Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Careening Toward Irrelevancy




The wheels continue to come off as Mark Hyman careens toward the end of his career as a media figure. He’s abandoned any attempt to make a sensible argument—or to make sense at all.

The latest example is the series of wild rhetorical haymakers he throws at the entity he refers to as “Hollywood.”

The commentary, which is apropos of nothing, imagines what a Hollywood treatment of Saddam Hussein’s life would be like.

For reasons known only to him, Hyman thinks Hollywood would create a loving ode to the former dictator. He imagines that . . .

The movie would tout his classrooms, in which textbooks referred to
Jews as pigs and gorillas, as the model for an educational system.

Well, only if Mel Gibson was directing. Actually, I’m sure Hyman’s right. After all, there aren’t many Jewish people in Hollywood in positions of power. It’s quite the hotbed of anti-Semitism.

Hyman’s other musings are just as nonsensical:


It would view his ambitions to invade Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and to
bomb Israel as statesman like.

No doubt it would characterize U.S. servicemen and women as criminal
terrorist thugs, the killers of women and children.


He ends with a gratuitous and ugly attack on Ted Kennedy:

After all, Hollywood is where Ted Kennedy is viewed as the conscience of
America and he left a woman to drown in the back of his sedan in 1969.

Unfortunately, Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Classy.


Life’s too short to bother with such drivel. This isn’t simply pandering to the right wing, but to the most woolly-headed, dunderheaded of far right wackos, and I’m not sure how many of them would actually buy it.


This is simply a ritualistic display of a right wing tenet: those who create the media are against us. This tenet flies in the face of all evidence, including the corporate ownership of so much major media outlets and the need for commercial media to appeal to a wide audience to succeed.

Precisely because of its absurdity, it’s a tenet that must be invoked on a regular basis. It’s part of the conservative creed. It’s not intended to actually persuade anyone; it’s meant to invoke a sense of community among those who already believe it.

After all, the only people thickheaded enough to buy Hyman’s assertions in the first place are already right-wingers.

And that’s The Counterpoint.

2 Comments:

At 12:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good Lord, Ted,

What would people like Hyman do if it weren't for Ted Kennedy's car accident -- and his POSSIBLY negligent response to it -- back some, uh, some THIRTY-SEVEN years ago?

Let's see, by Hyman's (and other completely loony bloggers') accounts, Ted Kennedy, like Secret Agent 007, purposely and deftly drove his car off a dangerous bridge to carefully land it, in controlled fashion, in the river.

He then activated his special Secret Agent dashboard, which sprung to life, opened his door, inflated a personal rescue devices, while killing his passenger.

Like other nefarious supermen, Kennedy knew he could "off" his hapless victim, while preserving his own life and, of course, minimizing any untoward media attention.

These guys are somethin, huh?

Then again, there's triple-naught Bush, who is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, all for a wet-dream of endless Iraqi oil, I mean freedom and democracy.

Sorry, Ted, but even with this high level of nonsense from Hyman, Sinclair is positively bor-ing! Gotta get back to Fox to see what murderer they might line up next for an "If I did it" interview!

Ah, conservative values!

 
At 1:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And it's enough to wonder if the Mark Hyman crowd would be the sort to regard a certain Branson, MO as their ideal centre for Amerikanischer Realkultur, and the supposed "acme and perfection" therefor.

One which, on closer inspection, is on the same level as Nazi Germany's use of the Kraft durch Frude ("Strength Through Joy") scheme to promote German folk culture on "patriotic" grounds, among other things.

 

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