Big Targets in Comedy
I always feel great when I sell a joke that takes on somebody big. The best example was when the leader of China came to the States and there were protests about his human rights record. My joke was that he didn't seem that phased by the demonstrations - have you seen his new cologne? (It showed his picture on the bottle and the cologne was named Oppression.)
Another time there was a conference between Thatcher, Reagan and Gorbachev after they were out of power. I wrote I didn't know what the conference was about but judging from these 3, it sounded like it was about unemployment. There have been hundreds of jokes about individual leaders, but this was a rare 3 in 1.
Of course, it was not anywhere near as important as showing the leader of China's face on TV in over 70 countries with the word Oppression under it. That sure had more impact than carrying a sign at a protest, unless the sign also made it on TV, which could happen.
Faithful readers of the Portland Freelancer - and hey, it's possible - might have seen the last post where I tanked with a joke, leading to fears that I would be out of the rotation for a while. Well, last night was more like it. I noted the shenanigans of Prince Harry falling down drunk in the gutter outside a nightclub, and Prince William grabbing a woman's breast in a photo and asked when Buckingham Palace had turned into a Hooters? They laughed pretty hard as opposed to the other night, so I'm back in the game.
The secret is that the crowd loves it when big shots are made fun of, especially if these big shots present themselves as superior, stuffy, pompous nitwits, which could be the Wilkapedia description for England's Royal Family. So last night was fun.
posted by Bill McDonald @ 7:05 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
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bot attack?
Bill, are you going to let us in on what the 'bad' joke was?
It was a little too "clever" : "Don't you just love March Madness? Not only is it great but this is the perfect month for it."
I'm not exactly holding my sides, but hardly a show-killer. Besides, they can't blame you can they? They chose to air it.
This isn't a joke but it is funny about 'celebrity' being the status necessary and sufficient for comedy writers to work off of. (Warhol, you know, eradicated the genre with a single artful line, the definition of celebrity as 'someone known for: being known.' I think it was Warhol.) Anyway, all celebrities are punchline objects of funny jokes (about their celebrityhood) except SOME celebrities saying and doing smart things that make sense and make us think -- in other words, deserve being known and earn their renown -- and then, they can't be funny, or made fun of.
The following concerns Rosie O'Donnell, who has been the butt of jokes of butt well and good and funny, for a while, but if the thinking she is on to is contagious, and starts spreading to other celebrities, it is almost scary that comedy writing may lose its stock supply of celebrities to joke about. Since this isn't funny and can't be made funny, or fun of, in any way, shape, or form -- against her or against her critic.
Off the Alternet.ORG news aggregation, www.alternet.org/wire/#49991 which may have vapor shelf-life, Rosie Opens 9/11 Conspiracy 'View' Debate ... Bill O'Reilly Implies ABC Should Fire O'Donnell After Remarks, "... a taboo that most daytime talk shows would never go near – the possibility of a conspiracy on 9/11."
What if this gets out to the kids ! ? Isn't there a lot of overlap of Rosie's audience and Main Street, I mean, Stream Media's audience? Such an idea! can NOT be let into play in Peoria morning coffee clatches, Starbuck's encounters, and around watercoolers. Despite the fact polls show over half the people have some idea of it, disregarding the MSM's disregard. Saying there is NO Al Qaida, or "in Arabic 'Q eidat ilmu'ti'aat'," is as bad as saying there is no God and so, logically, legally, all the churches have to give back all the money, or be taxed on their income and property, like Rajneeshees were.
I have never seen this 'The View' TV show, and for others like me, the article has further detail that might help picture it. "... co-host, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who has been known to go head-to-head with a conservative counterpoint to Rosie's left-leaning opinions, listened ... replying 'If someone could sit here and prove that to me, I would open my mind to that.'"
So, apparently, it is NOT a political humoring Leftist vs. Rightist thing, it IS a cops and robbers thing, justice vs. crime.
This just in, OpEdNews: HUMOR ON THE RIGHT: LIBERALS HATE AMERICA...Time For Dennis Miller To Put Up Or Shut Up, by Steve Young, it goes on:
"Liberals hate America."
Wait a minute. I need to catch my breath. Hard to speak when you're laughing uncontrollably. No. Not Laughing. Gagging. Yep, that's it. That's what I'm doing.
I am ... sick and tired of the Liberals Hate America mantra. It's bad enough that it's used as the basis of most any Rash Lamebrain Liberal diatribe, but that it's used as the foundation of satirical material is mortal sin in the comic biz. Satire itself is supposed to be grounded in truth. Not just some bullshit that Karl Rove crapped all over reality.
Just saying ...
