Category: The Dish

The philistines at Media Matters translated John Gibson’s use of the term "inamorata" as "enamorada." I thought it was Latin, then found out it is Italian, and now there’s more. From a reader:

Inamorata is not only feminine, but singular. It means "in Love," and its ending depends on the person doing the loving. You or I would inamorato. My wife would be inamorata.

Heath and Jake would use "inamorati," the masculine, plural ending.

Maybe Gibson was slyly impugning their masculinity. Or, er, maybe not. But it all reminds me of my favorite ever rhyme for "inamorata." It comes in a song by the British musical humorists, Flanders and Swann, about a besotted hippopotamus:

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow, down to the hollow
And there let me wallow in glorious mud
The fair hippopotama he aimed to entice
From her seat on that hilltop above
As she hadn’t got a ma to give her advice
Came tiptoeing down to her love
Like thunder the forest re-echoed the sound
Of the song that they sang when they met
His inamorata adjusted her garter
And lifted her voice in duet …

The rhyme is better in an English accent.

I know that trying to read and understand the public comments of a religious fanatic is a mug’s game. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent return and return to the Jewish question, the new appeal to Europe to take Israel’s Jews, his commitment to "wipe Israel off the map," and his pursuit of nuclear weaponry … don’t they all suggest something to you? When you put it all together with his eschatological theology, it’s not very, shall we say, reassuring.  We always kick ourselves for not taking warnings seriously. But some warnings are not in code, or intercepted by NSA wiretaps. Some are made in the light of day on a very large megaphone.

It was forty-five years ago today that John F. Kennedy became president. Here’s Alistair Cooke’s commentary on that day.

"[W]hat you watch carefully and what you track are inside those numbers – where they’re coming from, what’s driving them, where they’re growing. And we have been for the past four weeks both stunned into a kind of waking stupor, but also very proactively astonished at the numbers coming out of places like Little Rock, Arkansas or Fort Worth, Texas, or Pittsburgh or Columbus. The stereotype would be that you would continue to get huge grosses out of San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, etc. And then as you expand you’ll get these smaller numbers from so-called "less sophisticated" markets. But, when you’re doing $40,000 weekends on screens in Salt Lake City, you better catch up to reality fast! We’re seeing this in every corner of America, and that’s the real story." – James Schamus, producer for "Brokeback Mountain."

A reader comments:

I think we should pay homage to perhaps the first Post-PC comedian, who in fact pre-dates the Post-PC period.  He actually pre-dates the PC period.  That great man is Mel Brooks.  In movies such as Blazing Saddles and The Producers (the original), he would make racial, religious, gay, etc. jokes, knowing very well some would be offended, but also knowing that he was willing to suffer their slings and arrows if the rest of the audience would get the joke.  Perhaps, that is why The Producers is successful again in this Post-PC world.  Can you picture any other comedian writing "Springtime For Hitler" in the 60s?

Yep, he blazed a trail.

"Which is harder to watch, the pulling out the fingernails of "Syriana" or Heath [Ledger] and Jake [Gyllenhaal] inamorata in this?" – Fox News’ John Gibson, preferring to watch grotesque torture than same-sex love. Gibson, of course, hasn’t seen the movie. And the Latin Italian word he uses refers to a feminine object of attraction, not a masculine one.

If Pat Robertson is so far out of the mainstream, why does Fred Barnes keep going on his show?

A reader points out that not everyone is comfortable with being post-PC and Dave Chapelle may even have stopped working because not everyone was in on the joke:

While I do agree that post-PC is a sign of a healthy and tolerant culture, I believe that there is a segment of the population that in fact is not in on the joke. Instead, I think that some see the over-the-top prejudice so common in post-PC humor as reinforcement of their own prejudices and in the worst cases, hatred.

In fact, Chappelle himself cited this phenomenon as one of the contributing factors to him leaving his show midway through the 3rd season. Below from Time:

The third season hit a big speed bump in November 2004. He was taping a sketch about magic pixies that embody stereotypes about the races.

The black pixie—played by Chappelle—wears blackface and tries to convince blacks to act in stereotypical ways. Chappelle thought the sketch was funny, the kind of thing his friends would laugh at. But at the taping, one spectator, a white man, laughed particularly loud and long. His laughter struck Chappelle as wrong, and he wondered if the new season of his show had gone from sending up stereotypes to merely reinforcing them. "When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable," says Chappelle. "As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take f______ time out after this. Because my head almost exploded."

It’s difficult to quantify, but the best example I can give is when I watched some Chappelle skits with some southern relatives of mine who would be charitably described as racist. I couldn’t figure out why they were laughing at what was clearly a sketch written to make fun of people with attitudes and beliefs exactly like theirs (The blind, black KKK sketch). I noticed they were laughing not only at the wrong time, but for what appeared to be for the wrong reasons. Later, when they were quoting what they considered the "funny" parts of the skit, it wasn’t what everyone "in on the joke" was quoting.

Point taken.

I guess I had this coming:

"I often find your analysis nuanced and unique, so it proves frustrating when you callously dismiss Kos as ‘the man who’s doing so much to ensure that the Republicans stay in power for ever’.

I wonder how much of his writings you actually read, in simply lumping him in with the fringe elements who participate in the flourishing online community he has created.  Would it surprise you to hear that Kos is consistently beating the refrain of sanity when it comes to the need for an acceptance of Democrats in a Conservative mold in areas such as Montana, Colorado, Arkansas, etc… much to the chagrin of his readership at times.  That he rails in favour of grassroots participation over the failed cynicism of the professional advisor cliques who have done much to destroy the Democratic party.  That he calls attention every Tuesday to another of the many heroes of the Iraqi war who have returned home and are running for Congress under the Democratic ticket.

He has done as much to demonstrate and unleash the potential of the Internet in politics as anyone. Yet you still find it so easy to dismiss him as just another hack.  In doing so, you sell him and his accomplishments short, and the one-line attacks such as today’s serve to cheapen the debate. Step back from the personal shots and confront him on specific tactics and issues. You can do better."

Ouch. Just read the profile or visit his site. And make your own mind up.

Some of you have accused me of singling out one left-wing nutter (see below) to impugn everyone at the Daily Kos. I’m well aware that it’s a very big constituency, and that a majority of Kossers who responded to this poll still believed that bin Laden was a bigger threat than George W. Bush. But Bush was still more despised than Osama by 41 percent of respondents. I think that’s an indicator of how unhinged and ineffective the far left has become.