Said Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, quoted in "'Twain hated bullies.' Conan O'Brien receives Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center" (NPR).
I'd love to hear a lecture demonstrating — with lots of quotes — Mark Twain's hatred of bullies. I have a Kindle copy of "The Complete Works of Mark Twain" (only 99¢ at Amazon!), so I can easily do my own search, though it's hard to do a search for the word "bully," since many of the occurrences are in things like "Bully for the lion!" — shouted by "young ruffians" during a tour of the Coliseum in "Innocents Abroad" — an archaic usage.
But how can you delve into Twain and his times when you've got Trump... and your "shame" for showing up in what was once an arts paradise and is now the humbled plaything of that garish clod who is remaking everything in his own horribly orange image?
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The Kennedy Center redone in gold would be a subtle rebuke.
On the second night of Conan’s original show, he came on stage, looked around, and ran off the stage in what was supposed to be panic. I laughed. I don’t remember ever laughing at anything else he has ever done. I can read Twain and laugh at pretty much every page.
Moscow audiences know when to applaud and when not to applaud for classical pieces, which at least shows classical literacy.
I don't remember ever laughing at Twain. The good stuff must be cliches already and the not so good stuff is, well, not so good.
Ambrose Bierce had good lines but again it's not laughter that you get but sort of an insight.
To get laughter you need three of the following
Clever: "You recognize clever when you see it. It's just combining things that people didn't think you were going to combine, but yet you somehow made it work."
Naughty: "Naughty is usually just sex or bathroom jokes."
Bizarre: "Bizarre just means two things out of place."
Cruel: "Cruelty is a staple in humor. Cruel just means something bad happened to somebody or you said something unkind to somebody. You know cruel when you see it."
Cute: "Cute is usually just kids and animals."
Recognizable: "Humor usually requires that you recognize something about the subject of the joke being like your experience or like yourself. It's either like somebody you know, like you, but has to be familiar. Something you recognize."
Nobody who has read the final chapters of Huckleberry Finn, where Tom Sawyer bullies both Jim and Huck, when Tom knows full well that Jim had been freed by the Widow Douglas, but withheld that knowledge to take the opportunity to psychologically torture the pair, can really believe that Twain hated bullies.
Honestly, if Tom had just told Huck about Jim being freed when they first encountered each other, it would have been a perfect novel, maybe the greatest American novel of all time, I am including Moby Dick in that, but as I understand it, during the 19th century, novels were often sold as subscriptions, and often the people selling the novels would promise a certain length that the writer then was obligated to live up to, so Twain felt he had to add chapters when he finished the actual story, so he wrote those regrettable "comic" chapters at the end.
lol... Bully for you! is an "archaic" usage? Maybe to you. That's still regularly used in everyday speech out here, ann. Come out of the tower and listen to how people speak... The bully pulpit is still common usage too.
Maybe, READ the books you buy? Don't just "search" them to confirm what you're already thinking? Can old dogs still learn, or do you just preach like your Mather ancestors?
Have a good day. Try growing your brain today? Good luck. No shrooming or wine drinking! ;-)
'Trump brutally roasted', one Orange man to another. It's NPR, so you know they're highly biased in the misinterpretation of things they have no aptitude for (Just listen to any of their 'humor' shows).
Must have been hilarious. Almost 4 minutes to replay 2 not very good one liners. How bad was the rest of it?
Hating Trump jumped the shark. It's lame.
But the real reason - all the grifters in DC want their tax payer dollars flowing. into their pockets.
Paid people like Connan - are here to help the corrupt left.
Twain was a snobby Connecticut brahmin.
Twain had such a knowledge of how to make people laugh that it was considered a wonder at the time. He was an expert at it. One of his friends attended one of his "lectures" and allowed how if he could have the power over audiences that Twain commanded, he wouldn't do anything else.
Twain believed that if you could start the laughter by making the audience uncomfortable, and so elicit some nervous laughter, then he had the audience in his control and they were powerless.
He often lectured in churches, since they had the space for his audiences, but he had a problem that the devout audiences of the time felt it wrong to laugh in church. He would come out to the center of the stage or the lectern, or whatever, and stare at the audience while not saying a word, eventually the audience would break down and start to titter nervously, and then he had them like a snake under his boot. They were helpless and he made them laugh uproariously the rest of the evening.
There were some laugh out lout funny bits in Innocents Abroad, BTW.
I’m not persuaded by their Twain scripture. The devil can quote scripture, too…
Making sport of Trump, so avante-garde, so creative, so fearless. Into the valley of death charged the 600, fortified with chardonnay, brandishing their overpowering self-esteem. Onlookers trembled.
