“It’s an outrage!”
“What? The vending machine in the employee lounge is out of Snickers again?”
“Didn’t you hear me, man? This is an outrage! We must act now!”
“Um, okay, but…”
“There’s no ‘but’ about it! You’re with us or against us! Either join in the cause or get out of the way! The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!”
“Thank you, Edmund Burke. But…”
“Why are you just standing there? This is a call to arms! Don’t tread on me! Liberty or death! Freedom itself!”
“Would you mind easing off the throttle long enough to tell me what the inspiration is for this second American Revolution you’re calling for?”
“Are you daft? Are you deaf?”
“I will be if you don’t stop shouting.”
“Haven’t you heard what happened last Saturday night? It’s an outrage!”
“The only outrage I’m aware of from last Saturday night was how bad Dale Earnhardt Jr. did.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“How can you not know what happened? It was… was… an outrage!”
“Humor me by illuminating me. What happened?”
“Didn’t you hear what Wanda Sykes said?”
“Who?”
“Wanda Sykes!”
“Oh, her. I’d rather listen to the Who. Or my cat hocking a hairball. About as funny. Why should I have been listening to her?”
“Didn’t you hear what she said about Rush at the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday night?”
“I was watching NASCAR last Saturday night. More into fenders bashing and sincere celebrations in Victory Lane than political bashing and self-satisfied celebrations of election victories. Besides, what does she have against Rush? Sure, they’ve had their ups and downs. But overall they’ve put out a great catalog of work.”
“Wha… what are you talking about?”
“Rush. The Canadian progressive rock trio.”
“Not them, whoever they are! Rush Limbaugh.”
“Oh. Actually, I knew that. Couldn’t resist the pun, though.”
“This is no laughing manner!”
“Since it involved Wanda Sykes that was a rather redundant statement. Anyway, refer back to the aforementioned comment about illumination. Shine some light on the subject. Exactly what did she say that has outraged you so?”
“She said, and I quote: ‘Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you’re saying, ‘I hope America fails,’ you’re, like, ‘I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.’ He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason.’”
“To me, that’s typical left-wing stupidity. The inability to distinguish between someone stating they hope someone’s policies fail in order to demonstrate to everyone their fatal flaws and wishing for the country to fail… look. The government is not the country, although the current administration is trying to make it that way by de facto nationalizing everything it can. The people are the country. Rush loves this country. The last thing he wants is for it to fail. What Rush said couldn’t possibly be construed as meaning he wants the country to fail for no reason other than disliking the current administration’s policies and philosophies. Unless you’re deliberately distorting and misinterpreting his statement to suit your own purposes. It’s not Rush’s fault when that happens no matter how much Allahpundit and Patterico whine about it.”
“Who?”
“Precisely.”
“But… but that’s not all she said! She went on, ‘He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.’”
“And so…”
“And so? This is an outrage?”
“What, a terminally overrated ‘you have to love me no matter how lame I am because I’m a black female lesbian so if you don’t say I’m the greatest thing ever you’re a racist misogynist homophobe’ hack said something stupid pretending it was (quote) edgy political humor (unquote)? Big deal. Happens every minute of every day.”
“But… but Obama was LAUGHING!”
“Okay, so he acted like a jerk. What, that’s never happened before? Let him. Let people see he thought it was funny. Sure, the media will either ignore it or spin it so by their definition it’s no big deal, no doubt dredging up every everything ever said negative about Obama no matter how obscure the speaker so they can go, ‘See? The right started it!’ In other words, acting like children caught with their hand in the cookie jar whose immediate response is saying the other child did it first. So what?”
“What do you mean, so what? This is an outrage! We must flood the White House switchboard with calls! Fill their inbox! Bury them in letters demanding an apology!”
“Why? They’ve done us a favor by showing their ass in public. Besides, Rush is a big boy. Getting into a public spitting contest with him is only one degree less of a guaranteed losing position than trying to outdo Ann Coulter in a sarcasm contest. In either case it’s not whether you’ll get creamed. It’s how badly.”
“But… but they called him a terrorist! They wished he’d be tortured! They wished he was dead!”
“And in other news, water is wet. Get real and stop shouting long enough to listen. They’ve done us a favor. That’s nothing to get outraged over.”
“But what she said…”
“Let us review. While the Obama administration didn’t create all of the problems facing this country, they’ve exacerbated many of them. We’re drowning in debt and it’s only getting worse. We’re indebted to China, which weakens our position in the world. It is inevitable there will be increased taxes across the board, hitting everyone where it hurts. We’re weakening our military at a time when our enemies are hardly waving the white flag. We have a government dictating to private business how it will conduct its affairs, namely give everything to the unions which destroyed companies with their short-sighted greed while simultaneously destroying America’s ability to compete on the global market due to excessive labor costs to manufacture anything here. At the same time, they’re sticking it to investors, making them bleed red ink and weakening both their ability and will to provide the investment capital needed for the economy to recover. These are things worth being outraged over. These are things worth speaking up about and taking action upon. A comedian’s cheap shots and the President laughing at them? Doesn’t even register at the low end of the meter. That all said, there was one funny line at that event.”
“Which one was that?”
“Let me preface this by noting the only two sources of comedy that are genuinely funny: creating the absurd or pointing out the obvious. Creating the absurd is someone like Steven Wright, who’s the absolute master of it. Lines like, ‘I once almost dated a psychic but she left me before we met?’ That’s funny. Then there’s pointing out the obvious, such as asking why there’s a permanent press setting on an iron. And that was the only funny line. And it didn’t come from Sykes. It was from Obama.”
“Which line was that?”
“When he told the media, ‘You all voted for me.’”
