I think I'm starting to figure something out.
I’m coming to realize that Victoria Jackson is either a whip-smart satirist in the style of Steven Colbert, or she is so criminally, bone-chillingly vapid and clueless that it’s miraculous that she can navigate her way out of bed in the morning.
I never thought that she was even slightly humorous when she was on SNL: she was, in fact, one of the stupidest members of a particularly unfunny era for the Not Ready for Primetime Players (the only true bright spots being A. Whitney Brown and the early Dennis Miller – as opposed to the current, self-important, pandering Dennis Miller).
But now I think I understand. I suspect she’s actually a world-class performance artist, who’s been pulling off this ditzy blond act for almost thirty years now. Not because she is, herself, a vacuous, inane bundle of stupid wrapped in a little-girl voice, but as a potent weapon to skewer the ignorant and ego-driven. She has been making fun of various groups of unthinking zombies for decades, and has been doing it with such a straight face that nobody has caught on.
In her early career, I think she was concentrating on the female airhead: the woman willing to suppress her own personality and her own needs to fall in line with the 1950's cheerleader/Playboy image, where youth is prized and women have limited options. But she took that image to an extreme, and used as her archetype not the post-pubescent, sexually-charged girl, but the prepubescent, playful child: her original act consisted of reciting bad poetry while doing clumsy handstands and somersaults, while "accidentally" revealing her white cotton children's panties.
She stuck with that parody for most of her career, but now, perhaps noting that she's grown a little too old to pull off her infantile act any more, she's recast herself into a bad stereotype of a Teabagger. She mouths irrational philosophies, and tunes out any application of logic that might refute her poorly-conceived arguments.
That's the only explanation that I can come up with, to explain why Victoria Jackson proudly posted this video. She takes a cab into New York to meet up with members of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, and although she shows a couple of people just out to have a good time, and one extremist toward the end (essentially correct, but still an extremist), she spends most of the video talking to one man, who calmly and patiently destroys every argument she makes.
Her response? To repeat those same arguments, as if their bloodied shreds weren't piled around her feet. She completely ignores everything said by this quiet, good-tempered person, and goes back to her original, idiotic allegations, completely ignoring the past 15 minutes of her life.
And then she posts it on Youtube, as if it was a victory for her side of the debate. She even seems proud of it.
She can't possibly be that eyeball-meltingly ignorant. This has to be an act. A satirical persona that she uses to lampoon the Teabaggers. No person who can manage to navigate a fork into their mouth without impaling themselves in the forehead can be this galactically obtuse, can they?
I don't know – I've given up trying to plumb the depths of tea-infused ignorance. Milton's narrator in Paradise Lost says that for him, a blind man, wisdom has been "at one entrance quite shut out." But for the tea-folk, I would say, it has been quite shut out at every entrance. They seem incapable of inward reflection, and they evidently learn nothing from what comes their way externally. Since those are the only two ways insight or knowledge can come, well, we get the idea….
ReplyDeleteAnd yet I've found right wing websites today proclaiming that she tore the lefties a new one. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love this post, from the title on down, but I noticed that many of these Tea Tropes have been spreading like bedbugs recently. The one about only 50 percet of people paying taxes chased me through a parking lot a couple of weeks ago and the perpetrator became very confused when I mentioned that perhaps it was because that 50% was not making any money and if supply side economics worked at all, they should have been making plenty.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's only a dope's trope and a manufactured talking point which makes no sense of any kind but sounds witty and powerful to idiots. You know, like the one about how we can't be descended from monkeys because there are still monkeys.
Amongst the many crusades, were the children's crusade and the beggars crusade and now we have the idiots crusade. Scary, of course because there are far more idiots than children or beggars.
I do remember Victoria's one funny skit - her "I am not a bimbo" song. She is of course.
I never did understand the appeal of bimbos. I mean, after the shower, what is there to talk about?
ReplyDeleteTalk? No, parrots, budgeregars and bimbos don't listen, they just mimic.
ReplyDeleteBlind belief - I'm tempted to make a joke about blonde belief, but I'm not brave enough. It's true though, Tea Parteid is about belief in the evil of Good and there's not a damn thing or damn fact that will enlighten the dark gunpowder tea.
The first guy that she interviews uses big words. He keeps saying "inequity." She doesn't know what that means. You're too kind, Nameless. She is eyeball-meltingly ignorant. The guy in the navy shirt and glasses totally confused her. You could tell because her voice got even more squeaky. She needs to get a vocal coach to help her develop a grown up voice.
ReplyDeleteNo one can consistently pretend to be that ignorant. If it swims, flies, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
P.S. I really enjoyed your post, Nameless, and I totally got your satirical tone. You saved the best for last. This is my favorite line: No person who can manage to navigate a fork into their mouth without impaling themselves in the forehead can be this galactically obtuse, can they?
ReplyDelete