{"id":2795,"date":"2004-08-02T12:05:31","date_gmt":"2004-08-02T19:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2004\/08\/josh-marshall-lives-under-a-rock\/"},"modified":"2004-08-02T12:05:31","modified_gmt":"2004-08-02T19:05:31","slug":"josh-marshall-lives-under-a-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/02\/josh-marshall-lives-under-a-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Marshall lives under a rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tJosh Marshall says Republicans are planning to use humor to ridicule and diminish Sen. Kerry in the coming month:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The more discussion-worthy point, however, is the use of humor as a political weapon — mockery, derision, diminishment. <\/p>\n

Republicans are very good at this. And it can be a tool that is deceptively difficult to respond to or combat. Effective mockery is ‘sticky’, hard to shake off, hard to parry. And it appeals to people’s appetite for fun and humor. <\/p>\n

Indeed, it’s not just contemporary Republicans who have a knack for this. There seems to be something intrinsic to the reactionary or right-leaning mentality that gravitates toward this method of political combat. Think of the Tory pamphleteers and essayists of the 18th century in Great Britain or others of a more recent vintage in the US.<\/p>\n

This is potent stuff. And Democrats would do well not only to be on their guard but consider applying this approach to the current president, who is more than a bit ripe for such treatment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can he really be so naive? The Democrats have Michael Moore packing the faithful into the movie houses for a humorous (and fundamentally false) takedown of the president, Bill Maher attacking the president for an hour a week on HBO, and an entire radio network made up of failed comedians ridiculing him 24 hours a day. Is Marshall really so stupid that he doesn’t realize that Republicans are actually stealing a page from the Democratic Party’s playbook?\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Josh Marshall says Republicans are planning to use humor to ridicule and diminish Sen. Kerry in the coming month: The more discussion-worthy point, however, is the use of humor as a political weapon — mockery, derision, diminishment. Republicans are very good at this. And it can be a tool that is deceptively difficult to respond … Continue reading “Josh Marshall lives under a rock”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-J5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}