By Kurt Schlichter
Monday, June 03, 2013
The President seems to be on the verge of losing Jay Leno
just like Lyndon Johnson famously “lost Walter Cronkite” after the Tet
Offensive. The pointy-chinned funny man’s monologues have started picking at
the administration’s scabs over Benghazi, the IRS and its general incompetence.
After five years of Obama-fawning, a little comic accountability is certainly
welcome. But the big question is whether there is any chance of disenchantment
with the antics of the liberal establishment translating into a more
conservative popular culture.
Sure, the usual suspects are still acting out with their
usual cluelessness. Voice-of-her generation Lena Dunham – and God help any
generation she’s the voice of – started off the week with a tweet announcing
how she recognized Memorial Day by urinating in two different Starbucks stores.
I know the guys who stormed Normandy are proud of her achievement – those that
lived. She proceeded to shift into “V” for victim the moment folks tweeted back
their disapproval. Hilarity ensured as Dan Savage, the slavering anti-Christian
poster child of the left, joined in to defend her Gaia-given right to
disrespect millions of veterans without anyone calling her on it.
Dunham managed to make a second splash this week when she
got publicly fussy because some adult video outfit is making a porno parody of
her show Girls, apparently unaware that Girls itself is already a porno parody
of Girls.
Then Adam Levine, another Obamabot, was caught on a hot
mic muttering, “I hate this country.” For those of us who are so thick-headed
that we failed to comprehend his sly, subtle brand of repartee, Levine
helpfully tweeted a dictionary definition of “joke.” He forgot to mention that,
traditionally, jokes are funny.
Relatedly, the dictionary definition of the word “crappy”
is, “The music of Adam Levine’s band Maroon 5.”
The ravings of a couple of future footnotes aside, the
administration has to be unhappy that the unbreachable wall of liberal
reverence within the entertainment community that held back the forces of
parody and satire seems to be cracking, if only a little. Saturday Night Live
nearly made fun of Obama recently, and John Stewart almost criticized him last
week. After the smoochorama of the first term, that counts as progress.
But what happens when the administration really starts
spinning down the scandal commode? And it will – we’ve barely scratched the
surface of the corruption and political bullying that this administration has
engaged in since Day One. These new scandals are very different from the ones
that went before. Fast and Furious was difficult to understand, and on the
surface the claim that the administration allowed drug cartels to get guns from
U.S. vendors seemed almost unbelievable to anyone who wasn’t focused on the
particulars. Even Libya is kind of hard to understand for the low-info voter –
a good portion of them probably think Benghazi was the guy in the volcano lair
who tried to kill James Bond.
The IRS scandal is a whole different animal. Everyone hates
the IRS, and everyone understands, “These guys told the IRS to go and harass
their political enemies.” The press subpoena thing is a bit complicated, but
the victim – the press itself – ensures that it will get a boatload of
publicity.
So, as the zeitgeist morphs, we may well see the comics
follow. Comedians are the canaries in the coal mine of popular culture – they
react first and their reaction shows where things are headed culturally. Next,
the sense of scandal and disappointment with the administration – remember that
Hollywood’s biggest problem to date with Obama has been that he isn’t
progressive enough – will grow. That’s when the trouble starts not just for the
administration but for the liberal establishment as a whole.
For so long, the gatekeepers have done yeoman’s work
fending off the conservative barbarians and ensuring that not only their idol
Obama but the entire liberal idea was beyond any pop culture critique. However,
these scandals and the disappointment in politics they will engender in society
as a whole could create a precious, invaluable space within popular culture for
conservative entertainment within the mainstream. Instead of outsider movies
and shows – important, but ghettoized among those already conservative – it
might be an opportunity to move into position to address those Americans who
the liberal establishment has, for so long, kept for itself.
Moreover, new technology and new media outlets have
created a vast pool of conservative talent, talent with the ability to make
conservative cultural content. Most will fail, but most people trying to make
it in entertainment fail. The difference is that now all of them won’t fail.
For the present, watch what Leno does, especially since
he is now free from any kind of constraints as he winds up his tenure and
prepares to turn over The Tonight Show to shameless Obama lackey Jimmy Fallon.
Leno can call them as he sees them, and he absolutely knows that every gibe at
the President’s misfortunes and mistakes will annoy his replacement.
Moreover, what comedian wants to be less edgy than plain
vanilla Jay Leno (who was never as plain or vanilla as he was made out to be)?
When everyone was covering for The One, you could get away with it. Now, you’ll
be known as the comic who’s afraid to go where Leno went. Jokes about pot,
one-liners about sex – meh. If you really want to be a rebel and freak out the
squares, grab a mic and diss Obama!
Hollywood is never going to be conservative, but it can
be a lot less liberal. The scandals may well give pop cultural movers and
shakers the permission they need to dispense with the brown-nosing of the last
half decade. Obama has alienated the political class, and he’s alienated his
pals in the press. If he alienates Hollywood too, then that liberal duck and
his whole leftist dynasty couldn’t get any lamer.
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