Is it possible that someone can die from overexposure to smug?

The BBQ Pit
1

*Yes, two conservative-themed rants in two days. Knowing I’ll never be able to meet expectations following my first masterpiece, I offer this mediocre sophomore attempt.
*

Ever since the Republican National Convention, I’ve been dying from smug exposure. Smug poisoning. Why are republicans so damn smug? You could kick one of them in the nutsack and they’d stand back up with a stupid smile on their face and say, “Yeah, a liberal would do that”

Close your eyes and try to picture Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. What expression is on their face? I’ll tell you what, a smug little grin. “What, me? Lie and feel good about it?”

Wednesday night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart had a pretty long segment pointing out how when Bush was in office, anybody who protested was a fascist unamerican terrorist according to Fox News, but now that Obama’s in office, any protester is a god-fearing patriot. It was funny, and something that’s been needed to said for about 8 months now.

Bill O’Reilly, being a respected journalist, of course ignored the criticism and continued investigative reporting on the atrocities committed by Blackwater in Iraq, right?

Right?

Well, actually, no. Instead, he felt the need to counterattack:

Fox News is like a beehive swarming with egos. When one ego detects a threat to the ego collective, he must attack!

O’Reilly is defending himself against an attack by a comedian by trying to point out that the clips shown by Stewart are out-of-context, and then proceeds to run the full clips and show just how in-context they are. He does the whole thing with that stupid fucking grin on his face.

He ends it, of course, by playing a clip of himself appearing on The Daily Show completely out-of-context, using it only to launch a tepid insult at Stewart.

Seriously, I think my balls shrunk while watching that clip. It’s just one big masturbation session for O’Reilly. All he really wanted to say was “LOOK SOMEONE ON THE TEEVEE SAID MY NAME WATCH ME CALL HIM A POOPOO FACE.”

The idea that a purported newsman defending himself against satire is pretty damn ridiculous on its own, but when you consider that the claims he’s defending himself against are that he’s biased and his defense is to claim NO U ARE, he’s made a complete mockery of himself.

All with that god damn grin.

By the way, towards the end when O’Reilly’s voice raises 47 octaves as he says “noooOOOOOooooo,” does anybody reflexively reach for the nearest sharp instrument and try to jam it into their screen to make the wretched noises go away? Personally, I was trying to find a chopstick or a bamboo skewer, something long enough to poke both of my eardrums out simultaneously in one quick stabbing motion, but luckily the video ended shortly thereafter.

You can say a lot of things about liberals, but you can’t say that they’re smug. You can say they’re wrong, dangerous, deluded, full of themselves, or in favor of killing your pappy, but you can’t call them smug.

Smug has got to be the most irritating thing anybody can be, and it’s the only thing all republicans are. Maybe it’s some kind of defense mechanism they develop at an early age when they’ve realized they’re doing the devil’s work. In the same way a confused teenager tries to reject his own suspicions that he’s gay and replace them with a misguided hatred for homosexuals, republicans realize that they have no souls and try to compensate by regarding people who haven’t made a blood pact with The Beast as worthy of seething derision.

Or perhaps that’s not it. Maybe they don’t know how to be happy, their hearts as black as the tar coursing their veins, they try to emulate what humans regard as a “smile” with that weak, cringing attempt to lift the edges of the mouth, but it causes them so much pain that they wince at the same time. The result is the Sean Hannity grin. A mixed display of joy and hatred that one might subconsciously express while looking at a cheap Mexican bar’s greasy nachos; joy that it will taste very good, yet a prescient knowing that in a matter of hours it will come stampeding out their ass socket like a symphony of brimstone and clenched teeth.

If you can’t say “with a domestic terrorist?!” without a smile on your face, you know you’re a smug asshole. In fact, I’ll offer a bounty of a sweaty gas station bathroom handjob to anybody who can find a video of Sarah Palin saying anything without a smarmy grin on her face.

Or christ, have you ever seen John Boehner? His face is locked in a perpetual state of smugness. Maybe it’s some kind of cosmetic procedure you can have done, similar to Botox except, instead of having poisonous botulism injected into your face, it’s the distilled tears of orphans wrung out while “O Fortuna” is played over loudspeakers and Loki, god of tricks and deception, stimulates himself to orgasm using a slurry of Hitler’s ashes and goats blood as lubricant.

It’s fine if you want to run a network based entirely on lies for the sake of spreading propaganda. Well, actually it’s not fine, it’s the worst thing in the world. But if, in doing so, you want to rail about how you’re being unfairly maligned by your critics, maybe you can try to do so without a look on your face similar to that of a pedophile remembering the first time he saw a Kohls back to school sale catalog.

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I was looking forward to your rant about religion.

I’m disappointed.

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'kay

Lutherans are ugly!

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It sounds like the specifc expression you’re talking about it the one I think of as “purse-string mouth”. I don’t associate it with Republicans, but I have often observed this expression on the faces of people I have come to know as prone to explosive anger. As I’m mentally running through the list of people I know like this, I don’t know if they are more likely to be “conservatives” (since I don’t know the political leanings of most of them).

