"... that there was no room for laughter, which denoted a lack of earnestness. Self-deprecating humor, P.J.’s trademark, wasn’t allowed because it could undermine the mission. Saving the world was no laughing matter. One titter and the whole edifice could come crashing down.
Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom. A sense of humor, much less self-awareness, are not traits found in cults of personality. If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there."
Writes Christopher Buckley in "P.J. O’Rourke and the Death of Conservative Humor" (NYT).
Did you chuckle at "myrmidons of MAGAdom"? It's got a nattering-nabobs-of-nepotism air about it.
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113 comments:
Trump is a humorist. Like Don Rickles, he takes down the humorless in the opposition with a single one-liner.
Limbaugh's early self-promotion was self-deprecating humor, a larger-than-life act. He lost that later and the show dropped into just being a habit, hoping for a repeat of what he used to do.
Yoko Ono wife? Don't know the timing.
The left is funny?
I think there's more than a whiff of oikophobia involved in MAGA-hatred, since so many of Trump's followers are working class whites.
So glad to know that I should look to AOC and the Squad for my daily source of mirth and amusement.
Chris Buckley, former humorist turned establishment cheerleader, lectures us about humor.
Yeah... Did Christopher Buckley even go to a Maga rally?
"If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit"
Just about every speech by or interview with Carlson includes self-deprecating humor. Just yesterday he took on a new book about AOC that began with wit of the sort Buckley himself might have shown if he were still brave enough to skewer prog icons.
As rhh, said, Trump is a humorist, doing stand-up. Works on the stump, not so well in DC, not well at all when you have to switch to virus management.
Trump "earnest"? It is to laugh.
"If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there."
Well, yeah, I guess you would have to watch Tucker Carlson for at least a minute, maybe longer, to hear him say something hilarious. So I'm guessing this shit-eating Left Fascist media whore knows not whereof he speaks.
We went to a few local Trump/MAGA rallies in the lead up the election. Everyone there was happy compared to all of the left who were sad, angry, bitter. This clown needs to get out of the liberal bubble and talk to the rest of the country.
Nattering nabobs of negativism.
Am I first?
Was the "nattering nabobs of nepotism" line a typo, or a dig at Buckley? Because if anyone would know about nepotism, he'd be the guy.
Yeah, I thought it was off. Trump himself is doing humor a lot of the time, and I don't think his audience is grim. His haters are disgusted by his humor and his seeming to have a great time along with his crowd.
I can see feeling irked that anyone involved in political power is having fun...
I have yet to meet a hard core lefty who laughed at anything, excepting maybe at the death of El Rushbo.
Buckley obviously doesn't watch Tucker (at least I hope, for his sake, that's the explanation).
Humorlessness has a home on the right more than the left at this moment? Maybe the assertion is humor!
Did you chuckle at "myrmidons of MAGAdom"
No. Christopher tried to vault the fence and fell on his face. He should leave the funny stuff to someone more talented. Trump, for instance.
I don't know if Greg Gutfeld considers himself a conservative (probably a libertarian) but he is the funniest person on late night TV.
Buckley seems to have entered the liberal bubble which shelters people from reality.
Stephen Colbert is a master of universal humor that will hold up though the centuries, like a modern Moliere, and conservatives only say it's not funny because they are retrograde, even for the troglodytes that they are, and just live to spoil what is elevated and, in cases like Obama's the air of sublimity that permeates any proximity to his presence.
Joe Biden, has a warm and loving sense of humor -- who couldn't relate to his story of leaving the dead dog on that lady's doorstep for example -- a warm and loving sense of humor that harkens back to Will Rogers.
Basically, the effete lover of the wealth and military power that was P.J. O'Rourke is the very model of the model modern lefty Democrat, war-mongering, working class despising snobs.
Buckler’s a more pompous ass than his dad was and that’s saying something. As for Tucker not being funny, Buckley’s wallowing in the sin he’s describing: Ticker’s hilarious. Mean, sarcastic, a name-caller, juvenile but definitely funny.
Tucker laughs all the time. His whole shtick revolves around mocking the faux solemnity of characters like AOC and other absurd pols. So by throwing Carlson into his nevertrump rant, Buckley reveals his own ignorance and lack of humor. I can’t decide whether Buckley is so filled with contempt for Trump that he can’t SEE the inherent good humor he brings to the podium or if he’s still angry that the sarcastic edge of Trump’s biting humor (“low energy Jeb”) so that he’s POSING as unable to see it. Trump is truly laugh out loud funny at times and has outstanding timing. These two examples of Buckley completely undermine his premise.
