Just a Joke?

> Huffington Post blogger Martin Lewis now insists that he was only joking when he called for the arrest of President Bush by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

And of course -- as befits those who worship at the shrine of Atwater and Rove -- my satire has been twisted into headlines such as "HuffPo Calls For Military Coup In USA" Yup -- these guys are the Chubby Checkers of politics. They sure know how to twist... Again and again.

If there is even a single person left in the progressive/liberal/Democratic world who doubts how vicious and malevolent these people will be in their desperate attempt to retain the White House and regain Congress next year -- be aware now. These people will literally stop at nothing. 2000, 2004 and 2006 will seem like church picnics compared to how dirty they will fight the 2008 elections.

So, everyone who took him seriously is a malevolent, humorless idiot.

Except...

Lewis wrote his entry on a blog which has been calling for the impeachment of Bush since it's creation. There have been numerous posts about seeing Karl Rove or Dick Cheney "frog marched" out of the White House. Huffington has given a forum to congressmen such as Conyers who are calling for Bush to be impeached.

Also, Lewis's column is totally deadpan. There is no over-the-top quality to it to tip off the reader that Lewis isn't serious. He says of this

In an ideal world one doesn't have to wink to the audience so that it gets a joke. And one doesn't have to label satire with a label that says "satire".

Considering the company that Lewis keeps, if he really meant the column as satire then he needed a lot more than a wink to indicate satire. If someone in the middle of a lynch mob suggests that the victim should be shot instead of hung, who is going to believe him later when he says it was a joke?

Someone posting a comment to Lewis's follow-up points out that the Lewis responded to many comments to the original post with total seriousness. Presumably the people commenting to Lewis were well-rounded liberals (make that progressives) who should have been intelligent enough to pick up on the satire.

Or maybe Lewis was completely serious and took the coward's way out. Rather than apologize, he claimed it was all a joke.