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Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Black and White and Read All Over

We feel somewhat guilty about not discussing politics much here lately - especially since we're about to do it to you again. But here's at least a few things off the top of our head (as our long-departed hair used to say):

• We watched Michelle Wolf's "comedic" performance at the White House correspondents dinner and were vastly unimpressed. She said a lot of nasty things, but we think any actual hubbub about her performance is a waste of time because it wasn't important. And we weren't offended by her despicable ideology so much as we were offended by the fact that she wasn't very funny.  If we're wildly generous, maybe 20% of her jokes landed. The rest just flopped around on the floor and died in painful silence.

• Regarding the leaked questions Mueller wants to ask Trump, we have no idea if they were leaked by underlings of Mueller or Trump (though it's got to be one or the other). Either way, the questions reflect the preposterous nature of this "investigation." As Dorothy Parker (who, unlike Michelle Wolf, was both acerbic and hilarious) once observed, "there's no there there."

• What? Iran was lying about being in full compliance with the nuclear agreement so carefully crafted by Barack Obama?! We are shocked. Shocked.

• We still think Kanye West is a talentless idiot, but concede that he is an enormously influential one. For that reason, the fact that he's retweeting quotes from the brilliant conservative Thomas Sowell gives us a flicker of hope that a few minds may be opened to the reality of the Democrats' new plantation.

And now, let's get on with a little comedy! While tidying our office yesterday, we discovered an old and forgotten cache of Earwigs cartoons (albeit with only one caption each) which exist only on aging paper. As an act of historical preservation, we scanned them, and are sharing a few here:







23 comments:

Mike aka Proof said...

Michelle is a Wolf in (bleeps) clothing.

mamafrog said...

Omagawd--that number 2 picture is one of the most disgusting things I ran across in WA state when we lived there. It's something called a Geoduck (Gooey-duck). What horks my curds is people actually EAT the snot monsters, and we just shan't discuss what particular piece of the anatomy they resemble when someone actually digs the things out of the sand. Double blluuurgh. And there were times I could have used one of those kind of baby carriers! Nothing like chasing down two toddlers when you have many other things to be done.

Dan said...

@mamafrog -- you mean all this time I was navigating using a gooey positioning system?

mamafrog said...

@Dan--depends on what you were navigating with and where you were going. If you were anywhere near one of those things he'll is a distinct possibility.

REM1875 said...

Today I saw kathy griffin and Miss wolf accused of being comedians ......a charge of which both are totally not guilty.
If they were to to hang both for being comedians they would die absolutely innocent .....

Granny said...

The fart wafting taffeta dress is the hands down winner.
Thanks for the light relief on an otherwise dull day.

Stilton Jarlsberg said...

@Mike aka Proof- Hey, I'm glad Michelle is a wolf in ANY clothing; she made enough references to her own anatomy that I'm grateful we didn't actually have to look at any of it.

@mamafrog- It's true: interior or exterior, living or on a plate, the gooey-duck never looks less than disgusting. And my own Mom could have used that baby harness about 65 years ago when I was born along with my twin brother. Then again, maybe she HAD such a harness and we were just lucky enough to live where there weren't wolves.

@Dan- The notion of a gooey-duck sitting on one's dashboard and pointing which direction you should go is simultaneously revolting and hilarious!

@REM1875- To steal someone else's joke, "People laughed when young Kathy Griffin and young Michelle Wolf said they would grow up to be comedians - but no one is laughing now."

@Granny- Mrs. J echoes your appreciation of the fart wafting taffeta gag. Some words are just magic together!

AmyH said...

I think that Michelle should have watched old videos of roasts to see what an art it is. Just simply insulting a person for their looks (I thought Liberals were against bullying of any kind, oh wait, thats against Liberals, Conservatives are ok.) does not a roast make. Watch the Roast Don Rinkles did of Gov Reagan. Watch Dean Martin Roasts.
This was a lunatic Liberal writer for Late Night Talk Show hosts going off the deep end thinking she can do Roast material, when she cant. It delved farther into getting Liberal jabs at someone, anyone in the Trump Administration. As she was walking off stage she screamed "and Flint still doesnt have clean water!" Yeah? And what is Michigan doing about it? Why is it the Federal Government's responsibility? Last I knew, it was Michigan's job.

james daily said...

Politics are sort of dull right now but there is good news: Pelosi says she will be speaker when the demorats retake the house. Air Pelosi will be back in business so hitch a ride Stilt, they have top shelf booze on that tax payer plane. Oh, yea, I almost did not recognize the Chianti bottle without candle wax and a short candle.

TrickyRicky said...

