Comedy Tonight: Just 'cause the All-Stars are on the bench is no reason to miss this year's Values Voter Summit

by Ken

Mark your calendar for September 18-20. That's when the Coalition of Major American Wingnut Organizations will be holding this year's Values Voter Summit. It's normally a can't-miss event for anyone with aspirations for higher wingnutdom, and everyone who wants to hobnob with the aspirers, but as Lisa Derrick of FDL's La Figa blog notes "sadly": "My Values Voter heroes, John Ensign, Mark Sanford and Paul Stanley, weren't invited."

Nevertheless, Lisa is forecasting a fine time at the VVS:

How could anyone not want to go to this absolutely lutz-filled weekend of wingnuts, whackjobs, blowhard bloviators, bigots, hypocrites and high-horsed, narrow-minded numbskulls known as the Values Voter Summit?

It's a tea party on acid, beyond Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Oh won't someone send me, pleeeeeease?

Clearly Lisa has spent a lot of time studying the materials:

Check out these rocking breakout sessions! It's gonna be so hard to decide which ones to attend!

* SPEECHLESS - SILENCING THE CHRISTIANS
* THUGOCRACY - FIGHTING THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY
* DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD
* ACTIVISM AND CONSERVATISM: FIT TO A TEA (PARTY)
* THE THREAT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
* OBAMACARE: RATIONING YOUR LIFE AWAY
* MARRIAGE: WHY IT'S WORTH DEFENDING AND HOW REDEFINING IT THREATENS RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
* THE NEW MASCULINITY [Was this one planned for Sanford and Ensign? -- Ken]
* WAIT NO MORE: FINDING FAMILIES FOR WAITING KIDS
* TURNING THE TIDE IN YOUR GENERATION
[I swear, none of this is made up. -- Ken]

And you betcha, the Values Voter Summit is a real value! It's only $99 for the whole weekend (special event meals not included), $200 for the weekend plus the Saturday Evening Faith, Family and Freedom Gala Dinner Honoring Phyllis Schlafly (black tie optional).

There's more, much more -- about the exciting $550 package, about the exciting list of speakers ("which reads like a C Street spank bank list," though alas more than half the listees haven't confirmed), and the list of exhibitors. Lisa is especially enthusiastic about the promotional pitch to pastors:

Accept our personal invitation for pastors to attend the Values Voter Summit.
We believe this event will be a blessing to pastors and their ministry and will further equip pastors to speak boldly on the critical moral issues of our day.

Promote the Values Voter Summit in your church.
Promotional materials that you can use to inform your congregation about this important event will be available for downloading in the next couple of months. Among these promotional materials will be a bulletin insert. We are asking churches across the nation to put the insert into your bulletin...

Lisa comments, "It seems a little tacky to promote stuff like this in the churches, as it's a political event, not a charity walk for cancer research." But the VVS, she concludes, "still looks like the trippiest weekend ever! So are we going?!"

Oh, we hope so, Lisa, we hope so. We need you to go, so you can tell us all about it.


ONE PARTING PLUG: WATCH WOR$T
$LIDE $TORY (YOU'LL LOVE IT!)

Don't you just hate it when someone tells you you've just got to see or read or do something? Doesn't that make you want to not do it just for spite?

Well, when Noah passed Walt Handelsman's dazzling Newsday animation WorSt $lide $tory along to me, it came with just such an exhortation, and like you, I resisted. Eventually I broke down, though, and discovered that Noah was entirely correct, and so we passed it on in last night's "Comedy Tonight." I studiously stifled the impulse to exhort, "YOU REALLY MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO."

Well, you really must. Trust me, it has nothing to do with whether you normally like Broadway musicals. Of course the better you know West Side Story, the more fun you'll have with it, but it doesn't depend on that. I'm not going to beg, because it's really for your own infinite enjoyment, so why would I resort to begging? If you're in any way plugged into the economic fun 'n' games we've been enjoying this past year, just watch the damned thing.

UPDATE: After all that whining, wouldn't you know I would screw up the link to last night's "Comedy Tonight"? It's fixed now, I think. But wait, wouldn't it be easier if I just popped it in here again? Like so:

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