Hitchens v. Jon Stewart. Oh, why this, why now? :-)

So, here I was quite set to get back to watching The Daily Show's new season, and Christopher Hitchens spoils the party for me. Isn't Hitchens aware that the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are the hour of sanity for a few million, including me? :-)

So, what is Hitchens' problem with Stewart? Well, actually with Al Franken too. With the idea that these are satirists. Because, to Hitchens, a satirist has to be like Jonathan Swift.

“Al Franken for Senator” is one thing (especially when the alternative is or was “Norm Coleman for Senator”). But Jon Stewart for Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quite another. What next? Stephen Colbert for Zola? Al Franken for Swift?

Franken very often refers to himself as a “satirist,” which is a piece of hubris that comes to him too glibly and naturally. One wants to say, on hearing or reading such a claim, “Actually, sunshine, we’ll be the judge of that.” Swift famously compared satire to a mirror in which people could see every face but their own: if Franken desires to be considered a connoisseur of the satirical, he might want to paste that line into his hat.

I would never want to argue with Hitchens. He is like an uncle I had--the guy could quote verbatim from poems, religious texts, whatever, was fantastic with his repartee, but he was not the most loved person in the room either. But, no denying how smart that uncle was, and even smarter Hitchens is. And usually correct, as in his parting remarks:

Almost everything that I have quoted was printed or broadcast at a time when the Democrats were in opposition in both chambers and many state houses, excluded from the White House, and in a minority on the Supreme Court. The rebel humor on offer was rather lame even then. Shall we now be witnesses to a further decline? (This year’s African American lesbian comedian at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner broke bravely with tradition and chose to roast the absent Rush Limbaugh rather than the incumbent chief executive, to roars of complicit and knowing applause.) A liberal joke, at present, is no laughing matter.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Even Stevphen - Halloween
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Elections in India, and the summer of 2009

Elections a world away will resonate here

By Sriram Khé

For The Register-Guard

Posted to Web: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 06:11PM
Appeared in print: Wednesday, May 13, 2009, page A9

What is the difference between elections in India and elections here in America? In India, elections are conducted over one month, and the results are announced in a day. In America, elections are held on a single day but the result may not be known for months! Just ask Al Franken.

India’s elections were geographically staggered in five phases from April 16 to May 13, and the final results will be known on May 16. Out of the eligible 714 million voters, there is a good chance that about 60 percent — more than 400 million Indians — will have cast their votes by the final election day.

Most projections do not forecast a single party dominating, which will further the practice of coalition government. The current government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, of the Congress Party, is in power thanks to the coalition referred to as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). If it loses at the polls, the margin will be slim enough that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) might not be able to radically alter domestic or foreign policies.

These results would be very different from my experience as a kid, when the Congress Party almost always had a significant parliamentary majority. The opposition was so fragmented that the joke was that even a donkey could get elected on the Congress Party ticket. The era of coalition governments is a healthy sign, indeed. While there is no immediate causal relationship, the correlation is interesting: The more India’s economy opened up, the faster its economic growth rates have been, and single-party domination seems to have ended.

Even though I grew up in India, I have never voted in elections there; I had already moved to America by the time I was eligible to vote. As a kid I always looked forward to voting, given my interest in political issues from a very young age, and given how colorful and noisy election campaigning is in India.

I suppose my first vote in America made up for all that — it was the dramatic and history-making elections of 2000! In fact, politics in the United States have been pretty darned exciting since then, including Indian-style corruption with even a U.S. Senate seat for sale, and opportunistic party-switching for no reason other than to get re-elected. And I thought I would never get to see this here in America!

While no serious policy changes might result from India’s elections alone, taken together with the results of elections to follow in two neighboring countries, we might experience significant impacts on global geopolitical discussions and decision-making.

On June 12, Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, will be tested at the polls. Odds seem to favor his re-election, all the more so given that he seems to have gained the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A second term for Ahmedinejad will strengthen the country’s hard-line stance, particularly against the U.S. and Israel, and perhaps push the country closer to its first nuclear bomb.

Afghanistan will hold its presidential elections in August. The current president, Hamid Karzai, has been heading the country since the Taliban-led government was driven out of power by the U.S. and NATO military forces. Karzai has been increasingly criticized for not being effective in the fight against the Taliban, who have been rapidly gaining ground both in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is dealing with a possibility that democracy might get suspended there by a military coup, thanks to the democratically elected government getting more and more unstable. Unfortunately, neither a weak government nor a military coup is new to Pakistan.

Thus, whether it is the UPA or the NDA that gets elected to power in India, there will not be as many repercussions as from the political developments over the next couple of months in Afghanistan, Iran and, of course, Pakistan. How events unfold in South and West Asia this summer will have immense implications even for those of us halfway around the world.

I wonder if Al Franken will have been sworn in as senator by the time summer ends!