Obama, The Joker, and Daft Republicans

So, the Democrats have their panties in a wad because some Republican Party fundraiser put out a presentation slide featuring Barack Obama as the Joker, Nancy Pelosi as Cruella DeVille, and Harry Reid as Scooby Doo.

Good times, right?

Not if you're a Republican Swell.

Instead of keeping the whole thing in perspective, the Republican Establishment collectively wet themselves attempting to deflect blame. "Nobody likes this kind of thing". "Totally inappropriate". Heads must roll, sayeth Michael Steele, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch, collectively. See, it's not that they had problems with the caricatures of Pelosi and Reid or that Obama was caricatured as The Joker. No, these geniuses assumed that the caricature was racist, and with their responses promptly legitimized the notion.

For example, only Michael Steele can know what was going on inside of Michael Steele's head when Michael Steele decided to go where nobody else was going, defending his party by comparing the caricaturist to all of the Democrats who had ever called him (Steele) an Uncle Tom. Having thus explicitly connected the dots and made it an issue of Race, his sad-sack cohorts would have had to twist themselves into knots to characterize it differently. So instead, they simply threw in the towel.

The Washington Post gave the story it's usual balanced coverage, offering as a Back-story a Republican that would criticize Republicans for this terrible breach in manners.

The so-called Republican in question, Mark DeMoss, started an organization devoted to a return of civility to our political discourse, but it turns out he thinks the definition of "civility" is to hang out with a bunch of Democrats, visit the White House and criticize - Republicans. No hint on his website of any of the Democrat's serial and grotesque offenses to civility over the decades, and how ideologically committed must the Post be to let that bit of hypocrisy go unreported? OffHisMeds was also greatly amused by DeMoss so publicly rendering his loincloth, declaring he "will no longer contribute to any fundraising entity of our Party". Really Mark? One strike and you're out? Your "Party" doesn't even qualify for Double Secret Probation? No path they could take back to respectability, as you see it?

Me, I've got to wonder about the character of a man that devotes a website to the topic of Civility who proceeds to throw his own under a bus and not only ignores Civility's most egregious abusers (Democrats) but cozies up to them as well. Put it this way: anybody that thinks Democrat Hack Lanny Davis is a hands-across-the-aisle moderate is either a fool or an opportunist.

OffHisMeds waits with bated breath to discover exactly what kind of Stimulus funding The Civility Project will qualify for in the future.

Mark DeMoss and his ilk clearly have absolutely no sense of humor, but then, the self-appointed Hall Monitors of Society rarely do. If he had read the whole story he might have appreciated how truly funny the entire slide presentation was. For one example, you must keep in mind that it was given to "high-level Republican donors", whom the Presenter described as: "'ego-driven....and who can be enticed with 'tchochkes'." From Wikipedia:

Tchochke (Typically pronounced as "Chach-Kee") —originally from a Slavic word for "toys" are small toys, gewgaws, knickknacks, baubles, lagniappes, trinkets, or kitsch. The term has a connotation of worthlessness or disposability, as well as tackiness, and was long used in the Jewish-American community and in the regional speech of New York City.

That's a long remove from what high-level Democrat donors typically demand, but tell tell me that's not funny? I guess my point here is that the Presenter was lampooning everybody - Republicans and the President included - and the humorless tongue-cluckers in the Media as well as the self-appointed Guardians Of Propriety like DeMoss either didn't get the joke, or more likely, couldn't pass up an opportunity to misrepresent what was actually going on.

At the end of the day, what was most interesting about the whole controversy was that it was clear from their reactions that none of these Republican Swells initially got the cultural reference to the character "The Joker" from the movie "Batman Begins" (2005). If they had, they would have understood that it was not racist. They might even have appreciated The Joker's nihilistic worldview, devoted as he was to destroying society so that it might be remade in his twisted image. In other words, they might have gotten the joke.

These guys need to get out more; take in a movie once in a while; stop with the knee-jerk reactions every time some Joker says "boo!".

That was from the movie "Batman" (1989) starring Jack Nicholson, by the way.