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I've always found Sacha Baron Cohen's "Brüno" schtick simplistically hilarious: Flamboyantly gay Austrian journalist travels to America's homophobic heartland to wring laughs out of just how much those people fear and hate gay people.
But just as the hypocrisy construction allows liberally-minded people to freely ridicule Sarah Palin's kids for having sex (because it's hypocritical), razz [...]

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In today's Washington Post, Monica Hesse dismissed the news of Nevada Senator John Ensign's affair with a staffer as . . . not scandalous enough. A crisis management rep provided the money quote, characterizing Ensign as "really vanilla."
But despite the decidedly consensual, un-kinky, over-18, non-prostitutional nature of Ensign's affair, the scandal satisfies the one usual [...]

It is a simple formula for both comedy and political commentary:
Take a public figure (Sarah Palin) who holds disagreeable views (abstinence-only education). Zero in on an aspect of her personal life counter to those views (her own teen daughter, Bristol Palin, becoming pregnant). Reveal the comedic irony and/or hypocrisy of the public/private contrast. Repeat ad [...]