Great Moments in Conservative Humor

Only three posts deep and this is already my favorite series in Crushed by Inertia history. So vast is the Internet, so voluminous are its databases of authoritarian jackoff home movies and basement manifestos, I could write 10 of these posts a day for the rest of my life and barely scratch the surface. Barely scratch the surface, I say!

Here's the most humiliating debasement you will see all day, even if you have spent the 22 hours watching "Mind of Mencia" on mute with Alec Baldwin's angry voice mail as the soundtrack.



Michelle Malkin is upset that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this:

"I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and -- you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -- [know] this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday," said Reid, D-Nevada.

Nothing is more frustrating than someone who refuses to let you get away with making shit up. Don't you hate it when you're making shit up - say, defending an ongoing, bloody and directionless war of attrition - and some egghead brainiac busybody keeps insisting on pointing out the flaws in your logic?

It's telling, to begin with, that Michelle thinks mocking Harry Reid is the way to get her point across in this instance. Surely, if any occasion called for a professional pundit and author to use their alleged expertise and insight in the pursuit of sober analysis of cold, hard data, it's a crucial debate over an extended and thus far miserably failed military excursion. There is a place for humor and satire, of course...but is this it? The most powerful man in the Senate has blatantly come out and announced to the nation his firm belief that the war we are fighting can not be won and Michelle reacts by donning a schoolgirl outfit and making up a goofy cheer?

You're not on "The Daily Show," Michelle. They tend to prefer performers with charisma. What we in Hollywood call "The It Factor," with "It" in this case standing for "The Absence of Total Batshit Insanity." You actually do this for real for a living. For whatever reason, some deeply confused people have chosen to take what you say seriously. And as the constant, intrusive aural flashbacks to Cliff Robertson's Uncle Ben are almost certain to remind us next week, with great power comes great responsibility.

But, of course, Michelle's hideous little dance doesn't even work as satire. She's here playing a role, we are to assume. The hypothetical cowardly Democrat who's so meek and wussy, he or she actually cheers for defeat instead of victory! This notion could theoretically work, though I wouldn't want to begin with a premise that's so obtuse and over-reaching.

Regrettably, she can't resist projecting a constant, sneering hatred towards liberals even for the purposes of a minute-long sketch. (And seriously, what makes the bit so uncomfortable isn't Michelle's stiff, awkward movements or the ridiculous "clucking" sound effects that don't even really sound like clucking. It's the seething rage that's bubbling just under the surface.)

The joke only makes sense if she's pretending to be a Democrat. "Hey, let's lose! Come on, team, and quit!" And so forth. But that would require pretending to be a Democrat, which Michelle would never do. So instead, she's a Republican leading a cheer for Democrats. Which itself is not so much a joke as an unexpected situation. But, you see, it's actually a mean cheer that calls them losers! Haw haw haw!

How pathetic is it that Michelle can't even get a minute-long video in which she makes fun of Harry Reid right? Answer: Anywhere between pathetic and quite pathetic.