A lot of Americans think the government finally "deserves" their support under Trump.
The level of comedy is awkwardly derivative pandering. It's fitting because I have never thought Conan or his show was funny.
It's always "not our kind, dear."
No jokes about Conan’s prefabricated hair, akin to Trump’s?
"You ill-featured vat of septic phalanger jakes"
Well, that’s certainly a creative string of words! I’m not sure if I should be offended or impressed by your linguistic flair. Care to elaborate, or was that just a burst of poetic inspiration?
"Well," is programmed in.
From Roughing It: The other man was a stalwart ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt and a bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and always suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a disappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an opportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with whisky, and said: "I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection—" Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansas rose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he: "Wha-what do you know a—about Pennsylvania? Answer me that. Wha—what do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?" "I was only goin' to say—" "You was only goin' to say. You was! You was only goin' to say—what was you goin' to say? That's it! That's what I want to know. I want to know wha—what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you're makin' yourself so d—-d free. Answer me that!" "Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me—" "Who's a henderin' you? Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!—don't you do it. Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and cussin' and goin' on like a lunatic—don't you do it. 'Coz I won't stand it. If fight's what you want, out with it! I'm your man! Out with it!" Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly: "Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don't give a man no chance. I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have an election next week—that was all—that was everything I was goin' to say—I wish I may never stir if it wasn't." "Well then why d'n't you say it? What did you come swellin' around that way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?" "Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas—I just—" "I'm a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar's ghost—"
Success! On my screen Conan's face and ginger locks appear far more orange than orange man.
Conan is a better guitar player than he is a comedian. But one is harder than the other to make money.
Twain hated bullies
Asserted without evidence.
Is it bing a bully to stand up to people who are using their power to harm the interests of American workers? Or does it just seem like bullying to those people who benefit from these economic policies.
Is it bullying to keep scabs out of a factory? I guess that the scabs think so, and so do the factory owners, but is it really bullying? How are millions of migrants who are expressly imported to fight inflation, "break the wage price spiral" as Biden's people put it, any different than scabs. Scabs cross lines, like the border is a line, to take jobs from people who want higher wages.
A "bully" is a person who stands up for the side you are oppressing, I guess.
When are the morons going to get it? Trump is hip. Trump is the super intellect. He’s leaving you all in the dust, lefties. You’re just disgracing yourselves with your ignorance.
Contrary to O'brien's comedy writers - Twain wasn't particularly "supicious" of populism. He was against Imperialism, and out-of-control greed, captialism - which is exactly what the populist party and W.J. Bryan were against.
But Twain wasn't a "rebel" in any real way. He went along with whatever the mainstream thought was. He fought briefly for the Confederacy in 1861, then decided he didn't like being shot at, and went out West during the rest of the Civil war.
After the war, he adopted the views of the Eastern Establishment and started writing books attacking racism and Slavery. If you didn't know his personal history, you'd think he fought in the Union Army.
He tried to make a lot of money as a book publisher, and lost his shirt. This despite the commerical success of Grant's Memoirs.
Just before he died he was writing articles about how wonderful the Jews were, and no doubt would have supported the Balfour Declaration and our war against Germany in 1917.
The capacity for our Uniparty establishment to applaud the same thing, and laugh at the same jokes, over and over and over and over again, is truly amazing. Funny how comedians used to be praised for being "edgy" and "Subversive" are now being praised for celebrating the rich and the conformity.
But then it was never about "challenging people's beliefs" - that was just boob bait. The real purpose was to push Leftism. Now that the Left is in power, "the comfortable" don't need to be afflicted, they need even more "Comfort".
The nobility of America would snore through the Sermon on the Mount; but they'll labor like scholars to show their disdain for the devil-de-jour.
Conan starting to shrink a bit. Still tall but not the young guy.
All the left's awards lately seem to be variants of the "Moby Orange Prize," awarded for the best effort (so far) to harpoon the mighty Moby. They laugh. They cry. They kiss 4 years of graft goodbye. But they applaud the effort.
Anybody who dislikes populism dislikes democracy at its core. Those are the real bullies. The ones who feel that the lumpenproletariat needs to be kept in its place, or, you know, the price of maids, landscaping help, and stablehands for your polo ponies is going to go up! Not to mention wages at your factories, and if you don't keep bringing in people, the rents in your apartment buildings are not going to rise. If you stand up for these low class working people, you are a "bully."
