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From the Washington Post:
Thanks, Obama: This presidency has been comedy gold, from SNL to ‘Anger Translator’
He presented a unique challenge as the first black president and someone who lacked the personal scandals or catchphrases that easily opened him up to ridicule. But his own reliance on humor to deliver his message helped shape the comedic persona of the administration.
By Elahe Izadi
Follow @steve_sailer
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Why are they publishing stories like this now? Seems premature.
Don’t you dare stop clapping.
Obama is all things to all men…and one special lady. How do you do it, Barry?
This is like how they tried to make Michelle the new Jackie. I have nothing but contempt for High Fashion, but at least it isn’t Michelle Obama. They got dangerously close to literal emperor’s new clothes territory, there. She’s chic because we say so.
By the way, is SNL even still on the air? Why is this article treating it like it’s a Thing? Might as well be talking about Lawrence Welk, or the Tonight Show for that matter.
SNL still makes funny skits, but the idea of bundling skits into shows rather than feature on a clip service like YouTube is silly.Replies: @South Texas Guy
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/michelle-obama-weight-gain-2.jpg
Oi Vey
Wouldn’t Baruch Obama been a great stand up, had he not been President.
It is Orwellian not just in the doublethink aspect of taking it at face value, but knowing what happens to you if you do publicly make fun of him.
On the other hand, tho not comedic, Ken Burns wasted most of his address to some graduating college students this year, blasting the holy shit out of trump.
I'd heard that Ken was a real piece of work, manipulative as all get out, and painful to work with. Just a very strange duck.
I thought perhaps people were just picking on him because of his initial success, and the fact that he's past middle-age, and still sporting an aggressively dyed, schoolboy haircut. Which alone, is a bit willfully creepy.
In any case, I've never seen a commencement speech devoted primarily in trashing a presidential candidate, and begging the graduating class not to vote for him. I thought then that we had entered bizarre world, but then the NYT proclaimed that the disipline of journalism was an impossible task for the grey old lady to maintain... AT ALL!,
So I've stopped proclaiming we've officially entered bizarro world. It seems that when I do, I'm just asking for more bizarro.
You gotta have something for historians to dig through while he was still president, to convince them somebody thought this nonsense at the time. Otherwise, they’ll wonder why all anybody talked about during Obama’s final year in office was Trump.
I was thinking Hans Christian Andersonian. But I don’t remember a Room 101 from that, so I guess you’re correct.
“…at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up…” (Dorothy Parker)
You know this is probably what a lot of white women feel about Obama, the inspirational diversity hire. That’s what happens when you choose leaders based on appearance and charisma.
I remember a clown losing his job and being harrassed by an internet mob as a result of making fun of him.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/
Ok this reads like: our betters didn’t let us make fun of Obama but luckily the man was funny as a president. It is beyond pathetic and sycophantic.
I bet they said the same about Stalin in the USSR. And I’m also told Kim Young-un is a riot in private.
SNL does in fact still exist.
Michelle was in Maxim’s 100 Sexiest Women as well as People’s Most Beautiful People list, probably others as well. Even North Korean media can’t be more shamelessly in the bag for the ruling party than that.
Has anybody seen "Southside with You"?
I rarely go to the cinema any more and not even my morbid curiosity is enough to tempt me to check out what I expect would be the most saccharine hagiography one could imagine.
Maybe our part-time movie critic host, Mr. S., could take one for the team so we don't have to watch it ourselves?Replies: @PistolPete
For all her faults I have to give Michelle credit for being a very good mother and pretty good First Lady. In fact, given that she never once humiliated herself by claiming Trayvon Martin was "lynched" or that Michael Brown was "assassinated" (despite I'm sure strong personal urges to do so) I would rate her, in conjunction with her child nutrition and fitness initiatives, an excellent First Lady.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @bigduke6, @guest, @AnotherDad
But if he had played tennis, they would beg him for a centerfold.
Sad!
Barry O reminds me of one of those BMOC kids from high school who was constitutionally unable to be uncool. No matter how empty, ridiculous or otherwise uncool, his adoring fans lap it up, laugh and fawn and make excuses for whatever… for example that the “mom jeans” he just wore just now became the new cool. At least he wasn’t a stale pale whitemale… our contemporary popular definition of uncool.
By no means is the current President the worst. He’s simply not extraordinary enough in any dimension. However he’s certainly a shoo-in to be judged the most overrated President in history. Nobel Prize for Hope, indeed. What else could be expected of the great Black Choom Gang chill? Gliding effortlessly (and accomplishmentlessly) from one high gilded perch to the next higher one, welcomed by whomever was looking for a respectable-looking well-spoken cocoa-colored straw man…
———
Has anybody else noticed that so much of the black act Barry O is putting on seems so phony and otherwise unconvincing? Hip-hop and “shooting hoops” with the bros… Ha funny that. His passion for golf and who can say what else…? Perhaps betraying the fact that he’s way more white than black having been raised by his grandparents after his proto-BoBo mother abandoned him with them to go off and study and work in Indonesia.
We Yanks are an always striving folk… uncomfortable with what we were and are… always becoming and yearning and reinventing ourselves to rise in class and status. It’s perhaps no wonder we were so vulnerable to being seduced by such a big phony.
Sample question from the Federal Ministry of Truth Qualifying Exam for the Humor/Satire Endorsement to the Basic Journalism/Public Speaking License:
Which of the following is unacceptable as the basis for a satirical remark?
(a) Bush I: “Read my lips…”
(b) Clinton: “I did not have sex…”
(c) Bush II: “America is a nation with a mission…”
(d) Obama: “If you like your plan…”
(e) Both (b) and (d).
.
Answer: (d). Practice note: (b) forms the basis for mocking right-wing obsessions with invading personal privacy to prosecute normal healthy sexual practices, even to launching comically-unjustified impeachment proceedings.
Reagan was enjoyable in his humor though the elites constantly criticized him for being shallow.
Clinton was humorous in his high risk lifestyle.
Given this universe, Obama is enjoyably understated in his humor.
We will be going back to icy humorless 4 or 8 years if Clinton wins, If it is Trump, there may be boundless riotous humor but many people may not be laughing. The nearest approximation will be Bush 2 years.
“his own reliance on humor”
I thought his attempts at humor drone bombed. (Rim shot)
Yeah, I remember that. Reading about it is pretty funny. From an Orwell POV, anyway. Scary for the rest of us.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/
Not sure if I just deleted my reply.
I remember that.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/missouri-obama-rodeo/
Funny from an Orwell POV, scary for the rest of us.
And Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called for those responsible to be held accountable."I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS" -- president of the United States -- "the other night," he said in a post to his official Twitter account. "We are better than this."U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill echoed Kinder."The state fair is funded by taxpayer dollars, and is supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love," she said. "But the young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse, that somehow it's ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation."Replies: @Dr. X, @guest
He doesn’t remind me of high school, because though I hated and didn’t “get” some of them at the time, I think there was a basic justice to the social hierarchy. No one cheated to get there.
Obama, on the other hand, is an affirmative action cool guy.
Kind of like the celebu-tarts everybody loves or mocks. They're not the most beautiful, intelligent or interesting. Their power comes from their fame which feeds their power.
Which is exactly my point. Mr. Obama's rise was so rapid and hardly based on any significant accomplishments of his own. If the people had found another equivalently inoffensive empty brown skin in which to invest their hopes and dreams they would have been just as satisfied.Replies: @Twinkie, @onlyonegirlforbarry
As big a "joke" as his being both completely non-risible while at the same time being, personally, the funniest occupant of the White House ever! is this notion that he's a great dancer, or singer, or that he can even do a reasonable chant. His attempt at hymnals at the black church where the mass shooting occurred was amazingly awkward, yet I was willing to gave him a pass on that given how sad the overall occasion was. Yet last month I read that the version of "Amazing Grace" which he so haltingly sang was so electric that Coldplay* will sample it on their next album.
* For the benefit or our graybeard host and anyone else on this board similarly long-in-the-tooth, Coldplay is to Radiohead what The Monkees were to the Beatles, if 900% more of those who publicly praise Radiohead actually liked their music, and if The Monkees didn't realize what they really were- i.e. The Monkees.Replies: @guest
Steve Sailer even links some of their new funny skits.
SNL still makes funny skits, but the idea of bundling skits into shows rather than feature on a clip service like YouTube is silly.
What I wasn't surprised with was the Weekend Update segment. Reliably liberal players spouting reliably liberal jokes. With the possible exceptions of Norm MacDonald and Colin Quinn, I don't think there's ever been a regular in that segment who wasn't/isn't a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Not that MacDonald or Quinn are necessarily conservative.Replies: @TontoBubbaGoldstein
Speaking of propaganda….
Has anybody seen “Southside with You”?
I rarely go to the cinema any more and not even my morbid curiosity is enough to tempt me to check out what I expect would be the most saccharine hagiography one could imagine.
Maybe our part-time movie critic host, Mr. S., could take one for the team so we don’t have to watch it ourselves?
I bet a large portion of the audience will go just for the lols
Clowns MAY NOT make fun of the POTUS.
“Condemnation came from organizers and politicians alike. The Missouri State Fair Commission called it “unacceptable” and said the clown has been banned “from ever participating or performing at the Missouri State Fair again.”
“The commission reiterated that the statements and actions Saturday night were inappropriate and not in keeping with the fair’s standards,” the agency said in a written statement. “The Missouri State Fair apologizes for the unconscionable stunt.”
The board of directors at Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association also issued an apology.
“The Sport of Rodeo is not meant to be a political platform. We are taking measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again,” a statement on the group’s website said. “All Members of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association are very proud of our Country and our President.”
And Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called for those responsible to be held accountable.
“I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS” — president of the United States — “the other night,” he said in a post to his official Twitter account. “We are better than this.”
U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill echoed Kinder.
“The state fair is funded by taxpayer dollars, and is supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love,” she said. “But the young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse, that somehow it’s ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation.”
"Land of the free," my ass.
I think it’s still on though I haven’t watched it since the “Wayne’s World” days. Speaking of which,whatever happened to Dana Carvey? And what, exactly, is this “legacy” that Obama claims he needs to preserve.
It has a great legacy though: Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Louis CK, and Robert Smigel.Replies: @guest
The next Jackie O. The pictures don’t lie.
My memory of my public high school was that status was pretty random. It wasn’t the most attractive or hottest… not the best athletes or most excellent students… not the most charming and charismatic… The status leaders were often runts and jerks that had one common characteristic – a preternatural sociopathic self-confidence… which was to a large degree derived circularly from their status among peers. It truly seemed random. Had that amount of social status been invested in say another set of peers, the self-confidence would have naturally been cultivated.
