Setting the Record Straight

William Rivers Pitt Setting the Record Straight:

" Bill Simmons, an excellent sportswriter for ESPN, uses a yardstick he calls the Unintentional Comedy Rating to measure the humor of events that were not designed to be funny. For example, level 86 on a scale of 100 is achieved by 'any Wimbledon interview where Bud Collins tried to say something foreign to a non-American champion like 'danke shein.''

A recent perusal of the White House web site unearthed a page that, I think, scores a perfect 100 on the Simmons scale. The page is titled Setting the Record Straight, and is intended to carry forth the administration's argument that it did nothing wrong in pushing for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Note the rough-edged graphic at the top, meant to display the gritty reality of truth according to Bush and the boys. It isn't funny, not at all, and yet ... it is unintentional comedy of the purest ray serene, a perfect 100 no matter what the East German judges have to say. It is almost, dare I say, sublime.

Take note of the lack of substance to be found. Specifically, note that the rebuttals to accusations of wrongdoing offered here by the White House stop at November of 2005. That's funny all by itself. Just about every action taken by this administration that is now being exposed took place well before 2005. Most, including the leaking of Valerie Plame's name and the decisions to use false and debunked intelligence to defend the decision to invade, took place in 2003." (Read On ^)