Full Of CAP

(This is a bit stale, but still uninteresting. Was unfortunately sidetracked. I see I missed the death and resurrection of al-Zawahiri too.)

ABC News's Jake Tapper offers this apparently serious apology of Princetonian bigots:

First off, D'Souza says, one of the two stories from Prospect that Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, read this week at the confirmation hearings was intended as a satire.

The 1983 essay "In Defense of Elitism" by Harry Crocker III included this line, read dramatically by Kennedy: "People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic..."

The essay may not have been funny, D'Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.

Ah, yes. Satire. The use of humor to expose or attack folly or other human vice.

As we know from Mallard Fillmore, Day-by-Day, Gaggle and other efforts at humor by right-wing hacks, attempted satire can be very unfunny.

But exactly what human folly was CAP exposing? Was it ridiculing the bigotry of its wealthy, right-wing benefactors? Doesn't sound like it to me. Tapper certainly doesn't identify the butt of CAP's purported joke.

Racists and sexists and homophobes can attempt satire just like anyone else -- satire premised on their bigoted stereotypes. Emphasizing the "joke" in "racist joke" is not a defense to racism. Tapper should be smart enough to understand that.

p.s. to Tapper -- Don't give Kevin Trudeau your credit card number.