ManicDDaily

One of the good and bad features of a daily blog (especially for a blogger with a daily job) is that it requires the blogger to get posts out quickly, sometimes before an issue is very well understood.  (Sorry!)  In such cases. the post is really a reaction (perhaps premature) to an issue, rather than any kind of cogent analysis.  Sometimes the post doesn’t even reflect the blogger’s longer-term, or considered, reaction to an issue,  but, at best, is simply a snapshot of the moments in which it was written.

Here is further information about the topics of two recent posting:   the first relates to The Line Between Satire and Sneer (illustrated by the teapot surrounded by UFOs), which expressed my wish that the TV show Family Guy hadn’t joked about  the mother of a character with Down’s Syndrome being the former governor of Alaska.    Palin and her daughter Bristol interpreted the program as a cruel jab at Palin’s son Trig (with Down’s Syndrome).  An article in today’s New York Times describes the reaction to Palin’s outrage of the actress,  Andrea Fay Friedman, who did the voice-over for the Down’s Syndrome character and who herself has Down’s Syndrome.  Ms. Friedman accuses Sarah Palin of not having a sense of humor, and of misunderstanding the episode, which presents the Down’s Syndrome character as an obnoxious but strong figure:   “I’m like ‘I’m not Trig. This is my life, ” Ms. Friedman said in a telephone interview with the Times, “I was making fun of Sarah Palin, but not her son.”

I still don’t like Family Guy.  (It’s the crassness.)  And I still wish that the show had not given Palin further “mileage”.  But the article, which gives more information about both the episode and Ms. Friedman,  certainly clarifies another perspective.

The second story which is subject to increasing illumination as the days go by is about Joe Stack, the man who ran a plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building (and whose disgruntlement with the IRS apparently began when the IRS refused to give him a tax exemption as a church.)   Gail Collins has a great article today, The Wages of Rages, about Stack, but also various lame-brained attempts of Republican politicians to expropriate Tea Party rage for political capital.   Yes, she manages to include a reference to Mitt Romney tying his dog to the roof of his car.