Not everything ironic is funny

I try not to be too snarky, but in this goal I am a spectacular failure. I think, however, I might be getting better at distinguishing between the truly funny and somebody else's painful karmic feedback. Among my friends in the liberal onlineliness, there's a great deal of joy at the news that conservative screech monkey Ann Coulter has broken her jaw and that her recuperation involves getting her mouth wired shut.

Keith Olbermann found that funny--he totally mugged it upon his show Monday night upon hearing the news. I hope it's not just the fact that I'm right now in post-operative pain myself (got my ACL surgery Tuesday morning and I'm experiencing worse and more sustained pain than when I first tore up the ligament in August) causing me to think some rightwing nutjob's horrible pain is still undeserved horrible pain. Yes, it's ironic that a hatemonger can't talk. But she can still type and, frankly, there's just no humor in a fractured mandible.

On the other hand, as terror rips through Mumbai and the death toll from the attacks Islamic extremists reaches triple digits, there are still things about terrorists that I can still get an honest laugh from.

For instance, when al-Qaeda borrows a page from Sean Hannity's book and starts kvetching about the left wing media bias in favor of Barack Obama. See, Obama truly is a uniter: he's already brought al-Qaeda and Little Green Footballs together in common cause.