressionable young minds that might be questioning the indoctrination they have received in the nation's educational system. " Now it's funny, right?

I'll spare you the Michael Savage encomium, though I must mention that Lifson considers him "the greatest storyteller in modern broadcasting" but quotes none of his allegedly brilliant work -- though he does tell us that Savage tried to get a PhD from Berkeley, "only to discover that because he was not a woman or a favored minority, an academic career would be denied to him," which should be proof enough of his brilliance.

The creepy thing -- well, the creepiest; there are several levels of ick here -- is that Lifson seems to want to tell us what he likes about a couple of artists, but the only attributes he can convincingly describe are their politics and their grievances. I don't know what possibility is more chilling: That he might think that's what art is about, or that he might think that's what everything is about.