Showing posts with label joke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joke. Show all posts

Thursday, April 10, 2014

The Joke's on #CancelColbert Movement as Comedian Gets Late Night Show on CBS

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CBS announced today that Stephen Colbert is going to take over the show Late Night when David Letterman retires next year. This is great news for comedy fans, but bad news for other late-night comedians who lost out including Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, and Chelsea Handler (if you think she's funny, that is). Still, Colbert is what CBS needs to beat Jimmy Fallon of NBC's Tonight Show in the ratings war, and David Letterman had mentioned Colbert last week as a possible successor.

But for Twitter users, what's so satisfying about Colbert going on to a more high-profile job with an even bigger audience is that just a week or so ago a misunderstood joke about a minority group led to a controversial hashtag #CancelColbert. The hashtag caused a twitterstorm for days, and has even been immortalized at Know Your Meme and pages on Storify Here and Here and those are just two of many. (My blog was like Storify before it was cool, LOL)

More background on that below - scroll down.

Today when CBS announced that Colbert would take over Late Night, much Schadenfreude was had by tweeps poking fun at the fact that the hashtag did indeed work - his show on Comedy Central will be cancelled, but not because they tweeted, only because he is getting a plum-job. Oh, and Colbert was never a bigot in the first place but only playing one on TV.

First the announcement about Late Night:

From CBS News
CBS President and CEO Les Moonves said after seriously considering about a dozen candidates, it became obvious that Colbert was the best choice.
“We said, ‘my God, there’s one guy who just stands out to replace David who is original, who’s smart, who’s funny, who fits with who we are, and it was Stephen Colbert,’” Moonves told CBS Radio national correspondent Dan Raviv.
Colbert said he never dreamed he would follow in Letterman’s footsteps.
“I’m thrilled and grateful that CBS chose me,” he said in a statement. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to grind a gap in my front teeth.”

From David Letterman:
Letterman released this statement: “Stephen has always been a real friend to me. I’m very excited for him, and I’m flattered that CBS chose him. I also happen to know they wanted another guy with glasses.”

What some people have apparently missed over the years is that Colbert isn't himself on Comedy Central, but playing a parody of a Conservative Pundit straight off of Fox News. Chris Hayes referred to it on MSNBC as Colbert's "O'Reilly Act" referring to conservative Bill O'Reilly of Fox. That's why he has sometimes confused the lesser-light Republicans who have been on his show as he seemed to agree with them even while mocking the GOP. But this isn't rocket science, and most people who have a sense of humor got the joke to begin with, even on the Right.

The Colbert Persona, described by New York Times in 2012 when Colbert was making a fake run in the Republican Primary (yes, that was part of the schtick):
The Colbert character, whose taped descent, godlike, from the empyrean while clutching an American flag begins every show, was originally intended as a takeoff on Fox News figures like Sean Hannity and especially Bill O’Reilly. Though Colbert doesn’t much resemble O’Reilly physically, the persona has mastered some of O’Reilly’s pen-wielding, hand-stabbing gestures, and his credentials as a right-wing blowhard are beyond doubt. He thinks that gays will go to hell, that a flaming moat should be built around America to keep out immigrants and that Christianity is, or ought to be, the official national religion. He believes not in truth but in “truthiness,” a term of his own invention.
. . . The Colbert on-screen persona is actually less rigid than it used to be, and Colbert can dial it up or down as he chooses. There is now more of a winking quality to the act, a sense that we’re all in on the joke.

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Okay, so that last part has been lost on some self-absorbed people, including Anti-Bigot Suey Park, an Asian-American woman living in Chicago.

Here's that part of the saga, which started as Colbert made a joke about Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. To make his point, Colbert made a joke about Asian-Americans, using one of the trigger words "Oriental" which can drive many Asian activists right out of their minds (and it worked!)

From Dave Weigel on Slate:
Stephen Colbert made sport of Washington football team owner Dan Snyder and his plan to undercut criticism of the team name by founding an organization for the uplift of "original Americans." Colbert ran though all the reasons why this was funny, then called back to a skit from one of the show's first episodes, way back from the fall of 2005—a joke about the host being caught on a "live feed" playing a racist Asian stereotype (Ching Chong Ding Dong, from Guanduong), then not understanding why it was racist. Colbert would make amends with his new "Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever."
. . . the official Twitter account of The Colbert Report tweeted a short version of the joke: "I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." Bad move. This attracted the ire of a 23-year-old freelance writer and hashtag activist named Suey Park, who gained prominence last year with the #NotYourAsianSidekick micromovement.

