Freedom of Speech and the End of the Age of Irony

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Workers has reported before about how the new commander-in-chief of the USA (President Obama) is so a revered and above reproach (except of course by political opponents) that he seems untouchable by those who use irony to help us take our commodified and objectified (facebook anyone?) lives a little less seriously. The Economist has something on how comedians are having a hard time finding material to include the new Prez, the satirical Onion (which has now been upgraded to ironic from obnoxious and sophomoric) excepted. It seems that now too this reverence has made its way down to those that control goods flowing in and out of the country, otherwise known, ironically enough, as the "customs" department, who have held-up the importation of Obama bobblehead dolls to be used as give-aways at a minor league baseball game.

Happily the dolls are now freed from their tyrannical control. Even the new number one film in the USA, Night at the Smithsonian, (highly recommended, Ben Stiller is great, his usual nice mix of manic and sincere, specially his take on the flashlight as weapon and being good at whatever it is you love to do no matter what it it) uses Albert Einstein bobbleheads as a plot devise. Even Einstein didn't take himself too too seriously.