Posted on 10/20/2012 5:41:16 PM PDT by chessplayer
So the other morning a reader e-mails me a picture of a handful of women demonstrating outside the headquarters of the Ohio Republican party — in what we expert analysts round about this point in the quadrennial election cycle like to call the critical battleground of the Buckeye State. The women each wore two giant pieces of cardboard, front and back. Ah, I thought, a timely protest. These activists understand that, with Obama’s flatline economy drifting inexorably to a $20 trillion federal debt, we’ll soon be living in cardboard shacks in shantytowns in the parking lot of the bankrupt Solyndra factory. Or it’s what they’ll be using for the x-ray plates at your local hospital once the Obamacare rationing kicks in. Or maybe it’s the perfect visual metaphor for the flimsiness of U.S.-government security at its Middle Eastern embassies before the “Death to the Great Satan!” crowd punched through the compound like so much soggy cardboard.
But no. The women were chanting “Equal rights, not binders,” and they were protesting the following remarks by Mitt Romney at the presidential debate:
“And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ And they brought us whole binders full of women.”
Yes!!!!!!! With one bound, Obama was unbound! Romney had just made the worst presidential-debate gaffe since Gerald Ford declared there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. In the previous weeks, Obama had attempted to have a serious conversation with the citizenry, as befits the electoral process of a mature republic. He had raised the critical questions of our time — free contraceptives for middle-aged coeds, the outrageous right-wing Muppophobic assault on Big Bird — but the public had failed to bite. Now, in one fatal error, Romney had handed him the winning issue: binders!
Heh. It seems that sarcasm just doesn’t work as well as it is intended to work. Talk radio is another example. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if the host is being sarcastic if you’re a newcomer to his or her show.
I respectfully disagree!! I think Styne's sarcasm is penetratingly sharp, focused, and brilliant!! I love to hear him on the radio and to read anything he has written.
Oh I like Steyn’s articles very much and try not to miss reading them. My remark was about sarcasm in general and about newcomers to it.
At least Romney knows where a women’s place is
Between the covers........
We are so often sarcasm and irony challenged without the laugh track of the idiot box. This malady oughta be a recognized disability with generous government benefits.
Sarah Silverman's next commercial is her lesbian scissoring Big Bird instead of that hapless dog.
Steyn was very funny in that remark. Incidentally, MahaRushie says that second debate between Ford and Carter had little to do with Ford losing the race. MahaRushie says it was Saturday Night Live, that depicted Pres. Ford as a bumbling oaf, that really contributed to Carter’s victory (I did not vote for Carterm btw...).
The Democrats have gone insane. There’s no other explanation. Reality and their ideology have finally clashed so hard that they’ve all gone into another world, where nothing has to make sense and they are always right.
Mark Shields is still alive ? Oh my goodness. That brain-dead buffoon used to pollute CNN with his always-wrong prognostications and pontifications (especially on the old “Capital Gang” four-on-one leftist gang-bang of the late Bob Novak). He’s like Bob Beckel without the wit or charm.
Beckle didn't become the more likable guy until his FNC job on the boring Five. He was very annoying before that.
Yep, Mark Shields was a total AH on CNNs The Capital Gang. Always went into an indignation dramatic make believe fit on every thing Bob Novak said.
Obama implies that low gas prices tanked the economy, and the media is talking about binders?
Can we say “control the narrative”?
This is all they got?! Big Bird, free contraceptives, and binders?!
Take it easy on dodger there!
Poor guy hasn’t been the same since his operation.
He had his sense of humor surgically removed. They gave him a total funnybonectomy.
(He can still tell jokes alright, but they have to be explained to him afterward, ‘cause he no longer “get’s it.”)
“Muppophobic” - that deserves a hearty LOL!
This whole thing is obviously pissing women off : )
Wow, that's the best political commentary I've seen since Charles Manson retired.
Thats ok....I read it. LOL!
I didn’t see this as sarcastic.
Perhaps I’m slow, but over the last five days or so, I’ve been watching the president described as having won the second debate, which I categorically deny.
This commentary seemed like one more person who had bit off on that.
In this atmosphere, I think it might be a little helpful if the writer were to make his attempt at sarcasm more clear.
Nuance needs to be contrasted with something. Here it just blended in. At least for me it did.
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