Kind of like the celebu-tarts everybody loves or mocks. They’re not the most beautiful, intelligent or interesting. Their power comes from their fame which feeds their power.
Which is exactly my point. Mr. Obama’s rise was so rapid and hardly based on any significant accomplishments of his own. If the people had found another equivalently inoffensive empty brown skin in which to invest their hopes and dreams they would have been just as satisfied.
Entertainers are more manufactured than most people think. There is a baseline of ability you have to have, unless you are a novelty act or an outsider artist. And if you are a virtuoso, you'll find a niche no matter what. (Danny Gatton, for example.) But between those poles, the difference between the bigtime and being a footnote act has a lot to do with promotion and getting the imprimatur of the right people. They find the people they need when they need them, sometimes molding and shaping them, sometimes just letting them do their thing.
Then too, there is a trend factor that can be helped along or pulled down somewhat, that goes the way it will for a length of time. Once a trend is over and done, it usually never really comes back. Barbershop and big band music, western swing, instrumental rock, exotica, glam rock, you name it, they have their fans but they will never be "big" again.
Politicians more and more are going to that model. Barack Obama had certain demographic fits, could read a teleprompter, and could be counted on to do as told. They let him run against Bobby Rush to show him that "The Com'ünity" regarded him as having insufficient nigchlorion content, but he could do okey-dokey with liberal whites if he followed orders. He did, and he will.
https://elaheizadi.com/
https://mobile.twitter.com/ElaheIzadi/status/510538804374278144
“whatever happened to Dana Carvey?”
His health has been poor.
After SNL and Wayne's World, everyone thought Carvey would be huge, but he's really just an impressionist, not an original-character creator. His best work at SNL was his Bush 41 impression (the most spot-on SNL-presidential impression ever), and it's clear his Church Lady was an impression of one or two older women he'd met in his life. His Garth in Wayne's World was, similarly, an impression of some second-banana rock-music geek.
Later, Carvey tried to establish himself doing standup, but it really fell flat. He tried to create original characters (notably in The Master of Disguise) but also completely screwed it up.
Really, Carvey's just a 1990s version Rich Little, but he got way out of his comfort zone and never fully embraced his impressionist persona. He really should have followed Tracey Ullman's lead and created TV series where he just did impressions of various everyday people he met, with the occasional celebrity thrown in. In fact, Ullman is probably a way-more successful, female version of him.Replies: @anon
“Elahi Izadi”? What? Some Persian (Mestizo?) chick reporter for the Washington Post? Who does standup SWPL comedy on the weekends?
Violates Rule #1: if you cannot tell their gender by their name they haven’t been here long enough or assimilated nearly enough to opine about America, what it is, what it does, or where it should go.
So sorry.
Maybe the Teheran Daily News could use a DC stringer. She has her own homeland and nation. She should help them.
"Elahe Izadi is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist with experience covering politics and demographics. She currently writes for The Washington Post as a national general assignment reporter.
She previously covered Congress for National Journal. Elahe has lived in Central America, worked on a Native American reservation and speaks Spanish and Farsi.
Elahe is also a stand-up comedian."
Isn't that when they hang you upside-down from the ceiling and then connect a crank-telephone wires to your....stringer ?
obama totally, publicly punked on arrival in China ,enjoy.
That article sounds like a lot of, uh, um… okey doke.
Yes, he was sickly, but he was also massively over-hyped for talent.
After SNL and Wayne’s World, everyone thought Carvey would be huge, but he’s really just an impressionist, not an original-character creator. His best work at SNL was his Bush 41 impression (the most spot-on SNL-presidential impression ever), and it’s clear his Church Lady was an impression of one or two older women he’d met in his life. His Garth in Wayne’s World was, similarly, an impression of some second-banana rock-music geek.
Later, Carvey tried to establish himself doing standup, but it really fell flat. He tried to create original characters (notably in The Master of Disguise) but also completely screwed it up.
Really, Carvey’s just a 1990s version Rich Little, but he got way out of his comfort zone and never fully embraced his impressionist persona. He really should have followed Tracey Ullman’s lead and created TV series where he just did impressions of various everyday people he met, with the occasional celebrity thrown in. In fact, Ullman is probably a way-more successful, female version of him.
Well, it started out that way, but as time went on, he started getting a little carried away, to the point where his impression got almost frenzied, repeating "Not gonna do it!" almost like a chant, while he just kept chuckling to himself. It was a little weird.
What I remember about that time, though, was how everybody did a George Bush impression, that was really more of an impression of Dana Carvey's George Bush impression.Replies: @whorefinder, @ScarletNumber
Unless they ranked her in the Top 10, my I don’t have the heart to attack her for that. Sure she’s not a beauty, but she’s in excellent shape for a 40 (50?)-ish mother of 2. I think a much bigger mockery is to pretend stubble-haired Rhianna or bottle-blonde Beyonce are in any way beautiful. The over-the-top, GAME OF THRONES-inspired outfit she wore to the MTV Video Music Awards was particularly ridiculous given her course looks (and- God- I hate despite being a pretty meat-n-potatoes heterosexual dad, having to sound like Mr. Blackwell here).
For all her faults I have to give Michelle credit for being a very good mother and pretty good First Lady. In fact, given that she never once humiliated herself by claiming Trayvon Martin was “lynched” or that Michael Brown was “assassinated” (despite I’m sure strong personal urges to do so) I would rate her, in conjunction with her child nutrition and fitness initiatives, an excellent First Lady.
However--old white American guy perspective-- i disagree with you about Beyonce. Rhianna is a very average looking mulatto girl, laughable to call her a beauty. She's had youthful femininity working for her--girls in their estrogen bloom all look kinda nice if they aren't ugly or fat--that is departing now. Beyonce on the other hand while not perhaps a natural "beauty" is naturally better looking than average--unless you just hate the creole look\type--and is the sort of woman whose appearance improves pretty dramatically with makeup--mostly to get her brown eyes to pop.
There is something just "off" about Michelle Obama's face. The asymmetry--perhaps centered around her right eye--plus just some harshness around the eyes. (I know several black girls\women who have much much prettier faces.) It's the fact that she's clearly not a beauty that makes all these paeans so pathetic and annoying--this demand that because she's the first the first black first lady we must call her beautiful.
However, Michelle has stayed fit. More than i can say for a lot of even upper-middle-class white wives these days. I see plenty who are just sort of walking--waddling?--insults to their husbands. You *love* this guy and this is what you do? Make him put in a days work to come home to this? (But then, hey what's he gonna do--complain?--you can dump him anytime, take the house, the kids and a big chunk of his salary!)
Michelle has thankfully spared us from having to look at what a typical middle aged black woman looks like. In the big scheme of things a small gift--but one we should be thankful for nonetheless.Replies: @kaganovitch
The comments on the Washington Post story are mostly negative. Makes me think this could be a case where they have somone write something ridiculous hoping it gets picked up by Drudge and they get a big increase in page views.
After leaving SNL, Carvey went on to star in his own variety show on ABC. However, just before it premiered, ABC was bought by Disney, who wanted to make the show more family friendly.
It has a great legacy though: Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Louis CK, and Robert Smigel.
Violates Rule #1: if you cannot tell their gender by their name they haven't been here long enough or assimilated nearly enough to opine about America, what it is, what it does, or where it should go.
So sorry.
Maybe the Teheran Daily News could use a DC stringer. She has her own homeland and nation. She should help them.Replies: @wren, @bored identity
She does the standup comedy on the weekends.
“Elahe Izadi is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist with experience covering politics and demographics. She currently writes for The Washington Post as a national general assignment reporter.
She previously covered Congress for National Journal. Elahe has lived in Central America, worked on a Native American reservation and speaks Spanish and Farsi.
Elahe is also a stand-up comedian.”
Kind of like the celebu-tarts everybody loves or mocks. They're not the most beautiful, intelligent or interesting. Their power comes from their fame which feeds their power.
Which is exactly my point. Mr. Obama's rise was so rapid and hardly based on any significant accomplishments of his own. If the people had found another equivalently inoffensive empty brown skin in which to invest their hopes and dreams they would have been just as satisfied.Replies: @Twinkie, @onlyonegirlforbarry
Will to power?
I don’t know about you or SNL, but the past near-eight years with Barack have been near-eight years of comedy classics. I mean who can forget Obama’s Care – what a Joke! – had millions laughing ’til they cried – Just follow the trail, every year a season of humor that just won’t quit, you know what I mean. And, the Man can even take a joke – just look at the recent prank the Lords of Iran played on Him. Not a blush from the Man. If we play it right, we can get a spin-off of maybe four more years of democratic kick-ass humor with the Hillary and Bill Comedy Show.
ROTFLMAO. Twice.
Steve, do you still think Barry be smartz? menodinkso
Very good! If I could attempt my own coinage, Obama is a meta-Negro. It’s often funny, sometimes tragic, but always awkward watching him do something when he’s at the same time self-consciously trying to work out in his head what a real black man would be doing in a similar situation.
As big a “joke” as his being both completely non-risible while at the same time being, personally, the funniest occupant of the White House ever! is this notion that he’s a great dancer, or singer, or that he can even do a reasonable chant. His attempt at hymnals at the black church where the mass shooting occurred was amazingly awkward, yet I was willing to gave him a pass on that given how sad the overall occasion was. Yet last month I read that the version of “Amazing Grace” which he so haltingly sang was so electric that Coldplay* will sample it on their next album.
* For the benefit or our graybeard host and anyone else on this board similarly long-in-the-tooth, Coldplay is to Radiohead what The Monkees were to the Beatles, if 900% more of those who publicly praise Radiohead actually liked their music, and if The Monkees didn’t realize what they really were- i.e. The Monkees.
I know,I know…a poor Elahe is just doing the job that no American would do .
Here I fixed it:
If you liked to lionize someone who lacked the personal scandals or catchphrases that easily opened him to ridicule, than you can keep to lionize someone who lacked the personal scandals or catchphrases that easily opened him up to ridicule.
The mainstream media keep telling me that President Obama is “cool” and that Mrs. Obama is “sexy.” I just don’t see it. The president strikes me as a chain-smoking, gangly, and somewhat nerdy half-black/half-white guy who desperately tries to sound more intellectual than he is and act more athletic than he is in actuality. The first lady strikes me as an average-looking, seemingly resenful black woman. If I were to use just one word to describe them, it would be “mediocre.”
This whole cool and sexy couple thing seems to have started with President Kennedy and his wife. Ever since Democratic presidents and their wives are supposed to be this saxophone-playing cool guy with his high-achieving wife or some variant thereof.
I miss the old days when uncool old white men were presidents. Even President Carter, the foreign policy and economic disaster that he was, seemed sincere and well-meaning, rather than self-indulgent and self-centered compared to today’s lot. My wife and I were taking a trip down the memory lane and watching clips of President Reagan the other day, and we both just sighed and said, “Geez, remember when adults were in charge of the country?”
