Clarity Of Flippancy

People forget this, but the purpose of "irreverent" humor is to get to the fundamental truth of something by cutting through the solemnity or import that surrounds it - to refer to disreputable pharmacuetical companies as "Drug Dealers," for example.

So it was when I read this Washington Post opinion piece from Lisa Miller; which aims to take an "if-it-walks-like-a-duck" look at the image of American "conservative" politics of the moment as typified by the movement's two dominant public-images: Pols and pundits crusading for the moral-right to keep women away from birth-control on one hand; Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum's campaign-images as patrician papas flanked by their beaming, obedient wives and armies of offspring on the other. What she comes up with is nicely summarized by the headline the Post's online-version used to tease the piece: "The Republican Fertility Cult."

Short, accurate, incendiary and to-the-point. Well done.