You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.
People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.
There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
The apology, that is constantly put forth for the injustice of government, viz., that a man must consent to give up some of his rights, in order to have his other rights protected - involves a palpable absurdity, both legally and politically.
The sight of allegedly sophisticated politicians parroting complete tripe trivialises and demeans government and it has to be stopped. It's played a significant part in public disillusionment with politics and has led to the absurd situation where more people vote for 'Strictly Come Dancing' than voted in the general election.
Have you noticed how the Republicans and Democrats try to copy each other at their conventions. Like at the Democratic convention John Kerry's daughter told a story about how he once gave CPR to her hamster. At the Republican convention the Bush girls are going to tell a story about how when their hamster was bad, their dad built them a little electric chair.
I just wish I could walk into my Senator’s office and say, “Senator Dude, Um, we have a problem with these sicko scientists…” But then again, I don’t think we have a Senator, do we? Is there a state where mutant freaks are represented? If so, let me know.
We have a lot of really boring, silly, stupid politics. We need people to point that out.
Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.
If a gigantic asteroid were barreling toward impact with our planet, you can bet there would be at least a few members of Congress who would insist on leaving it alone, either because they would see it as a warning shot from the Almighty or because a mining company with a savvy team of lobbyists had laid claim to the big rock.
In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.
There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.
In America you have the mouse now trying to sit down on the elephant, thinking that he's going somewhere. And it's - and it's absurd.
Washington is too small to be a nation but too large to be an insane asylum.
The same expression was used 124 years earlier referring to South Carolina. See James Louis Petigru.
A top McCain policy adviser claimed this week that McCain's work in the Senate helped create the BlackBerry, saying, 'You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.' He then handed the BlackBerry to McCain, who attempted to withdraw $20 from it.
No one has ever seen a Republican mass meeting that was devoid of the perception of the ludicrous.
The people I really feel sorry for are all the writers out there who wrote these outrageous comedic romps about a grossly unqualified person who goes on to become a Vice Presidential candidate in a hotly contested presidential race. With hilarious results. They must be so bummed.
I think it's a slightly crazy time actually, it's very difficult to satirise because each of politicians is in their own way enacting a commentary on the world of politics anyway. To then comment on them just feels like adding another layer. I find it very difficult to do jokes about current politics because for me it's all about... I actually genuinely want people to be involved properly, you know? I mean, the number of people who don't vote... Frightening, really.
There's something inherently comic about the fact that politicians make things worse by worrying too much about something.
Abraham Maslow said that the fully realized person transcends his local group and identifies with the species. But the election of Ronald Reagan might've been the beginning of my giving up on my species. Because it was absurd. To this day it remains absurd. More than absurd, it was frightening: it represented the rise to supremacy of darkness, the ascendancy of ignorance.
The Democrats are going to change the name of the Hoover Dam. That is the silliest thing I ever heard of in politics . . . Lord if they feel that way about it, I don't see why they don't just reverse the two words.