The idea that Trump supporters don't have a sense of humor is, well, Sad. Fake news. I'm sorry; very fake news.
Talk about no sense of humor...https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/11/politics/enemy-of-the-people-jim-acosta-donald-trump/index.html
To see Trump's humor is heresy, so they are willfully blind.
They are the hidden reactionaries of the future. This is not their time. Neither is tomorrow. Who will be their Don Colacho?
You made me laugh, Althouse.
Tucker is hilarious. I was watching a clip a few days ago about how Dems are like teenagers. His face looked like he was 9 and it was Christmas morning. The chryon was hilarious at times: Max Boot is on the verge of an emotional breakdown and Please hand Kinziger some tissues. His roasts of Trudeau this week have been enjoyable.
Tucker wouldn't be where he is without being funny.
Tucker is actually pretty funny if you listen to him without the hate. You have to actually have a sense of humor to get humor.
Maynard said...
I don't know if Greg Gutfeld considers himself a conservative (probably a libertarian) but he is the funniest person on late night TV.
I second that!!!
Specking of a cult of personality, I remember when Buckley wrote a column announcing his vote for Comrade Obama. I'm thinking Sarah Palin was beneath him, or something along that line. It was more to do with perceived class/personality than it was to do with policy. He seems to have been the perfect choice for a NYTimes piece on O'Rourke. His father was a conservative and that gives him the bona fides.
I'm not sure W.F.Buckley would appreciate his son turning into another ass kissing liberal but there it is.
Trump, MAGA-heads and Tucker Carlson are having great fun ridiculing the progressive crack up. If you are a stuck up snob, the jokes may be sailing over your head.
Let me say it first. One man's humour is another man's hatred!
Britain won the dark days of the 2nd World War when America refused to engage, through humour, self deprecating humor especially the Tommies, working class men. They totally destroyed the humorless Germans with humor as well as their stiff upper class self important leaders.
Sebastian is right. Prompted by this post, I watched the clip from Tucker last night on AOC. Here's what he said, "Now a hagiography on Sandy Cortez is a little like opening a box of fig newtons, you know it's wrong to do but the temptation is strong. And so we did."
It's great.
Buckley fils was just mad the huntress woudnt date him,
The fact is that Republicans spend TOO MUCH TIME on making jokes that it utterly detracts from real danger of the Dems/progressives, as well as people taking the Republicans seriously.
I remember being assured repeatedly that Rush Limbaugh's show was all shouting and hate, often by editorial cartoonists and other humor-challenged newspaper types.
Now, Carlson is funny. But Gutfeld's schtick is unwatchably dreadful.
Like most have commenters, I find both Trump and Carlson very funny, for the same reasons I found early Rush funny. Not only is the humor funny to begin with, but it's the exposing and the goring of the sacred cows, and the freakouts that always follow from our betters, which make everything even funnier.
Millions of leftists caterwauling, "That's not funny!" is very funny indeed.
Case in point: Trump looking up at the sky and saying, "I am the chosen one." And then the expected headlines follow: "He thinks he's appointed by God!"
Or "s--thole countries." Or the tweet with the Trump hotel in Greenland. Or fast food at the Oval Office to reward a visiting team. Or before the election, "Maybe Russia can help you find your emails." Or telling a reporter, "What a stupid question!"
Or a thousand more examples.
One of my favorite things to do when Trump was President was watch the "coffee with Scott Adams" videos. Sometime Adams could not stop laughing after reading a particular Presidential tweet, and I'd laugh along with him. I miss those days. Imagine Biden or Harris saying something or tweeting something remotely funny. Although I did laugh at Harris when she talked with the child actors, getting excited about a telescope. But that wasn't meant to be funny.
Carlson isn't really my cup of tea, but I'm glad he's on the air. When I catch him, I think he's very funny, even when he's reporting something serious. He will often throw in an unexpected sarcastic one-liner that perfectly encapsulates the absurdity of our country's present situation.
It's sad that Chris Buckley is so predictably blind to all this. His father famously said that he'd prefer being governed by the first two hundred names in the Boston phonebook. Despite his wealth, that's really what we got with Trump. A regular man who didn't care about the opinions of the elite, but instead relished in their disapproval. For those of us who were sick of the status quo, that was the height of entertainment.
