One aspect of the blogosphere that I find tiresome is the preponderance of a certain faux-hip brand of self-congratulatory sarcasm based on puns and clichés, which passes itself off as "snark" but is really the stale province of New York Post headlines. (I also find the endless references to kabuki and schadenfreude mildly annoying for their haute laziness, but that's another matter.)
Jon Swift doesn't do snark, he does satire; bone-dry, fat-free, devastating, hysterical 21st-century satire. Writing from the literary viewpoint of a cocksure but intellectally-limited American conservative, Swift brilliantly elucidates the irrationality of the right-wing's talking points and thought processes. Whereas Stephen Colbert's conservative character is flamboyant, bombastic, and quirky, Swift's voice is perhaps even more creepy because it's so frighteningly banal. The self-description on his website reads: "I am a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues." There's nothing outlandish about those two sentences; except that their content is both commonplace and completely insane.
What's more, Swift's iconoclastic prose is not only offered up on his blog; it's served to us via Amazon.com's system of user reviews, which Swift has deftly (shh!) appropriated for satirical use. He has developed a signature style of reviewing books by opening with the words "I have not actually read this book but..."; after which he offers a few choice morsels of conventional wisdom, strung together by illogical associations, tinged with reactionary hysteria, concluded with an almost mellow self-assertion. He's particularly fond of declaring himself to be "against" various meaningless abstractions (e.g. "I am against evil", "I am against doing good"), then leaping from that meaningless abstraction into some grandstanding opinion
In addition to his book reviews, Swift has also reviewed a "personal tank" called the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank, available on Amazon for $19,999.95. (No, seriously, this is a real product.) As if the mere existence of this product isn't funny enough, here's what Jon has to say about it:
Tank got back?, August 14, 2006
I have not actually used this tank but I must congratulate the makers on choosing to name a tank after an African-American slang word for a curvaceous woman's buttocks. Surely, just the name alone will cause terrorists to avert their eyes and flee.
Now, let's enjoy some more excerpts...
On Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism by Sean Hannity:
I have not actually read this book but I agree with Mr. Hannity that evil is bad. I am against all evil whatsoever, whether it is in an axis or solo. Liberals are always making complicated distinctions between things that are a little bit evil and things that are moderately evil and things that are very evil. Not Mr. Hannity. Everything to him is either good or evil, period. I think that's a much easier way to view the world and it saves a lot of time.
On Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd:
Men are very necessary, January 16, 2006
I have not actually read this book but I want Ms. Dowd to know that men are very necessary. Without men, for example, I think we would be losing the War in Iraq. I used to like Ms. Dowd when she was attacking President Clinton for having sex but now she is attacking President Bush and there is no evidence whatsoever that he is having sex so I don't understand what the problem is.
On How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter:
I have not actually read this book but she looks very nice on the cover. She seems just a little too skinny to be healthy, however. I also wonder if her hair is really blonde. For some reason most Republican women that you see on TV seem to be blonde. I don't know if there is some reason that blonde women become Republicans or if the RNC has asked them all to dye their hair blonde. Anyway, I am very glad she wants to start a dialogue with liberals. Judging by the cover she seems very personable and reasonable so it doesn't surprise me that she would believe that constructive dialogue is a good thing.
On AP Stylebook by Associated Press:
I have not actually read this book but I think it is a perfect example of what is wrong with journalism today: the emphasis of style over substance.
From "Putting the Word Breasts in This Title Is a Cheap Ploy To Generate Traffic" about the surreal blogger-boobs fight after the Clinton luncheon:
When I saw a picture of liberal bloggers who were invited by President Clinton for lunch, my only thought was that I wish he had invited a reasonable conservative like, for example, myself, since I am all in favor of a free lunch as long as it's not something the government hands out to poor people. But it turns out I was not looking at that picture closely enough. [...] Leading the way was Ann Althouse, a blogger and law professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who often delightfully skewers her readers with a withering disdain that reminds me of The Paper Chase's Professor Kingsfield -- but with breasts. [...]
It turns out that President Clinton was not only responsible for 9/11, he single-handedly destroyed feminism. "I really don't know why people who care about feminism don't have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist," wrote Althouse. Althouse is angry that feminists don't believe Clinton's accusers and she is also angry that they do believe the accusers of the Duke lacrosse players. And she doesn't much care for feminists like Andrea Dworkin who are anti-sex and she's not all that happy with feminists who are pro-sex. Unfortunately, liberal feminists today seem to be partisan hypocrites who can't maintain a consistent position, unlike Professor Althouse who consistently opposes whatever position liberal feminists take.
At first Professor Althouse maintained her dignity as a respected member of academia by staying above the fray. But when Jessica Valenti of Feministing revealed herself as the blogger in question and accused Professor Althouse of judging her by her looks, Althouse just couldn't restrain herself any longer. Althouse politely countered by implying that she didn't even consider Jessica attractive enough to judge her by her looks by cuttingly remarking, "Don't flatter yourself."
From "Lieberman Refuses To Cut and Run After Primary Loss":
When Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut primary last week, he didn't cut and run as Ned Lamont and other Democrats might have done. Instead of quitting the race and handing a victory to the terrorists he decided to continue campaigning indefinitely. Lieberman is a glass-half-full kind of guy and he believes his strong second-place finish was even better than what he called "a three-way split decision for third place," which cynical political pundits unfairly described as a fifth place finish in the 2004 New Hampshire presidential primary. It shows that the blogger insurgency is in its last throes and that come November Connecticut voters will greet him as a liberator from all of the partisanship that is dividing Washington. [...]
Although many Democrats want to politicize the War on Terror for partisan gain, Lieberman is a man who hates politicizing politics. He would much rather be above the partisan fray. While a partisan simply repeats whatever people in his party believe, Lieberman eschews partisanship by saying the opposite of what people in his party believe. [...] It must be difficult for a man like Lieberman who is intellectually and morally superior to most Connecticut voters--who, let's face it, are not the sharpest knives in the drawer--to have to sell himself to the unwashed hordes who have the power to fire him from the job he so clearly deserves.
From "Why Conservatives Support the Duke Lacrosse Team":
First of all, I want to make it clear that there is absolutely no racial dimension to this case whatsoever. The fact that the alleged victim is black and the alleged perpetrators are white is a complete coincidence. Conservatives are totally colorblind and we pride ourselves on our blindness. You see, it is actually liberals who are racists because they always take the side of black people against white people and we are just reacting to that. If one day all the liberals got together and tricked us by supporting a white person against a black person, we would then end up supporting the black person, whom we wouldn't even know was black because of our color-blindness. Try it someday and you'll see it's true.
One reason conservatives may be sympathetic to the lacrosse players is because of the game itself. Lacrosse is a more Republican sport than, say, basketball. The oldest sport in North America, lacrosse is steeped in tradition (which conservatives love), and can be traced back to the 1400s when Native Americans invented the game, while basketball wasn't invented until 1891.
Hilarious.
Posted by: Temple3 | Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 08:42 AM