Why The Daily Show will go the way of Tom Lehrer

Most of you are probably too young to know who Tom Lehrer is. (Think Mark Russell, only with talent.) When he retired from his political musical satire career (actually, it was well after he retired that he said it, but let's not let facts get in the way), he said "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize."

Rinse. Lather. Repeat:

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, (Former Ambassador Peter) Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

What can Jon Stewart do other than roll his eyes? This one tells itself.

the poets down here
don't write nothing at all,
they just stand back
and let it all be

Bruce Springsteen, Jungleland