Blueprint for a Real Liberal Media
April 2003
by David Brown

Spare us, o ye liberals, your cries of agony. Eric Alterman, be damned! The myth about the liberal media being a myth is just that. Things aren't as wretched as they seem. For Christ's sake, 60 Minutes is pitting blithering, withering Bob Dole against Bill Clinton. It just ain't a fair fight. A month of this nonsense and Andy Rooney is starting to look young and fresh, not to mention erudite and cogent.

And can't we find something better for Clinton to do than debate a tired old man whose face looks like it's being held together with an uninspired arrangement of staples and epoxy resin? Give Clinton the whole damn hour and let's just see what happens. 60 Minutes has lost its edge anyway. Before the war started providing them with limitless material they were lucky to string together two stories a week that didn't make you say, "What was the point of that? We should have gone to Bennigan's after the golf tournament."

Until Clinton spawns his own media empire, the malcontents of the left will have to make due with Charlie Rose and James Carville. But there is another alternative. And, thankfully, it does not involve Al Franken. I'm talking about actual comedy, folks. Two news sources that aren't taken seriously enough and which may be the most important outlets an enterprising young news junkie could study: The Onion and The Daily Show.

I know – they make things up. But it's all grounded in truth, and right now, they're clobbering the Bush administration to far better effect than any bleeding heart pundit or Eleanor Clift could possibly comprehend. So pay attention.

Let's examine some recent headlines from stories in The Onion, the nation's undisputed king of news satire and the reason why you never accomplish much on Wednesday mornings at the office. Here's a sampling:

"Bush Subconsciously Sizes Up Spain for Invasion" (April 9)
"137 More Oil Wells Liberated for Democracy" (April 9)
"Dead Iraqi Would Have Loved Democracy" (March 26)
"Vital Info on Iraqi Chemical Weapons Provided By U.S. Company That Made Them"
"Bill of Rights Pared Down to a Manageable Six" (December 18)
"Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over'" (January 18)

The Onion is not only funny, but it tells you all you need to know about the men who are apparently leading our country. And they do it while at the same time mocking the mainstream media. What could be better than that?

Actually, a TV version could be better. The Daily Show has eclipsed SNL and Leno/Letterman as the place to turn for biting political humor (and if you even THINK about saying, "What about Capitol Steps?" you should not be reading this column. You should be sitting in your garage with the car running and the door closed).

Host Jon Stewart delivers the goods, and "correspondent" Stephen Colbert is perhaps the best comedic mind on television right now. That's right – he's even funnier than the fat guy from King of Queens. Some highlights from recent shows:

"If the UN does not authorize force against Iraq for disregarding its guidelines, the US will unilaterally attack Iraq, thus disregarding the UN's guidelines. Of course, we'll claim the UN is too weak to enforce its own resolutions which we are attacking Iraq for violating, while in turn violating the UN. It's all right here in the State Department's latest report, 'Whaaaaaaaaa?"

"Yesterday the president met with what he calls the coalition of the willing and what everybody else calls England and Spain."

In a report modeled after campy 1950s educational films about surviving a nuclear attack, entitled, "So You're Living in a Police State," Colbert addresses the sunny side of citizen surveillance: "Who would you like to see arrested? Does your neighbor have something you covet? [Talking on the phone while ogling his neighbor's wife] 'Hello, government? Yeah, my neighbor has been acting kind of suspicious. He's been eating a lot of falafel, baba ganooj and stuff.' And presto, betrayo – he's declared an enemy combatant. And the government doesn't even have to tell him what he's charged with. [As his neighbor is led away in cuffs, he comforts his wife] 'I'll keep an eye on her for you, Habib!'"

You want to attack the right? Use humor. No one takes the liberal agenda seriously because they take themselves too seriously. Democrats are funnier than Republicans when they want to be. Follow the examples of these two titans. Sure they will take shots at anyone and everyone – it's called credibility. But with Bush in power, or as Eric Alterman called him on The Daily Show, "the ultimate simplifier," a smart sense of humor is a powerful weapon.

(David Brown is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine)