No Man’s Blog

You can say what you want against the Americans, they know best how to make a whipping political satire. But the interesting question here goes something like that: is the sheer brilliance of the like of South Park,  Jon Stuart’s The Daily Show or Michael Moore, directly related to the fact that their  horrendously stupid president, (which, his IQ aside, also runs incredibly incompetent administration) simply provides endless material for a biting satire, or is it something embedded deeper in the political culture of the US?  Put differently, why is there no equivalent to Jon Stuart here in the UK? Surely, political objection or protest is expressed here in the usual channels like newspapers columns, blogs and street marches, but i don’t remember seeing anything like this here:

Indeed, Tony Blair is more charismatic than Bush, and definitely more intelligent and eloquent but considering his own incompetence and lies over the war in Iraq, his persona alone cannot explain why there is not a single effectively (Blair)bashing satire.

It seems to me that there is that edge in the American democratic culture that allows that bush-bashing or any other topic/person for that matter to be dealt with in such hilariously relentless way. Like it or not, they surely exercise their freedom of expression and the result is usually sharper, dirtier, outrageous and uncompromising than any other place in the world. Something like Little Britain but more personal and politically daring. Take a look at this speech given by Stephen Colbert at the white house  correspondents dinner. Standing just a few feet away from President Bush, Colbert
skewered the current administration, the President, and the press corps. I don’t think this could happen anywhere else. You can watch the whole speech here.   

And South Park, (which i don’t quite understand how it isn’t really BIG here) is the best example for that. They are truly equal opportunity offenders – no one, (i repeat -  no one) is off their hook. Left, right, liberal, conservative, gay, straight, black, white, Muslems, Jews, Christians …. the list is endless – they spare no senstivity, leave no butt unkicked, mocking every aspect of American culture.