As he says, Suey Park is a "hashtag activist" so she invented one, and sent the Twitterverse into a frenzy:



About half of Twitter got behind Suey Park, cheering her on as a hero taking on a bully, and confused people from both the Right and the Left jumped on the Angry Asian train with vitriol directed at Colbert. The Conservatives and Libertarians who use hashtag #tcot jumped on the bandwagon because they hate his biting satire towards the GOP - they get the joke! They twisted Park's hashtag to attack the Left, thanks to Suey Park's overreaction.









Suey Park was so naive she allied herself with Queen of Hate Michelle Malkin, also Asian-American but a rabid Fox News contributor who hates every other group on the planet. Malkin was more than happy to help Park lead the charge against Colbert.





Some people missed the point of both the Hashtag and the Uproar:



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Meanwhile, the rest of Twitter
mocked the nonsense of it all:











Bob Cesca of The Daily Banter summed up what happened in "When Hashtag Activism Totally Lost Its Narrative" :
In a recent interview, Colbert stated quite clearly that his role isn’t to prescribe solutions to problems, but instead to mock through exaggeration and caricaturization the people who are responsible for the problems. It’s difficult to think of another performer working in television today who’s been more effective at this task.
Now, sure, I concede that the name “Ching-Chong Ding-Dong” is in and of itself offensive. But here’s the thing: it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be shocking in order to underscore how shocking it is, in Colbert’s view (the man’s, not the character’s), that “Redskins” is seriously the name of a professional football team in 2014. In other words, it was a spot-on comment about the shocking offensiveness of the word “redskins.” If his satirical charity wasn’t at all offensive, how could it ever adequately comment upon the offensiveness of “Redskins?”

Suey Park tried to explain that she sees Colbert as "The White Oppressor":

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An interview the next day with Salon:
A lot of white America and so-called liberal people of color, along with conservatives, ask, “Do I understand context?” And that’s part of wanting to completely humanize the oppressor.
To see the white man as always reasonable, always pure, always deliberate, always complex and always innocent. And to see the woman of color as literal. Both my intent behind the hashtag and in my [unintelligible] distance, is always about forcing an apology on me for not understanding their context when, in reality, they misunderstood us when they made us a punch line again. So it’s always this logic of how can we understand whiteness better, and that’s never been my politics. I’ve always been about occupying the margins and strengthening the margins and what that means is that, for a long time, whiteness has also occupied the margins. Like, people of color get in circles with no white people in the room and we see that whiteness still operates. So I think it’s kind of a shock for America that whiteness has dominant society already, it also seeps into the margins. What happens the one time when the margins seep into the whiteness and we encroach on their space? It’s like the sky is falling.
. . . anything I say as a joke or in all seriousness gets dismissed. I must apologize, I must X, Y, Z. I will get rape and death threats for not thinking Colbert is funny, or for trying to crack my own jokes about race. And I think that’s unfair, cause in the same way he thinks Orientalism is backward and old, but he still uses it to make a point. For every time he does that, it should be more than justifiable for me to actually target the system of structural advantage that is whiteness and to be able to make jokes about white supremacists, which I do all the time in my work. I always paint my white characters to be singular, to be ignorant...
. . . Colbert did when he chose to ruin an opportunity to make a point about racism in America by using more racism. So he’s the one that destroyed an opportunity to shed light on Dan Snyder and the Redskins the moment that he chose to use Orientalism and a foreign accent to make his point. And so, I think in that sense, it’s Colbert that lacks context. It’s Colbert that doesn’t realize how he’s using racism as a vehicle to end racism, which is really just circular logic and doesn’t lead to an end destination of liberation, so I think if you are going to do it, you can’t draw parallels. Orientalism and genocide are actually not relative or comparable in social location.



Suey Park also did an interview on HuffPost Live, and that turned out badly too, via WaPo:
Fireworks entered the picture when Park found problems with how Zepps was framing the issue of satire and racism: “I feel like it’s incredibly patronizing for you to paint these questions this way, especially as a white man. I don’t expect you to be able to understand what people of color are actually seeing with regard to #CancelColbert. He has a history of making jokes…”

Interrupting a touch, Zepps responded that being a white man doesn’t keep him from “being able to think.”
This wasn’t headed in a good direction. “Well, white men definitely feel like they’re entitled to talk over me,” said Park. “They definitely feel like they’re entitled to kind of minimalize my experiences…”

Zepps: “No one’s minimalizing your experiences, no one’s minimalizing your right to have an opinion,” he said, before amping up the scorn: “It’s just a stupid opinion.”
Park: “You just called my opinion stupid, you just called my opinion stupid. That’s incredibly unproductive. And I don’t think I’m going to enact the labor of explaining to you why it’s incredibly offensive and patronizing.”