Tenks, If I don't respond to your individual points it's often because I'm all over it already. I've often seen the information myself. For example, I watched the entire speech by Bill Maher's old speech writer as well as the Rosie clips on Prison Planet.
Both Dennis and Evan Sayet had what they describe as almost a revelation after 9/11. To me that's totally indicative of their lack of analysis about these topics before hand.
What happened in my opinion was that 9/11 scared them and their subsequent analysis was formed out of fear. It takes courage to be free, and it's momentarily comforting to become a sheep.
I believe after 9/11 many conservatives became intensely frightened and turned over our freedoms to their kind leaders Bush and Cheney. They also go after liberals because part of being comfortable as a sheep is to have everyone else bleating out the same thing.
Liberals in my opinion are trying to save America, just as they were during Vietnam.
We can't afford to wait for a MacNamara moment of realization from these guys.
Rosie has to be attacked because Building 7 does not add up. Building 7 will never add up, so the people who know what happened are battling like hell to keep the lid on.
If you project ahead at the rate this is all changing and the amount of people who want this exposed, we could be in for an interesting year and some dangerous times ahead for speaking out. Charlie Sheen said the stuff a year ago but he didn't use his sitcom to do it. They could be worried about what is coming next from Rosie, especially if they get the Harvard physics guy to explain how what happened couldn't be in the official story. By the way, as I'm sure you know, the 9/11 Commission didn't bother with Building 7 because they can't go there. There's nothing but trouble for the government looking at that.
And yes, I have thought about how weird it would be if the celebrities actually step up and save the day.
I was maybe thinking something along the lines (for Leno) like:
Reporters in the Middle East found some of the hijackers still alive after 9/11 ... they're still looking for Cheney.
The investigation commission found no explanation for Building 7 billowing up in a cloud of smoke on 9/11 ... same as Bush in 2000.
Comedy is not pretty. Maybe we shouldn't try this at home. Save it for church.
Bill, if the tone of my comments sounds like I am berating you, I am sorry. That's not what I want or am trying to say. I am appalled at the situation and I lash out. What I want and am trying to get is answers. If and when a person finds out or figures out Nine Eleven Op was all a hoax, and so knows there were no hijackers and there is no Al Qaeda and there are no 'terrorists,' then how can a person spend a split second or write a single serious sentence vouchsafing the bogus? Such as "Iraq war," "War on Terror," and on and on. How can a person believe a single second of TV news is real or true? How can a person buy or bother to read a newspaper? None of that is anything, except made-up bogosity.
And there are people everywhere soaking up every word of it and believing that's the world and changing their lives for it and spending time on it. They're absolutely crackersville. Haven't they ever been in the world? What the hell happened to people? Did they 'forget' reality? They lived it ten, twenty, forty or more years, and they simply -=blip=- forgot all that? People are good. People aren't bad. You go meet them, and people are good. Nobody's running around going, 'I'm going to steal identities,' or 'I'm going to steal babies,' or whatever else the 'news' says people out there are doing, better lock your door, strangers are danger. B.S. Strangers are some of the nicest goodest people you haven't met yet. And all the damn public money and common wealth and common sense and purpose of society is getting poured down this damn black hole of a fraudulent fiction.
Well, so, I lash out. And slap anyone reading, with my words. But, hey, nothing personal. Just asking, what have you heard, what have you got to say, about what's really happening? And I'm interested in any answers. Please, though, no bogosity, please don't say you are moving and shaking, doing and making, coming and going, in the bogus. Please don't say you believe some of it. Please. It is so saddening, it makes me so sad to hear. People haven't pinched themselves to see that they aren't awake, so I sorta SLAP a lot of them. They're snoring anyway. We could use some help over here, all around, making and running the world. Like, votes, maybe? Duh.
I think, it seems, you may have misunderstood what I was getting at, Bill. I don't believe, or hope, that celebrities are actually going to step up and save the day. If anything, just the opposite -- they're not part of the solution, they're part of the problem. In ways as little as merely thinking that 'celebrity' is something to be. It's not, it's bogus. If Rosie O'Donnell is talking reality and truth, then she must be not a celebrity. And, that's what O'Reilly says, too -- 'fire her.' I doubt she's going to change the (minds of) celebrities on TV. If her good knowing gets started spreading around, she's going to change TV so celebrities aren't on it anymore, celebrity isn't what it's made of or consists of. I bumped into Walter Cronkite in the Baskin Robbins in Cambridge after the Harvard - Yale game one year, said, 'hi, how's it going,' said same, back. He wasn't a celebrity. This was before cable TV, which is where people get paid (from subscriber fees) to be a celebrity whether or not any audience is watching whatever channel they're on. No, celebrities aren't here, or going, to save the day. They are here to be the punchlines of jokes told by other celebrities, so everyone can reassure themself that they 'get it' and are informed about who celebrities are.
