| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Born Identity | ||||
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And it wasn't by a small margin - Stewart collected 44% while Brian Williams could only manage 29%, Charles Gibson 19% and Katie Couric 7%.
Sadly Australia doesn't have anyone remotely in the same universe as Stewart either as a comedian, a satirical wit, or a newscaster.
On the other hand, our loons aren't any match for American loons either.
It's fascinating to watch how the birther movement - the bizarre assortment of fruitcakes who insist Barack Obama is an illegal alien who somehow got to be president - has infiltrated the mainstream media.
You have to think that - every time someone like G. Gordon Liddy turns up on television, claiming Obama was born in a hospital in Mombasa and is shown by Chris Matthews an actual birth certificate, and still manages to claim that black is white, or white is black - the collective intelligence of the United States shrinks a little. Even if Liddy's eventually reduced to a kind of stupefied, indignant, inert silence. Senility on television has never been more painfully exposed.
Next thing you know the notorious Lou Dobbs joined in on his radio show by suggesting a caller's view that Obama was a fake, fraudulent Kenyan "could not be discounted". Sure, in the sense any theory can't be discounted, including the theory that Lou Dobbs is an alien from Mars, and his constant talk about illegal aliens is a cunning way of distracting America from the truth.
That's when Stewart delivered his smack down to Dobbs, reminding him that on his very own show, a fill-in host, Kitty Pilgrim, had disposed of the Obama born in Kenya claims with a thorough credibility.
But still the sly hints and innuendos keep coming from others - like Rush Limbaugh's line "God does not have a birth certificate, and neither does Obama - not that we've seen."
James Rainey does a nice story on Lou Dobbs and the canard over President Obama's birth.
But I'm feeling Australia is outflanked and outnumbered. Our loons can't match that level of loonacy, and our comedians can't match Jon Stewart. And our conspiracy theories are generally totally feeble.
I mean what if my view that Kevin Rudd was born in New Zealand and then smuggled into Queensland and so we are now controlled by a covert operative from fush and chup land was true? What would it matter, though I'm pleased you haven't discounted it out of hand. There has to be an explanation for his pallid tedium, and the notion that he was reared on New Zealand diary products seems by far the best explanation (though perhaps the thought that he's Sony's first actual robot, designed to help revitalize Japan's economy through a reverse takeover of Australia can't be discounted either).
In America you have any number of decent conspiracies freshly minted, recycled, as good as gold and ready to take off the shelf, from the faking of the moon landings through the aliens of Area 51, the controlling power of barcodes, to the dozens of theories explaining what really happened on September 11th.
Michael Jackson wasn't cold in the grave before the conspiracy theorists cranked into overdrive, and every so often I like to Google up the world's best conspiracy theories to remind myself that nuttiness is to life as fruit is to a well made Christmas cake (no doubt helped along by a healthy dash of rum or brandy).
You can catch a typical example of The Best Conspiracy Theories at this Wired story, including the notion that lizard people are running the world. I always preferred the Colin Wilson inspired notion that we all suffer from mind parasites, which limit our intelligence. Well you have to admit our intelligence is limited, so that means there's mind parasites. QED.
Of course one of the best current conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theories and theorists are all under the spell of the intertubes, which sadly misses out on crucial aspects involving the conspiracy to kill Christ, bring him back and then smuggle him out of the cave, which have been going around a few thousand years now. How novelists and Hollywood love them.
It would be nice to think that right wingers and conservatives hold the provenance for the juiciest conspiracy theories, but really they can only lay claim to the current one about Obama's birth (and all the other right wing memes, but who's counting).
Truth to tell, conspiracy theories, as well as being in politics, are above politics. Without a decent set of conspiracy theories, some people couldn't get through the day.
Which is strange considering how truly rooly fucked the world is in many ways. My theory is that a conspiracy theory allows you to transfer your hatred/hostility on to another idea. The extreme right wing loathe Barack Obama, so calling him an illegal alien born in Kenya is so much more easy than calling him a black overlord, kissing cousin to Darth Vader and Sauron. That gets you tagged as a KKK'er, whereas calling him an illegal gets you tagged as a birther.
Birther almost makes you sound as innocent as a midwife interested in home births or a pro baby activist. Then you watch Gordon Liddy and it makes you sound tragic. One thing's for sure, Ken Kesey got the title of his book dead wrong. It should have been A Loon Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:
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