Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Tom DeLay’s Parody Problem

Posted by Ed Brayton on May 25, 2006
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Now this is really funny. There’s a new documentary out, The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress, by Robert Greenwald. It apparently is an expose on DeLay’s corruption, and the DeLay folks are busy trying to spin the claims in it. They sent out a mass email about it that included a one-page fact sheet that declared:

Hollywood Pulls Michael Moore Antics on Tom DeLay
Colbert Cracks the Story on Real Motivations Behind the Movie

That’s right, they’re using a Stephen Colbert interview, where he asked such questions as, “Who hates American more, you or Michael Moore?”, as evidence to disprove the claims in Greenwald’s movie. The email actually claims that Greenwald “crashed and burned” under Colbert’s tough questioning. That line between reality and parody just seems to escape some people.

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Comments

  1. #1 Raging Bee
    May 25, 2006

    Are you sure that mass email came from DeLay’s people, or from Colbert? You need to do another IP address search.

  2. #2 Will Error
    May 25, 2006

    It’s obvious those people–like the ones who signed up Colbert for the Press Corps dinner–have no sense of humor, irony, sarcasm, etc. Such fine distinctions are beyond their literalist minds; they only understand moral indignation and self-righteous persecution.

  3. #3 NonyNony
    May 25, 2006

    Could be a gag, could be a misunderstanding.

    But, then, I once got an e-mail forwarded to me be a Christian conservative acquaintence that was a scaremongering bit about Harry Potter encouraging devil worship – which was from the Onion. So I guess I wouldn’t be totally suprised if someone just didn’t get that they were being made fun of.

    (You’d think that after the whole Press Corps dinner thing they’d be clued in – but maybe not.)

  4. #4 Capt. Rational
    May 25, 2006

    I can’t decide which is worse: using something Colbert said in your defense or using something O’Reilly said in your defense.

  5. #5 James Wynne
    May 25, 2006

    I had a coworker once who came in one day talking about a documentary about a British rock band he had seen on TV the night before. He said they made it seem like the band had been famous at one time, but he had never heard of them. The name of the band was, of course, Spinal Tap.

  6. #6 tacitus
    May 25, 2006

    Delay has the Colbert clip on his Defend Delay web site.

    This is Spinal Tap: brilliant movie.

  7. #7 Lou_FCD
    May 26, 2006

    Sort of reminds me of the time my brother-in-law (in his defense it was around ’89 and he was like ten) drug me to his room to let me hear this great new music he had discovered in a box of stuff in the barn. When he dropped the needle on the LP, I heard

    “On a dark desert highway,
    Cool wind in my hair…”

    Ya gotta love kids