When I was at William and Mary there was a running set of Grendel cast parties, which continued long after the play "Grendel" had sunk beneath the whale-road. We played charades until the small hours. You have never seen charades until you see it played by drunken theater majors.
Our team had assigned Oxford English Dictionary to the other side to act out. Predictably, the actor went for what should have been the easiest syllable first. Book. Three words. Third word. Four syllables. First syllable. Prick. Penis... It went downhill rapidly after that, with people screaming synonyms for male genitalia while the actor shook his head with increasing anger and frustration. As the obscene slang became more outrageous and unlikely - I recall that "whistler" was one of the guesses (whistler? Huh.) - people were collapsing in hilarity.
Throughout it all, sweet, clever, quiet Stephanie Benninghof had guessed "Dick...dictionary?...Oxford English Dictionary?" and was trying to break in with her guess while the overdramatic drunks fell over the sofa racking (or "wracking" seeing that it was a Grendel Party) their brains for more penis-slang. We, the other team, heard her and sat quiet, hushed, hoping that her own team would not notice she had gotten the right answer. This went on for three minutes, the allotted time each team had.
"COCK!!!"
"WIENIE!!!"
"The Oxford English Dictionary?"
"WIENER! Not Wienie, WIENER!!! WIENER!!!
"TESTICLES! PREPUCE!!! (Bio major, there) BALLS!!!"
"The Oxford English Dictionary?"
I thought of that today as I read things around the internet that don't seem to make it to the national conversation except on the right side of the blogosphere. Gateway Pundit has a list of 17 times Bush tried to avert the fannie mae crisis and was stopped by the Democratic Congress. (His whole site is filled with stuff you didn't know.) Powerline has simple summaries of the under-reported Obama scandals entitled Deep Secrets (there are four in the series so far). Researched, linked, damning information. But of course it was more important to discuss whether Bristol Palin got laid on Prom Night.
The analogy works. The Mediaheads are the drunken drama queens shouting clever, titillating, but irrelevant information. The right blogosphere is Stephanie, quietly repeating the correct answer while no one listens.
2 comments:
Very. Very. Perceptive.
Have you noticed how any report/post/story that accepts comments and that has any negative implication at all for the McCain-Palin team immediately begins to accumulate comments that steadily become more and more deranged, repeating lies and propaganda until the entire thread is completely useless.
Here's a good example.
And that's mainstream. It's worse in other locations, IYKWIMAITYD.
I have told my children over and over again - Those kids you go to school with? You will meet them in various shapes and sizes throughout your life. Learn to deal with them now and you will be ahead of the game. Child after child, it has proven to be true.
The drunks outnumber the Stephanies every time.
middleagedhousewife
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