I have to admit the Chianti bottle made me feel vaguely disturbed. Like something from the cover art on Over-nite Sensation.

Emmentaler Limburger said...

Per Wolf, someone should have quoted Uncle Albert after everything she uttered: THere's nothing like a good joke! And that was nothing like a good joke..."

Kanye West *is* a douche bag, but, as many users of such contrivances can tell you: even a douche bag has redeeming qualities. (But most are intelligent enough *not* to grouse about their lot in life at awards ceremonies; nor do they allow themselves to be recorded and distributed while destroying "Night At The Opera"...)

Oh, and Flint is reported to now have water WELL below the federal maximums for lead, so, besides being a putz, Wolf is an uninformed putz. Michigan did its thang, thank you very much. Now, there is a big liberal push to replace all the piping in everyone's houses in Flint. Something that any responsible homeowners did in the sixties, assuming they're lead. If they're not, then it's simply liberal knee-jerk superstition, witchcraft, and pandering. Last I looked, water will not "plate" lead on anything it flows over or through... (Though I am not a chemist or a metallurgist. Nor do I play one on radio or television. Or YouTube, I guess, for this modern era...)

It took me a minute to catch on, but the suicide guy. That tickled my darker side. But the farted taffeta does take the cake, so to speak...

great Unknown said...

I give up: what's with the suicide/perseverance?

Old Cannonballs said...

I meant to leave you this comment on Wednesday, but got sidetracked by the million and one curve balls life throws at me every day (except for when I'm expecting one, of course, and get a fast ball on the inside corner of the plate instead). Anyway, regarding restless face-punch syndrome or whatever the heck they called it, I wanted to give you a heads-up. I have symptoms of restless leg syndrome occasionally, and my doctor prescribed a drug that's a kissing cousin to Prozac and Xanax etc., what are whimsically referred to as serotonin re uptake inhibitors, the drugs that almost every mass shooter in the last 20 years has been on, as well as countless suicides. That stuff. I refused to take it.

John the Econ said...

Crying Wolf: Didn't hear her speech, other than a clip of her "Don't knock [abortion] until you try it, and when you do try it, really knock it. You know, you got to get that baby outta there" joke. Because nothing says comedy gold like joking about abortion.

I really couldn't decide what was the worst of that:

o There were people in the room that actually laughed at that. I mean, I understand that under the new Maoism that getting up an walking out at that point would be a career-ender, but apparently there were people in the room who either thought that was funny, or felt obligated to laugh at it. You decide which is worse.

o She actually used the word "baby" instead of the formerly de rigueur "fetus" or even safer "non-viable tissue mass". That's bold, and proof that today's Progressives have moved beyond the need to hide beyond soft-selling euphemisms. "Hey, we're all about flushing babies down the tubes, and not only are we cool with that, we actually find it amusing!"

And then they wonder why we now live in a world where kids feel entitled to shoot up schools. It's not the guns. If homicidal teenagers were exclusively shooting up conservative venues, I'm sure jokes about that like this would be totally okay with these morally bereft nihilists.

I don't care so much where people stand on abortion. But if you find this okay, then there is something seriously wrong with you.

Mueller's Questions: Now that the Russia narrative is now dead, the only reason for the Mueller probe is to annoy Trump and provide a distraction from the successes of the Trump Administration. But we've long since learned that annoying Trump does not garner the results Progressives wish, and the longer the probe goes on searching for meaning, the weaker and sillier it gets. Quite frankly, as the Democrats do I hope it's still going on during the 2020 election. It's now helping Trump more than hurting him.

If I was Trump, I'd make a big deal about wanting to be "interviewed" under the same conditions that Hillary was; No oath, no recording, room full of sycophants, etc. Make the whole charade about Democratic corruption.

Iran: Who knew this would be the case, other than everybody?

Kanye: I agree that he's "talentless", but not so much that he's an "idiot". He's just smart enough to know that he is talentless in a sea of other talentless people. If he had just stuck with the usual gangsta-rap crap, he'd just be another nobody. Most people seem to have forgotten this, but Kanye only rose to become a star over 15 years ago when started to bad-mouth Bush 43 during the war, which post 9/11 was still a somewhat bold thing to do. The media loved it because it conformed to a narrative they were at the time anxious to push, and elevated Kanye to A-list celebrity status. He's still talentless, but he relies upon outrageous behavior to maintain the media spotlight.

So now that we're living in a world where there are no more cultural taboos left, (after all, we can now openly joke about knocking unwanted babies out of our uteruses and the media elite are actually compelled to laugh about it) what does one do to be "outrageous" anymore? The only taboo left, the "official one": Agree with conservatives!

