Duncan "He Is Not Sirius" Black Delivers The Funnies

The blogger formerly known as Atrios, now revealed to be Duncan "Not Sirius" Black, is a media critic by day and a blog-comic by night.

We found this entry to be especially amusing - Not Sirius provides without comment a story telling us that "Iraqis visiting on a civil rights tour [in Memphis, TN] were barred from city hall after the city council chairman said it was too dangerous to let them in.

No, that is not funny, it is disgraceful. What is funny is that neither the media nor Not Sirius himself mentioned the party affiliation of the city council chairman, Joe Brown.

Is he a Democrat? Who knows? And guess what - responding to a commenter, Not Sirius tells us that he doesn't care whether this guy is a Republican or a Democrat. Uh huh. I can't shake the feeling that if Joe Brown were a Republican, we would be hearing about it, and hearing about the media whitewash, from the "No Republican bashing left behind" crowd. So as to "don't care", color me skeptical.

But while coloring me, please be very careful in your choice of colors - this "Celebrate Diversity" post delivers a blistering critique of wardrobe choices, but then... well, any explanation would step on the punchline, which is delivered in the concluding paragraph.

He can't be serious.

More: Michelle Malkin will Celebrate Diversity, too, and we thank Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Let's bring the other Media Matters maven, Oliver Willis, back into the mix. A media critic who doesn't read the media - where do I sign up?

UPDATE 2: Glenn has lots more; Kalblog makes the unexpected Frank J connection; Camedwards has diversity and guns, and attitude; Steve Gilliard spanks Frank J's "monkey" - and this time he's serious. Steve's position on the ABC Note "Googling Monkeys" is under investigation, although how it can be anything other than a clear allusion to plantations and chain gangs eludes me. Look for "Free the Googling Monkeys" t-shirts soon.

(Waddya mean, they didn't have Google on plantations? How could anyone get anything done without Google? Is that why they lost?)

Comments

[Jim Elbe]

WOW! I wish I had the tinfoil hat concession for Atrios' commentators. I would be able to retire tomorrow. The stuff they read into this T-shirt is astounding.

[Holly S]

I live in Memphis. Joe Brown is indeed a Democrat as is the county mayor, A.C. Wharton, and the city mayor, Willie Herenton who says he is independent. Both mayors were too "busy" to include any time with the Iraqis in their schedules. And Joe Brown was just totally out of line. Today the local newspaper ran lots of Letters to the Editor by outraged and humiliated citizens, but of course the paper won't take a stand until they determine that Memphians are unhappy that their dysfunctional government has performed in all too typical a fashion.

Color me mortified that this group has behaved so badly. And by the way, the only councilperson who gave the Iraqis the respect they deserved is a Democrat, Carol Chumley.

[Paul Zrimsek]

A quick Google turned up this amusing nugget:

In City Council, District 8, Position 1, which takes in a generous hunk of inner-city Memphis, incumbent Joe Brown, appointed by the council after the death of the former incumbent, Dr. Talib Karim Muhammad, hopes to fend off a stout challenge from Muhammad’s widow, Maryum Karim Muhammad.

[lem snapper]

Sounds like you are saying you would rather he just ignore the story altogether, rather than focus on the political parties.
I wish people weren't so preoccupied by party affiliation.
I don't hate republicans, but I find many troubling things in government today, in my opinion, stem from republicans. Yet I'm not yelling about republicans, I'm yelling about the things they do.
You should join Atrios in condemning this behavior, rather than trying to make him seem like some kind of hack.
If we all worked at narrowing our differences maybe we might succeed a little.
PEace

[capt joe]

Lem Snapper, But atrios IS a partisan hack.

He is the blogging equiv to James Carville. James Carville who insists that Moore's film is completely true. Who also said that the forging of the pantagraph newspaper by Moore is no issues at all.

[HH]

Old Duncan has seized on the occasion of Sullivan's vacay to finally criticize a Democrat. Sully will soon be tagged a "LIAR!" by the Atriettes.

I also assume that Mr. Brown should not be confused with the Joe Brown from Memphis that appears on syndicated teevee every day after Judge Judy.

[RandMan]

I followed the Celebrate Diversity link back to Atrios and read his take along with the comments. More glaring evidence that the Left is totally humorless. Sheesh. What a bunch of paranoid ninnys!

[Josh]

Theres a tremendous number of off-topic comments in that atrios post message board. It's like the want to ignore all of their faults and switch the subject as fast as possible. Considering that I dont spend time reading atrios, I wonder how often his readers do that sort of (stupid) thing.

