A Day in the Life, or Asshats Will Out

By Dermott McQuestionmark

It never fails. Each morning, we of The Lionel Show crew sit in the office and bandy ideas about, groping for provocative and edifying topics for the day. Sometimes the same old themes just don’t excite. The run-of-the-mill comments from the familiar talking heads sound like just so much chin music, possessed of neither sound nor fury. The political scene begins to look like one long, drawn-out argument, with the only clear goal being perpetuation of the argument itself. Sometimes, we’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. The bloom, it seems, is off the rose, and the day stretches before us with no promise of redemption or transcendence. We sit. We wait. We wait for that spark.

And then, it happens. A figure emerges from the shadows, an individual with an outlook so baffling and backwards that we are stunned out of our complacency. The hairs on our collective neck stand at attention, unable to resist listening to one of these mysterious figures. The things they say! And the way they say them! And to think, they are often handsomely compensated for these inane disquisitions apropos of nothing, these maundering screeds which evince a casual disregard for facts in favor of a cynical and lazy reliance on fear and ignorance. That’s right, folks: I’m talking about The Asshat. Thank God for him and her; what would we do without them?

Now, The Asshat can be from “the left” or “the right”; ignorance, melodrama, and preposterous oratory are not confined to conservatives anymore than intelligence and morality are confined to liberals. Anyone can be an Asshat (now that’s democracy!). And there’s a new one every day, seemingly! Radio hosts, televisions commentators, actors, journalists, everyday “Joes” and “Janes”…there’s a whole world of idiocy out there, and I personally couldn’t be happier about it.

Today we’ll start things off with a truly remarkable series of comments from an old standby in the Asshat stable. Join us, won’t you?

If you would and you could, indulge me in a personal story about The Asshat. As I meditate on my storied career in radio (hello, everybody!), I see in my mind’s eye two pairs of footprints in the sand. I know that these represent times that the Asshat was walking beside me, providing me with something to lampoon and someone to mock. And yet there are times when I see only one set of footprints left on the shifting sands, and I am moved to cry out “Asshat, when I needed you most, why did you abandon me?”

And the Asshat smiles down at me from above and says “Barack Obama is an autistic Muslim”

And I smile up to the sky as a single tear slides down my cheek. Thank you, Asshat. You are the hot air beneath my wings.