Juan Cole, Wit of the Left
Juan Cole is up for best writing in the 2005 Koufax Awards, and it’s no wonder with pure gold like this, titled Top Ten Ways Iraq Is Like Harry Whittington:
1. Cheney attacked secular Iraq, mistaking it for an ally of Usamah Bin Laden. Cheney attacked Harry Whittington, mistaking him for a small bird.
…3. Cheney did not have a legal license to hunt quail on the trip that saw Whittingon wounded. Cheney did not have a United Nations license to invade Iraq or reduce it to rubble.
…5. Cheney thought Iraq’s insurgency was in its last throes nearly a year ago. Cheney was deathly afraid that Whittington might be in his last throes.
…9. Cheney thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Cheney thought Whittington was a small bird. [See number 1, above - exact same 'joke']
Ahhh haaaa haaaaa ahaaa haaaahaaa aaaah…ahhh….ummm….
*Cough, cough*…
Wow, that really, really….just…whoa, I mean that just SUCKED….
UPDATE 2:49 p.m.: For a lesson in how to be truly witty AND topical, I refer you to (hey, I’m linking a lot lately, but he’s been on a roll) Jeff Goldstein…
Comrades,
ya know, for a well educated, and pretty knowledgeable fellow, he’s still a maroon….. Classic example of why PBS ought to be axed. The poorest of segments on the Comedy Channel beats this stuff…
Respects,
Gwedd
But he speaks Arabic, and therefore you must not question him!
>for a well educated, and pretty knowledgeable fellow, he’s still a maroon
Gwedd, I’m not even convinced of the middle notion. He pretends to a lot more knowledge than he has, and then bludgeons anyone who disagrees with him. Every newsgroup has his bullying type on it, and they usually aren’t any more well informed than anyone else.
Yes. It sucked.
Dick Cheney reduced Iraq to rubble? From what? The presumption is always that Iraq under Saddam, while a bit tense, was prosperous and otherwise free. That is a load of crap. Iraq outside of the Kurdish areas was a blighted wasteland economically with a ’60’s era infrastructure already worn to the nub when the Iran/Iraq war raged. We are not REbuilding but building. Well, whatever. You are correct, as a wit, Cole is a damp squib on his best day. That #1 I could feel I was getting ready to laugh but realized as I read that I was expecting a rhyme or some other humorous connection to Bin Laden… then pffft. That’s worse than not even trying as it leaves no doubt as to Coles sense of humor. It proves he doesn’t have one.
Did anyone read the comments? Let’s see… as of my time of reading, there were ten. They broke down like this:
* Conspiracy theories – 3
* Earnest mini-essays about foreign and domestic policy – 2
* Discussion of how the American public is too stupid to understand a complex scandal like Iraq, but can take in a simple scandalous narrative like this one – 1
* Attempts at humor (1 was pretty funny; the rest were like that old Cheers episode when the bar guys convince Norm to go to an open-mike comedy show on his “What’s up with that?” shtick, which he bombs, and, giving up on it, intones, “Drinking and driving – what’s up with that? Thank you,” and leaves the stage), or congrats on the humor – 4, one of which concludes with a short gun safety lecture, which pretty well kills off whatever amusement there was in the piece – no pun intended