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Now, here's the "Revenge is Sweet" part of the saga that happened today as Colbert was being named the heir apparent to Letterman, and people rushed to point out the irony to Suey Park and other #CancelColbert aficionados in case they didn't get the joke again, LOL:













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Thursday, August 15, 2013

GOP ~ We Are All Rodeo Clowns

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Previous Related Post:
GOP Rebranding: Racist Rogues and Rodeo Clowns

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 Video of the Missouri Rodeo Clown Taunting Obama

"Oh boy, Obama - they're comin' for you this time!
We're gonna smoke Obama ... Obama they're coming for you this time. Don't you move, he's gonna getcha, getcha, getcha, getcha!"




 Glenn Beck: The Left is "Terrified" of Clowns, and therefore he declares himself one

Look at what is happening to the Rodeo Clown. . . . Let me tell you something, Rodeos - The Rodeo Association - if you go down this road, you will forever damage rodeos. You'll shut them down. Because who the hell is going to your rodeos? Who's going? It's not a bunch of people who are politically correct. They're, they're clear-thinking, common sense farmers, cowboys, straight-ahead Americans. That's who's going. You had one stupid letter that showed up on Daily Kos. Now, now hang on just a second. Who's reading that? Leftists.
Now why would you go target the Rodeo Clown? Why would you destroy him? And why is the NAACP saying that there should be an investigation by the Secret Service and the DOJ on that Rodeo Clown?
It's a Rodeo Clown, at a State Fair, wearing a stupid mask? What's goin' on? I'll tell you what's goin' on. They're terrified.
They have GOT to shut you up. They have got to get you so afraid that you will not say anything, that you will continue to sit down. They are terrified. They know it's about to fall apart. They know this thing is falling apart. That's why they're going after the Rodeo Clown. They're freaking out! Good.
Advance America! Advance! Don't you dare retreat. Don't you dare sit down.
Today I declare myself Officially a Rodeo Clown.
Today I Officially Declare that We are ALL Rodeo Clowns.



Peggy Noonan: Obama Needs to be "Classier" than the Rodeo Clown That Pretended to Have him Gored by a Bull with a Cattle Prod up his Butt

Let me suggest a classy Obama move that might go over well. From his Vineyard vacation spot he should have the press office issue a release saying his reaction to finding out a rodeo clown was rudely spoofing him, was, ‘So what?’ Say he loves free speech, including inevitably derision directed at him, and he does not wish for the Missouri state fair to fire the guy, and hopes those politicians (unctuously, excessively, embarrassingly) damning the clown and the crowd would pipe down and relax. This would be graceful and nice, wouldn’t it?
~ Peggy Noonan in Wall Street Journal 


Dana Loesch: Firing Racist Clowns is Unfair Because Free Speech and Benghazi


Is the outrage because the Missouri State Fair receives taxpayer dollars? I’m not sure if the others that have mocked presidents in the past accept subsidies, but since when are Democrats concerned about wasting taxpayer dollars? They just wasted mounds of it targeting political opponents through the IRS. They’re buying drones to monitor us in violation of the Fourth Amendment. They allocated funds to send arms overseas and they sent arms across the border to Mexico. Sure, if they’re seeing the light, yes, cut the fair’s funding. I’m not sure why they’re still receiving it in this economy (or any, really). But if they’re attempting to argue that free speech is restricted if one receives federal funding, progressives tie their own hands with policy.
~ Dana Loesch on Red State


Steve Stockman, R-Texas: We Need More Racist Clown Humor in Texas, YeeHaw!

