From Hitchens, who just makes me howl sometimes. Click here.
An excerpt:
"He had intended (pause for thigh-slapping and guffawing) to make a truly original joke about the IQ and educational level of the chief executive. His crack team of gag-writers had toiled on the joke and combed all the bugs out of it. It was there, poised on the pad and ready for launch. And it fizzled. (Funny--that punchline usually activates the easy-laugh track, as Messrs. Leno, Stewart, Maher and Colbert demonstrate with airy ease practically every night of the week.) And out of the syntactic chaos came the impression that Mr. Kerry thought only a dumb jerk could end up in uniform in Iraq.
No wonder Mr. Kerry feels hard done-by: He can't recount a joke that practically tells itself and has been road-tested to work with almost Pavlovian certainty, especially on campuses. Surely everybody--any fool, in fact--knows that it's Mr. Bush who is supposed to have the difficulties with timing and articulation? Ah, the unfairness of it all."
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