Yes his rip taylor innuendos are a little forced but the give and take with the rest of the gang is good.
Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom.
As with Rush, criticisms like these of hate and humorlessness on the right do dissuade the unpersuaded for a time; but among those who are nevertheless persuadable and do listen, these mischaracterizations become an early reveal that there's a level of deception on the other side that extends, possibly, to every other assertion they make.
This is how Rush built his audience and a movement. Persuasion, fearless honesty and humor.
The huntress (palin) poked fun at the sacred cows, whereas john stewart raised them
Millions of leftists caterwauling, "That's not funny!"
It's easy to be dismissive of something when it is turned into a joke.
You know for all the foibles of Biden and Harris, their deadly serious incompetencies leading to multiple crises are really not all that funny.
Buckley is a shitheel who refused to see his out-of-wedlock kid.
And his old man cut the grandson out of the will.
The Buckleys are fucking scum.
I think Christopher Buckley doesn’t know wth he’s talking about.
The Right doesn’t need to save the world- c’mon man- it’s in the name: MAGA!
Self-deprecation- that’s what he demands to prove humor resides on the Right? Of course, why- of course he does. B/c laughing at the current President+ and pointing out the blatant, self-serving hypocrisy of the Left(at all times, mind you) is no laughing matter.
Lol…
One of the problems with Gutfeld is that there is something of George Carlin in his delivery. And Carlin wasn't funny either.
Ha! I almost rolled out the 'nattering Nabisco of negativism' phrase with regard to the Mask Karens on another post. Wasn't it Pat Buchanan who wrote it in a speech delivered by Spiro Agnew?
Oops...I had Agnew right, but it was William Safire.
Was there any good humor reason for Buckley to write "crept in its petty pace" (in "Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right")?
It's a reference to the soliloquy in "Macbeth":
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
That's about the slow progression of *time* — which feels like it should be so valuable — it's everything we have — but can be quite perplexing to the point that you might get so frustrated you declare it to be nothing.
"Humorlessness" is no parallel to time. It's just a negative quality. Yes, its seepage into some new location might progress at a regular but slow speed, but it's not inexorable like time and it doesn't have anything seemingly good about it either. Macbeth is a dumb distraction.
Buckley seems to be pathetically striving to be erudite.
Like Chris Wallace, Christopher Buckley is a shadow of his old man.
Both living proof that nepotism will get you far in life...
We've talked before about conspicuous consumption and status symbols (which Ann is used to and does not find jarring) and the newer term "virtue signaling" (which Ann is not yet accustomed to hearing and does find irritating) but the allusion to a famous quotation from MacBeth is another example of the same kind of thing. Those who feel themselves elite and well-educated and among similarly elite friends will offer this sort of thing as an "in-joke" -- yes I'm quoting Shax, y'know.
The bo-bos that watch Marvel movies love to pick out allusions in the current pop offerings that reference (or can be stretched to pretend to allude to) prior characters or events in the source comic books. Being more fannish and genre-savvy than their peers. It's the same posturing, in a different branch of the culture.
And yes, any of the different examples of such signals to the tribe are pathetic.
I'd bet $20 bucks that Chris Buckley laughed his ass off watching "Blazing Saddles" when it came out.
But seeing it today, he'd likely look like the grim guy in that famous Grant Wood portrait.
That's not funny!!!
Leftist elitists don't get any more humorless than Chris Buckley. Always scolding us to make humor less cruel and pointed. But they forget how much joy people used to get in things like minstrel shows, which the population found very entertaining. They didn't see a need to change with the times like the progressives would have demanded and depict those characters in humane ways. And they forget how masterfully right-wing comedians can work a room, like this well-dressed, orderly gentleman did - and to uproarious laughter!
He definitely knew how to shut up the progressive leftists. If conservatives had more leaders like that nowadays then the left would appreciate how funny we really are.
"I'm thinking Sarah Palin was beneath [Buckley]..."
He wishes.
Bender said...
Now, Carlson is funny. But Gutfeld's schtick is unwatchably dreadful.
***********
"Why, oh fucking why", I ask myself, "do people offer up their personal tastes in food, music and entertainment as if they were Universal Truths?"
If Gutfeld's schtick were "unwatchaby dreadful" he would not own his show's timeslot.
https://noqreport.com/2021/12/01/gutfeld-ratings-explosion-beats-late-night-giants-jimmy-kimmel-and-jimmy-fallon/
Humorlessness is positive, not negative, and about erecting guardrails. Woke is full of it.