BTW, Clemens married into a family in Elmira, NY, not exactly a center of the Eastern establishment, but it was a center of abolitionist thinking, before the Civil War. Harriet Beecher Stowe's uncle was a preacher there, for one thing. The Beecher name is well remembered in Elmira. Twain did a lot of his best work there, he liked to work there because nobody bothered him in that town. There is one story of when Rudyard Kipling tracked him down to his writing lair to interview him for the London Times, but mostly it was just the locals. Kipling wrote that Twain entertained him by playing "negro spirituals" that Twain had learned in childhood, when the practice was that the white children of slave owners and enslaved children played together until a certain age, when the enslaved children were put to work. He tells a story in his autobiography about how a former slave, who was working as a junk dealer, saved his daughter's life when her wagon broke free on a steep road on a hill, and he risked his own life to stop the wagon. Twain kept trying to reward him for this act of heroism, and he kept giving the money way to this relative or that. Nobody could write as he did about slavery and about the black people he knew personally if they were just putting on a show for elite establishment types.
Twain defined an era in America. As a young kid I got more pure enjoyment from his work than anything else. It troubles me how many make facile claims as to his unsuitability. If you read him broadly you will find a great American pageant. To each his own.
I love Twain's writing, read every bit of it I could lay hands on when I was a teenager, but considering his avoidance of service in the Civil War and coming out as an abolitionist, after abolition had been accomplished, he never struck me as a model of courage.
I lost all respect for the Mark Twain Prize when they gave it to Tina Fey, essentially for her Sarah Palin impersonation. I assumed the award was some cherished national tradition, but it's barely older than this century and it's been largely a Boomer self-congratulatory thing. Still, early honorees like Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, and Bob Newhart had long and distinguished careers compared to Fey's.
Did any of the honorees have "an impact on American society in ways similar to" Mark Twain's? That's something to ponder. There's the difference in media. The honorees all come from film, TV, stand-up and (Neil Simon) the theatre, which don't have the lasting power that great fiction had. On the other hand, fiction doesn't matter as much now as the performing arts do.
With the exception of George Carlin, and maybe Jon Stewart none of them was noted as a social critic. Kurt Vonnegut would have wanted the award and probably was qualified for it (whatever one thinks of him) but never got it. Joseph Heller didn't live long enough to win it.
For all the late-night comedy show hosts on the list, Johnny Carson never got the award. But maybe we should be grateful that Colbert and Kimmel having won it yet.
he was pretty young in that era, In the Golden Era, he became a cynic, by the time of the Spanish American war a nihilist,
Yeah, Twain out against slavery after the war. It was a brave stance at the time.
I don't really care about Twain and black people. Its probably the least interesting thing about him. But to those in the 21st century, especially white people, its incredibly important. Reading wikipedia you'd think the two most important characterist of every white person before 1965 was (1) Did they love Jews enough and (2) were they "racist"?
Lazarus, yes, for me too the Tina Fey award was the end. Just like Obama's Nobel prize.
Conan O'Brien? When Carson was overlooked?
according to the wiki, he volunteered for a confederate unit for two weeks, then wrangled a gig in Nevada, as far from the Front lines as you could imagine,
Interesting side note ... Lloyd Billingsley posted today on Steve Hayward's "Political Questions" SubStack about the Candian reaction to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's jokes about Canada (They went over about as well as Trump's "51st State" joke did)
I liked Twain growing up. I'd seen movies of his books. So I ordered "The Mysterious Stranger" from the Scholastic Book Service. What a creepy downer of a book. Even as an adult, it's chilling.
"Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane—like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!... [T]here is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
because free will, also there is the whole Adam and the garden thing,
Sounds like Twain was dreaming of the Matrix, glad I skipped that offering,
@Lazarus
Twain was the original internet atheist.
The new Kennedy Center Chair talked about Kennedy Center Honors, complaining about past honorees, predicting they will skew more conservative during his term, and suggesting he hist to ensure their success. Not seen any comment from him on the Mark Twain Award, also a big money maker for the Center, to streamed on Netflix under current contract.
"TE Times Entertainment"? A 240-year-old newspaper has turned itself into Entertaiment Tonight (ET)? What hath Rupert wrought?
if there was an internet back then, he would have been on it,
I didn't watch much Conan, but Triumph was by far the best part.
I just go with the assumption that all these celebrity events are mainly leftest therapy sessions. I haven’t been wrong yet.
Ann, is that your actual opinion, that Trump is remaking a once noble place into his own orange image? If so, shame. I loved that the acts that cancelled because of his involvement were ones that I would never ever pay money to see, but Riverdance (which we enjoyed immensely) honored their obligation
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