Monthly Archives: September 2011

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart welcomed Bill O'Reilly and they had one of those conversations wherein Stewart scored some political points on the man Stephen Colbert calls "Papa Bear" — but not so many that O'Reilly won't come back on to plug his next book. This is pretty much the modus operandi of Mr. Stewart. Given that he's smarter and funnier than most of his guests and that he has home court advantage, I'm pretty sure he could leave most of his guests gasping in a rhetorical bloodbath if he tried. But he doesn't.

(I am not, by the way, suggesting Stewart would win such battles because he's Liberal or correct, though I think he's usually both. He'd win because of home court advantage: His opponent is playing in his stadium with his rules and his equipment and with Stewart largely controlling what they talk about and when they break for commercial…plus there's that audience there cheering him on. O'Reilly usually "wins" arguments on his show, largely because of home court advantage and because he's real good at sensing when a guest is about to say something that will wound him and interrupting. That's why he usually does that trick of giving the guest that last word; to smokescreen the fact that he never let them finish most of their sentences before that.)

Anyway, last night O'Reilly kept harping on the infamous "$16 muffins" and Stewart didn't know what they were. They're a new Republican talking point which Kevin Drum discusses here. Basically, it's all an apparently false claim that your government paid $16 apiece for muffins at some government function…and this proves that the government is irresponsible and can't be trusted with money and so we certainly can't raise taxes on rich people. After all, that money would just be squandered on $16 muffins.

Had Stewart pointed out to O'Reilly that the story is spurious (or at least misrepresented), it probably wouldn't have mattered. He would have just said, "Even if that's true, you know that kind of thing goes on all the time with our government." That kind of thing is maddening in two ways.

One is the sheer non-reliance on facts…this idea that the truth is whatever makes your point. Back when Ronald Reagan was telling stories about Welfare Queens in Cadillacs, everyone knew he was making them up or passing on anecdotes that someone else had made up. No one had actually seen the alleged Welfare Queen drive her Cadillac to the liquor store to spend her food stamps on vodka and Reagan supporters didn't care that Ron was passing off fairy tales as facts. It didn't make him a pathological liar…like, say, any political opponent who said something that didn't fully check out. It was just Reagan making a valid (to them) point.

But even more maddening is that the argument that the government wastes money is not being made over billions spent on Iraq or paid to Halliburton or given away to Wall Street. That's apparently okay. The scandal is that someone allegedly paid $40,000 for $20,000 worth of refreshments. Or something like that. I'd be really happy if the most irresponsible thing my government did with our tax dollars was to overpay for muffins.

How to pick a science-fiction or fantasy novel to read.

I've decided to keep my Facebook Friend list just under the maximum 5,000 so there'll always be room if someone I really, really know well wants in. Apart from that, I have a few slots open. If you want one, send me a friend request and a message with the name of your favorite Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy or Buster Keaton movie. This is my way of trying to admit only folks who I know actually read this blog. I'm also unfriending folks who send me spam or invites to see them perform in Paraguay.

They have a dozen of them in the Giant Panda Breeding Center in Chengdu, China. A warning before you click: They're far cuter than you will ever be. Heck, they're even cuter than me. Some of them, at least. Thanks to Mark Thorson for the link.

I am informed by (so far) ten people that Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title is available for instant streaming on Netflix. And sure enough, it is.