CSotD: The midway is only half way
Skip to comments
Anne Morse Hambrock asks the right question, though it is less about what the Learning Channel puts on than why they are successful.
That is, the Learning Channel has discovered that you can't bring in viewers with interesting documentaries but you can do so by mounting a freak show. And numbers are the point, so out comes JoJo The Dog-Faced Boy.
JoJo — Fyodor Jeftichew — is described in this Wikipedia article as a "sideshow performer," his "performance" being to bark and howl as Barnum described his subhuman existence in the wilds. In fact, the article goes on to say, he spoke three languages.
And he was a second-generation freak: His father, who had the same odd affliction, had toured with circuses. And perhaps they could have been very good blacksmiths or farmers or storekeepers, but they probably made more money letting people stare at them and selling little souvenir photos like the one here.
It was their choice, just as it's the choice of a topless dancer to let men pay to stare at her breasts or the choice of a prostitute to let men pay to get even closer.
It's up to the public to decide what they will pay for.
There are no prostitutes where there are no johns, and there are prostitutes in every culture around the world.
And while there is a difference between buying a ticket to stare at JoJo and dropping a penny in a beggar's bowl, there would be neither inspiration porn nor poverty porn if it didn't make people reach into their wallets.
It's a good question to put to God, because the followers of the Book — Jewish, Muslim or Christian — are challenged by their religions to consider such things, and I suppose there'd be no reason to challenge them if they didn't so often come up short.
There was a time, however brief, in which we were ashamed that we'd ever had freak shows in this country.
We were also ashamed that we'd ever laughed at Jerry Lewis, and marveled that the French considered him a genius. We preferred the intellectual comedy of Lenny Bruce, of Shelly Berman, of Bob Newhart.
Maybe you needed to be there, because we're back to laughing at people who pretend to be clumsy, stupid and socially inept — or perhaps may actually be — and we tune in to watch freak shows on the Learning Channel and several other cable outlets and when they aren't bizarre enough we go to Youtube.
So here's a misprint on a ticket to tonight's State of the Union visitors' gallery, and it's not only hilarious but proof that Donald Trump is an incompetent president.
Because of course he personally checked off on the proof sheet. Or maybe it was a Cabinet Secretary, so it's still, really, his fault.
If it were simply the work of some low-level printshop employee deep in the bowels of the Capitol building, that wouldn't be funny.
Unless the Learning Channel decided to start a show called "America's Funniest Fuckups" in which we would howl over stupid people in crappy jobs.
At which point it would be hilarious, by acclamation.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Can't lay it out much more plainly than this, and don't overlook those stock ticker abbreviations on Matson's cartoon.
But the success of the Dow doesn't mean a damn thing to the guy in Marshall Ramsey's cartoon and, if you believe it does, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Bob is not a freak. He's just a normal guy, though maybe that's his only jacket and tie, right there, that he only wears on special occasions.
There are plenty of normal people who look like Bob, and, when you focus on the freak show, you take attention away from them.
I saw three cartoons from cartoonists whose work I respect that were about how the "real" State of the Union is how Melania Trump must feel over the Stormy Daniels thing.
Hurray! Hurray! Step this way! Did you think it was an ideal marriage? Were you under the impression that he was a good, faithful and attentive husband?
Only one thin dime, the tenth part of a dollar, step right this way!
And here's a washed-up political hack reading a passage from "Fire and Fury" on the Grammys! Hilarious!
Right here on our midway!
Meanwhile, Pat Bagley offers a re-write of How A Bill Becomes A Law, and it's a helluva lot more important than whether the Trump marriage could become more dysfunctional.
At this point, you may well be asking, "Who pissed in your cornflakes?" and so I will tell you:
Franklin Foer has taken a giant whizz in my corn flakes.
His Atlantic cover story, "The Plot Against America: Paul Manafort and the Fall of Washington" may be the most chilling piece of reporting I've read in several years.
We all have this sense that we're not being heard, that only the plutocrats have a voice in our government, and that it wasn't always like this.
Foer traces where things went off the rails, and if you think Trump just sprang from the foolish anger of grubby people in roadside diners far from where you get your macchiato, you are missing the picture entirely.
"Have you no decency?" wasn't the end. It only signaled a pause.
I was surprised, a year or so ago, to learn that Roy Cohn, a villain I associate with the McCarthy Era, was around long enough to be an active influence on Donald Trump. The McCarthy Era wrapped up before I entered kindergarten, and Trump is only a few years older.
But I'm far more stunned to see the thread that Manafort represents, stringing together the Reagan Revolution and Iran/Contra and the mobbed-up disintegration of the Soviet Union … and the State of the Union today.
Because the Dog-Faced Boy is just part of the sideshow.
Manafort performs under the Big Top.
Comments 12
Comments are closed.