From my view, the national Democratic Party is not in great shape. Sure they have--increasingly--the demographics to win the presidency, but the whole operation is looks pretty shabby.
-- the Kennedy aping thing; a pathetic trope and mediocre metric for presidential choice
-- the Clintons sucked up all the oxygen. Nothing has been "rebuilt", no "bench" built up. Obama managed to sneak through in 2008--using the black Kennedy thing, even the Clintons couldn't stop him. But they easy just grabbed the nomination in 2016. Hillary is really an unpleasant person, corrupt, incompetent and a pathetic candidate ... but no heavyweights tried to stop her. This should have been prime time--and last chance--for all the Democrat baby boomers, but they didn't even show up. As far as i can tell, there simply are no heavyweights, no bench out there. (Who'll run in 2020? Or 2024?)
-- blacks get to pick the President
Hillary is so mediocre that the white Democrats went for Bernie the socialist from the Vermont whitetopia. Didn't matter--Hillary was black approved and blacks get to pick.
-- it's the Jews' party
While the candidate gets "picked" by the blacks, they have to be chosen by the Chosen. The Democrats are the "parasite party", the Wall Street-Washington trading and rent-seeking party, run by--financed, organized, pitched and sold--by the Jews.
Basically to succeed as national ticket Democratic, you have to be blessed by the most parasitic elements of the Jewish community, and pledge fealty to keeping their finance, lawyering, lobbying humming along and then get the support of the blacks by strumming those ridiculous blame whitey chords that resonate so well. And ideally do it all while being the next Kennedy, "fresh" and "charismatic". (Obama with "first black" carried it all off pretty reasonably. Hillary, obviously can't do the third bit--she has only the tired "first woman" thing--but clearly makes the rich Jewish donors very happy and is willing to wallow in black blame whitey rhetoric to pass muster there.)
It's a kludgy, ugly--very ugly--society damaging policy and marketing mix. (Pretty much the antithesis of the small-r republican ideal.) Only held together--as Sailer i think accurately described--by ramping up the hate on pale stale males. All else being equal, it's such garbage i don't think it could survive--the piece of the polity it truly serves a bunch of Jews in the Hamptons, the rent-seekers in Washington and black thugs in the state pen. But the demographics are headed their way, so that's what we're getting.
For all her faults I have to give Michelle credit for being a very good mother and pretty good First Lady. In fact, given that she never once humiliated herself by claiming Trayvon Martin was "lynched" or that Michael Brown was "assassinated" (despite I'm sure strong personal urges to do so) I would rate her, in conjunction with her child nutrition and fitness initiatives, an excellent First Lady.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @bigduke6, @guest, @AnotherDad
She is 52 and 2 years younger than her husband; ironically, she was his boss.
Completely o/t but the meaning of the authoress’s name, in Farsi, can actually mean “Divine Divine”.
The megaphone seems to be trying to enlist the good Lord on their side.
Whole point of this article’s existence is to promote Izadi’s putative stand-up comedy career. Nothing in it is meant to represent facts. Even small-market editors approve a few of these kind of advertising/lifestyle pieces every day. And, nobody IRL was ever heard to say, “Hey, Elisha Izzardy is playing this weekend at the Wonquet Tribe Casino, let’s check that out.” It’s like when an op-ed’er writes a think piece to pimp his new book.
I saw the trailer for South Side With You and thought it looked OK. Maybe 5 years ago I might have bothered to see it. Some were giving Michelle a hard time in 2009 when she hadn’t done anything yet but now she is in for at least 8 years of richly deserved underexposure purely to restore the cosmic balance.
On this particular point they don’t need to lie. Kim Jong Un’s wife is a beautiful woman.
OK, here’s the right Google Images result.
Violates Rule #1: if you cannot tell their gender by their name they haven't been here long enough or assimilated nearly enough to opine about America, what it is, what it does, or where it should go.
So sorry.
Maybe the Teheran Daily News could use a DC stringer. She has her own homeland and nation. She should help them.Replies: @wren, @bored identity
Hmm, Elihe did some Persian stand-up in the past …..
Isn’t that when they hang you upside-down from the ceiling and then connect a crank-telephone wires to your….stringer ?
The funniest thing about Obama is all this worship that surrounds him. Remember the day they gave him the Nobel? Everyone was laughing their heads off. That must’ve been the single funniest Presidential moment in the last 100 years.
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren't wrong about him.Replies: @inertial, @Anonymous, @dr kill
Killer rabbit.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I love how Steve Crowder nailed it.
https://youtu.be/PnLqoRtUAVg
Obama is a huge stiff. He does deadpan delivery pretty well, and he has top men writing for him.
To me he seems like a dorky, quiet guy who can deliver a pretty good quietly sarcastic line now and then. As for the high school dynamic, he didn’t start on the basketball team or even play much, and I highly doubt the Choom Gang wasn’t a term of derision with the other kids.
Every school had the burners off in the trees or on a hill or some corner of the parking lot smoking various substances. They weren’t the cool kids. They were the burners.
An uptight black guy who’s a little insecure and stiff has much comedic potential. Eddie Murphy just used his ‘white guy’ voice, but it totally worked for his dorky black guy, too.
And as Steve has pointed out, BHO lived in the WH with his mother in law from the south side of Chicago. There was a huge vein of comedy gold there, but nobody wanted it.
Jon Lovitz has repeatedly pointed out how making fun of Barry Hussein Obama is verboten, here talking to Dana Carvey about it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/01/jon-lovitz-and-dana-carvey-why-cant-comedians-make-fun-of-obama/
For some reason when I try to copy/paste a Google Image result for “Kim Jong Un’s wife”, Google gives me the result for “Kim Jong Un” instead. Anyway, you can look her up yourself.
Gilda Radner’s SNL character Lisa Loopner had Obama’s “comedy gold” nailed: “So funny I forgot to laugh.”
And in other news, some privileged affirmative action types find that their privilege does not work in other countries:
https://www.rt.com/viral/358221-red-carpet-obama-g20/
I’m catching up after a few days off, and Steve made me LOL on almost every piece. Elahe Izadi should be taking notes.
For all her faults I have to give Michelle credit for being a very good mother and pretty good First Lady. In fact, given that she never once humiliated herself by claiming Trayvon Martin was "lynched" or that Michael Brown was "assassinated" (despite I'm sure strong personal urges to do so) I would rate her, in conjunction with her child nutrition and fitness initiatives, an excellent First Lady.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @bigduke6, @guest, @AnotherDad
Wow, you’ve managed to lower the standards for being considered a beautiful/sexy celebrity more than even Princeton and Harvard had to lower their standards to admit Michelle. Nice work!
I’ve seen several leaks describing how Obama pushed for less war within his administration, both in the Middle East and the Ukraine, against Hillary, Kerry and others. There’s been a lot of war on his watch, but less than under W, less than there would have been under McStain and Romney, and less than there will be under Hillary. I’m not a fan of O’s domestic policies, but on foreign policy he’s been a force for peace “within the regime”.
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren’t wrong about him.
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren’t wrong about him.
One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times.
Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine--and he would have had the moral authority to do so:
1. Nothing to publicly pressure Israel to end the occupation or the building of jewish colonies in the W. Bank.
2. Nothing to highlight Israel's Jim Crow regime. This would have been especially powerful coming from a black president.
3. Nothing to oppose Americans' money being transferred wholelsale to Israel's military--in the billions. No threat to cancel the funds, unless Israel ends the settlement building.
Given that the jewish colonization of Palestine is the foundational cause behind America's broader violence across the Middle East, Obama's conduct is truly deplorable.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @Whiskey
Which of the following is unacceptable as the basis for a satirical remark?
(a) Bush I: "Read my lips..."
(b) Clinton: "I did not have sex..."
(c) Bush II: "America is a nation with a mission..."
(d) Obama: "If you like your plan..."
(e) Both (b) and (d).
.
Answer: (d). Practice note: (b) forms the basis for mocking right-wing obsessions with invading personal privacy to prosecute normal healthy sexual practices, even to launching comically-unjustified impeachment proceedings.Replies: @epebble
Speaking of humor, Bush 2 was a source of much levity, with his verbal tangles. Bush 1 and Carter were ice cold and featureless. Nixon was crooked which was humorous in a grim way.
Reagan was enjoyable in his humor though the elites constantly criticized him for being shallow.
Clinton was humorous in his high risk lifestyle.
Given this universe, Obama is enjoyably understated in his humor.
We will be going back to icy humorless 4 or 8 years if Clinton wins, If it is Trump, there may be boundless riotous humor but many people may not be laughing. The nearest approximation will be Bush 2 years.
That’s pretty much their entire business model.
Kind of like the celebu-tarts everybody loves or mocks. They're not the most beautiful, intelligent or interesting. Their power comes from their fame which feeds their power.
Which is exactly my point. Mr. Obama's rise was so rapid and hardly based on any significant accomplishments of his own. If the people had found another equivalently inoffensive empty brown skin in which to invest their hopes and dreams they would have been just as satisfied.Replies: @Twinkie, @onlyonegirlforbarry
In high school, group status is ‘earned’, by some characteristic. In athletics, it is largely although not wholly by talent: if you don’t put up numbers nothing else matters.
Entertainers are more manufactured than most people think. There is a baseline of ability you have to have, unless you are a novelty act or an outsider artist. And if you are a virtuoso, you’ll find a niche no matter what. (Danny Gatton, for example.) But between those poles, the difference between the bigtime and being a footnote act has a lot to do with promotion and getting the imprimatur of the right people. They find the people they need when they need them, sometimes molding and shaping them, sometimes just letting them do their thing.
Then too, there is a trend factor that can be helped along or pulled down somewhat, that goes the way it will for a length of time. Once a trend is over and done, it usually never really comes back. Barbershop and big band music, western swing, instrumental rock, exotica, glam rock, you name it, they have their fans but they will never be “big” again.
Politicians more and more are going to that model. Barack Obama had certain demographic fits, could read a teleprompter, and could be counted on to do as told. They let him run against Bobby Rush to show him that “The Com’ünity” regarded him as having insufficient nigchlorion content, but he could do okey-dokey with liberal whites if he followed orders. He did, and he will.
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren't wrong about him.Replies: @inertial, @Anonymous, @dr kill
No, the joke wasn’t about Obama being a warmonger. No one could’ve known that at the time, which is actually the point. Didn’t Obama get a Grammy the previous year? That was funny, too. They should’ve topped it by giving him an Oscar, a Fields Medal, and the title of the Sexiest Man Alive. That’d be comedic perfection.
