The Kook and the Clown

Big news today! The so-called "video proof" of 9-11 has been proven a hoax. After years of Americans fooling themselves into believing 9-11 was the responsibility of "terrorist masterminds," news reporters have finally vindicated Osama bin Laden and his peace-loving organization, al-Quaida. You can read the full story of the Faking of the Osama bin Laden video.

Oh, and speaking of which, you can also collect the entire Hitler playing card collection.

Why is it that people rely on comedy when dealing with The Bad Guy? (Speaking of which, I can't find a good mockery of Osama bin Laden, but apparently one of his nieces is a model, and another has just signed a six-figure deal to be a porn star...) The art of mockery -- satire -- was born a long time ago, back in the late Renaissance. It flourished in the written and verbal form during the 1700s and, later, took on the visual arts: cartoons, movies and eventually television. Charlie Chaplin was best known for his satire of Adolph Hitler (as shown above, a still from the October 1940 film, The Great Dictator), and he was possibly the first and greatest satirist of the big screen.

We've been trying since. We really have. It's not our fault we're miserable failures in the enemy-as-comic relief department. Ever since Chaplin we've been headed sorta down hill. Exaggeration seems to be the best we can manage -- "Dubbya" has big ears, Stalin is obscenely obese and looks like the Santa from hell, and don't even get me started on satire of Mao Tse-Tung (I couldn't find any particularly good cartoons). Today there's also a new form of satire -- satirical music (best exemplified, in my opinion, by Ray Stevens' Osama, Yo Mama).

But they all pale in comparison to Chas. Is it because Hitler, as opposed to Osama bin Ladin, truly was a terrifying spectre of things to come? I remember when I was about ten years old, sitting in "The Bagel Place" listening to two old men talking about Saddam Hussein and comparing him to Hitler. I also remember thinking, "Not a chance." Hitler had great generals, brilliant strategists, a war machine capable of producing vast amounts of material, and plenty of resources (oil notwithstanding). Hussein, by contrast, had oil. No great generals, no wealth to speak of, no strategists and tacticians, no excess with which to construct materiale. He just had oil.

Anyway, off topic rant there. Today the best we can really manage is satirical cartoons, primarily of our own leaders (who are, admittedly, very often the worst enemy we face). Still, I can't really say I miss the days of Charlie Chaplin, both because I dislike his movies and because the modern satirical cartoons are considerably more vitriolic than ever before.

Maybe one day we'll find an author truly worthy of the satirists from the early years of satire. But I doubt it. The fine art of political mockery has well and truly come into its own in the modern political cartoon -- probably because it's too hard for most readers to get through a book, whereas cartoons are quick and easy.

Well, I've gotten totally off topic. My original purpose was just to share the top two stories, and now I've been babbling about satire and Charlie Chaplin for far too long. Allahu Akbar!