Radosh.net

Well, I can't argue with Richard Cohen. He is a funny guy, after all.

>>"This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg." A mixed metaphor, and lame as can be.

Holy crap--he's criticizing this because it's a MIXED METAPHOR????

And it made made me laugh out loud.

i don't even know that colbert would say that he was funny. he was more... devastating. or something.

I have to admit to being confused by this:

"I am a funny guy. This is well known in certain circles, which is why, even back in elementary school, I was sometimes asked by the teacher to 'say something funny'"

Now, the column as a whole isn't funny. It seems to be intended to be taken seriously, right? But it boggles the mind to think Cohen actually wants us to believe he's funny on this basis.

Saying "I am funny" is only funny if you're not actually funny. But if he's not, in fact, funny, how can he judge whether Colbert was funny?

Further, the Appeal to Grade-School Teacher argument is so ludicrous it has to be intended as a joke... right? I mean, everyone who's ever been to school knows that to determine who in the class is actually funny the very last person you would ask would be the teacher.

So that line has to be intended as a joke, right? But then, why use it? Especially when it so clearly underlines your misapprehension of what Colbert was doing so successfully, i.e. rudely mocking the teacher and getting away with it? Did he mean to set that up as a devilish Swiftian counterpoint or is he really, honest-to-god that clueless???

I will grant that Cohen may indeed be funny, but if so it's a kind of funny that's far too complicated and esoteric for people like me to understand. And, apparently, people like Colbert as well.

Best is when Cohen complains about the joke that went something like this: "When we switched press secretaries, you people in the press said Bush was rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No, this administration is soaring! If anything they are rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg!"

Cohen complains that this is a "mixed metaphor." Oy. How to explain funny to people who don't see it?

Note to self: Read comments before posting one yourself. The Velvet Blog says what needs to be said.

How is that a mixed metaphor? I'm sure there were deck chairs.

A mixed metaphor would be "fuck him and the hybrid car he rode in on". But the Hindenberg thing, that wasn't mixed.