Does Kanye believe any of it? Maybe, but I doubt it. I don't think he's deep enough.
And since he's in the "outrageous" business, I refuse to take him the least bit seriously. However, if some of his followers were to accidentally ingest some of the clarity of Thomas Sowell, that would not be a bad thing. Every cascade failure starts with a single fault. If the lights switch on in but a couple thousand of his millions of fans, it could be the beginning of something big.

Colby Muenster said...

Michelle Wolf's so called comedy routine, Kathy Griffin's severed Trump head, the vitriol spewed in such copious amounts by liberals on FB, Twitter, etc.... all proof that they have run out of legitimate reasons to oust Trump. I'm almost enjoying the desperation, except that our country needs to move beyond Russia, Russia, Russia, Stormy, Stormy, Stormy, Melania's dumb, Sarah Sanders is fat and stupid, and get on to shit that matters.

A thought... If Trump actually wins the Nobel Peace Prize, won't the liberals be in a quandary!? They can't exactly decry the legitimacy of the prize because their messiah "won" it back in 2009. So I'm guessing the vitriol will grow exponentially beyond what we can even imagine. Best stock up on popcorn becaeu the Noble committee may have their hand forced, especially if the Koreans actually make nice.

Kanye West is an attention whore, but he could very well be the start of a landslide of anti-Democrat black people, even if he secretly hates Trump. More popcorn please.

Pelosi saying she will wield the gavel again in 2019... NOOOOOOO!!!! Folks, we gotta get our conservative friends to the polls in November. So many people sit out the mid-terms, but this one is really, really important. I would love nothing better than to see the Democrat's numbers even lower, and their replacements to be more like Mark Meadows, and less like Paul Ryan.

@Stilton,
We'd like to hear your progress beating the gut bug. Are you back eating solid food and getting to have an occasional tipple?

Regnad Kcin said...

So, what's up with Ms. Wolf ? We have thousands of comedians out of work and she's trying to be funny ? What a sad statement on our brave new world.......

John the Econ said...

@Colby Muenster, they never had legitimate reasons. And that the best they can do is front vitriolic harpies like Griffin and Wolf to make their point reaffirms that. Beyond their argument that Trump is a blow-hard and a pig (which everyone including Trump's supporters agree on) they have nothing. That's gotta hurt.

Nobel Peace Prize for Trump: Not going to happen. Ever. For decades now, the Nobel Peace Prize has been nothing more than an expression of failed European Progressive wet dreams. Reagan certainly deserved one, and yet nobody expected that he'd actually get one. In fact if anything, that Trump has been successful at something generations of previous Progressive leaders have utterly failed at actually makes him less eligible for one. They'll give one to Kim Jong Un, Assad and Putin before they consider Trump for one.

Stilton Jarlsberg said...

@AmyH- You're quite right that Wolf was out of her depth here. I actually don't mind a little casual obscenity in a comedy act if said act is funny. But this wasn't. Even more egregious is the fact that she used shocking language as if that's all a punchline needs: just suddenly say something wildly offensive. No. She probably peaked when writing jokes for others behind the scenes. She clearly doesn't have the ability to tell her good material from the bad, nor the skill to deliver either one.

@James Daily- All I can say about Pelosi is "please, God, no." Regarding the illustration, when you insert the so-called "short candle" in the bottle neck, you end up with a litter of little chianti bottles about 8 weeks later. That's true. You can look it up.

@TrickyRicky- Every artist strives to invoke an emotional response for the audience. In this case, I'll take "vaguely disturbed."

@Emmentaler Limburger- Good points throughout. Well played, sir.

@great Unknown- Let me be the first to admit that some of my punchlines are unlikely to make sense to anyone other than myself, because I tend to see the world in a very odd way.

In this case, the "suicide cartoon" shows a meat grinder that's been used...and a disembodied hand on the crank. To me, that said that a guy had committed suicide by running himself through a meat grinder, and had kept grinding until the only thing remaining was his hand.

And this is the head I live in (grin).

@Old Cannonballs- For what it's worth, I've been on Prozac for years and haven't gone on any killing sprees. As far as anyone knows. For that matter, I'm also on a SECOND antidepressant (which may actually be the cause of my odd nighttime movements - we're going to check that out). In any case, I'm unlikely to be prescribed yet another SSRI.

@John the Econ- Regarding Wolf, her "joke" about abortion was so offensive that I almost wondered if it wasn't actually a subversive pro-life statement. Sadly, the rest of her routine suggests that this isn't the case.

