It’s funny cause it’s…true?
Jon Stewart did a commentary on The Daily Show recently about the tendency of Hitler comparisons to come up in our political speech. It was, as usual, a funny piece of work.
If you missed it, Mark Evanier linked to the segment on his webpage. But it took Bill Sherman to notice…
“…something squishy about the way the writers set up the joke. In the sequence, [Dick] Durbin is slapped for bringing up Hitler in a speech…Finally, a Republican politico is shown giving a speech making a comparison to more generalized Nazis. “Now, we’re getting somewhere,” Stewart says, the joke being that the conversation has now been moderated since generic storm-booters are being rhetorically used instead of the big man himself.”
“The thing is, look at the actual speech and you see that Durbin never used the word “Hitler” either.”
