Referring to a repetitive obsession by denying that you suffer from said obsession is a joke as old as humor itself. I remember being in a comedy club in New York in the early 1980s when a drunk in the audience began to blabber about seeing whales at the New York Aquarium. It was totally off the wall. The comedian tried to continue, but the dude kept yelling out that he was in New York to “see the whales.” He must have said it eight times. Finally the comic looked right at the guy and said, “And that’s entirely enough out of you, sir.” Then the comic said something along the lines of, “Let me tell you what I think about whales,” and everybody laughed.
The comedian wasn’t showing insensitivity to whales. He made a lightly sarcastic quip at the expense of a guy who kept clutching to a single topic.
“There is a thought that stops thought,” G.K. Chesterton once remarked. “That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” We have gotten to the point where people like Chris Matthews have become so circular in their obsessions with race, gender, and race, that they have lost the basic ability to think. Sometimes I work as a substitute teacher, and I am not exaggerating in the least when I say that it is easier to reason with a marginally intelligent fifth grader than with Christopher John Matthews, who is now officially batshit crazy. He needs help.
We have reached the jumping-off place. Human reason has broken down. Chris Matthews, the progressive Ishmael, will hunt his whales right to the bottom of the ocean.
Mark Judge is the author of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.
