NEA A Terrorist Organization!!!!!

Blunt, but true. I don't know that one of us could have gotten away with that comment. Thanks Thomas.

Hobitbob you are obviously an out of control radical and a clear and present danger to the republic. They will be knocking on you door momentarily :wink:

If Bush is re-elected, I don't doubt that. I'll save everyone seats.

I think a lot has to do with the projected context of the remark - i.e, to which extent a remark/joke etc resonates in terms of a more general problem or attitude it is seen to symbolize.

I mean, apart from the partisan sniping that, in an election year, has both sides trying to pick up on whatever they credibly can.

For example. Someone wrote that, if Dean had uttered his 'rebel yelp' two months earlier, when he was at the height of the wave he was riding, it wouldnt have had the same effect, at all. People might have frowned, but looking at the typically strident Dean and his cheering hundreds of supporters, would have merely analysed some bla bla about the new "fire" he brought to discourse, etc. But that Iowa night, his over-the-top scream symbolised and magnified everything that had just struck people that very day: the doubts about his character, the doubts about his electability, and how these doubts were reflected and reinforced by the Iowa election results.

You might see the same thing here. The Bush administration is virulently hostile towards unions and their ilk. Plus, the administration is very widely seen as caught in a with-us-or-against-us black-and-white thinking that makes any political opponent or even critic into an unappeasable enemy. Whatever you may think about it, these are characteristics of the Bush admin that have caused great unease.

Paige's lame joke was thus not random: it magnifies, like a carnival mirror might, the very thing a damn lot of people are highly concerned and agitated about. Are a lot of people highly concerned or agitated about what they suspect is Hillary's submerged tendency to virulent racism? No. Her lame joke was so disconnected with any bone people might have with her, that it didnt even pay for Republicans to raise the issue.

Now if Hillary had made some joke about stupid rednecks, or dumb stayat-home mums, you wouldnt have heard the end of it. Thats the connect that makes a story a story or not, no matter how hard either party pushes it.

My two c

nimh makes a good point. Leno touched on it when he said his jokes about politicians only resonates if it's taken as validation of a pre-concieved idea.

When Republicans make racial gaffes it might resonate more because people are pre-disposed to believe that Republican ideology is less favorable to minorities.

If Bush made a joke about invading another nation it'd be taken very differently than if Pascal Couchepin did.

Remember Reagan's "I have outlawed Russia, we begin bombing in five minutes?"

The President of Switzerland, huh?

Had to look that one up.

Like Bush's big joke (other than when he is shaving) -

"I have hit the trifecta.............."

So did I, all I remembered was "Couch Pin".