To me he seems like a dorky, quiet guy who can deliver a pretty good quietly sarcastic line now and then. As for the high school dynamic, he didn't start on the basketball team or even play much, and I highly doubt the Choom Gang wasn't a term of derision with the other kids.
Every school had the burners off in the trees or on a hill or some corner of the parking lot smoking various substances. They weren't the cool kids. They were the burners.
An uptight black guy who's a little insecure and stiff has much comedic potential. Eddie Murphy just used his 'white guy' voice, but it totally worked for his dorky black guy, too.
And as Steve has pointed out, BHO lived in the WH with his mother in law from the south side of Chicago. There was a huge vein of comedy gold there, but nobody wanted it.
Jon Lovitz has repeatedly pointed out how making fun of Barry Hussein Obama is verboten, here talking to Dana Carvey about it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/01/jon-lovitz-and-dana-carvey-why-cant-comedians-make-fun-of-obama/Replies: @ScarletNumber
As opposed to Sarah Palin, who was the star of hers.
He did a podcast with Kevin Smith that made the news because he said he didn’t like Obama.
Something like, if it's a conspiracy to wipe out the black community, they aren't doing a very good job.
Some how this never seems to have attracted attention in the funny department:
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/50tf4p/two_different_tones_same_date_wall_street_journal/
WSJ tailoring same news to different audiences!
Reporting from the parochial backwater of the UK I can say that I have never seen Obama ridiculed, satirised or used as the butt of a single joke by any British comedian or comedy vehicle whether as prez or before.
By which I mean anywhere in the MSM. Not online or in some niche publication. I’ve never seen a stand-up mock him any way either, but I don’t go and see comedy much these days.
Charisma?
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren't wrong about him.Replies: @inertial, @Anonymous, @dr kill
I’m not a fan of O’s domestic policies, but on foreign policy he’s been a force for peace “within the regime”.
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren’t wrong about him.
One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times.
Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine–and he would have had the moral authority to do so:
1. Nothing to publicly pressure Israel to end the occupation or the building of jewish colonies in the W. Bank.
2. Nothing to highlight Israel’s Jim Crow regime. This would have been especially powerful coming from a black president.
3. Nothing to oppose Americans’ money being transferred wholelsale to Israel’s military–in the billions. No threat to cancel the funds, unless Israel ends the settlement building.
Given that the jewish colonization of Palestine is the foundational cause behind America’s broader violence across the Middle East, Obama’s conduct is truly deplorable.
They weren't right about him. He was nominated only a month or two into his first term. Whoever did nominate him had no basis to judge him other than that he was a black who was elected President. Nor did he accomplish anything of note by the time he was chosen as the Nobel Prize winner. His winning of the Nobel was the ultimate act of affirmative action.
"One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times."
That is true; he doesn't seem completely on board with the program. One senses that he has offered some resistance to what the military/intelligence/foreign-policy/oligarch complex wants him to do.
"Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine–and he would have had the moral authority to do so:"
Bring peace and justice to Palestine? It is not within his power to do so, nor is it his responsibility to do so, nor that of any American President.Replies: @Anonymous
Read about the constant bombings by the Naval Task force off Libya? Of course not even though over a two week period there have been over 300 bombing attacks in concert with local forces. We are bombing all sorts of people in Yemen, in Somalia, in Syria, in Iraq, in Eritrea, in South Sudan, in Mali, and lots of other places I likely forgot.
Obama's strategy has been to bomb, bomb, bomb, sometimes with drones, other times with manned aircraft, and avoid boots on the ground and demand (the media obeys the First Black President like he is a Living God) no ugly pictures or video of the US bombing aftermath. Obama has had something like 10X the drone attacks Bush did; with lots and lots of people killed. Often in areas of no strategic interest to the US, like South Sudan or Mali.
Just because the Media was too busy reporting on Kim Kardashian's latest idiocy to detail all the War didn't mean it didn't really happen.
As for the cause of America's constant war in the ME, that is the dependence of the Saudis for US protection, along with the other Gulf States, as the British withdrew from the Gulf following WWII. The US protected the world's oil supply from Soviet clients (like Saddam), independent actors (like Saddam, and also Nasser), and various jihadi/Brotherhood groups. While of course the Saudis exported Jihad all over including NYC and DC, memorably. As early as FDR, we were offering Ibn Saud guarantees of protection for oil production.
And of course America as the major naval power wants control of the Suez Canal to be in friendly not unfriendly hands.
With Fracking oil the US can probably wash its hands of the ME. Which would be a good idea IMHO.
But lets not pretend that the 1950s-2000s did not in fact run on ME oil because demonstrably it did and prompted lots of military action to preserve US reliable supplies. The 1950's Prosperity was in particular a function of repeated US intervention by Ike, not exactly Israeli's friend, to prop up shaky Arab regimes allied to the US. If Israel had never existed we'd have fought the same number of wars because the economy runs on oil not unicorn farts and rainbows.Replies: @Anonymous, @Jim Don Bob, @No_0ne
Lovitz did a funny joke about Wright’s AIDS conspiracy, but I can’t find it anymore.
Something like, if it’s a conspiracy to wipe out the black community, they aren’t doing a very good job.
I always thought Obama was funny-looking and dull.
To say the least!
On the other hand, tho not comedic, Ken Burns wasted most of his address to some graduating college students this year, blasting the holy shit out of trump.
I’d heard that Ken was a real piece of work, manipulative as all get out, and painful to work with. Just a very strange duck.
I thought perhaps people were just picking on him because of his initial success, and the fact that he’s past middle-age, and still sporting an aggressively dyed, schoolboy haircut. Which alone, is a bit willfully creepy.
In any case, I’ve never seen a commencement speech devoted primarily in trashing a presidential candidate, and begging the graduating class not to vote for him. I thought then that we had entered bizarre world, but then the NYT proclaimed that the disipline of journalism was an impossible task for the grey old lady to maintain… AT ALL!,
So I’ve stopped proclaiming we’ve officially entered bizarro world. It seems that when I do, I’m just asking for more bizarro.
Lol
Martin Short, Dana Carvey & David Spade tend to remind me of one another..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2TEAb-bCvY
After SNL and Wayne's World, everyone thought Carvey would be huge, but he's really just an impressionist, not an original-character creator. His best work at SNL was his Bush 41 impression (the most spot-on SNL-presidential impression ever), and it's clear his Church Lady was an impression of one or two older women he'd met in his life. His Garth in Wayne's World was, similarly, an impression of some second-banana rock-music geek.
Later, Carvey tried to establish himself doing standup, but it really fell flat. He tried to create original characters (notably in The Master of Disguise) but also completely screwed it up.
Really, Carvey's just a 1990s version Rich Little, but he got way out of his comfort zone and never fully embraced his impressionist persona. He really should have followed Tracey Ullman's lead and created TV series where he just did impressions of various everyday people he met, with the occasional celebrity thrown in. In fact, Ullman is probably a way-more successful, female version of him.Replies: @anon
His best work at SNL was his Bush 41 impression (the most spot-on SNL-presidential impression ever)
Well, it started out that way, but as time went on, he started getting a little carried away, to the point where his impression got almost frenzied, repeating “Not gonna do it!” almost like a chant, while he just kept chuckling to himself. It was a little weird.
What I remember about that time, though, was how everybody did a George Bush impression, that was really more of an impression of Dana Carvey’s George Bush impression.
Daryl Hammond's Bill Clinton is up there, as anyone who does a Clinton impression does the lip bit, weird thumbs up, "I feel your pain", and soft-spoken southern accent that Hammond pioneered and did.
Unlike, say, Chevy Chase's Ford (which was merely Chase falling down), whoever was doing Reagan in the 1980s,Farrell's hate-filled W. impression, the Obama/Hillary cyphers. The closest was Fred Armison's Obama, which was close, but as he was (1) covering for a lefty; and (2) a white dude doing a black man, Armison really pulled his punches. If it hadn't been taboo for those reasons, Armison's impression probably would be up there.Replies: @anon
John Byner, who was known for impressions of Dean Martin and Jackie Mason, also did Robert Stack. During the filming of Airplane!, Stack was having a tough time with his lines. So the director showed him a copy of Byner doing Stack. So Stack, rather than being himself, ended up doing Byner doing stack.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren’t wrong about him.
One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times.
Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine--and he would have had the moral authority to do so:
1. Nothing to publicly pressure Israel to end the occupation or the building of jewish colonies in the W. Bank.
2. Nothing to highlight Israel's Jim Crow regime. This would have been especially powerful coming from a black president.
3. Nothing to oppose Americans' money being transferred wholelsale to Israel's military--in the billions. No threat to cancel the funds, unless Israel ends the settlement building.
Given that the jewish colonization of Palestine is the foundational cause behind America's broader violence across the Middle East, Obama's conduct is truly deplorable.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @Whiskey
“The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren’t wrong about him.”
They weren’t right about him. He was nominated only a month or two into his first term. Whoever did nominate him had no basis to judge him other than that he was a black who was elected President. Nor did he accomplish anything of note by the time he was chosen as the Nobel Prize winner. His winning of the Nobel was the ultimate act of affirmative action.
“One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times.”
That is true; he doesn’t seem completely on board with the program. One senses that he has offered some resistance to what the military/intelligence/foreign-policy/oligarch complex wants him to do.
“Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine–and he would have had the moral authority to do so:”
Bring peace and justice to Palestine? It is not within his power to do so, nor is it his responsibility to do so, nor that of any American President.
Man, and Harambe couldn’t even make a honorable mention list in GQ.
But if he had played tennis, they would beg him for a centerfold.
Sad!
Well, it started out that way, but as time went on, he started getting a little carried away, to the point where his impression got almost frenzied, repeating "Not gonna do it!" almost like a chant, while he just kept chuckling to himself. It was a little weird.
What I remember about that time, though, was how everybody did a George Bush impression, that was really more of an impression of Dana Carvey's George Bush impression.Replies: @whorefinder, @ScarletNumber
That’s how you know it was a great impression: for the average person, he became the presidential impression. The great story he tells about visiting Bush 41 and doing the impression so well he fooled the Secret Service also adds to the legend.
Daryl Hammond’s Bill Clinton is up there, as anyone who does a Clinton impression does the lip bit, weird thumbs up, “I feel your pain”, and soft-spoken southern accent that Hammond pioneered and did.
Unlike, say, Chevy Chase’s Ford (which was merely Chase falling down), whoever was doing Reagan in the 1980s,Farrell’s hate-filled W. impression, the Obama/Hillary cyphers. The closest was Fred Armison’s Obama, which was close, but as he was (1) covering for a lefty; and (2) a white dude doing a black man, Armison really pulled his punches. If it hadn’t been taboo for those reasons, Armison’s impression probably would be up there.
