This is NOT from The Onion. I repeat, THIS IS NOT FROM THE ONIOIN.

[lapsedmodernist]

I ask, what is the point of The Onion in light of this, much like I wonder what the point of conspiracy theories as a discursive category is in the age of PNAC.

Bush targets himself and those elusive weapons of mass destruction at dinner

BY SIOBHAN McDONOUGH

(03-24) 21:16 PST WASHINGTON (AP)

President Bush poked fun at his staff, his Democratic challenger and himself Wednesday night at a black-tie dinner where he hobnobbed with the news media.

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

There was Vice President Dick Cheney, a frequent butt of gentle Bush ribbing, holding his fingers a few inches apart. Bush said, "Whenever you ask him a question, he replies, 'Let's see what my little friend says."'

And there was Bush again, in an odd contortion in front of his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. He said he was trying to explain to her the foreign policy of Democratic challenger John Kerry.

Bush showed himself playing cards on Air Force One and cracked that he was on his way to an international summit and using a special deck to help him bone up on the names of the leaders he was about to meet.

His slide show segued into a somber ending, showing a group of special forces troops in Afghanistan at the site where they buried a piece of the fallen World Trade Center in commemoration of the dead from Sept. 11.

Comments

like rain on your wedding day, don'tcha think?

[tomorrow-devil.livejournal.com]

Why did this catch your eye? Other than because kitschmenschen (you and me both) have really fallen for Bush's charismatic highjinks. Because we know that Bush is collectible.
This looks like standard White House tomfoolery. LBJ picks his dog up by the ears, Clinton and the sax; sometimes presidents (and presidents' staffs) take it upon themselves to entertain, especially in election years. Yeah, it's terribly ironic, but only significant insofar as the things that presidents lampoon tend to have more gravity to them than office politics. Instead of the boss at the office mocking himself and management's paper rationing policy, it's Bush getting a few giggles and poking fun at office life(x10us). It's goofy on the order of Jimmy Carter. That said, if I had seen it on SNL - and it would have been a perfectly expectable, unfunny, and believable SNL sketch - I wouldn't have imagined it could possibly be real.
So, tell me, is it portential or ironic? And then why is it significant?

Related matters. When someone ICQd me the Onion article about Bush pushing a constitutional amendment on Iraq that would ban gay marriage, I had no idea about its source. It seemed believable. In fact, it was entirely unexpected but meshed so well with my suspicions that I just about flipped out. "Bush really is a fundamentalist!" My friend told me that it was from the Onion, and I calmed down. "Jesus Christ. That woulda been IT."

THAT woulda been it?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Um, that's the whole point. Things that come out of this White House cannot be parodied in The Onion or on SNL. Parodies of that sort exaggerate the essence of the events and thus highlight the ridiculous. The White House, constent in its policy of preemption, beats them to the punch. Obviously, the difference from the dog/sax scenario is, LBJ and Clinton seemed whimsical or quirky; making fun of something that is costing lives every day and has managed to futher destablizie the Middle East is tantamount to Bush mooning reporters.

that WOULDa been it

[tomorrow-devil.livejournal.com]

(Um. That would've been enough to finally convince me that Bush really is a fundamentalist, I mean. People seem to disbelieve everything they hear about the White House except when they hear that Bush is a fundamentalist or an idiot. They gotta disbelieve harder and hope that the population of Lynchburg gets tired of clapping their hands.)

Okay. I mean, taken by itself, lampoonery is pretty typical presidential conduct. I do understand that the content and situation of the lampoonery (word) changes everything - just interested in your take.
The reason SNL can't parody anything is because SNL's comedy is dogmatic, and sucks. (I dunno, though. I haven't watched it for a very long time.) On the other hand - not that I'm too eager to mistake it for resistance - I don't think The Onion's all-the-way failing at parody. Even when it's about the White House, even about the war. Or . . . Thoughts?

Rev. Sharpton on the other hand . . .

[tomorrow-devil.livejournal.com]

. . . always makes me laugh:

"Well, that's not a joke to us, Mr. Bush. Five hundred soldiers lost their lives, looking for weapons that weren't there. Billions of taxpayer dollars were spent looking for weapons that weren't there," Sharpton said. "But guess what? You gonna look out that window in January and see a moving van to send you back to Texas."

Bush's WMD joke draws criticism

[(Anonymous)]

what i wonder is not whether people notice the lack moral dimension in shrub (his intellectual and moral development stopped at around age 9 to 11 -- reagan stopped at around age 14), but whether they notice something that the richard clarke event has put on display: whenever shrub&co are criticized, they accuse people of the very thing that they themselves are guilty of. for example, as the ongoing iraq and 9/11 information comes out, shrub&co become less and less credible to more and more people (c. rice is absurdly guilty of this in the past week). so what does the press secretary accuse clarke of? his declining credibility. and it goes on and on in many other ways. shrub&co are inconsistent? contradictory? accuse your critics of being inconsistent and contradictory. it's all intended to muddy the (public debate) waters.

-mjm