It's not like a mind brimming with inexperience, as Lautreamont put it.
As I recall, Wm. Buckley had a lot of children, ten or something. It came up as a question in a college talk in the 60s, the woman questioner asking how he reconciled having ten children with the world overpopulation problem. "I see your point," was Buckley's answer.
A pivot of juxtaposition:
I had to google erudite.
I don't find Gutfeld funny but I'm not the target demographic.
Colbert was very funny in his original show. I read him as mocking the left by constantly putting forward positions calculated to enrage them. Far from mocking the right with the positions, he let the left's reactions make the show. The left being his victim in the episode.
Colbert is funny? News to me. I think he's sort of a nattering nabob--if you catch my drift, and I think you do.
Gutfeld is frequently funny. Carlson amuses himself--and a few others.
and buckleys father in law, was the company chief in korea, and his former boss, the one also targeted by that hack ari ben menashe, years ago
Just got here. Wasn't it 'nabobs of negativism"?
Maybe someone else caught it. Maybe I'm wrong.
Buckley the Lesser got about half of dad's wit.
I think on average, Trump and his base remain more open to humour and in a lot of ways, more open to self-deprecating humour than is usual for American politicians. Trump has joked about how he could act "presidential" but that would be boring. I also remember his cracks about Diet Coke being garbage and never having seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke (it is his drink of choice). And his supporters, at least in 2016 leaned into jokes about God Emperor Trump (with photoshops portraying him as a character from the comically dystopian Warhammer 40k setting) or talking about people "bending the knee" (from the markedly less dystopian Game of Thrones). I do think, however, that as more normal politicians and political activists have begun supporting Trump, his base has lost its light, ironic edge for something more like the turgid, worshipful tone we saw with Obama's strongest supporters.
From afar, I get the sense that Trump finds this both gratifying and boring -- I recall a story once about his making fun of some TV commentator who was slavishly devoted to him. In contrast, he apparently liked (likes?) Maggie Haberman of the NYT, who was relentlessly critical of him. And he was always eager to wade into conversation with hostile reporters, to the clear frustration of his staff.
He struck, frankly, easily the least authoritarian tone of any US president in my lifetime. But many of his professional political allies buy into the crude caricature of him that his most rabid opponents believe in. Which I think accounts for the his supporters becoming blander and more reverential.
I think there's a lot to this, except that it's not a "right" problem but a "political class" problem. There aren't any funny political commentators at all, other than the meme-ers.
Is the problem that Carlson doesn't waggle either his eyebrows or his non-existent cigar when he delivers a quip? How does a halfway intelligent person miss his humor? I don't watch him a lot, but when I do he almost always makes me laugh.
As for Rush - my dad also failed to see he was doing comedy - thought he was a self-righteous ass. How my father, quite an intelligent man, missed the humor of Rush's declaration of "talent on loan FROM GODuh" - well. I love my dad very much. But his sense of humor runs more to dad jokes and bad puns: makes his children and grandchildren laugh but doesn't engender much merriment from other adults.
I'm struggling to remember DeSantis's fairly recent performance-art joke against - mmm, I think it was against Biden's COVID policy. Something about the town he chose as the location to sign a Florida bill into law... Ring any bells with anyone?
Alluding to Macbeth pathetic? I'd say the word is better applied to catering to one's MAGA commenters.
yes I don't get this attachment to haberman, who came up with the worst piece of gornisch imaginable, and didn't present any evidence
yes Rush was half tongue in cheek, there were many imitators that could not catch up, not to mention that stable on air america, schultz, papantonio maddow, who slithered onto msnbc
Christopher Buckley’s new novel “Make Russia Great Again” is a rollicking satire of Donald Trump’s White House — and of a president whom Buckley told Yahoo News must not be reelected or “we’re all going to be sitting in lifeboats.”
Not exactly Nostradamus, him.
“A number of people said, ‘Gee, why aren’t you writing about Trump?’” Buckley recalled. “And I said, ‘I don’t really know how.’ Trump as an object of satire is both a low-hanging fruit and a challenge — and he’s a challenge precisely because he’s a low-hanging fruit.”
At least Buckley left him an excuse not to write one about Biden, the lowest of low hanging comedic fruit.
Readering said...
Alluding to Macbeth pathetic? I'd say the word is better applied to catering to one's MAGA commenters.