I'd say Darryl Hammond's was more realistic than Carvey's, though less funny.Replies: @Steve Sailer
They weren't right about him. He was nominated only a month or two into his first term. Whoever did nominate him had no basis to judge him other than that he was a black who was elected President. Nor did he accomplish anything of note by the time he was chosen as the Nobel Prize winner. His winning of the Nobel was the ultimate act of affirmative action.
"One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times."
That is true; he doesn't seem completely on board with the program. One senses that he has offered some resistance to what the military/intelligence/foreign-policy/oligarch complex wants him to do.
"Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine–and he would have had the moral authority to do so:"
Bring peace and justice to Palestine? It is not within his power to do so, nor is it his responsibility to do so, nor that of any American President.Replies: @Anonymous
Obama has many tools at his disposal, some of them named in my post. He can threaten to cut the $5-$15 billion in direct funds we transfer to the Middle East each year for Israel’s benefit. He can go on the stump about Israel’s colonialism and Jim Crow policies. He can withdraw support at the UN, or even file resolutions for sanctions against Israel. He can go public to pressure Israel to bring its nuclear arms program under international rules and sign the non-proliferation treaty. He can cancel visas or Israeli tourists, workers, and academics. He can withhold military information and cooperation.
Israel’s conduct puts American lives at risk. Therefore, it absolutely is his responsibility either to bring pressure to bear on Israel to change its provocative actions or to cut ties and take American citizens out of the firing line.
sending $1.5 billion to a country like iran might put some americans at risk mr rocket scientist.
go ax baracky he's 10' tall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0Replies: @Anonymous
Egypt has the same arrangement with the US. It's part of the Camp David peace agreement.
And Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called for those responsible to be held accountable."I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS" -- president of the United States -- "the other night," he said in a post to his official Twitter account. "We are better than this."U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill echoed Kinder."The state fair is funded by taxpayer dollars, and is supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love," she said. "But the young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse, that somehow it's ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation."Replies: @Dr. X, @guest
Huh.
“Land of the free,” my ass.
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren't wrong about him.Replies: @inertial, @Anonymous, @dr kill
There’s a Mormon angel named after you. Reading your comment damaged 3 scotch and water’s worth of brain cells with no acceptable trade-off.
Daryl Hammond's Bill Clinton is up there, as anyone who does a Clinton impression does the lip bit, weird thumbs up, "I feel your pain", and soft-spoken southern accent that Hammond pioneered and did.
Unlike, say, Chevy Chase's Ford (which was merely Chase falling down), whoever was doing Reagan in the 1980s,Farrell's hate-filled W. impression, the Obama/Hillary cyphers. The closest was Fred Armison's Obama, which was close, but as he was (1) covering for a lefty; and (2) a white dude doing a black man, Armison really pulled his punches. If it hadn't been taboo for those reasons, Armison's impression probably would be up there.Replies: @anon
I guess that’s true. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that SNL only had a couple of presidents to do impressions of before and after Bush I.
I’d say Darryl Hammond’s was more realistic than Carvey’s, though less funny.
Hillary’s ahead but not acting like it. I don’t mean that in a complimentary not-resting-on-laurels way– she’s actually going manic, Project Fear doom & gloom, instead of photo-op campaigning at fish fries in red states, some of which are surprisingly close like S.C. It might be a reflection on her staff who tend to be D.C. lifers and Type A kiss-ups and thus have no idea how to mix with the folks. Deep experience in spinning is necessary but not sufficient to nab the swings and low-infos.
Well, it started out that way, but as time went on, he started getting a little carried away, to the point where his impression got almost frenzied, repeating "Not gonna do it!" almost like a chant, while he just kept chuckling to himself. It was a little weird.
What I remember about that time, though, was how everybody did a George Bush impression, that was really more of an impression of Dana Carvey's George Bush impression.Replies: @whorefinder, @ScarletNumber
That’s how it normally works; the impressionist finds the kernal, then everybody else copies him.
John Byner, who was known for impressions of Dean Martin and Jackie Mason, also did Robert Stack. During the filming of Airplane!, Stack was having a tough time with his lines. So the director showed him a copy of Byner doing Stack. So Stack, rather than being himself, ended up doing Byner doing stack.
I'd say Darryl Hammond's was more realistic than Carvey's, though less funny.Replies: @Steve Sailer
“I’d say Darryl Hammond’s was more realistic than Carvey’s, though less funny.”
That’s probably a general trade-off. Dana Carvey made GHWB sound like Paul Lynde, which is pretty funny but not very accurate.
Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60
Nov. 4
Emmy Award-winning comedian and SNL star Dana Carvey makes quite the impression with his distinctive brand of comedy in his new, outrageously funny stand-up special filmed at the The Wilbur Theatre in Boston.
I'm hoping that it's not just a bunch of self loathing. Carvey can be political, and most likely a lefty, but never went full-on modern snark or vicious. You can probably expect a goofy Trump impression that gets weirder the longer it goes, which seemed like his take on both Bush presidents.
Also on Netflix, which is the cool place to release content, is another stand-up special featuring someone Steve occasionally refers to:
Colin Quinn: The New York Story
Nov. 18
SNL veteran Colin Quinn delivers a taping of his sold-out off-Broadway show to Netflix for his second stand-up special. In front of a crowd of fellow locals, Quinn presents the history of New York and the different groups who shape the personality of the city. Quinn’s show was filmed at the Schimmel Center in New York City and is directed by Jerry Seinfeld.
Expect some criticism as Quinn will probably touch on race and may dangerously veer towards "punching down" or "coming from a place of privilege". Quinn can write, but unfortunately he's never had the best delivery of his own material. Trips himself up often. His time as Weekend Update anchor says it all. I still expect this to be worth watching.
Back to Carvey. His cinematic career could be considered a dud, but his very short lived TV show was pretty funny for how out there it was, and was loaded with talent on the cast and writing staff.
Finally, Hammond always seemed to be a poor impressionist given his reputation. When he played it straight, most of his voice work sounded the same and not that great. His most memorable "impressions" might be as an unhinged Chris Mathews (you could argue is just a rip-off of Carvey's great John McLaughlin, R.I.P.) or Alex Trebek's arch nemesis Shaun Connery. Both of these resemble a Carvey-style take; 10% impression 90% cartoon parody.
The SNL house brand for 40 years has been silliness for the sake of silliness. Lorne Michaels has explained many times that his goal is to hook adolescents who are just old enough to stay up late with their friends for the first time.
So, aiming the show at what 14 year olds think is funny, which isn’t hugely different from what 10 year olds think is funny, is the goal. Thus, Dana Carvey’s impression of the elder Bush was very funny in a silly way and thus is the most famous SNL presidential impression, along with Chevy Chase falling down.
top notch journolism at wapo
Persian Jewish Rosh Hashanah Food
https://mobile.twitter.com/ElaheIzadi/status/510538804374278144
>Israel’s conduct puts American lives at risk. <
sending $1.5 billion to a country like iran might put some americans at risk mr rocket scientist.
go ax baracky he's 10' tall
Right, those years where you can stay up for the show, but aren’t old enough to drive. By coincidence or not, I find those years to be the funniest.
>So, aiming the show at what 14 year olds think is funny<
top notch journolism at wapo
sending $1.5 billion to a country like iran might put some americans at risk mr rocket scientist.
go ax baracky he's 10' tall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0Replies: @Anonymous
But even more Americans would have been put at risk had the United States not made the Iran deal–because of either Israeli lobbying the US into more wars or its leveling its own violence on the Mideast and provoking more conflict.
ask bibi what he wants not bill crystal/norm pod/krauthammerReplies: @Anonymous
I couldn’t figure out The Departed because Di Caprio, Wahlberg and Damon all look alike to me.
Although, since I really cannot stomach a violence, I still get triggered every time with one movie-scene when Leslie Jones and Jessica Lange just keep trashing everything around them for a half hour.
Or, maybe it was Naomi Watts...I'll have to look up on IMDB.
>But even more Americans would have been put at risk had the United States not made the Iran deal–because of either Israeli lobbying the US<
ask bibi what he wants not bill crystal/norm pod/krauthammer
This whole cool and sexy couple thing seems to have started with President Kennedy and his wife. Ever since Democratic presidents and their wives are supposed to be this saxophone-playing cool guy with his high-achieving wife or some variant thereof.
I miss the old days when uncool old white men were presidents. Even President Carter, the foreign policy and economic disaster that he was, seemed sincere and well-meaning, rather than self-indulgent and self-centered compared to today's lot. My wife and I were taking a trip down the memory lane and watching clips of President Reagan the other day, and we both just sighed and said, "Geez, remember when adults were in charge of the country?"Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Harry Baldwin, @ScarletNumber, @AnotherDad
I’ve noticed, among some friends I grew up with who are now lefties, the frequent, unironic use of the term ‘cool’. One of the antonyms for ‘cool’ they use is ‘icky’, a word straight out of kindergarten. It’s all childish feelz . . . .
This whole cool and sexy couple thing seems to have started with President Kennedy and his wife. Ever since Democratic presidents and their wives are supposed to be this saxophone-playing cool guy with his high-achieving wife or some variant thereof.
I miss the old days when uncool old white men were presidents. Even President Carter, the foreign policy and economic disaster that he was, seemed sincere and well-meaning, rather than self-indulgent and self-centered compared to today's lot. My wife and I were taking a trip down the memory lane and watching clips of President Reagan the other day, and we both just sighed and said, "Geez, remember when adults were in charge of the country?"Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Harry Baldwin, @ScarletNumber, @AnotherDad
They call Serena Williams “beautiful” and “sexy,” so why not Michelle Obama?
ask bibi what he wants not bill crystal/norm pod/krauthammerReplies: @Anonymous
It’s time for jews to stop the land grab. And it’s time for us to start discussing the reparations they are going to pay to the Arabs who have been oppressed, killed, maimed, and dispossessed.
Has anybody seen "Southside with You"?
I rarely go to the cinema any more and not even my morbid curiosity is enough to tempt me to check out what I expect would be the most saccharine hagiography one could imagine.
Maybe our part-time movie critic host, Mr. S., could take one for the team so we don't have to watch it ourselves?Replies: @PistolPete
Haven’t been to a movie at a movie theater in years, but for some reason I feel like going to see that stupid movie. Just to see how bad/ridiculous it will be. I probably won’t tho.
I bet a large portion of the audience will go just for the lols
If Obama is such a funny fellow, one would think that within his two memoirs there would be any number of well known jokes or witticisms.
Yet I can’t recall a single one.
Why might that be?
This whole cool and sexy couple thing seems to have started with President Kennedy and his wife. Ever since Democratic presidents and their wives are supposed to be this saxophone-playing cool guy with his high-achieving wife or some variant thereof.
