My cousin’s wedding had been hastily arranged, though no one told me why, and I had trouble finding a flight from New York at such short notice. It would be my first time in Punjab in years, and though I wasn’t born here, my parents had been and I’d lived with the idea of the place from as far back as I could remember, side by side, as if I’d spent my life with a phantom twin whose pull on my imagination was made that much more powerful by his absence.
That first morning after arriving, I immediately felt my own strangeness in these surroundings for walking out of the bedroom I was confronted by a servant on her hands and knees ferociously brushing the carpets. My aunt offered a perfunctory hello, and turned on the maid and started pouring out abuse. The young woman dropped her head and pulled her scarf tightly over it and nodded and pressed the stiff bristles so deep into the frayed carpet she was almost flattened against it. Whoosh-whoosh, whoosh-whoosh! My aunt walked on and the maid raised her head and smiled at me and returned to her previous, and still quite vigorous, pace.
The Groom appeared at breakfast wearing a sheepish grin and offered a sarcastic roll of the eyes, as if to say he was nothing more than an onlooker to the spectacle unfurling around us and not at all the center of it. “Hullo,” he said, warmly gripping my hand, “I guess I’m getting married, eh.” He stood, slightly pudgy with a round, boyish face and a constantly embarrassed grin and said how glad he was I’d traveled all this way. Every now and then, that look of sarcasm mixed with suspicion returned and seemed to telegraph a feeling on his part of both bafflement with me and superiority.
Sarah Gray is an assistant editor at Salon, focusing on innovation. Follow @sarahhhgray or email sgray@salon.com.
Here’s how it works: The president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction!
The media response to the epic truth-telling? First they mostly ignored him. Then they said he just wasn’t funny.
The Washington Post, the longtime guardian of acceptable Beltway behavior, seemed especially humorless about Colbert’s now-classic performance. “The consensus is that President Bush and Bush impersonator Steve Bridges stole Saturday’s show — and Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert’s cutting satire fell flat,” wrote the Post’sAmy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts.
According to Dana Milbank, Colbert “wasn’t terribly funny.” AndPostcolumnist Richard Cohen was utterly aghast at how “rude” Colbert had been to Bush. It was the comedian’s rudeness that utterly rendered his act “not funny” and why he “failed dismally.”
For the record, Cohen represented a prime example of a D.C. pundit who not only bought Bush’s bogus tale of WMD’s in Iraq, but who actively pushed the fabrication in his column. But I’m sure that had nothing to do with Cohen’s disdain for Colbert’s biting performance, right?
Meanwhile, can you imagine a conservative comedian rattling the Beltway the way Colbert did at that dinner, and the way he’s been doing it for nearly a decade? Neither can I. Comedy Central’s satirical juggernaut must be driving conservatives to distraction, especially the ones worried about losing the larger pop culture war.
“The right’s anger over being comically challenged is made worse by that fact that they so desperately want to be funny,” comedian Dean Obeidallah wrote on Daily Beast this year, when humorless Fox News anchors spent days lamenting President Obama’s very funny appearance on the Zach Galifianakis web series, Between Two Ferns. (“Tragic,” “gross,” “dreadful,” “unbearable” was how the unsmiling pundits lambasted Obama’s extended bit.)June: Sexy mugshot guy
A mugshot of Jeremy Meeks — aka, “hot mugshot guy” — went viral after the Stockton Police Department uploaded the photo to their Facebook in June. Meeks had been arrested on felony weapons charges, but since gaining over 10,000 likes on the photo, he now also has a modeling contract. Such is the power of the internet.
July: Potato salad kickstarter
My cousin’s wedding had been hastily arranged, though no one told me why, and I had trouble finding a flight from New York at such short notice. It would be my first time in Punjab in years, and though I wasn’t born here, my parents had been and I’d lived with the idea of the place from as far back as I could remember, side by side, as if I’d spent my life with a phantom twin whose pull on my imagination was made that much more powerful by his absence.
That first morning after arriving, I immediately felt my own strangeness in these surroundings for walking out of the bedroom I was confronted by a servant on her hands and knees ferociously brushing the carpets. My aunt offered a perfunctory hello, and turned on the maid and started pouring out abuse. The young woman dropped her head and pulled her scarf tightly over it and nodded and pressed the stiff bristles so deep into the frayed carpet she was almost flattened against it. Whoosh-whoosh, whoosh-whoosh! My aunt walked on and the maid raised her head and smiled at me and returned to her previous, and still quite vigorous, pace.
The Groom appeared at breakfast wearing a sheepish grin and offered a sarcastic roll of the eyes, as if to say he was nothing more than an onlooker to the spectacle unfurling around us and not at all the center of it. “Hullo,” he said, warmly gripping my hand, “I guess I’m getting married, eh.” He stood, slightly pudgy with a round, boyish face and a constantly embarrassed grin and said how glad he was I’d traveled all this way. Every now and then, that look of sarcasm mixed with suspicion returned and seemed to telegraph a feeling on his part of both bafflement with me and superiority.
Sarah Gray is an assistant editor at Salon, focusing on innovation. Follow @sarahhhgray or email sgray@salon.com.
Here’s how it works: The president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction!
The media response to the epic truth-telling? First they mostly ignored him. Then they said he just wasn’t funny.
The Washington Post, the longtime guardian of acceptable Beltway behavior, seemed especially humorless about Colbert’s now-classic performance. “The consensus is that President Bush and Bush impersonator Steve Bridges stole Saturday’s show — and Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert’s cutting satire fell flat,” wrote the Post’sAmy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts.
According to Dana Milbank, Colbert “wasn’t terribly funny.” AndPostcolumnist Richard Cohen was utterly aghast at how “rude” Colbert had been to Bush. It was the comedian’s rudeness that utterly rendered his act “not funny” and why he “failed dismally.”
For the record, Cohen represented a prime example of a D.C. pundit who not only bought Bush’s bogus tale of WMD’s in Iraq, but who actively pushed the fabrication in his column. But I’m sure that had nothing to do with Cohen’s disdain for Colbert’s biting performance, right?
Meanwhile, can you imagine a conservative comedian rattling the Beltway the way Colbert did at that dinner, and the way he’s been doing it for nearly a decade? Neither can I. Comedy Central’s satirical juggernaut must be driving conservatives to distraction, especially the ones worried about losing the larger pop culture war.
“The right’s anger over being comically challenged is made worse by that fact that they so desperately want to be funny,” comedian Dean Obeidallah wrote on Daily Beast this year, when humorless Fox News anchors spent days lamenting President Obama’s very funny appearance on the Zach Galifianakis web series, Between Two Ferns. (“Tragic,” “gross,” “dreadful,” “unbearable” was how the unsmiling pundits lambasted Obama’s extended bit.)June: Sexy mugshot guy
A mugshot of Jeremy Meeks — aka, “hot mugshot guy” — went viral after the Stockton Police Department uploaded the photo to their Facebook in June. Meeks had been arrested on felony weapons charges, but since gaining over 10,000 likes on the photo, he now also has a modeling contract. Such is the power of the internet.
July: Potato salad kickstarter
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