Wickedly insightful pun of the day

The Hatemongers are objecting to the abuse of the phrase "cycle of violence." Their initial objection to its use in the Israeli-Palestinian context seems pretty on-target to me. (Remember that the immediate result of the unilateral Israeli pullout from Palestinian territory has been that the particular Palestinians who for years have been getting their jollies by killing Israelis, but now thanks to the pullout have no Israelis conveniently to hand, have simply redirected their murderous behavior at each other; as a Loren Estleman character once said of the Apache Indians, "If they were the only people on earth, they would pick a fight with the moon.") Here are the Hatemongers musing on the "cycle of violence" in Palestine:

Indeed, if the Israelis did not respond to Palestinian terrorism, the so-called “cycle of violence” would end — after the Palestinians murdered millions of Jews.

But then the Hatemongers deliver this untoppable piece of pointed wordplay:

If you ask us, a better phrase for the Israeli-Palestinian situation would be “unicycle of violence”: You’ve got one people (those peaceable Palestinians) hell-bent on violence, and the violence would cease if they stopped it.

Gentlemen, I salute true inspiration.

By the way, the Hatemongers are sui generis - a very highly (but amusingly) mannered mix of P. G. Wodehouse's and Judith Martin's tongue-in-cheek highfalutin' tone, along with Dave Barry's technique of introducing the occasional crashing non sequitur into a seemingly straight-faced set of examples. The triplicate list of examples in which the final one is patently absurd may seem like a simple formula, but patent absurdity is a lot harder to achieve than you would think. For example, here is a list from the same article, with the comic third term left blank for you to fill in with your best effort. And remember that the core joke of the whole blog, unless I've badly missed the point, is to send up the liberal stereotype of conservatives as "hateful" by producing one deliberately over-the-top piece of tongue-in-cheek piece of "conservative hate speech" after another (the hate is as deliberately mannered and comically exaggerated as is the pretentious style). So (this is a big hint) you should be trying to come up with a creating and laugh-inducing way to insult somebody, in your best "true conservative [as perceived by liberals]" assumed voice.

...various hip words and neologisms trouble us, sometimes deeply.

For instance, there are the following: “Diversity”; “a teachable moment”; _________ Any sane person (read: Non-academic) should feel his skin crawl upon hearing such ugly words.

How did you do? Here's what I imagine to be the Rush Limbaugh version, for example:

For instance, there are the following: “Diversity”; “a teachable moment”; Hilary Clinton. Any sane person (read: Non-academic) should feel his skin crawl upon hearing such ugly words.

But here's the Hatemonger's version:

For instance, there are the following: “Diversity”; “a teachable moment”; Billy Joel. Any sane person (read: Non-academic) should feel his skin crawl upon hearing such ugly words.

Now take out "Billy Joel" and put in "Cher" or "Barry Manilow" and you've got vintage Dave Barry -- and let's face it, Dave Barry is a lot funnier than Rush Limbaugh. And IMHO so are the Hatemongers.

At any rate, I read every 'Mongers rant for the same two reasons I'm careful to check regularly over at ATB to see what graphics Alexandra has come up with today: I don't know anybody else who's doing exactly what the crack young staff is trying to do; and what the crack young staff is trying to do, they're doing pretty darn well.