“Liberals want to bronco bust dissent. But Texans value speech, even if its speech they don’t agree with. From Molly Ivins to Louie Gohmert and every opinion between Texans value free and open political speech. I’m sure any rodeo in Texas would be proud to have performers.
Disagreeing with speech is one thing. Banning it and ordering citizens into reeducation classes for mocking a liberal leader is another. Liberals have targeted this man for personal destruction to create a climate of fear.
The liberal reaction is straight out of Alinsky. They want to crush dissent by isolating and polarizing anyone who questions Obama, even if it’s a rodeo clown with a harmless gag. The idea to create a state of fear and make people afraid to trivialize Obama. No one tried to personally destroy the rodeo clown who wore a George H.W. Bush mask.
~ Congressman Steve Stockman R-TX, inviting the banned Missouri Clown to Texas


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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Treasury Rejects Coin Solution to Debt Ceiling Conundrum

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Related Posts:
A Coin As Big as 89 Whales
White House Plays Coy on Minting Coin
Obama Should Mint Coin to Avoid Debt

From Ezra Klein on Washington Post
The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.
That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.

Official White House Statement on Huff Post
There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default," said Press Secretary Jay Carney. "When Congressional Republicans played politics with this issue last time putting us at the edge of default, it was a blow to our economic recovery, causing our nation to be downgraded. The President and the American people won't tolerate Congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy. Congress needs to do its job.

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With this, the White House has now ruled out the two best options for preventing a default in the event that the House GOP refused to life the debt ceiling. The White House has been quite adamant that the other alternative (invoking the 14th Amendment) is not acceptable.
So now the stakes are high, as The White House has refused to negotiate with the GOP on a debt ceiling hike.
What bargaining chips does The White House hold? Unclear.
~ Joe Weisenthal on Business Insider

. . . the last debt ceiling confrontation crept up on the White House because Obama refused to believe that Republicans would actually threaten to provoke default. Is the WH being realistic this time, or does it still rely on the sanity of crazies?
The thing is, the coin option sounds silly, but it clearly obeys the letter of the law. As far as I can tell, none of the other options — other than outright surrender — has the same virtue.
. . . And default in any of these senses would risk a huge collapse of confidence.
So is there a plan, or will it just be another case of tough talk followed by a tail-between-the-legs retreat?
~ Economist Paul Krugman on NYT

















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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Obama Should "Mint the Coin" to Avoid Debt Crisis

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Related Posts:
A Coin As Big as 89 Whales
White House Plays Coy on Minting Coin


Update: Nine Faces of the Platinum Coin from Talking Points Memo

...A stalwart band of merrymakers are finding a lot of fun Monday in the concept of a giant platinum coin.
~ Denny Gulino, MNI Financial News

From Joe Weisenthal on Business Insider
So where does the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin fit in?
In the section of the law which specifically relates to the Treasury's ability to create money (coins and bills) section K says this:
(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.
In other words, when it comes to platinum coins, the Secretary (who is currently Tim Geithner) has discretion on the designs, specifications, quantities, and denominations of platinum coinage.
So let's say, Tim Geithner decided to stamp out a $1 trillion coin. What does that accomplish?
The idea is that after it was created, Geithner could walk it over to the Federal Reserve, and deposit it in the Treasury's bank account. Then the Treasury, rather than having to issue new debt (because remember, Congress hasn't raised the limit) can make sure its checks clear against this money.
Voila, crisis averted!



Funny Money
Imagine sitting around the kitchen table, trying to figure out how you're going to pay off that next-generation HDTV you just bought.
Then someone has an idea. Brush off one of the old checker pieces in the attic, assign it a value of, say, $2,000 -- and use that newly minted "coin" to pay the credit card.
~ Fox News

I don't think there's even a remote chance that any court in the country would uphold a Treasury reading of this law that used it as a pretense for minting a $1 trillion coin.
. . . This whole notion is the kind of thing that Herman Cain would come up with. It's time to stop treating it seriously.
~ Kevin Drum on Mother Jones

. . . There is a Twitter hashtag – #mintthecoin – and a wan, spindly White House petition created on January 3 that needs around 25,000 signatures and currently has just under 2,000, which makes it resemble the winsomely pathetic Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
. . . This is an elegant solution – if you are a cartoon villain given to sitting in a vast underground bunker and innovating plans for world domination while petting a white cat. It makes less sense for real mortals. In fact, it has all the aspects of a group of well-financed mad scientists plotting to create a giant slingshot to avert an asteroid hurtling towards the earth.
~ Heidi Moore on Guardian UK

There’s exactly zero chance that the House Republicans, faced with the Coin Threat, will suddenly turn logical and decide that they’re not going to play political games around the debt ceiling after all. Rather, the Coin Threat is a political game, played by the other side: it’s the executive branch bringing itself down to the House Republicans’ level.
If you believe that the country is best run by grown-ups, you can’t believe in #mintthecoin, because it simply isn’t a grown-up strategy.
~ Felix Salmon on Reuters

