Irony-Free or Hypocrisy-Unconscious Zone?

Thank God, or the deity of your choice, or just the cosmic balance of the universe for Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Last night was masterful in two respects. The first was in coverage of El Presidente Bushie's energy speech, in which he mentioned our need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, juxtaposed with a story in which Chimpie was shown walking hand-in-hand with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Strike one.

The next was Bush's declaration that our energy independence would be brought about through reliance on technology. At that moment, on CNN, the signal carrying the story flaked out, leaving a captioned black screen with no audio feed. The reporter at the CNN anchor desk, without missing a beat after the glitch, repeated Bush's statement in such a way that it was clear the anchor had essentially no understanding of the meaning of the text. Of course, in Britain they call them "news readers," which explains the intellectual vacuity and total lack of self-awareness that these powdered and blow-dried mannekins possess. Stewart, after showing this segment, shook his head and said, "What is this? Is CNN an irony-free zone?" And strike two for Bushie's energy plan.

Then there was Chimpie's proclamation that we should turn more to nuclear energy to supply our growing power needs, noting that no new plants had been built since the 1970s. Stewart's next bit had him asking why that might be, while a graphic of Three Mile Island was shown above him. He looked at it and then deadpanned, "Oh, yes. The accident." That's three strikes.

To be fair, nuclear power has come a long way with smaller plants--France is the technical leader there--and deserves at least a hearing, but you can bet that Bush's desire for "nukular" has more to do with ideology and monetary ties to the industry than to any real understanding of the issues involved. Shit, a man who can't even pronounce the word properly can hardly be expected to understand little things like meltdowns and disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

And then Stewart and crew turned to the issue of church and state, highlighting last Sunday's meeting of theofascist traitors (to be charitable) in Louisville, Kentucky, whose allegiance to invisible cloud beings trumps any notions of democracy, balance of power, or the separation of church and state in the U.S. Just go watch it here. My commentary will add nothing. This program is simply comic and news genius.

The tragedy, of course, is that it takes a half-hour show on Comedy Central to make up for all the failings of the corporate media in America. That's not so funny.