[lbo-talk] onion does hitchens

[westrich at miser.umass.edu]

This is precisely why I never read the Onion.  While undoubtedly if I bothered 
to read it more often I would think some of it funny (alas life is too short 
and humor is more economically delivered in different sources), but the little 
I read of it is not particularly funny and worst of all gets the details 
wrong.  

Besides the way-too-obvious and not particularly funny references to "double-
wides" and "riding lawn mowers" (hyuck! yuck! yuck!) this parody is about 
Hitchens AS-A-LEFTIST and is making fun of him for being a leftist.  Very 
little is specific or shows knowledge of Hitchens work (I will grant a bit of 
credit for linking his pro-war stance with popular pro-war fervor but even that 
was not very sharp or clear).

The only thing funny about that is they don't appear to know much about 
Hitchens.  Now lazy satirists getting street cred while serving ye olde tropes 
about irrelevant alleged leftists.  That's funny.

I think getting the details right is what satire is all about.  The closer you 
can come to the source material and still manage to turn it on its head the 
better.

Jim

". . . all this talk is like stamping coins. They pile up. 

                 while the real work is done outside 

                             by someone digging in the ground." 

--Rumi (Molana Jalal-e-Din Mohammad Molavi Rumi) 

Quoting Guilherme <groschke at luminousvoid.net>:


> http://www.theonion.com/onion3915/christopher_hitchens.html
> ....
> 
>  When the officers attempted to remove Hitchens from the premises,
> the leftist intellectual became physically and verbally abusive toward the
> officers, calling them "shitkickers," "bitches," and "effete liberal
> apologists for the atrocities of late-stage capitalism."
> 
> ...