Essential Bullshit

I have exactly one friend in my immediate friend unit who owns and occassionally operates a television set. I tell you this not just to brag, but to brag in particular about having organized my cramped living room furnishings to facilitate conversation instead of passive viewing, and because I haven’t a clue about the latest political ads, nor commercials in general, nor do I know a thing about network television. Plus, in the clutches of entropy, I know that at least I’ll always゠abstain from that particular form of procrastination. So there.

However, as far as political satire goes, without a TV, I suspect I’m seriously missing out. At the very least, I have no means for regular Jon Stewart and Colbert Report watching, which has given me more than one pause to wonder whether I’m missing out on some golden age of smart political humor and commentary which will never have it’s equal in any other medium, ever. Already, I’m all nervous about my unborn children studying all the positive and many, many negatives of the Bush years in History class, and stone cold staring me down over the dinner table in the house with no TV, ゠gnashing their teeth and sputtering, “How could you have missed a single episode? Stephen Colbert was required watching for The Resistance! What, you thought you could properly inform yourself゠reading? What a loser.”

And while even this nightmare scene doesn’t quite convince me to televisionize my life, it does cause me to wonder about all the juicy dirt I’ve been missing in terms of hating on゠Sarah Palin. (Again, the unavoidable subject.)

And that’s when I decided to let this blog be a record of at least two lowly television spots, likely familiar to the rest of Western culture, that did their part to dissssss on Palin this week. And also to ask, what did the rest of us do toward that effort?

Here, witness Keith Olbermann’s gifted tech people condense Sean Hannity’s “slightly less hard hitting than one you’d see on a late night infomercial” interview with Gov. Palin down to its essential bullshit.

Shit, did she just bust out O.P.M.? Let’s do this mom? Reform! And how cute is Olbermann’s stoked little deep breath after he issues the “Roll ‘em”? He knows he’s done his weekly duty.

And then there’s the Fey-as-Palin, Poehler-as-Clinton SNL sketch. Most everyone would admit to already having seen it—that is, except for Palin herself, who in the same ridiculous Fox News interview owned up to watching my hero Tina Fey ゠”with the volume all the way down and I thought it was hilarious… I didn’t hear a word she said, but the visual was spot on.”゠Totally.

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