Perlstein in the Voice

Read the article here, and then read what the editors cut here:

Tuesday was compassionate conservatism night. Arnold Schwarzeznegger was scheduled to rhapsodize about the immigrant dream, Laura Bush to wax gauzy about the man she calls "Bushie." At the Laugh Factory eight blocks away, on the other hand, it was "GOP Comedy Night," and the comedians apparently didn't get the compassionate conservatism memo. Jokes, argued Sigmund Freud, are best understood as a response to anger and frustration. If you want to learn what the Republican rank and file gets angry and frustrated about when they're not reading from Karl Rove's script, the Laugh Factory turned out to be a useful place to be.

*"To my fellow immigrants listening tonight, I want you to know how welcome you are in this party,"* Arnold said later that night at the Garden.

"I want to take that torch off and put in a finger, right like that!" gestured the MC about the Statue of Liberty.

*"It doesn't make any difference if, like me, you couldn't even speak English until you were in your twenties..."*

"Islamic prayer in Spanish," said comic Julia Gorin. "That's the next step."

The First Lady: *"We are determined to provide a quality education for every child in America."*

The MC: We "have to face the fact that there are some dumb kids!...It's time to give just a few of them coloring books, some crayons--press on to what we can save."

Steven McDonald, the hero cop shot in Central Park in 1986, on AIDS: *"Here at home, President Bush has committed record levels of support to fighting the disease. Internationally, President Bush has marshalled an army of compassion..."*

For wacky Julia, who wears a cameo of "my Georgie" around her neck, AIDS is nothing but a pet cause of Hollywood activists. Want to know why they're so eager to find a cure? "They can't keep their legs shut."

The MC kills with a Cosbyesque riff--"What' the hell is a 'time out'? The only time out I had was when I was unconscious for three and a half minutes!" Then loses the crowd when the next line rushes out too loud and fast, like a 12-step confession instead of a joke. ("'Time out' was for my old man to switch hands"). Then he composes himself. He produces an image of what his mother would do if he, who only had a stick to play with instead of an X-box, complained that he was bored. Punchline: "She would have stuck the stick up my ass!"And now the audience is his again. The only joke that yields a bigger laugh is Gorin's Valley Girl squeal about why John Kerry should be glad Empress Hillary didn't install herself as running mate:

"He would have gone the way of Ron Brown, Vince Foster, and Buddy the dog."
Those Democrats!

Though of course the only time you saw that kind of anger on the convention podium it CAME from a Democrat--and the delegates gave it their warmest acclaim of the week. Which is all part of the hustle. If the bloodiest chunks are tossed out by someone who's not Republican, it can't be vicious partisanship, right? Even if the speech was the sheerest extrusion of rage since the days when Senator Joe McCarthy ranted and raved about Democrats as the party of twenty years of treason.