Threat Watch: Protecting America from the ravages of sarcasm

by anderson

"Everyone was terrified of Doug.  I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug."



"What did he do?"



"He used ... sarcasm.  He knew all the tricks; dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes, ... and ... satire."

--The Piranha Brothers.

The life-art imitation loop continues to fascinate and bemuse.

Whoever imagined that Monty Python's seminal tale of Doug Piranha's cruelty would wend a decades-long path into contemporaneous American political discourse, not as the satire it originally was, but as a real political excuse for expanded claims of state secrets?

That it has done this, however obliquely, is amusing enough.  But it has done this without a hint or nod by the Obama administration as to the provenance of their latest fear in refusing to release notes from Patrick Fitzgerald's interview of Dick Cheney during the Plame investigation.

So, why, exactly, does the White House insist on keeping the interview notes a secret? Presumably, there is nothing in the notes that would be incriminating, or, one would think, Fitzgerald would have done some indicting.  But that didn't happen.  So, what excuse is on offer now?

Obama's DoJ provides Jeffrey Smith's rigorous notions about why the investigation of potentially treasonous actions ought to be kept closeted.

I don't want a future vice president to say, `I'm not going to cooperate with you because I don't want to be fodder for 'The Daily Show.'"

Firstly, let us ignore the cheap rhetorical quip about "future" vice presidents.  This is not about future vice presidents and Smith knows it.  In fact, we're all rather hoping that future vice presidents won't be in the position of having to protect secret notes from an interview about their involvement in blowing the cover of a CIA NOC out of politically spiteful revenge.

Let us further ignore, by not ignoring, the odd implication that Dick Cheney has been cooperating, or might potentially cooperate, with anyone other than Fox News.  Indeed, Cheney has been a one-man Obama White House wrecking crew, tossing rhetorical gasoline on the political stage, and warning America of the grievous harm that surely will come from Obama's decisions. Are we expected to believe that Cheney is "cooperating," or plans to cooperate, with the Obama administration?

Besides, The Daily Show doesn't need secret notes from a years-ago interview of Dick Cheney to make fun of Dick Cheney.  All anyone needs to make fun of Dick Cheney is Dick Cheney.

Given the accountability-free state of current American political theatre, The Daily Show, and satire and parody more generally, is about the only venue where the abject criminality of the previous administration is discussed in something other than the most admiring of tones.  And now the Obama administration is determined to shut down even that small comeuppance: they must draw out the heavy weapon of "state secrets" in order to shield Dick Cheney from the cruel and casual machinations of a sarcastic television show.

And the Obama administration disappoints, once again.