My bill will take the coin scheme off the table by disallowing Treasury to mint platinum coins as a way to pay down the debt.
~ Congressman Greg Walden, R-Oregon, on a bill in which he wants to make it illegal to mint coins to pay the national debt























"That's silly/zany/juvenile!" This is probably true, but it's not a dispositive objection. Republican intransigence over the debt ceiling is juvenile. There is no particular reason that the president should not use a juvenile strategy in response.
The key question to ask about the platinum coin is not "is it juvenile?" but "will it work?" Minting the coin will allow the federal government to continue to meet its spending obligations despite hitting the debt ceiling. It will allow President Barack Obama to pressure Congress to repeal the debt ceiling. That -- not whether it seems silly -- is the important thing.
~ Josh Barro on Bloomberg



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Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to force America into default? Yes, absolutely. He will, after all, be faced with a choice between two alternatives: one that’s silly but benign, the other that’s equally silly but both vile and disastrous. The decision should be obvious.
. . . Enter the platinum coin. There’s a legal loophole allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination the secretary chooses. Yes, it was intended to allow commemorative collector’s items — but that’s not what the letter of the law says. And by minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling — while doing no economic harm at all.
So why not?
~ Paul Krugman

There are two possible trump cards for Obama. One is the “platinum coin” option, in which the government mints a trillion-dollar coin and uses it to pay its debts... There’s also the 14th Amendment option, which some legal observers believe empowers the President to ignore the debt ceiling.
. . . Obama appears cool to both ideas. But Scott Wagner, a former NYPD homicide detective with extensive experience negotiating hostage crises, says the President needs to at least hint at a willingness to pursue an alternative endgame. A hostage negotiator needs to persuade a hostage taker that he is totally isolated and that the negotiator is the only one who holds the key to his way out — that “deep down, he is not in control of the situation.”
Greg Sargent on Washington Post








Petition on WhiteHouse.Gov
Direct the United States Mint to make a single platinum trillion dollar coin!

With the creation and Treasury deposit of a new platinum coin with a value of $1 trillion US Dollars, we would avert the absurd-yet-imminent debt ceiling faceoff in Congress in two quick and simple steps! While this may seem like an unnecessarily extreme measure, it is no more absurd than playing political football with the US -- and global -- economy at stake.
Created: Jan 03, 2013
Issues: Economy
Learn about Petition Thresholds
Signatures needed by February 02, 2013 to reach goal of 25,000
18,882
Total signatures on this petition
6,118

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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Romney-Hood is Robin Hood in Reverse

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Obama Quips "Romney-Hood" ~ story via Politico

"The entire centerpiece" of Romney's economic plan is a $5 trillion tax cut, he said.

The president spoke of the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Romney's plan again. "It's like Robin Hood in reverse -- it's Romney-hood."

The crowd laughed and roared and whistled its approval.

"That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term as president."


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President Obama recently said the biggest regret of his first term was not telling better stories. He’s trying to make up for it now, but his stories just aren’t true. There’s only one candidate in this race who’s going to raise taxes on the American people – and that’s Barack Obama. While he’s used taxpayer dollars to grow government and reward his donors, middle-class Americans have seen fewer jobs, lower incomes, and less hope for the future. Mitt Romney has a plan for a stronger middle class – and, unlike President Obama, a record of accomplishment behind it.
~ Romney spokesman Ryan Williams
 

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From Film Industry Network
Top actors to play ‘Romney Hood’

    1 : Alan Rickman : If he can pull off an American accent it would be nice to see a role reversal of the Sheriff of Nottingham now playing the lead in Obama’s new film.
    2 : Michael Madsen : He’s got the gruff voice, the imposing charisma, and a cool, relaxed approach that could suit a cunning yet devious Romney Hood character.
    3 : Jim Carrey : He would bring an edgy, unpredictable, yet slightly megalomaniac approach to the role.
    4 : Charlie Sheen : He’s already been cast as a President this year, but Sheen could bring many angles to Romney Hood that could turn this into a comedy roast.
    5 : Tom Cruise : I think Cruise could bring back some of his Mission Impossible suave, mixed with his thuggish ‘collateral’ character.

Production details
Synopsis : ‘Romney Hood’
“The rise of the middle class has shattered the dreams of the super rich but a distant warrior emerges from an unlikely place and he will become known as Romney-Hood.”
Genre : Drama / Comedy
Production Budget : $2 million est.


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