Secret Stash

Monday, your LakeCountyEye took notice of a local municipal trustee who compared, on a blog, her political opponents with the Nazis ...

Q the Eye/04.12.10

Well as every political satirist knows, you are having a good day if someone got the joke. Your LakeCountyEye's post being no exception to the rule, requests are flooding in for advice on how best to smear one's enemies with the Hitler-card.

Nevermind your LakeCountyEye's belief that Nazis are to negative campaigning what nuclear power is to clean energy: far and away more trouble than it's worth. And nevermind the corollary to Godwin's Law that says the first one who compares an opponent with Nazis/Hitler has lost the debate. Your LakeCountyEye fondly recalls passing untold hours in fourth grade detention hall, pencilling little Hitler mustaches on church bulletin photos of the nuns. Hitlerizing your nemeses, while fair-game for fourth graders, is another thing entirely when applied to grown-up political discourse. Any adult who compares their enemies with the Nazis is going to be perceived as someone who hasn't evolved much beyond, well, the fourth grade.

Level headed considerations such as these have not deterred the LakeCountyEye Operatives, however. Their consensus seems to be: if it works for Glenn Beck, how do I get it to work for me? So be it. The vox populi is the vox dei, and your LakeCountyEye wishes not to disappoint.

The secret is the stache. SharpEyed Ops may notice that Glenn Beck, Lyndon LaRouche, the Tea Party, et al never directly compare their enemies with Hitler. Rather they draw little Hitler mustaches on photos of their targets. Painting your opponent with that Charlie Chaplinish clown mustache, adds just enough irony to a political message, that you are inoculated from being the one perceived as a clown. It gets you promoted, so to speak, from the fourth grade to the, say, ninth or tenth grade.

Prepare your sharpies. There are plenty of shaven images out there, waiting.