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Is satire, really, finally, dead now?

The original statement was that satire was dead when Nixon was elected: that’s from Tom Lehrer. Myself I think Kissinger getting the Peace Prize was a sterling moment. But, sorry, it ain’t dead yet:

President Barack Obama announced in his weekly address that he will travel to the Florida Everglades on Wednesday, which is Earth Day, to bring attention to the dangers of climate change.

That is, Barack Obama, the President, will travel with his own 747 Jumbo Jet, with an advance party in another, larger, cargo plane carrying his armoured limo (s), with a back up plane in the air just in case. In order to give a speech on how aviation emissions, among other things, threaten the fucking planet?

Umm, don’t they have a TV studio in the White House? Or maybe satire is finally dead?

26 thoughts on “Is satire, really, finally, dead now?”

  1. What they don’t like is poor people travelling, or indeed having any bourgeois luxuries at all. These things are reseved for the Elect, who have earned them through their moral virtues.

    Keep up, Tim.

  2. Satire never lived. It’s only virtue, ever, has been to hearten the remaining living with a wry smile. It has never changed a thing, except negatively as a road map.

  3. Under Big Nanny, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Like the ones with Zil limos and 747s.

    Mark Steyn has written a couple of articles lately comparing how the Royal Family travel to how even lower-level US burrowcrats like Clinton travel.

  4. Numerous kings have died in battle but no Presidents. English Public Schools trained boys for a life where the horse should be fed before the men and the men before the officers. Admittedly the last British King to lead his troops in battle was George II but that is because George III was too young for one war and too old for the next and since then all the male sovereigns have been too old when they succeeded to the throne (George VI fought in WWI when his father was King, Philip fought in WWII when he was merely a Prince of Greece, Andrew fought in the Falklands when Charles was a bit too old …).

    Presidents have a sense of entitlement.

  5. “too old for the next”

    Wisdom can be underrated – let their sons fight.

    Sorry – this was about clinate change. Do we need Dr Connolley to pop over and adivse us on this one?

  6. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Apparently Leonardo diCaprio took six private jet flights in six weeks and still has the gall to be lecturing the plebs on how they should be restricting their travel. Fuck these people. Seriously, just fuck them all in the ear. I do not want to hear another single goddamn fucking word out of their hypocritical, lying, rent-seeking gobs. I will burn a fucking pile of tyres and throw a condor on the fucker if they don’t shut up.

  7. Remember the climate change summit in Copenhagen? I remember reading that the airport ran out of space to park all the private jets and the limo rental companies ran out of limos so more had to be brought in from Germany. But I’m a cunt for taking a holiday flight….

  8. So Much for Subtlety

    Bloke in Costa Rica – “Fuck these people. Seriously, just fuck them all in the ear. I do not want to hear another single goddamn fucking word out of their hypocritical, lying, rent-seeking gobs.”

    Al Gore bought a mansion on the beach. Seems he doesn’t think the sea is going to rise any time soon. As the cliche goes, I will believe this is an emergency when the people telling me it is an emergency start behaving like it is an emergency.

    So in a way, I appreciate the fat little f**ker. He is the canary in the coal mine. As long as he is flying high coast-to-coast, I can rest sure in the knowledge everything is fine in the world.

  9. 8 years of Obama followed by 8 years of Hillary Edmund Sherpa Tensing Clinton, could any nation survive that?

  10. Then another Bush. Then Chelsea Clinton. Then the two families intermarry and America finally gets its proper monarchy.

  11. My own favourite in the green hypocrisy stakes is Prince Charles flying by helicopter from Wiltshire to Southwold (return) to open, with much self-congratulation all round, a “carbon-neutral” brewing facility for Adnams.

  12. ‘Admittedly the last British King to lead his troops in battle was George II’
    The last American president to lead troops in battle was James Madison.

  13. George VI fought in WWI when his father was King, Philip fought in WWII when he was merely a Prince of Greece, Andrew fought in the Falklands when Charles was a bit too old …
    For at least the last century the policy has been that the spare can be exposed to a moderate amount of danger in war, but the heir cannot. Hence Andrew and Albert (later George VI) seeing action, but not the future Edward VII.

  14. Why stop at Andrew? Harry’s done 2 Afghan tours and William, constrained by the heir and spare policy PaulB mentioned, has served as a SAR mate. That involves some pretty hairy flying; at least one pilot of my acquaintance went to see his CO to say he couldn’t take another night in a cab in high windunable to see the cliff due to the rain or fog and went on to fly large aircraft into Afghanistan as light relief.

  15. There isn’t a particular need to protect the heir. The next in line becomes the heir, and that’s that (a point well understood by the King during WW2).

    Bad for morale though, and a logistical and ceremonial nightmare if we were to lose important Royals “unexpectedly”.

    Maybe William though SAR was light relief after nights out with his brother.

  16. @ ZT
    ” …lead *his* troops in battle” When Madison was President he didn’t fight – the biography page says that he *fled* when British troops approached Washington. If you are including his command of some treasonous rebels in 1776, then why not quote Teddy Roosevelt? William IV post-dated Madison and George VI post-dated Teddy Roosevelt. The only American Presidents to be killed have been killed by other americans. A dozen British kings have died in battle (including three successive kings of Scotland James II, III and IV).

  17. @ PaulB
    Edward VIII, not VII. Allegedly Bertie” was dragged out of the army not to protect him but because he was not living up to Prince Albert’s moral standards.
    If war had broken out when Charles was commanding a ship he would have been involved in a combat role – no way would he or Philip permitted any alternative. He wasn’t: just as well because he was not expendable when Andrew was the alternative. Now that William is the alternative I bet the person who regards Charles as least expendable is William.

  18. Edward VIII, yes. The usual story is that Edward wanted to fight, saying that it wouldn’t matter if he were killed since he had plenty of brothers, but Kitchener forbad it for fear that he would be captured.

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