I miss the old days when uncool old white men were presidents. Even President Carter, the foreign policy and economic disaster that he was, seemed sincere and well-meaning, rather than self-indulgent and self-centered compared to today's lot. My wife and I were taking a trip down the memory lane and watching clips of President Reagan the other day, and we both just sighed and said, "Geez, remember when adults were in charge of the country?"Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Harry Baldwin, @ScarletNumber, @AnotherDad
Well Carter was a Democrat after Kennedy. Maybe he will the last one.
For all her faults I have to give Michelle credit for being a very good mother and pretty good First Lady. In fact, given that she never once humiliated herself by claiming Trayvon Martin was "lynched" or that Michael Brown was "assassinated" (despite I'm sure strong personal urges to do so) I would rate her, in conjunction with her child nutrition and fitness initiatives, an excellent First Lady.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @bigduke6, @guest, @AnotherDad
You wouldn’t need to attack her. She’s just a prop.
It has a great legacy though: Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Louis CK, and Robert Smigel.Replies: @guest
I think Charlie Kaufman was in there, too.
As big a "joke" as his being both completely non-risible while at the same time being, personally, the funniest occupant of the White House ever! is this notion that he's a great dancer, or singer, or that he can even do a reasonable chant. His attempt at hymnals at the black church where the mass shooting occurred was amazingly awkward, yet I was willing to gave him a pass on that given how sad the overall occasion was. Yet last month I read that the version of "Amazing Grace" which he so haltingly sang was so electric that Coldplay* will sample it on their next album.
* For the benefit or our graybeard host and anyone else on this board similarly long-in-the-tooth, Coldplay is to Radiohead what The Monkees were to the Beatles, if 900% more of those who publicly praise Radiohead actually liked their music, and if The Monkees didn't realize what they really were- i.e. The Monkees.Replies: @guest
Remember how they gushed over him half-assedly singing maybe a bar of “Let’s Get Together?” I can sing better than that. Where’s my Nobel Prize?
The Monkees had competent songwriters and producers, and they were photogenic. Coldplay, on the other hand, barely even sounds like music to me. (And I’m not that long in the tooth. 34.)
And Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called for those responsible to be held accountable."I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS" -- president of the United States -- "the other night," he said in a post to his official Twitter account. "We are better than this."U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill echoed Kinder."The state fair is funded by taxpayer dollars, and is supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love," she said. "But the young Missourians who witnessed this stunt learned exactly the wrong lesson about political discourse, that somehow it's ever acceptable to, in a public event, disrespect, taunt, and joke about harming the president of our great nation."Replies: @Dr. X, @guest
We call that “lese majesty.”
“the single funniest Presidential moment in the last 100 years”
Killer rabbit.
I thought my tweet was pretty good.
I found SNL funniest when I was 11 or 12, so that fits. They changed over the cast in ’96, I think, and though the previous season was awful it got so I couldn’t even watch anymore. I was 14. So they dropped the ball.
Except Norm MacDonald’s Weekend Update. I still watched that. Heck, it’s funny now. I remember him showing a picture of the Clintons waking their dog and he said something along the lines of “Here’s the president and the First Bitch.”
The Obama worship in the US media is nauseating, yet the Nobel people weren’t wrong about him.
One does get the sense that he has resisted the neocons at times.
Yet, he has done nothing valiant to bring peace and justice to Palestine--and he would have had the moral authority to do so:
1. Nothing to publicly pressure Israel to end the occupation or the building of jewish colonies in the W. Bank.
2. Nothing to highlight Israel's Jim Crow regime. This would have been especially powerful coming from a black president.
3. Nothing to oppose Americans' money being transferred wholelsale to Israel's military--in the billions. No threat to cancel the funds, unless Israel ends the settlement building.
Given that the jewish colonization of Palestine is the foundational cause behind America's broader violence across the Middle East, Obama's conduct is truly deplorable.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @Whiskey
The idea that Israel is the cause for America’s ME wars is ridiculous and childish; like believing in the Tooth Fairy. And Obama has created plenty of War; the media just refuses to cover it.
Read about the constant bombings by the Naval Task force off Libya? Of course not even though over a two week period there have been over 300 bombing attacks in concert with local forces. We are bombing all sorts of people in Yemen, in Somalia, in Syria, in Iraq, in Eritrea, in South Sudan, in Mali, and lots of other places I likely forgot.
Obama’s strategy has been to bomb, bomb, bomb, sometimes with drones, other times with manned aircraft, and avoid boots on the ground and demand (the media obeys the First Black President like he is a Living God) no ugly pictures or video of the US bombing aftermath. Obama has had something like 10X the drone attacks Bush did; with lots and lots of people killed. Often in areas of no strategic interest to the US, like South Sudan or Mali.
Just because the Media was too busy reporting on Kim Kardashian’s latest idiocy to detail all the War didn’t mean it didn’t really happen.
As for the cause of America’s constant war in the ME, that is the dependence of the Saudis for US protection, along with the other Gulf States, as the British withdrew from the Gulf following WWII. The US protected the world’s oil supply from Soviet clients (like Saddam), independent actors (like Saddam, and also Nasser), and various jihadi/Brotherhood groups. While of course the Saudis exported Jihad all over including NYC and DC, memorably. As early as FDR, we were offering Ibn Saud guarantees of protection for oil production.
And of course America as the major naval power wants control of the Suez Canal to be in friendly not unfriendly hands.
With Fracking oil the US can probably wash its hands of the ME. Which would be a good idea IMHO.
But lets not pretend that the 1950s-2000s did not in fact run on ME oil because demonstrably it did and prompted lots of military action to preserve US reliable supplies. The 1950’s Prosperity was in particular a function of repeated US intervention by Ike, not exactly Israeli’s friend, to prop up shaky Arab regimes allied to the US. If Israel had never existed we’d have fought the same number of wars because the economy runs on oil not unicorn farts and rainbows.
There are more than a few countries that need $70+ oil to survive. Fracking is great for the USA but a problem for resource based economies.
Can you say Venezuela or Iran? Yes, I know you can.
And PNAC = Santa Claus. AIPAC = the Easter bunny. Yup, just move along here, nothing to see...
I always thought Dan Aykryoyd’s Bob Dole as was the late Jan Hooks take on Hillary as was the late Phil Hartman’s Clinton. Wish they were around for the current election campaign.
and here with Al Franken as Pat Robertson
Killer rabbit.Replies: @Steve Sailer
It really was a huge rabbit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HICd-N80JQU
and here with Al Franken as Pat Robertson
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfa7ek_al-franken-as-pat-robertson_shortfilmsReplies: @Steve Sailer
Thanks, I’ve always wanted to track down the SNL skit where a bleak Bob Dole unloads on Pat Robertson.
Obama is a rich target for ridicule: he hates hates hates White men, while being pretty White himself (tragic Mulatto version, see Colin Kaepernick). He lives with his mother in law. His wife famously finds him boring, and uncharismatic. His daughters roll their eyes at him and one is a choom smoker like Obama and is dating some rapper named “Joey Bada$$” Yes dollar signs in his name.
Obama reflexively backs Palestinians, Muslims, gays, Lesbians, BLT (Bacon Lettuce Tomato) transgenders, etc. over anyone who might be an ordinary White person. He worships Third World failure like his Nice White Lady worshipers and hates hates hates American accomplishment like Iwo Jima, the Apollo Moon landings, or the construction of the Panama Canal.
Obama is widely believed to be both a closet homosexual and Muslim. As well as foreign born.
That right there is comedy gold.
————————————
And as far as the Iran deal, the principal objectors to it were the Saudis who fear Iranian Nukes as much as Israel being rival oil producers (see their oil production to crush both US Fracking crude and Iranian production). And had generations of US security guarantees. After all the US did not fight Saddam in the Gulf War to protect Israel, rather Saudi Crude.
Iran’s nuke approval from Obama (which is what the deal really is) seems to be rooted in Obama’s desire to please Fantasy Black Mommy Valerie Jarrett, who speaks Farsi, hates hates hates White people and White men in particular, and is widely believed to be “the REAL President” who makes all the key decisions while Obama watches Sportscenter or golfs.
The ME is aflame, not because of Jews and Israel, but because of the fundamental inability of Arabs and Muslims to achieve any decent standard of living. Having one’s ass up in the air five times a day, half the population in a burqua, illiterate, and subject to polygamy is about the surest way to guarantee poverty that exists for humanity.
Add to that the fundamental differences between Sunni, wanting an austere, Salafist, Jihad-prone violent aggression against insufficiently Muslim Muslims, including “moderate” Sunnis, Shia of course, Christians, Yazidis, Jews, Hindus, the Chinese, etc. and everyone else, particularly Persian Shia, and you have a recipe for massive warfare.
What, the Ottoman Sultanate and Persia were not at constant war with each other for centuries? War is fundamental and the natural state of Muslims, far more than Europeans. They just don’t have European industrial bases or cooperative populations to fight each other.
The Iranians, with help from the Russians, want to establish a Shia Ayatollah-run empire from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the East, Central Asian in the North, the Arabian Peninsula in the South, and Egypt and Eastern Europe in the West. [Persia before Alexander ruled much of Eastern Europe around the Black Sea and Persians are acutely aware of this.]
The Saudis, Egyptian Military, Gulf Arabs, and sometimes Turkey’s Erdogan, want a Sunni Empire or Confederation to withstand Persian/Shia expansion. Erdogan has a Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Putin, that won’t last much longer than its model.
The absence of Great Power intervention and control is not peace, light, and unicorns in the ME. It is the reverting to type of brutal Muslim-on-Muslim warfare that comes with deep poverty, the inability of military people and Muslim Brothers and Ayatollahs alike to create any prosperity or even decent lives, and grinding brutal tribalism and various Sunni/Shia Adventurers dreaming of being new Caliphs or Ali or Sultans.
Egyptians were ruled for almost a thousand years by Turkish Sultans, and don’t think for a minute Erdogan has forgotten that. Or the Egyptian military even though both are allied against Iran.
Thanks to my photographic memory, I rarely mix up the actors.
Although, since I really cannot stomach a violence, I still get triggered every time with one movie-scene when Leslie Jones and Jessica Lange just keep trashing everything around them for a half hour.
Or, maybe it was Naomi Watts…I’ll have to look up on IMDB.
Read about the constant bombings by the Naval Task force off Libya? Of course not even though over a two week period there have been over 300 bombing attacks in concert with local forces. We are bombing all sorts of people in Yemen, in Somalia, in Syria, in Iraq, in Eritrea, in South Sudan, in Mali, and lots of other places I likely forgot.