Pathetic, yes, when the quote is simply the one that's most drummed in college-prep English and is malappropriated to boot.
De gustibus . . . Tucker is funny, Gutfeld is capable of funny, and Trump can be funny in small doses.
I never thought Chris Buckley was very funny. He had all his father's flaws IMHO and none of his virtues.
Colbert, Kimmel, Noah--those guys dance and preen for their small coteries, knowing full well that they are approved as pets of the powerful. Any funny is accidental.
Perhaps Buckley wrote right after watching Tucker analyzing Sandy Cortez.
I wonder what compels a guy like Buckley to say such things. Does he really not know that all self-deprecating humor resides in MAGA land today? Or does he think he can fool readers into thinking he is right by making a bold assertion?
Pretty pathetic attempt for either reason I might add.
I'd say thank you for smoking was his last genuinely witty entry, he painted a portrait of biden, as clueless and sinister dexter mitchell, in his supreme court tale, who would go on a telenovela about a President, (this was before Netflix and House of Cards)
Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom.
The projection is breathtaking.
Makes me want to slam my head against the desk. Will refrain.
"If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there."
Actually, Carlson says quite a few witty things on his show. yes, he's no Chris Buckley but he does have a sense of humor. And so Laura Ingraham, and so did Rush Limbaugh. Buckley just reinforces why I soured on PJ O'Rourke. This constant "both R's and D's are wrong" - combined with support for elite views on Trump, trade, foreign policy, immigration, race, etc. Its why Buckley is writing for the NYT's and was AOK with Biden and Hillary being POTUS. He may not be a total progressive, but he doesn't tweek them over anything they consider important.
Was it Justice Brennan who wrote, “I know pornography when I see it.”? Well, I know funny and Tucker is funny. Trump is funny. And there are plenty of “left” comedians who I find funny when they make a non political attempt at humor, Bill Maher being one of them. Funny is in the eye of the beholder, so subjective too. Too bad for Buckley, he’s lost his sense of funny…..
Trump is actually funny. For a billionaire/President he has a great sense of humor. Most of our recent Presidents have had some wit to them. We're not talking Groucho Marx here, but even Obama or Bush could get off a one-liner now and then. Probably the ones that had very little humor were LBJ, Ford, and Carter. Nixon could be funny in private or small settings. He usually kept a serious demenour in public.
Colbert, Kimmel, Noah--those guys dance and preen for their small coteries, knowing full well that they are approved as pets of the powerful. Any funny is accidental.
I liked Colbert when he was doing his Bill O'Reilly satire. But his talk show is AWFUL. He's the sort of comic that needs to play a Character and have lots of good writers. By himself he's as funny as a rotten stump. Noah is so bad, I change the channel after 10 seconds.
As I recall, Wm. Buckley had a lot of children, ten or something.
No, you're thinking of his brother. Not James Buckley either. There's another one. WF Buckley only had one child, Chris. Deep down WF Buckley was an upper-clas social liberal. Its only his Catholic faith that kept that in check. Its why he helped a killer get out of Jail, and favored legalized drugs.
WFB just had the one son. His father WFB, Sr. had ten.
WFB was a divided soul. He believed in his father's rugged capitalist individualism and he thought that he wanted America to return to what it had been in his father's younger days, but he was already part of a world where self-expression and style mattered more than business or material advancement.
PJ O'Rourke was a bit like Christopher Buckley, they both came to be so attached to their liberal literary milieu that they didn't keep up with or follow the changes in conservatism in recent years. Maybe it wasn't just the liberal literary environment. A lot of upper middle class, college-educated White guys were the same way.
Christopher gets it completely wrong. World-saving seems to be a trait of the left now -- and maybe not just now. It was far more a a part of the right in his father's day than it is today. Movement conservatism has a humorless, crusading strain, that I don't see in Trump. Put Trump up against David French or David Frum and it's not hard to see how the humorless ones are.
There's also a misunderstanding of "cult of personality." Trump is an entertainer, so people respond to his act. They find something appealing in the performance. Trump also turned out to be a pretty good -- surprisingly good --president. Most people who voted for him aren't saying that he was perfect and infallible, just that he was better than the alternative.
Comedy doesn't cross political lines easily anymore. Tucker Carlson is funny, but if you don't agree with him you won't find him funny at all. I suppose you could say the same thing about Rachel Maddow. Gutfeld is more genuinely funny, but even so, if you disagree with what he's saying, you may not see the comedy.
