Reverse Sarcasm

Media Appeasement

Have you ever had the experience of reading something where you go back and forth wondering whether it is sarcasm or a straight up piece?  If you haven't, the following has had us going back and forth, asking "Is This a Joke, or What?"

It comes from the Associated Press and we think it has to be a Monty-Pythonesque joke.  It reads the tea leaves on Kim Jong Un's recent criticisms of Donald Trump.  It argues that things have changed in US-North Korean relationships.  Trump has crossed a line and it's clear (apparently) that Kim Jong Un has had enough.

The piece takes the mien of a mocking teenager taking the mickey out of a blustering bully, with comments like "Ooooh, we're scared", and "We're shaking ourselves into a fever."  It's clear that the alleged author, AP White House reporter Josh Lederman is having fun at Kim Jong Un's expense.

Unbelief's Mad, Mad World

Monty Pythonesque

Spare a thought for poor old Loretta Lynch, the US Attorney General.  She came forth to issue a strong statement to condemn the shooting at the Planned Parenthood centre in Colorado Springs.  She certainly stood and delivered. 

She has to be credited with a sterling attempt to fit this horrendous crime into one of the prevailing narratives of Unbelief.  She had recourse to the old "War on Women" chestnut.

President Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch is issuing a strong statement about a shooting in a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic last week.

The Attorney General denounces the shooting as “a crime against women.”  “This unconscionable attack was not only a crime against the Colorado Springs community, but a crime against women receiving healthcare services at Planned Parenthood, law enforcement seeking to protect and serve, and other innocent people,” she said in a statement.  [Breitbart News]

This stentorian denunciation was fast followed by another revelation.  If it was a "crime against women" it was committed by "one of yours"--someone who apparently "identifies" as a woman.  Robert Lewis Dear, it turns out, is a bearded woman.  And, Lorrie, as we all now know, gender is a fluid concept, and none can gainsay one's belief about one's identity.

Monty Python could not have written a madder, more bizarre script.