To this point, read (maybe, please), Danny Schechter's latest piece. About that there. News is Too Important to Just Laugh At. Me and Danny go way back. I bumped into him at the Baskin Robbins in Cambridge, too, but it wasn't after no football game, it was after a street demonstration. He was gathering sound bites for his news broadcast the next morning. He and I have been exchanging emails for a few years now, and I keep asking him why he says "Iraq War" and "terrorists" and validating the whole fiction by buying into using the bogus words. And he keeps telling me to stop accusing him and blaming him for having friends, and meaningful friendships with, mainstream media big name celebrities. And I am not accusing or blaming. I'm just asking how he can go around in phony world and think and act and write about it as though it was real. All along, we both make and completely agree it is all in, and all about, music and art and how Art (Carney?) comes to save the day. Reading altogether TOO Much into his latest piece, I take it as sort of partial personal vindication, and I think I partly moved him to it, as it has been a point I've made again and again, that we can't just 'go along' and 'get through' this 'news,' trundle along 'bearing it' during this 'exception to reality' presidency, and then when we get out the other side, things can get back to 'normal.' Just, I haven't said the point as well as he writes it. And I don't produce as much as he produces. But being wrong is not why he's not making the Big Bucks. Being true is why he's not making the Big Bucks.
The other reference I don't understand in your comment, Bill, is about "some dangerous times ahead for speaking out." Other way around, isn't it? Finally it is safe now to speak out, and being in danger from fictional characters is no longer any acceptable excuse to stand mute. Indeed, mute is more damning complicity now than it ever was. That was the reasoning behind my taking a swipe at our US Attorney, Karen Immerut (sorry if misspelled). (My jab was probably in the comment of mine you had to del, Bill.) When the documents turned up showing 'they' ranked the 93 US Attorneys by how much Bush illegality they each supported, and fired the ones who didn't endorse illegality, how come Immerut wasn't fired? Same question for all of the ones who weren't fired, but let's Act Locally. What part or knowledge, if any, did she have in the Brandon Mayfield false arrest, and if so then how much of the $2,000,000 punitive recovery from 'the FBI' is coming out of her paycheck, if any, or are we taxpayers paying for ALL of the FBI's illegality, and if WE are, how is that 'punishing' the true and actual criminals for their crime? Further along the same logic, WE taxpayers cannot pay for retirement and Secret Service protection for Bush after he was not actually truly a publicly elected president. Things are not going to 'get back to normal' unless and until we enact what 'normal' is. I'd say the times ahead are dangerous for staying silent. Like those who are harboring criminals over at the newspaper, pick a newspaper, any newspaper. Or broadcasting station. Danger exists for the silent ones who make it in their mind, instead of thinking on their feet and out loud.
Lastly, (and I see this runs long, but, hey, it's only megabytes, penny a pop, who's counting), comes an update in an ongoing story U and I have had going here. Now, I admit I didn't immediately see the particulars and actors staging the hoax Nine Eleven Op. I felt the 'fishy' but couldn't scale it. The dead giveaway, for me, was when 'they' muted the audio for broadcast of the (phony, I knew) Osama tape, was it December?, 2001. Then it was obvious 'IT' was all fiction, all hoax, all apparition. With only slight focussing in, soon I found the ironclad photographic evidence of the crime at the crime scene, and figured out the rest from there, steering by the good stuff that turned up, in particular from Mike Ruppert's work, the man is a legend of heroism. And, of course here, citing Wayne Madsen. Titan of the typewritten. Olympian. But my statement here has been my own creation, alone, that the Iraq invasion is all a military exercise, a 'war game,' both 'sides' are our (taxpayer paid) armies, Red Army vs. Black Army -- the deaths are real, the cause is injust and bogus phony make believe. Look at the requested military budget. It's twice the size it ever was, showing we now have to pay to have an army and an 'enemy,' too.
So comes the following item and the GAO says it's so, like you had with me, here first, Bill. GAO Faults US Military Over Munitions in Iraq, By Ann Scott Tyson. "The U.S. military's faulty war [provisioned] ... possibly millions of tons of conventional munitions ... in the hands of insurgent groups ...." And if you believe the fiction that it was 'accidental,' then you probably still believe the 'missing WMDs' was 'accidental bad intelligence' from the best equipped, implaced, informed, and globally aware-to-GPS-resolution intelligence concentrating agency in the history of the world. That is, there's NO mistakes.
The greatest pleasure I found today is Benjamin Franklin quotes. Bill, your daily excellent practice here demonstrates that you quite likely approve of my first choice favorite: Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
New York Times Editorial -- Another Layer of Scandal, April 9, 2007
"As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration .... It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?"
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