Rail­ing against the idio­cy and iniq­ui­ties of  pusil­lan­i­mous media barons, shame­less polit­i­cal oppor­tunists and the per­pe­tra­tors of the abom­i­na­tion of the war in Gaza hav­ing had lit­tle to no effect, it’s time to deploy what they fear most — mockery.

The poten­tial effi­ca­cy of that is man­i­fest­ly evi­dent in ABC’s fir­ing of Jim­my Kim­mel, an adroit needler of the liars, posers, brag­garts, craven and fantasists.
Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump hailed it as “Great News for America.”
Maybe, if you equate the greater good of the U.S. with the major own­ers of ABC affil­i­ate stations.
They’re in the end game of nego­ti­at­ing a $6.2‑billion merg­er that needs the approval of Trump-appoint­ed Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion chief Bren­dan Carr. He called the remarks that got Kim­mel fired  part of a “con­cert­ed effort to lie to the Amer­i­can people.”
The late  come­di­an George Carlin’s joke about the sev­en words you can’t say on tele­vi­sion, now includes any com­bi­na­tion of words that can be inter­pret­ed as any­thing and every­thing that might fall under the bale­ful glare of Trump’s ego, or place any chance of  the ultra-rich not mak­ing more mon­ey under its humour­less shadow.
Lest I be accused of vic­tim­is­ing said mag­nates, I sug­gest cre­at­ing an Oscar award for Best Self-abas­ing CEO, and one for Best Sup­port­ing Hypocrite.
The win­ners would be those whose great­est fear is of appear­ing not to be fear­ful enough.

                              POSTURING  IS JUST THAT

At the oth­er end of the scale, but equal­ly pathet­ic, are the self-right­eous politi­cians who pro for­ma pro­claim their “deter­mi­na­tion” to “fight” for, or against, any­thing and every­thing they think will please or bam­boo­zle voters.
The annoy­ing spec­ta­cle they make of them­selves by think­ing they are mak­ing fools of their con­stituents, could be turned into com­e­dy by requir­ing them to define fight, list the weapon­ry they will deploy, how it will be used and what will con­sti­tute a knockout.
As ref­er­ees, we the peo­ple for whom the bat­tle is being waged, would of course need to be out of splut­ter­ing range.
In place of the can­celled late night com­e­dy shows, there could be a “he said/he did” real­i­ty show.
Episode One would be Trump tout­ing his deter­mi­na­tion to use Amer­i­can fire­pow­er by sink­ing fish­ing boat-sized ves­sels that might, or might not, have been car­ry­ing drugs from Venezuela, and offer­ing no proof of what was accomplished.
That would segue into his Russ­ian and Chi­nese coun­ter­parts Vladimir Putin and  Xi Jin­ping, bud­dy­ing up at the biggest mil­i­tary parade in mod­ern his­to­ry, show­cas­ing high-tech weapon­ry, includ­ing hyper­son­ic mis­siles, one of them nick­named the “Guam Killer”, and under­wa­ter drones.
Episode Two could com­pare Trump’s rav­ings about build­ing a bor­der wall paid for by Mex­i­co, to ICE agents round­ing up any­one who speaks Span­ish, to Kore­an work­ers build­ing a new invest­ment by Hyundai.
The like­li­hood of future episodes hav­ing to strug­gle for mate­r­i­al  is low.

                          BRAGADOCCIO

When the Israelis jus­ti­fi­ably went on the offen­sive against Hamas,  it’s fair to say nei­ther they nor their many friends, allies and sym­pa­this­ers thought it would last longer than the usu­al few weeks or maybe months of intense fight­ing, fol­lowed by an uneasy peace until the next time.
Two years on, with all their might and almost unlim­it­ed access to mod­ern, sophis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry hav­ing sealed off Hamas weapons sup­ply lines as effec­tive­ly as they have food for inno­cent civil­ians, killed most if not all of Hamas’ senior lead­er­ship, along with 65,000 Gazans and, as of the lat­est esti­mate in July, destroyed 70 per­cent of  Gaza’s infra­struc­ture, there’s no real end in sight.
The most opti­mistic  (depend­ing on whether you’re an Israeli or a Gazan) view was Israeli mil­i­tary spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin’s assess­ment that the lat­est oper­a­tion to free the hostages and defeat Hamas, would go on for “as long as necessary”.
That seems like an ide­al mock­ery oppor­tu­ni­ty, by point­ing out that, as the Viet Cong, AK-47 tot­ing Soma­li mili­ti­a­men and the Afghan Tal­iban have shown, in the long run, his­to­ry is not on the side of the most heav­i­ly armed.
Nor do wan­na-be dic­ta­tors and their acolytes and enablers occu­py the top tier of any pan­theon of history’s admirable figures.
Mock­ery is a sure way to make that clear.
The main­stream media has shown a will­ing­ness to do that from time to time, and an equal propen­si­ty to pride itself on doing do, with the self-dep­re­cat­ing caveat that even more needs to be done.
The Wash­ing­ton Post self-pol­ish­es its image with the  admo­ni­tion that “Democ­ra­cy Dies in Darkness”.
That would be inspir­ing, if they weren’t in the process of turn­ing the lights out, most notably by Post own­er Jeff Bezos cozy­ing up with Trump, and the fir­ing of award win­ning colum­nist and occa­sion­al Trump crit­ic Karen Atti­ah, a clear-cut case of uncon­scious, or even more wor­ry­ing, uncar­ing self-mockery.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.