[Dan]

"He is the blogging equiv to James Carville. James Carville who insists that Moore's film is completely true. Who also said that the forging of the pantagraph newspaper by Moore is no issues at all".

One of the best reasons for re-electing GWB could be that the Dems decide they can't win with people like Carville on their side.

[Patrick]

As soon as someone says "lighten up" on that Atrios point, his little followers declare that person insesitive, a racist, a facist, or some combination. And when someone actually called them "humorless liberals" they got all self righteous. The fact that the debate got so serious over a T shirt is actually frightening. I wonder how many burnt out philosophy majors are reading Atrios.

[JorgXMcKie]

Might as well reveal myself for whatever it is that I am. My wife, well-educated, great job doing what is usually perceived to be a male kind of thing, has a response for why she refuses to call herself a feminist. A play on an old joke. She says she went into a "feminist bookstore" (self-described) and looked around for the humor section. When she couldn't find it she asked where it was. Her answer: "We're *feminists.* We don't have a humor section."

They probably wouldn't let her dance at the revolution, either.

I can no longer call myself liberal since there is no longer much humor there.

[HH]

"One of the best reasons for re-electing GWB could be that the Dems decide they can't win with people like Carville on their side."

Dream on... Carville is still embraced even after that garbage-can night, Election 2002.

[Jim Treacher]

But... Duncan thought about it for a couple of hours before he posted it! That unprecedented show of restraint just proves he's really onto something, right? Right?

My favorite comment to that post was this sneer: "Whatever you do, don't call him racist. He'll trot out his African in-law! That proves he's not!" Well, how about not calling him a racist because he's done nothing to earn it?

[Tim]

Yeah - if these liberal lemmings are driven off the cliffs of sanity by a harmless, albeit mocking, t-shirt, what will they do when Bush fishguts Kerry...? It will worse than 9/11 for that crowd...

[Jim C.]

Let me Atrociously pontificate on the Memphis story.

The real reason that the mentioned Memphis officials rebuffed the Iraqis was that the officials are far-left Democrats and consider the Iraqis mere puppets of the U.S. "occupation". So the Iraqis deserve no help at all, and in fact, the officials actually do not want a free Iraq.

/tinfoil hat

Okay, I'm just dreaming things up. I wasn't being serious. I have absolutely no idea what the complete facts are about the Memphis incident. But I think this is less of a reach than the leap of Atrocious and his dittoheads from gun colors and a poke at a sacred cow of the left to a slam on Pan-Africanism and a "racist sub-text".

Maybe now that Atrocious is on the Democratic payroll, they're getting all his best propaganda and he has to strain to find something for his free blog.

[Skeej]

Yeah, I find it very interesting that all this time Atrios has been coyly remaining anonymous, he has been working for the wealthiest moon-bat of all, George Soros.

Kind of dings his leftist creds, all that filthy lucre.

[The Kid]

As I’ve cruised blogs tonight I couldn’t help but notice all of the references to tinfoil hats, the sign of the whacked out.

It is with some trepidation that I bring this up, since I don’t want to be thought of as a candidate for metallic haberdashery of any sort, but is there a conspiracy to in fact increase consumption of aluminum products? The former administration official who helped kick off the moonbat rush last year, former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, was an executive of Alcoa and retained considerable holdings in that company. Has Teresa diversified out of food into minerals? Is George dumping gold for bauxite?

Okay, I’ve been drinking, but from bottles. Still, qui bono?

[Slartibartfast]

We're *feminists.* We don't have a humor section."

Reminds me of a joke. One that my mother made much more funny by repeating the punchline in response:

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: That's not funny.

[Ric Locke]

I mentioned this over there, but thought it worth repeating: A master satirist, assigned to generate a faux-Left comment illustrating the real point behind the T-shirt in question, would have been hard-pressed to come close to accomplishing what Atrios did in a few short paragraphs.

Reynolds is right. The Onion -- and satire and parody in general -- is dead, not funny any more. The Left is parodying itself, and doing a better job of it than anyone else could.

As for D. Black -- the "Not Sirius" suggestion is sound, but it's too long. In electronics, negation or "NOT" is often signified by a bar over the name. That isn't possible in ASCII or ordinary computer text, so various symbols are used, one of which is a preceding exclamation point. So:

!Sirius = "not Sirius" = Duncan Black.

Regards,
Ric Locke

[TM]

!Sirius - the exclamation point precedes him. That's very funny.

But what about "Hillary!"?

[Slartibartfast]

In a similar vein, I propose we replace Kerry with !Bush.

[Slartibartfast]

Dammit: !Bush.

[Tom Maguire]

There may be an obvious explanation.