i started a joke

“I started a joke, which started the whole world crying, but I didn’t see that the joke was on me, oh no”, lyrics from the Bee Gee song I Started A Joke. Seems lots of jokes have been started by not so funny people who have left a whole lot of people crying, denying, lying, and anything but laughing. And unlike the lyrics those who have started the joke have yet to find out the joke was on them.

Since we have become a nation less concerned with truth and more occupied with 15 minutes of fame, less interested in fact and more mesmerized by fiction, quick to find a scapegoat, and slow to find consensus, jokes abound by sad sack losers who are surrounded by odor and smell claiming that the ill smelling fragrance is emanating from others and never from themselves. Point the finger away and then you never have to admit to your failings and failures.

In the 2004 Presidential race, the Swift Boat Veterans started a joke, penned by the Republican Party to smear the reputation of then Democratic candidate John Kerry. They stated without fact, but lots of conviction and a punch line or two that John Kerry exaggerated his service in Viet Nam and challenged the legitimacy of his combat medals. It was necessary to start the joke because the real joke at the time was the fact that George W. Bush had no military experience. Point the fingers away from the fact; fantasize the fiction loud enough and the joke will succeed. The punch line to this joke was 4 more years of George Bush.

“Weapons of Mass Destruction” as declared by George Bush, was a good reason to invade Iraq. The President and his band of joke writers like Karl Rove decided to land a lollapalooza of a joke on the US and the world, and claim any second any minute the United States would be the target of a barrage of weapons of mass destruction. Georgie Bush plans a war, then finds a reason for the war, place a laugh track throughout the war and the joke becomes hilarious. Who dies laughing, about 4000 American soldiers and over 100,000 Iraqi’s. The Republican Party stood behind the joke never once questioning the validity of the claims and those who even hinted at the legitimacy of weapons of mass destruction were called traitors, enemies of the state.

Those who are unemployed are jobless because of the ease at which they receive unemployment benefits. Ask Orrin Hatch, Republican Senator of Utah. He has been in the Senate for over 30 years receives his socialized health insurance from the government, lobbyist money from big corporations and a pat on the back from the Church of Latter Day Saints. He has led the Republican jokesters claiming that unemployed men and women in this nation are lazy, they prefer receiving their average of $300 unemployment checks then find a job, and damn it to hell there are more jobs out there for those really willing to work. He and his cohorts had until yesterday blocked the massive group of Americans, (unemployed primarily by the bad politics of the Republican dominated politicians during their reign of power for the 8 years of the Bush/Cheney dictatorship) from receiving any measly remuneration to pay even a part of their bills. The joke was a laugh riot spun by wealthy Republicans who have no idea of conscience or civility.

And the latest joke to cause guffaws and giggles is the joke about the black lady who hates whites. Not only does she hate whites, but she works for the Federal Government which has a black President (her ultimate boss), and she spoke at the NAACP which was organized not to protect the rights of blacks in this country but to spew hatred and bigotry against whites. My belly aches from laughter as I write this!

Seems rightwing Tea Bagger compatriot Andrew Breitbart thought the joke was on the Tea Bagger Brigade when they were accused by the NAACP as being a racist group of people. Pictures of President Obama in African attire a noose around the black man’s neck, spitting at members of the Black Caucus were just some of the examples provided to make the point. So Mr. Breitbart started the joke claiming that Shirley Sherrod was indeed the bigot and that she and the NAACP were racially profiling the whites in this country. At the root of the joke Mr. Breitbart started was a video tape spliced, altered and incomplete. He had a joke to tell and if he had to show the video in its entirety with the truth it would have taken too long to get to the punch line and even then there would be nothing funny about it. Not one to require the truth, the vultures at FOX News aired the misinformation and laughed all the way to the bank. And the big ‘gotcha moment of this joke was when both the White House and the NAACP laughed so hard they fired and admonished Ms Sherrod in tandem with the other fools who found fact to be mere fiction.

There is nothing funny in any of the jokes written, orchestrated, organized or arranged by the comedy writers of the Republican Party’s Right Wing/Tea Bag/Neo Con/Fundamentalist/Anti Democracy gang of hoodlums. There is no humor when truth is absent and the fact is baseless. There is no ha-ha moment when lies abound to disguise loathing. The jokes started are harmful and the results hideous and horrifying.

Seems too many people end up crying from the jokes started by those who have little sense of humor but a great deal of evil.