Obama's strategy has been to bomb, bomb, bomb, sometimes with drones, other times with manned aircraft, and avoid boots on the ground and demand (the media obeys the First Black President like he is a Living God) no ugly pictures or video of the US bombing aftermath. Obama has had something like 10X the drone attacks Bush did; with lots and lots of people killed. Often in areas of no strategic interest to the US, like South Sudan or Mali.
Just because the Media was too busy reporting on Kim Kardashian's latest idiocy to detail all the War didn't mean it didn't really happen.
As for the cause of America's constant war in the ME, that is the dependence of the Saudis for US protection, along with the other Gulf States, as the British withdrew from the Gulf following WWII. The US protected the world's oil supply from Soviet clients (like Saddam), independent actors (like Saddam, and also Nasser), and various jihadi/Brotherhood groups. While of course the Saudis exported Jihad all over including NYC and DC, memorably. As early as FDR, we were offering Ibn Saud guarantees of protection for oil production.
And of course America as the major naval power wants control of the Suez Canal to be in friendly not unfriendly hands.
With Fracking oil the US can probably wash its hands of the ME. Which would be a good idea IMHO.
But lets not pretend that the 1950s-2000s did not in fact run on ME oil because demonstrably it did and prompted lots of military action to preserve US reliable supplies. The 1950's Prosperity was in particular a function of repeated US intervention by Ike, not exactly Israeli's friend, to prop up shaky Arab regimes allied to the US. If Israel had never existed we'd have fought the same number of wars because the economy runs on oil not unicorn farts and rainbows.Replies: @Anonymous, @Jim Don Bob, @No_0ne
Without Israel in the picture, no military action would be necessary to keep the oil flowing. The Arab countries’ need to sell it at least equals our need to buy it.
He’s the worst by a long shot but HRC looks like undercutting him. Both career crims.
For a critique of Obama’s humor, see:
http://fosterspeak.blogspot.com/2013/07/obama-humorless.html
The single funniest thing I ever heard a president say was when W was sternly reading off a list of terrorists during a big speech and he stumbled on the name Ramzi Yousef and then said, “Sorry about that, Ramzi.”
SNL still makes funny skits, but the idea of bundling skits into shows rather than feature on a clip service like YouTube is silly.Replies: @South Texas Guy
I agree. I caught some recent SNL stuff and was pleasantly surprised, but as since the show’s founding, the quality of sketches is wildly uneven.
What I wasn’t surprised with was the Weekend Update segment. Reliably liberal players spouting reliably liberal jokes. With the possible exceptions of Norm MacDonald and Colin Quinn, I don’t think there’s ever been a regular in that segment who wasn’t/isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Not that MacDonald or Quinn are necessarily conservative.
Wouldn't Baruch Obama been a great stand up, had he not been President.Replies: @SteveM
Obama is a self absorbed narcissist. His interpersonal life is centered around engorging himself with narcissistic supply, and just as importantly, protecting himself from narcissistic injury. I.e., his genuine mediocrity becomes exposed.
Obama gets his supply from his countless cheap grace political stunts like fronting for men in dresses to use women’s facilities so his sycophantic lackeys in the MSM mindlessly applaud his “courage”.
Obama’s “humor” such as it is, is almost entirely a deprecating form of crude narcissistic self-defense. I.e., he glibly attacks those who are not sufficiently deferential to the “smartest person in the room”. So his “humorous” comments equating Vladimir Putin to a bored schoolboy. Putin does not suck up to Obama, so Obama the narcissist hates him for it.
BTW, narcissistic avoidance is why Obama consciously ignores the hard issues like the imploding Obamacare. No supply and plenty of potential injury…
I checked Charlie Kaufman’s filmography on IMDB and he wasn’t there. Perhaps you thought of Andy Kaufman. http://snl.wikia.com/wiki/Andy_Kaufman
Israel doesn’t get a single cent. It’s all just stuff.
Egypt has the same arrangement with the US. It’s part of the Camp David peace agreement.
“And it’s time for us to start discussing the reparations they are going to pay to the Arabs …”
“Us”? Who’s “us”?
Still funny.
Barry does bear a serious resemblance to OJ Simpson in that respect, check out the OJ:Made in America series.
I think she was assigned as his mentor for awhile in a “job shadowing” program.
What I wasn't surprised with was the Weekend Update segment. Reliably liberal players spouting reliably liberal jokes. With the possible exceptions of Norm MacDonald and Colin Quinn, I don't think there's ever been a regular in that segment who wasn't/isn't a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Not that MacDonald or Quinn are necessarily conservative.Replies: @TontoBubbaGoldstein
Dennis Miller?
For all her faults I have to give Michelle credit for being a very good mother and pretty good First Lady. In fact, given that she never once humiliated herself by claiming Trayvon Martin was "lynched" or that Michael Brown was "assassinated" (despite I'm sure strong personal urges to do so) I would rate her, in conjunction with her child nutrition and fitness initiatives, an excellent First Lady.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @bigduke6, @guest, @AnotherDad
Good point.
However–old white American guy perspective– i disagree with you about Beyonce. Rhianna is a very average looking mulatto girl, laughable to call her a beauty. She’s had youthful femininity working for her–girls in their estrogen bloom all look kinda nice if they aren’t ugly or fat–that is departing now. Beyonce on the other hand while not perhaps a natural “beauty” is naturally better looking than average–unless you just hate the creole look\type–and is the sort of woman whose appearance improves pretty dramatically with makeup–mostly to get her brown eyes to pop.
There is something just “off” about Michelle Obama’s face. The asymmetry–perhaps centered around her right eye–plus just some harshness around the eyes. (I know several black girls\women who have much much prettier faces.) It’s the fact that she’s clearly not a beauty that makes all these paeans so pathetic and annoying–this demand that because she’s the first the first black first lady we must call her beautiful.
However, Michelle has stayed fit. More than i can say for a lot of even upper-middle-class white wives these days. I see plenty who are just sort of walking–waddling?–insults to their husbands. You *love* this guy and this is what you do? Make him put in a days work to come home to this? (But then, hey what’s he gonna do–complain?–you can dump him anytime, take the house, the kids and a big chunk of his salary!)
Michelle has thankfully spared us from having to look at what a typical middle aged black woman looks like. In the big scheme of things a small gift–but one we should be thankful for nonetheless.
Actually according to America's "Newspaper of Record", Michelle has gained an enormous amount of weight.
See http://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/michelle-obama-weight-gain-fitness-crisis-national-enquirer/
He was, but I never heard of him.
Obama reflexively backs Palestinians, Muslims, gays, Lesbians, BLT (Bacon Lettuce Tomato) transgenders, etc. over anyone who might be an ordinary White person. He worships Third World failure like his Nice White Lady worshipers and hates hates hates American accomplishment like Iwo Jima, the Apollo Moon landings, or the construction of the Panama Canal.
Obama is widely believed to be both a closet homosexual and Muslim. As well as foreign born.
That right there is comedy gold.
------------------------------------
And as far as the Iran deal, the principal objectors to it were the Saudis who fear Iranian Nukes as much as Israel being rival oil producers (see their oil production to crush both US Fracking crude and Iranian production). And had generations of US security guarantees. After all the US did not fight Saddam in the Gulf War to protect Israel, rather Saudi Crude.
Iran's nuke approval from Obama (which is what the deal really is) seems to be rooted in Obama's desire to please Fantasy Black Mommy Valerie Jarrett, who speaks Farsi, hates hates hates White people and White men in particular, and is widely believed to be "the REAL President" who makes all the key decisions while Obama watches Sportscenter or golfs.
The ME is aflame, not because of Jews and Israel, but because of the fundamental inability of Arabs and Muslims to achieve any decent standard of living. Having one's ass up in the air five times a day, half the population in a burqua, illiterate, and subject to polygamy is about the surest way to guarantee poverty that exists for humanity.
Add to that the fundamental differences between Sunni, wanting an austere, Salafist, Jihad-prone violent aggression against insufficiently Muslim Muslims, including "moderate" Sunnis, Shia of course, Christians, Yazidis, Jews, Hindus, the Chinese, etc. and everyone else, particularly Persian Shia, and you have a recipe for massive warfare.
What, the Ottoman Sultanate and Persia were not at constant war with each other for centuries? War is fundamental and the natural state of Muslims, far more than Europeans. They just don't have European industrial bases or cooperative populations to fight each other.
The Iranians, with help from the Russians, want to establish a Shia Ayatollah-run empire from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the East, Central Asian in the North, the Arabian Peninsula in the South, and Egypt and Eastern Europe in the West. [Persia before Alexander ruled much of Eastern Europe around the Black Sea and Persians are acutely aware of this.]
The Saudis, Egyptian Military, Gulf Arabs, and sometimes Turkey's Erdogan, want a Sunni Empire or Confederation to withstand Persian/Shia expansion. Erdogan has a Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Putin, that won't last much longer than its model.
The absence of Great Power intervention and control is not peace, light, and unicorns in the ME. It is the reverting to type of brutal Muslim-on-Muslim warfare that comes with deep poverty, the inability of military people and Muslim Brothers and Ayatollahs alike to create any prosperity or even decent lives, and grinding brutal tribalism and various Sunni/Shia Adventurers dreaming of being new Caliphs or Ali or Sultans.
Egyptians were ruled for almost a thousand years by Turkish Sultans, and don't think for a minute Erdogan has forgotten that. Or the Egyptian military even though both are allied against Iran.Replies: @dr kill
That’s the way it appears to me as well.
This whole cool and sexy couple thing seems to have started with President Kennedy and his wife. Ever since Democratic presidents and their wives are supposed to be this saxophone-playing cool guy with his high-achieving wife or some variant thereof.
I miss the old days when uncool old white men were presidents. Even President Carter, the foreign policy and economic disaster that he was, seemed sincere and well-meaning, rather than self-indulgent and self-centered compared to today's lot. My wife and I were taking a trip down the memory lane and watching clips of President Reagan the other day, and we both just sighed and said, "Geez, remember when adults were in charge of the country?"Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Harry Baldwin, @ScarletNumber, @AnotherDad
Since Kennedy the Democrats have always been looking for their next “Kennedy”. They seem to have this–juvenile? female?–need to swoon over their presidential candidate. There’s a raft of ones who can capture that “fresh young thing” vibe–Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Clinton, Kerry (in a different way), Obama–and get lots of media mileage, well beyond their record, accomplishments. Some Republicans have had–to a lesser extent–Reagan idolatry, but it’s more ideological. They just want a conservative who stands up to Democrats\the media.
From my view, the national Democratic Party is not in great shape. Sure they have–increasingly–the demographics to win the presidency, but the whole operation is looks pretty shabby.