I have a long-held theory about why people laugh at unfunny stuff, as we saw on display here. I think a lot of people have been programmed to recognize the geometrical set-up for a joke, then laugh reflexively when they identify the "punchline" whether it's actually funny or not. It's part of the social compact, and even more so at group events where people become more demonstrative. Especially when there's free liquor.

Regarding Mueller's questions, there clearly was no actual Russian collusion or really even any significant meddling by the Russians. The whole investigation at this point is to try to demonize Trump for his unhappiness at the ridiculousness of Comey's dealings. And I agree- the ONLY way Trump should testify is if he gets the Hillary treatment: no oath, no recordings, no transcripts, and his whole team sitting there with him. And, oh yeah, a letter of exoneration from Mueller before Trump testifies.

Regarding Iran, I'm just thinking of the many, many cartoons I did pointing out what a sham this thing was from the beginning - and I'm no rocket scientist. For what it's worth, I don't think Barry was ever fooled - he WANTED a nuclear Iran to basically rule the Middle East. The rat bastard.

And great observations about Kanye. The first time I ever heard of that numb-nut was when he proclaimed that George W Bush hated black people. He's been dead to me ever since.

Stilton Jarlsberg said...

@Colby Muenster- You're right; the Left isn't really even trying to attack Trump on substance anymore, but continues to attack on the simple grounds that they HATE him (and by extension, us). And I'd love to see Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize (even though it's been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited) just to see liberal heads explode.

Regarding the midterms, they're going to be almost terrifyingly important. If the Dems get the numbers to impeach Trump, they will. And that could be a bridge too far for a lot of Americans.

And since you asked for a Stilton Health Update, I'm glad to say that the diverticulitis has passed, I'm ramping my way up into actual foods now, and yesterday I enjoyed my first sip of bad scotch in about two weeks. I also enjoyed the 70 or 80 sips which followed thereafter. Regarding my flailing limb condition, it might be related to one of my meds, but I'm going to have to see a neurologist to get to the bottom of things. In the meanwhile, I've had uninterrupted sleep for the past several days (though the video shows I'm still moving, though less dramatically). Could be because I've been able to get back on my magnesium supplement. Who knows?

@Regnad Kcin- Nobody works harder than a "clean" comedian. In most (but not all) cases, comedians go for shock only when they don't have the skill to create or deliver an actual joke. Such is certainly the case when it comes to Ms. Wolf.

Regnad Kcin said...

@ Stilton J. - One of my fave "clean" guys is Utah Phillips. Totally funny without the F-Bombs that so many talentless hacks consider mandatory in their performances. His story about "Moose Turd Pie" can be found on youtube in one form or another. PG-13. Grown up humor with the wit that's so lacking nowadays. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.........

mamafrog said...

@Regnad Kcin I can't believe somebody else knows that joke!! I heard it the first time at a show at college, in the very early 70's. The group who was opening for the first group did that one. I thought I was going to roll off my chair laughing at it and told it for many years to come. My father and I had the same rude sense of humor and he really enjoyed it too when I took it back to him. Many good memories from that one.

John the Econ said...

"...I almost wondered if it wasn't actually a subversive pro-life statement.

Interesting thought, and not-contrary to my personal "counterinsurgency campaign" where I not only agree with Progressives on various positions, but then extend them to their ultimate conclusions. (For example, I'll argue that since Progressives already call me a literal "Nazi", then there's no reason I shouldn't agree with them on abortion since it primarily dispenses with poor and minority babies) But I'll have to agree that that the rest of her routine suggests conformity.

"...a lot of people have been programmed to recognize the geometrical set-up for a joke, then laugh reflexively when they identify the "punchline" whether it's actually funny or not.

I'd agree with that, which just makes this all the worse; A room filled with our supposed elite thought leaders are little more than stimulus-reactive amoebas. They don't really think much about what they're hearing. They just react properly. Totally explains their coverage of Trump.

Mueller: Agreed. Except that I hope Mueller keeps this ride going, straight through into 2025.

Iran: It's as though Obama wanted the cold war back, except the east would be run by the mullahs instead of Soviet-Marxists and it would be a lot less cold. That would be his real enduring legacy.

Kanye: I respect him for his ability to manipulate the pop-media for his own interests. Beyond that, he's an ass. I have more scorn for the people who think he's brilliant.

Glad you're feeling better.

Utah Phillips: Classic comedy! In fact, Mrs. Econ & I frequently use "Moose Turd Pie" as a metaphor in our marriage; It's our polite code with each other for "If you don't like the way I am doing something, you are more than welcome to take over that task yourself". It's headed off a lot of conflict over the decades.

Colby Muenster said...

And Jim Gaffigan!