This particular phenomenon is so funny that it deserves its own special Joke Revue thread. Some good ones I’ve seen so far, in addition to the ones Bob notes below:
Was a bit warm and muggy outside today. Now I know what it was like to fight the Vietcong.
Stuck inside working from home today. Now I know how Anne Frank felt.
My modest contribution:
Got caught in the rain today. Now I know how Pharaoh’s army felt when Moses dumped the Red Sea on them.
Add your own @petehoekstras in the comments!
UPDATE: Could this story get any funnier? Here’s a statement released by Hoekstra’s office in an effort to calm what must be an incredibly embarrassing uproar:
“Congressman Hoekstra did not compare the ongoing violence in Iran to when Democrats shut down the House chamber during the energy debate last summer,” said spokesman Dave Yonkman. “The two situations do share the similarity of government leadership attempting to limit debate and deliberation, and the ability of new technologies to bypass their efforts and allow for direct communication. That’s the only point that he was trying to make.”
In other words: Hoekstra didn’t compare the two. He just noted that they’re similar. That’s all. đŸ˜€
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p>Now I know what it’s like to be this kid. Or this one…
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Now I know what Christ felt like rising from the dead.
Not that I meant to compare the two in any way.
For a while, the GOP’s media style has been to appeal to the “reptilian”, i.e. older, parts of the brain. They want to appeal to stuff like fear, disgust, tribalism, purity.
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p>How does this work on the new media, blogs yesterday and Twitter today? Not so well. Text-based communication is subject to critical, rational review. What might work admirably as an emotional appeal if delivered on a passive medium like television falls flat in an environment where response, mockery, satire, and critical examination are not only possible but expected.
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p>For Republicans, Twitter is their friend the way Gremlins make cute pets.
so I get that metaphor even better than you do!
It was hideously violent.
I only read about it on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an excellent way to learn about all the popular culture one has missed.
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p>That’s how I know about The Godfather, too.
… at the disparate nature of the education in popular culture that Lynne and I experienced. I’m a little older and she grew up without cable. Much of our early dating (and some of our current dating) involves her ‘education’ on what she’s missed.
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p>With regard to the Godfather,… you should really see all three. I truly believe that hundreds of years from now, when history or drama students are studying 20th century western culture, this work will be (rightly or wrongly) iconic.
Are you sure you’re not just trying to negate the significance of the point being made? That’s the same thing going on with the DOJ brief, where all the MSM and blog focus is on the comparison being odious in and of itself, because there is a comparison being made that offends them.
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p>I guess the model is Godwin’s law, and this is just a general use of it. When a comparison makes you uncomfortable, just do what Goebbels and Himmler would do in a similar situation.
First, the way it was worded was terrible. Second, it makes him look like he was also pitting the seriousness of the situation in Iran and its NEED to get news out, and the Repubs who, frankly, come off as whining when they pull stunts like that. I mean, they did that ALL THE DAMN TIME to Dems when the R’s were in charge, locked them OUT of the chamber and so on. But now that the tables are turned and they can’t dictate the tenants of the debate, wah wah wah wah. Culture of victimhood all over the place.
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p>And what does this situation have to do with the DOJ brief, anyway? How are the two even synonymous? That comparison in the brief WAS odious. The comparison between the GOP and Iran freedom marchers is just…silly beyond belief and deserves to be mocked.
You’re changing what the points were, from valid points, to mockable comparisons. The DOJ wasn’t “comparing gay people to pedophiles or incest”, they were showing other examples of marriages that states do not necessarily recognize. But that point is drowned out by the outrage at a slight that wasn’t made, and the uninformed might believe the DOJ was making a moral, religious-right, “gay people are evil molesters and predators!” argument, which they weren’t. And in this case, similarly, the idea is to get attention off the limited point he made, and instead convince everyone that the story is about how full-of-themselves Republicans are, comparing themselves to Morrissey or whatever it’s morphed to by now.
… you say is true, it really should be noted that they could have made their point in a much less inflammatory (justified or not) way.
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p>That they didn’t actually lead one blogger to consider the possibility that it was ‘burrowing’.
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p>Others have come to the conclusions you have.
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p>Salon:
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p>I did find the links to be interesting.
Dick Cheney reportedly got some sand in his bathing suit. “Now I know how it feels to serve a tour of duty in Iraq,” mused the former Vice-President.
And put on facebook:
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p>”easyvegan: I sent Obama a tea bag thru the USPS; it was very much like fighting in the American Revolution. @petehoekstra #GOPfail”
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p>Awesome.
According to the Globe, the AFL-CIO says that elimination of the Quinn Bill feels like waterboarding.
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p>TedF
…now I know what it’s like for African children that don’t have clean water.
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p>…or what it was like to be a Jew following Moses around the desert for 40 years.
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p>…or how it feels to live in a drought-stricken California town.
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p>:(
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p>Also, my roommate left the freezer door open and melted my ice cubes. Now I know how the polar bears feel about global warming.
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…now I know how the Kurds felt when they were gassed by Saddam Hussein!