— the Kennedy aping thing; a pathetic trope and mediocre metric for presidential choice
— the Clintons sucked up all the oxygen. Nothing has been “rebuilt”, no “bench” built up. Obama managed to sneak through in 2008–using the black Kennedy thing, even the Clintons couldn’t stop him. But they easy just grabbed the nomination in 2016. Hillary is really an unpleasant person, corrupt, incompetent and a pathetic candidate … but no heavyweights tried to stop her. This should have been prime time–and last chance–for all the Democrat baby boomers, but they didn’t even show up. As far as i can tell, there simply are no heavyweights, no bench out there. (Who’ll run in 2020? Or 2024?)
— blacks get to pick the President
Hillary is so mediocre that the white Democrats went for Bernie the socialist from the Vermont whitetopia. Didn’t matter–Hillary was black approved and blacks get to pick.
— it’s the Jews’ party
While the candidate gets “picked” by the blacks, they have to be chosen by the Chosen. The Democrats are the “parasite party”, the Wall Street-Washington trading and rent-seeking party, run by–financed, organized, pitched and sold–by the Jews.
Basically to succeed as national ticket Democratic, you have to be blessed by the most parasitic elements of the Jewish community, and pledge fealty to keeping their finance, lawyering, lobbying humming along and then get the support of the blacks by strumming those ridiculous blame whitey chords that resonate so well. And ideally do it all while being the next Kennedy, “fresh” and “charismatic”. (Obama with “first black” carried it all off pretty reasonably. Hillary, obviously can’t do the third bit–she has only the tired “first woman” thing–but clearly makes the rich Jewish donors very happy and is willing to wallow in black blame whitey rhetoric to pass muster there.)
It’s a kludgy, ugly–very ugly–society damaging policy and marketing mix. (Pretty much the antithesis of the small-r republican ideal.) Only held together–as Sailer i think accurately described–by ramping up the hate on pale stale males. All else being equal, it’s such garbage i don’t think it could survive–the piece of the polity it truly serves a bunch of Jews in the Hamptons, the rent-seekers in Washington and black thugs in the state pen. But the demographics are headed their way, so that’s what we’re getting.
He wasn’t all that conservative when he did the news.
Screenwriter: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synechdoche New York, etc.
We were talking about the short-lived Dana Carvey Show and its unusual concentration of comedic talent.
Because, with her ++ breasts, at least Serena is a silverback who’s proportionate. And a smidge less unattractive.
I find it hard to believe so many think that the surly cow of a First Lady is “fit”, especially after seeing photos of her showing a string of defeats in the battle of the bulge. What kind of women do you associate with?
However--old white American guy perspective-- i disagree with you about Beyonce. Rhianna is a very average looking mulatto girl, laughable to call her a beauty. She's had youthful femininity working for her--girls in their estrogen bloom all look kinda nice if they aren't ugly or fat--that is departing now. Beyonce on the other hand while not perhaps a natural "beauty" is naturally better looking than average--unless you just hate the creole look\type--and is the sort of woman whose appearance improves pretty dramatically with makeup--mostly to get her brown eyes to pop.
There is something just "off" about Michelle Obama's face. The asymmetry--perhaps centered around her right eye--plus just some harshness around the eyes. (I know several black girls\women who have much much prettier faces.) It's the fact that she's clearly not a beauty that makes all these paeans so pathetic and annoying--this demand that because she's the first the first black first lady we must call her beautiful.
However, Michelle has stayed fit. More than i can say for a lot of even upper-middle-class white wives these days. I see plenty who are just sort of walking--waddling?--insults to their husbands. You *love* this guy and this is what you do? Make him put in a days work to come home to this? (But then, hey what's he gonna do--complain?--you can dump him anytime, take the house, the kids and a big chunk of his salary!)
Michelle has thankfully spared us from having to look at what a typical middle aged black woman looks like. In the big scheme of things a small gift--but one we should be thankful for nonetheless.Replies: @kaganovitch
“However, Michelle has stayed fit.”
Actually according to America’s “Newspaper of Record”, Michelle has gained an enormous amount of weight.
See http://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/michelle-obama-weight-gain-fitness-crisis-national-enquirer/
A few notes on Carvey first. He has come through his heart-related health issues, and seems to be as hyperactive as he has always been. Compare to Hillary and the impact to her health that her concussion caused. He actually has a new special coming out on Netflix soon, with an interesting title:
Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60
Nov. 4
Emmy Award-winning comedian and SNL star Dana Carvey makes quite the impression with his distinctive brand of comedy in his new, outrageously funny stand-up special filmed at the The Wilbur Theatre in Boston.
I’m hoping that it’s not just a bunch of self loathing. Carvey can be political, and most likely a lefty, but never went full-on modern snark or vicious. You can probably expect a goofy Trump impression that gets weirder the longer it goes, which seemed like his take on both Bush presidents.
Also on Netflix, which is the cool place to release content, is another stand-up special featuring someone Steve occasionally refers to:
Colin Quinn: The New York Story
Nov. 18
SNL veteran Colin Quinn delivers a taping of his sold-out off-Broadway show to Netflix for his second stand-up special. In front of a crowd of fellow locals, Quinn presents the history of New York and the different groups who shape the personality of the city. Quinn’s show was filmed at the Schimmel Center in New York City and is directed by Jerry Seinfeld.
Expect some criticism as Quinn will probably touch on race and may dangerously veer towards “punching down” or “coming from a place of privilege”. Quinn can write, but unfortunately he’s never had the best delivery of his own material. Trips himself up often. His time as Weekend Update anchor says it all. I still expect this to be worth watching.
Back to Carvey. His cinematic career could be considered a dud, but his very short lived TV show was pretty funny for how out there it was, and was loaded with talent on the cast and writing staff.
Finally, Hammond always seemed to be a poor impressionist given his reputation. When he played it straight, most of his voice work sounded the same and not that great. His most memorable “impressions” might be as an unhinged Chris Mathews (you could argue is just a rip-off of Carvey’s great John McLaughlin, R.I.P.) or Alex Trebek’s arch nemesis Shaun Connery. Both of these resemble a Carvey-style take; 10% impression 90% cartoon parody.
Martin Short is hilarious as Jimmy Glick.
John Byner, who was known for impressions of Dean Martin and Jackie Mason, also did Robert Stack. During the filming of Airplane!, Stack was having a tough time with his lines. So the director showed him a copy of Byner doing Stack. So Stack, rather than being himself, ended up doing Byner doing stack.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
John Byner was a funny guy who, like Martin Short, never achieved much fame. Don’t know why.
You couldn’t pay me enough . . .
Read about the constant bombings by the Naval Task force off Libya? Of course not even though over a two week period there have been over 300 bombing attacks in concert with local forces. We are bombing all sorts of people in Yemen, in Somalia, in Syria, in Iraq, in Eritrea, in South Sudan, in Mali, and lots of other places I likely forgot.
Obama's strategy has been to bomb, bomb, bomb, sometimes with drones, other times with manned aircraft, and avoid boots on the ground and demand (the media obeys the First Black President like he is a Living God) no ugly pictures or video of the US bombing aftermath. Obama has had something like 10X the drone attacks Bush did; with lots and lots of people killed. Often in areas of no strategic interest to the US, like South Sudan or Mali.
Just because the Media was too busy reporting on Kim Kardashian's latest idiocy to detail all the War didn't mean it didn't really happen.
As for the cause of America's constant war in the ME, that is the dependence of the Saudis for US protection, along with the other Gulf States, as the British withdrew from the Gulf following WWII. The US protected the world's oil supply from Soviet clients (like Saddam), independent actors (like Saddam, and also Nasser), and various jihadi/Brotherhood groups. While of course the Saudis exported Jihad all over including NYC and DC, memorably. As early as FDR, we were offering Ibn Saud guarantees of protection for oil production.
And of course America as the major naval power wants control of the Suez Canal to be in friendly not unfriendly hands.
With Fracking oil the US can probably wash its hands of the ME. Which would be a good idea IMHO.
But lets not pretend that the 1950s-2000s did not in fact run on ME oil because demonstrably it did and prompted lots of military action to preserve US reliable supplies. The 1950's Prosperity was in particular a function of repeated US intervention by Ike, not exactly Israeli's friend, to prop up shaky Arab regimes allied to the US. If Israel had never existed we'd have fought the same number of wars because the economy runs on oil not unicorn farts and rainbows.Replies: @Anonymous, @Jim Don Bob, @No_0ne
Well said. And one of the ways Reagan defeated the Soviets was getting the Saudis to pump beaucoup oil in the early 80s. It collapsed the Soviet Union, and Houston too, since both were rolling along on high oil prices.
There are more than a few countries that need $70+ oil to survive. Fracking is great for the USA but a problem for resource based economies.
Can you say Venezuela or Iran? Yes, I know you can.
Obama getting the Nobel was hilarious.
I love how Steve Crowder nailed it.
Read about the constant bombings by the Naval Task force off Libya? Of course not even though over a two week period there have been over 300 bombing attacks in concert with local forces. We are bombing all sorts of people in Yemen, in Somalia, in Syria, in Iraq, in Eritrea, in South Sudan, in Mali, and lots of other places I likely forgot.
Obama's strategy has been to bomb, bomb, bomb, sometimes with drones, other times with manned aircraft, and avoid boots on the ground and demand (the media obeys the First Black President like he is a Living God) no ugly pictures or video of the US bombing aftermath. Obama has had something like 10X the drone attacks Bush did; with lots and lots of people killed. Often in areas of no strategic interest to the US, like South Sudan or Mali.
Just because the Media was too busy reporting on Kim Kardashian's latest idiocy to detail all the War didn't mean it didn't really happen.
As for the cause of America's constant war in the ME, that is the dependence of the Saudis for US protection, along with the other Gulf States, as the British withdrew from the Gulf following WWII. The US protected the world's oil supply from Soviet clients (like Saddam), independent actors (like Saddam, and also Nasser), and various jihadi/Brotherhood groups. While of course the Saudis exported Jihad all over including NYC and DC, memorably. As early as FDR, we were offering Ibn Saud guarantees of protection for oil production.
And of course America as the major naval power wants control of the Suez Canal to be in friendly not unfriendly hands.
With Fracking oil the US can probably wash its hands of the ME. Which would be a good idea IMHO.
But lets not pretend that the 1950s-2000s did not in fact run on ME oil because demonstrably it did and prompted lots of military action to preserve US reliable supplies. The 1950's Prosperity was in particular a function of repeated US intervention by Ike, not exactly Israeli's friend, to prop up shaky Arab regimes allied to the US. If Israel had never existed we'd have fought the same number of wars because the economy runs on oil not unicorn farts and rainbows.Replies: @Anonymous, @Jim Don Bob, @No_0ne
…like believing in the Tooth Fairy. ”
And PNAC = Santa Claus. AIPAC = the Easter bunny. Yup, just move along here, nothing to see…