One very close family member of mine has this expression often. She has a tendency towards explosive anger (which she is aware of, and works hard to control). One of the ways she tries to cover this tendency is to smile and project “everything is fine, I’m happy, you’re happy, it’s all good”, but when she goes into this state, her mouth tightens, so her smile is just how you described. A scrunched up, thin-lipped, tight little line with the corners turned up. It always looks like an effort to keep those corners upwards, and I know her well enough to know that if those corners draw down, I need to duck and run, ‘cause she has reached her limit of control, and the storm is a comin’.

I have always had trouble understanding other people’s facial expressions, so they have always fascinated me. This particular expression, in my experience, is found on people who have a tendency towards anger. I contrast this with other people I know (myself included) who have more a tendency to react to a negative situation with a feeling of hurt or sadness. Those people seem to more often have mouths that are looser, often slightly open, and when in an extremely negative situation (such as when a purse-string mouth in the room is losing its upturned corners), they often attempt to keep their mouths closed, too (mebbe a normal human attempt to not say what they’re thinking/feeling?). However, rather than thin, tight lips, the lips will mebbe quiver slightly, and the line of the mouth goes loosely down-turned. Especially the females will often start having glistening eyes at this point, if not actual tears.

I have also observed that each type I’ve described above seem to have an instinctive, negative reaction to the corresponding expression in the other type. My friend who has the tendency more towards anger seems to feel like punching me when I get the trembly mouth, and when she gets the tight-lipped smile, I don’t like it and don’t want to be there.

Now I’m going to have to start observing and asking about political beliefs in these types to see if there’s any correlation.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

(edited to add that the closing of the mouth in both types seems to correspond to the attempt to avoid/control/resist strong emotions)

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I don’t think it’s possible to die from overexposure to smug otherwise Nancy Pelosi would have killed off hundreds of thousands by now.

6

Sadly, another One Hit Wonder has gotten the big head. He who sits on his laurels wears them in the wrong place.

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The true nature of my works will reveal themselves in time.

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Well, I thought it was another good rant, and I look forward to more from you in the future, aaron.

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Oh there’s plenty of smug on both sides of the spectrum. The multi-millionaire Conservative pundits who claim to be both the defenders of and inspiration for honest, struggling Joe Paycheck (if by “defend” you mean “exploit,” and by “inspiration” you mean “appeal to base instincts of anger and frustration”) cited in the OP; and the self-righteous Liberals whose real motive was best called out in the final exchange between Jed Leland and Charles Foster Cane: "You don’t care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules. "

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Who, aaron or O’Reilly?

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Pick a card, any card.

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Call me a card, will you??

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That’s the way of it, kid. Here on the boards. You think Aldiboronti was always reduced to lame snipes at Nancy Pelosi? Never heard of the Aldiboronti Sisters? Withering Farts? It is said that Scylla was once pretty funny, but it is lost in the mists of time, leaving only the broken remains, confusing Charlie Manson with Hubert Humphrey…

It’ll happen to you, too, kid. You get a rep. Soon, every new thread you ride in to, there’s some snot-nosed punk, wants to find out if you’re as fast with a keyboard as they say you are. Reboot Hill is full of them…

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It’s too early, really, to call you anything. I’ve no idea whether you just happened upon the board last week, or have been lurking for years as some people (often dubiously) claim, or are some sock for a more knowledgable poster who knows the ways of the board and has changed IPs as well as his ways. I just know that you did a steller OP in the Pit recently. (As in yesterday, I think.) And I know that I gave you a 10.0 (which you did not acknowledge.) And now you are opening threads all over the place, including more here and at least one in Great Debates about the “destupization” of the US — an unfortunate typo. Clearly, you’re not putting a toe in the water; you’re diving in head first. Your politics will certainly be acceptable (although I think you’re a bit more authoritarian than even most people here — very few have actually advocated central plans to elminate whole portions of the population based on perceived intelligence or faith, as you have.) So, as far as I’m concerned, you’re just another newbie — either a sock or a long time lurker. I don’t really care which. I’ve gotten PMs before that surprised me. But you’re a fresh face to most everyone here, and your recent Pit OP will carry you a long way, unless you wear it out with too much too fast. My rep is already set in stone. (Most people don’t care for me, but many do. And I’ve made peace with many lately.) You, on the other hand, have an opportunity to (re)establish one. Don’t squander it. Make fun of this. Answer with a witty quip. Ignore it altogether — whatever you wish. It is offered with sincerity.

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So, when are you going to rant about us eating babies? I have some great recipes to share. Did you know that the recipe for baby back ribs involved actual babies during the great depression?

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Oh, come now, Lib. You were young once. You were, right?

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smirk: Well thanks for sharing that information with us today. :snort

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Like this? (NSFW!)

CMC fnord!

19

Yes. And a mentor or two might have done me well.

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Yes, exactly. I was thinking of that very clip, thanks.

[me, tickled]Somebody responded to my post![/me, tickled]