perfidy

It sure did! I gave the NR a chance a few years ago, but in recent times I've felt they've succumbed to the smugness that always threatened to overcome their thoughtfulness. Maybe that's what happens when a magazine founded on oppositional principles finds itself suddenly speaking for the group in power.

Funny, there's an old Atlantic article about the Spectator and the trouble with success that I was pointed to recently. If you subscribe, you can read it here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200111/york

Most of the quotes they singled out for especial scorn were acually pretty good. I liked really liked, "not unlike his colleague Representative Pleistocene (D-MN)"

When I first came out of the closet and decided to be an open conservative, I occasionally read TAS. It quickly declined in quality. A much more interesting conservative rag, the National Review, has often praised the Daily Show and Stewart. They feel that while Stewart and the writers are undoubtedly liberal, the show has much value for its constant lampooning of the media.

I love the Daily Show. While it does rip on the right more than the left, its primary focus is ripping on anyone who drifts into the the media spotlight. It is balanced, in the way that good political comedy is. I have never found Rush Limbaugh reliably funny, because he is a one, or at best two-note entertainer. Everyone on Air America (but especially Al Franken) is even more one dimensional than Limbaugh.

That article exhibited some spectacularly bad writing, btw.

It is a satire, a pasquinade, a hoot at the American polity, a bemanuring of the High and Mighty.

Me: ... bemanuring?
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr: It's a perfectly cromulent word!

This is the guy who thinks he has the authority to give out a award for the worst book of the year? Jesus, talk about the pot and the kettle. Plus fluff it up for an extra two paragraphs with nonsense about the "Coogler Committee" and "judges", when nothing of the sort exists. Say what you like about A:TB, it has no pointless fluff. (Actually it is all fluff, but it isn't pointless.)

About TAS, and Political/Cultural magazines in general: The sad thing is that during a republican administration all of them become unreadable. The liberal mags are screaming raving paranoid, while the conservative ones are obnoxiously, insufferably, self-congratulatory. I had to let my subscription to Harper's, a rag I had enjoyed through the Clinton years, lapse after a year of Bush hate. The breaking point was the issue whose cover story was titled "Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Machine". I looked at it and thought, why even bother? So now I make do with Scientific American until a democrat is elected, or the left media gets tired of their tantrums, whichever comes first.

(The Harpers issue in question was illustrated with an octopus, just so you know. I guess our allies from the deep have to take what work they can get these days.)

B sez:

When I first came out of the closet and decided to be an open conservative, I occasionally read TAS. It quickly declined in quality.

Coincidence, I hope.

But you're right (the both of you) - Stewart's funny and Tyrell's a poor writer. The incessant concern (on both sides of the political aisle) about being lampooned is, itself, laughable.

Satire has its place, and Stewart does it well.

Just hope I don't start reading your blog.

What? You don't? I assumed that was where all my reader had gone.

(no, not a typo)