Posted on 10/05/2007 7:52:22 AM PDT by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
From "Roxanne" a modern-day telling of Cyrano de Bergerac:
Roxanne: I was being ironic.
C.D. Bales: Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here....We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.
In debate, it’s one of the cheapest tricks in the book: get the opponent to say something that is manifestly contradictory to their point, appearance, identity, or history. When it comes to making an opponent look stupid, there is nothing like it. Try this sometime: during an argument, repeatedly observe that “Some people just take this stuff too personally.” If the opponent is angry enough, or has lost the ability to recognize the trap, they will eventually respond with “I do not!” – essentially illustrating your point in a delicious moment of situational irony.
As Steve Martin’s latter-day Cyrano said of irony in the movie Roxanne, “…we don’t get that here,” and here in the U. S. of A, that certainly seems ironically true on far too many levels. The public discourse is full of comments and ideas that would be devilishly funny for their internal and external contradictions were it not for the fact that the speakers were scarily earnest.
A letter-writer to the Washington Post recently bewailed the fact that “illegal immigrants are treated as criminals.” Breaking the law is, in fact, one of the definitions for criminal behavior, so what part of “illegal” does the writer not understand? Ironic.
In San Francisco, where irony is an art form, an attendee at the leather-and-fetish Folsom Street Festival griped about children being present. “That’s sick,” declared the man who was at the time engaged in public self-abuse for the amusement of the crowds. Really ironic.
But irony is far more than an art form in Washington, where lawmakers have moved irony to a whole new level. The recent flap over whether stalwart troop-supporter Rush Limbaugh deliberately insulted troops who might disagree with him is a case in point.
To be clear from the start, Limbaugh’s point, which has since been taken quite out of context, was that many of the voices of dissent that purport to originate from “the troops” are fraudulent. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the darling of New Republic, may actually be a soldier, but apparently made up just about everything else. Jesse MacBeth, at one time the anti-war poster child, was neither a veteran of Iraq nor a witness to the war crimes that he claimed, but a boot-camp washout, now charged with falsifying his service.
It’s not as though Limbaugh is relying on only a couple of red herrings. There is Amorita Randall, profiled by the New York Times Magazine as having been injured in Iraq, who was never there; or Jimmy Massey, whose published book about war atrocities was thoroughly debunked, but never retracted; or anti-war author Micah Wright, who was never an Army Ranger as he claimed.
The irony here is the reaction Limbaugh’s comments have evoked. Tom Harkin, himself once caught padding his own military resume, took the lead in hurling personal invective at Limbaugh. The same Democrats who looked the other way when MoveOn.Org called General Petreaus a traitor in the New York Times, are now rearing up in outrage while frantically twisting Limbaugh’s words to manufacture something to be outraged over.
The Democrats are in a tough spot. Their flirtation with the radical Left has proven unwise, and the American people, for as tired as they are of this war (38% support), and as tired as they of this President (33% support), they are even more tired of this Congress (11% support). The tacit approval indicated by the silence of the Democrats for an outrageous ad hominem attack on Petraeus only further eroded their support and alienated voters deeply suspicious of the Democrat dalliance with radical leftism. They have failed to enact most of the agenda they promised a year ago, and their leadership increasingly resembles an enraged toy poodle, yapping ceaselessly and without value.
This rush to bring Rush to judgment is about a lot more than Rush Limbaugh or his comments. It’s about muzzling Right-leaning talk radio; it’s about reviving the dead “Fairness Doctrine”; it’s about getting some payback for being embarrassed by the company they keep (Soros & Co.); and it’s about regaining control of the public debate.
This attempt to re-cast the debate over national defense into one over Rush Limbaugh is sad, essentially putting liberals in the position of opposing free speech in order to score points against a war they oppose. More to the point, it’s ironic.
Unfortunately, they don’t get that here.
The jack-booted thugs on the left are trying to silence dissent. They own the Congress of the United States and they are managed by groups headed by the likes of George Soros. It is time to take our country back. Our country is now in the hands of the sell out crowd. The whiney butt Libtards that cry about much yet do very little. It is ripe for true revolution here.
nicely done piece.
That is an very solid essay on the topic. Right to the heart of the matter. A++, David!
I know dems completely understand this, their tactical battle plan. They just don’t want anyone to know it.
Do you have a link to the original article?
"My opinion is .... that you could as soon scrub the blackamore white as to change the principle of a profest Democrat, and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this country."
GW, calling it correctly from 209 years ago .... I find that 'ironic'.
double ditto!
I like irony. But the congressional don’t get it. They lost their edge a long time ago and now are swimming 90 mph in the Soros river just to keep up.
Great article.
Irony - “we don’t get that here”.
Great quote!
Just a postscript to the above:
I think we have an attempt at irony with Obama saying he was no longer going to wear an American flag lapel pin. He said something about being known by his actions that would determine whether or not people perceive him as an American patriot.
He’s about three steps away from making a bait-hit for irony. And that might be baits like, “Most people who wear a flag lapel pin are just showing off,” or “Wearing a flag lapel pin doesn’t make you a real patriot (like me),” or “People who wear a flag lapel pin aren’t real patriots.”
If he says it long enough — and there’s plenty of time before the election in November to say it long enough — the other candidates, Republic and Democrat alike — will jump in and say “I am too. Who are you saying is not a patriot?”
And at that point, he gets a politician on the defensive. And he gets back in the news. He’s been losing a lot of percentage points lately so he needs to figure out some way to get his name back in print.
I mean, after all, these dummy politicians started out so early that they have run out of things to say. There’s only a certain number of times that any of them can go on the talk shows. Nobody listens to old, rehashed stuff. So they have to keep re-inventing their game plans.
Otherwise, people are going to do more interesting things. Like mow their grass on Sunday afternoons, or weed the flower beds.
Ratings go down when these politicos come on to talk about old stuff — like their disdain for President Bush (over and over again). Pretty soon the TV show ratings go down. Then they go looking for interesting guests — not political re-runs.
But the irony is an interesting ploy. We’ll just have to wait and see if the political candidates bite Obama’s bait.
If they do, it ought to be interesting. They’re about ready to start cannibalizing each other.
Anything to grab a headline.
Very well written piece!!!
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