Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Archives for October 2004

Political sensibilities

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Tucker Carlson doesn’t know when he’s been beat.

“I thought that he looked ridiculous,” Carlson said in an interview Monday, “and I think the tape makes that clear.”

Carlson said Stewart continued lecturing the “Crossfire” crew after the show went off the air. “I wasn’t offended as much as I was unimpressed,” he said.

Stewart wasn’t talking about the confrontation on Monday, a spokesman said. Comedy Central executive Tony Fox said there may be some regret over the vulgarity, but that Stewart has been a longtime critic of cable news networks and their political argument shows.

The comedian hasn’t gone out of his way to endorse Kerry. In a public forum last week in New York, he was asked who he would vote for, and he said he’d back the Democrat.

Carlson noted that many of the great comedians kept their political opinions to themselves, not for fear of offending anyone, but because it could hurt their art.

“You’re selling out,” he said. “If you are a satirist or an acute social observer, and he is, and all of a sudden you suspend disbelief on someone or suck up rather than prod or poke someone, people will look at you and say, ‘Even if I agree with you, I don’t like it,'” he said.

Fox said “The Daily Show” poked fun at people in power, regardless of their party. Most people who watch Stewart are aware that he leans to the left politically.

“I don’t think it really impacts the show at all,” he said. “The show does what it does regardless of Jon’s political persuasion.”

Wow. Comedians…keeping their political sensibilities to themselves…who knew?

hope-nixon.jpg

Bob Hope: he could have been one of the Greats

Mr. Carlson: please, for the love of God, shut up before you do yourself any more harm, ‘kay? Because it could hurt their art? Are you high? The great comedians have always been political. You have access to Google (I should hope): check out the etymology of “the court jester.” (Also, watch the Danny Kaye movie. It’s funny stuff.) Maybe as comedians get more successful they have more to lose if they offend the people in power, so they doing do the pointed stuff and thereby become the bland bores we all think of when we think of comedians. But one of the great things about being a comedian is that you get to speak truth to power and if you do it well you make people laugh as well. Not just the laughter of recognition but because you said something funny. Sheesh.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Now take off that ridiculous tie. You’re an insult to nerds.

(No, I don’t know for a fact that Hope was a Republican. He made fun of everyone. But he seemed to have more Republican pals. Besides which: not the point of my joke.)

Update: And now…your moment of Zen.

Halloween on a Sunday

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You know, I keep hearing that I’m supposed to respect other people’s beliefs, but goshdarnit they make too hard sometimes:

NEWNAN, Ga. – Across the Bible Belt this Halloween, some little ghosts and goblins might get shooed away by the neighbors — and some youngsters will not be allowed to go trick-or-treating — because the day falls on a Sunday this year.

“It’s a day for the good Lord, not for the devil,” said Barbara Braswell, who plans to send her 4-year-old granddaughter, Maliyah, out trick-or-treating in a princess costume Saturday instead.

Some towns around the country are decreeing that Halloween be celebrated Saturday to avoid complaints from those who might be offended by the sight of demons and witches ringing their doorbell on the Sabbath.

“Moving it, that’s like celebrating Christmas a week early,” countered Veronica Wright, who bought a Power Rangers costume for her son. “It’s just a kid thing. It’s not for real.”

It is an especially sensitive issue for authorities in the Bible Belt across the South.

“You just don’t do it on Sunday,” said Sandra Hulsey of Greenville, Ga. “That’s Christ’s day. You go to church on Sunday, you don’t go out and celebrate the devil.”

In Newnan, a suburb south of Atlanta, the City Council decided to go ahead with trick-or-treating Sunday. In 1999, the last time Oct. 31 fell on a Sunday, the city moved up trick-or-treating to Saturday, which brought howls of protest.

In Vestavia Hills, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham, a furor erupts every time Halloween falls on Sunday.

I don’t feel at all bad keeping my kids away from religion. Not a bit.

Orcinus on NCLB

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David Neiwert has an excellent entry on No Child Left Behind, the crown jewel of Bush’s domestic program—and if that doesn’t tell you what kind of shape Bush’s domestic program is in, nothing will.

What little discussion there has been of these remarks has focused, perhaps rightly, on how out of touch they make Bush appear when it comes to the lives of working people. A 55-year-old worker isn’t interested in going back to school to learn a new skill so he can start up another career. He just wants his job back. Bush’s remarks reflect someone who sees workers and jobs as portable commodities, and has no sense whatsoever of the pain inflicted by policies that eviscerate the nation’s manufacturing capacity.

But even more telling, I think, are what these remarks say about Bush’s view of education.

To people like Bush, the value of education lies solely in its ability to provide a steady supply of workers. Education isn’t a matter of improving our lives, making us better citizens capable of thinking for themselves, inspiring us to reach the maximum of our human capacities; it’s a union card, a system designed to churn out as many trained workers as possible.

This view of education, in fact, is pronounced among conservatives in general. And it’s directly reflected in Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program.

Consider, if you will, the areas of accomplishment that are tested under NCLB: reading, math, science, and English. All of these areas are those which are viewed by business interests as those most essential to training a viable workforce. All other areas of education — particularly the arts, civics, history, geography, and social studies — are relegated to minor status.

Now, it’s unquestionable that one of the important functions of education is indeed to prepare young citizens for entry into the workforce, and to provide them the tools to be fully capable participants in the economy. But that isn’t its sole purpose, either.

Education is supposed to make better citizens of us by giving us the tools to understand how our world works. It is, above all, supposed to help us to find our own special gifts and enable them, making our society both more creative and inventive and making us more fulfilled individually.

NCLB not only ignores those aspects of education, but by giving work-related skills primacy, it crowds them out, sometimes altogether.