"If Tucker Carlson has said anything advertently funny, witty or self-knowing from his bully pulpit, I missed it. Maybe you had to be there."
Writes Christopher Buckley
Why yes, dork, you do actually have to listen to a speaker before claiming he's never said anything funny.
But Tucker is bad, because he's accomplished things on his own, rather than coasted off what his daddy got for him
Ann Althouse said...
Buckley seems to be pathetically striving to be erudite.
Our hostess wins the thread
That is a common failing of the NeverTrump "Right". They're credentialed midwits who desperately want to be thought of as more than that
Readering said...
Alluding to Macbeth pathetic? I'd say the word is better applied to catering to one's MAGA commenters.
Are you really that stupid, Readering?
The problem isn't alluding to Macbeth. Alluding to Macbeth is cool, if you do it well.
Buckley's problem is that he didn't do it well
but, I guess you have to have an education and a functioning brain in order to see the difference between "alluding poorly" and "alluding well"
Justice Stewart.
Trump showed a sense of humor as a winner. Has lost it as a loser. Folks involved in his TV roast said he was open to jokes on all topics...marriages, children, prejudices.... The one topic off limits was on whether he was as rich as he claimed. And that's now his future. The guy who for years has charged Republicans for an empty office in Trump Tower and now is going into golf business with the Saudis.
Grog the classless traitor makes Buckley's point about the inherit comedy gold from stick up the ass humorlessness.
Colbert has never been funny because he was always ideological. PJ was funny because he skewered stupidity from all sides.
Greg, sometimes you can be such a little myrmidon. (Google it.)
Trump showed a sense of humor as a winner. Has lost it as a loser. Folks involved in his TV roast said he was open to jokes on all topics...marriages, children, prejudices....
Trump's problem is not that he has an outsized ego, it is that he cannot disguise his outsized ego as polished politicians do on a regular basis. Even if he could the DNC media would not let him. However, his humor seems genuine and somewhat funky.
That he wasn't in good humor after the 2020 election surprises you?
rcocean said...
Deep down WF Buckley was an upper-clas social liberal. Its only his Catholic faith that kept that in check. Its why he helped a killer get out of Jail, and favored legalized drugs.
**********
....and wins the Great Kreskin Award for Mind-Reading!
What's more, read this...
https://www.thirteen.org/openmind-archive/the-law/on-legalizing-drugswith-william-f-buckley/
"William F. Buckley, Jr. has been called the guru, the patron saint of American conservatives, which has made it particularly hard for some of us to identify him with the call for decriminalization or legalization of drugs. Supposedly, that’s a radical cause, better left than right. Yet Buckley is, astonishingly enough, joined with Milton Friedman, George Schultz, and other leaders of his conservative establishment in calling for drug legalization."
....and tell us if Milton Friedman and George Schultz were also "only" held in check by their Catholic faith.
Streisand effect happening now. AOC isn't happy at Tucker's show last night.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AOC/status/1495075757462376450
Howard said...
Grog the classless traitor makes Buckley's point about the inherit comedy gold from stick up the ass humorlessness.
Was this supposed to be in response to something other than the voices in your head?
Readering said...
Greg, sometimes you can be such a little myrmidon. (Google it.)
That's the thing about having an actual education, Readering, is that I didn't need to Google it to know what it meant.
Exactly whose myrmidon are you claiming I am? Prof Althouse's?
Imagine Biden or Harris saying something or tweeting something remotely funny.
Biden and Harris are hilarious, just not intentionally.
"P.J. O’Rourke and the Death of Conservative Humor" (NYT)..." It's not as if conservative humor died a natural death; it was murdered.
We live in an age of "that's not funny!," one in which the scolds have no humor at all and will not tolerate anyone who does.
And so the price of deploying what the scolds characterize as "inappropriate humor" has become dear indeed, so dear that few are willing to pay it.
I suspect Buckley's Catholicism, as well as his environment in which heavy drinking was tolerated, made him keenly aware of the hypocrisy of the drug laws. That was the case for me, who have never taken drugs.
Yes, why can't we have few laws:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsohPbnp1b8
Some have criticized me for what I said about WFB. Pointing out that others did the same thing, doesn't prove they did it for the same reasons.
Further, mind-reading is another way of saying "ascribing a motive".
Reid Buckly had 10 kids. what's funny is he's a dead ringer for WFB.
"Bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom" shoots itself in the foot by sabotaging its own alliteration. "Militant myrmidons of MAGAdom" would be much better. Even "Mad . . .", "Maddening . . .", or "Machiavellian . . . "would be better.
Dude obviously didn't take to much care in how he wrote this.
(What is that American expression about shoes and feet?)
From my experience, having no sense of humor is a danger sign that you have become too extreme in your views. That goes for people on both the right and left.
“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” - Spiro T Agnew.
I don't know if he was trying to be funny, but he was.
1.rhhardin nails it: Trump is Rickles. I think Ms Althouse once posted Trump w/laughtrack. Revelatory.
2. Lil Buckley couldn't just talk about how PJ found the Left humorless. He had to dish on Trump so he'd be invited back to Fire Island.
3. Big Buckley's debates with Vidal are fun to re-watch. Especially good in B&W.
Even Hillary thought Trump was funny. I give her credit for mostly maintaining her composure during the debates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQPZtPaYHy0
"Colbert was very funny in his original show. I read him as mocking the left by constantly putting forward positions calculated to enrage them. Far from mocking the right with the positions, he let the left's reactions make the show. The left being his victim in the episode."
OMFG.
You have completely misread The Colbert Report, getting it as ass-backward as can be. He was mocking pompous, dunderhead right-wing newscasters such as Bill O'Reilly, (hence then name of his show, echoing The O'Reilly Factor). The "left's" (sic) reaction to his show was laughter and applause, rather than the displeasure and annoyance you apparently assume.
(I don't think the prosperous young liberals who enjoyed his show can really be considered "leftists," other than relative to to the hard right, such that even Richard Nixon would have to be considered a leftist.)
Myrmidon or henchman? You decide.
Back in the early 70s my friends and I (history and polisci geeks to a nerd) would banter about being mindless minions of monolithic Marxist masters in Moscow. A more innocent time.
Speaking of Vidal--can you imagine him not being canceled by now if he had lived?
I suspect Buckley's Catholicism, as well as his environment in which heavy drinking was tolerated, made him keenly aware of the hypocrisy of the drug laws. That was the case for me, who have never taken drugs.
I doubt that. None of the Buckley family were "drinkers". Hypocrisy? LOL!
Mankind has been drinking wine/beer for thousands of years. You can be a heavy drinker for 30 years and MAYBE you'll die of it. Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose with one hit.
Comparing Cocaine-Heroin-Meth to a beer is like comparing a handgrenade to a 105mmm shell.
colbert when he was mocking Bill O Reilly ran into the same problem that Norman Lear ran into with Archie bunker.
Tucker Carlson has said more funny things in one hour than this RINO moron has said in his whole career.
Rmc, responding to your post, one of Biden's funniest moments was that time he wandered away from his keepers and went into the nearest ice-cream store. If you were, like me, undecided whether he was mentally impaired, that video clip would have decided you. Next funniest: Biden trying to ascend the steps of Air Force One and tripping three--count 'em, three!--times.
You might say, what's so funny about an old man having a "senior moment" in an ice cream shop or tripping three times in rapid succession? Normally, nothing. But it's CHINA JOE! And I have a sick sense of humor. And I have to grab what laughs I can before Dementia Joe leads us into World War III, or sets off an economic apocalypse worthy of the final chapters of ATLAS SHRUGGED.
Buckley supported and voted for 0bama in 2008. That’s not cricket.
OK, I waded through all of the comments and cannot believe that no one responded to Tim in Vermont's comments, particularly where he alleges that Biden has a 'warm and loving sense of humor reminiscent of Will Rogers. Am I missing something? Is Tim perhaps know to be speaking sarcastically? Or is he generally known to be such a lost cause that he is best ignored? If Biden is ever funny, it is unintentionally in an old-man 'get off my lawn' kind of way.
People who happily refer to themselves as "Deplorables" can't understand self-deprecating humor, and those have adopted the rallying cry of "Let's Go Brandon" are solemn hero worshippers.
Talk about projection.
And Yinzer, I am fairly certain that Tim had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote that.
WFB's wife was a drinker. I was thinking pot.
Yinzer said...
OK, I waded through all of the comments and cannot believe that no one responded to Tim in Vermont's comments,
The 1st two paragraphs were complete sarcasm. I'm not sure about the 3rd
boatbuilder,
Tim's tongue wasn't in his cheek, it was all the way over in the next room.
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