Matt/Slim was one of the organizers of the event. He couldn't get people to show up, and neither could Colbert. Numbers are numbers. The First Amendment protects your right to speak but it won't assemble an audience for you.
Speaking of a low turnout: "Jay Leno slams late-night hosts for alienating half of viewers by targeting just Trump" (NY Post). Leno, who left "The Tonight Show" 11 years ago, said "Why shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole?... I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don’t do it at all.... I’m not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what’s funny.... Funny is funny. It’s funny when someone who’s not … when you make fun of their side, and they laugh at it, you know, that’s kind of what I do."
"... and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines.... Charging and access to fuel were also concerns a century earlier.... They also had to overcome gender stereotypes. Their benefits like quiet, smooth operation were considered by some men to be too feminine, and, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many models like the Baker Electric were explicitly marketed only to women.... In the fall of 2022, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene [said].... 'There’s nothing more American than the roar of a V-8 engine under the hood of a Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro, an incredible feel of all that horsepower.' But Democrats, she said, 'want to emasculate the way we drive.'... 'Musk has done everything he could to try to make a Tesla a manly vehicle,' said Virginia Scharff, ... author of... 'Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age.'... But, Ms. Scharff added, Mr. Musk may have gone too far... 'Tesla is so associated with a kind of toxic masculinity now...'..."
The president has long used his affinity for cars to burnish his workaday origins and, more recently, to conjure an aura of vitality despite being the oldest president in American history. In the run-up to the midterm elections next month — with control of Congress and the future of his agenda at stake — Mr. Biden is hoping his gearhead reputation will appeal to some parts of the Republican base.
IN THE COMMENTS: Meade writes...
Joe Biden is unsafe at any age.
And here in person, Meade nudges me to show you a picture he took of a real-life Corvair (in Decorah, Iowa):
[T]he old-guy bashing of Mr. Dole in political cartoons and late-night comedy routines has reached an intensity that makes the jokes about Ronald Reagan in the 1980's seem like gentle kidding. Dole age jokes ("Dole is 96") are now as much a part of popular culture as gibes at Madonna's impending motherhood, and sometimes as mean-spirited.
"Bob Dole is calling himself an optimist," David Letterman said in a recent monologue. "I understand this because a lot of people would look at a glass as half empty. Bob Dole looks at the glass and says, 'What a great place to put my teeth.' "
"He isn’t a conservative firebrand like, say, James Woods or Ted Nugent. But he has made a conscious effort not to alienate potential right-leaning fans," writes Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast.
“Democrats and Republicans are interesting, because Republicans really laugh at themselves more,” he told David Gregory in 2012....
“You always put the joke first, and whatever you have to say second,” Leno said on Real Time with Bill Maher last week, when asked about how his politics were supposedly difficult to nail down....
“I don’t like them not to like me for the wrong reason,” the comic said in an interview with Nikki Finke in 2004. “If someone says, ‘I don’t like Jay Leno because he’s a conservative,’ I call him and I go, ‘I’m not conservative. I’ve never voted that way in my life. Where do you get that from?’..."
"Democrats and Republicans are interesting because Republicans really laugh at themselves more. Like when Bush came on, it was, 'We want to do a skit, we're kind of making fun of… — 'Yeah, go ahead!'" said Leno on NBC's "Press Pass" with David Gregory, who appeared on Leno's show earlier in April...
"We went up to Al Gore, 'can we do this skit?' — 'Hang on.' And there was this focus group, and then media people came in: 'Where will Al be sitting? Will Al have the punchline?," Leno said.
"The 14th annual Subway Ride became a huge hit when people braved the cold weather and went pantsless. Part of an yearly tradition started by a group of seven boys, the event has grown into a global tradition.... According to the rules, underpants must be worn. Uniforms and business suits are encouraged to amplify the lower-half effect as are props - bicycles, prams, shopping bags or a briefcase. Participants are also forbidden from speaking to one another. They are instructed to bring to behave in a normal manner- read a newspaper, book."
That reminds me — and this is only slightly related — Jay Leno was on the Bill Maher show last Friday. You might have read about it in the context of his saying that Hillary Clinton "seems to be sort of very slow." But the part that got me was that he said that he never wears shorts — doesn't own a single pair.
The phrase appears to be an immediate descendant of one that took off in the early '90s: "Politics is show business for ugly people." It is frequently credited to Jay Leno -- but when we checked the record, it appears the late-night host always presented it as someone else's witticism: "It's like they say, 'Politics is. . .' "
Who were "they"? While James Carville uttered the phrase in a 1996 Playboy interview, we found what may have been the first in-print usage of it, in a 1992 Washington Post interview with Carville's fellow Clinton-Gore strategist Paul Begala.
But Begala doesn't claim to have originated it. Rush Limbaugh says it a lot. Maybe he knows. It seems related to his longstanding aphorism "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society." Nice of him not to say "ugly," no?
My heart — which, I must say, contains an element of palpable bitchery — goes out to Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who had a text, probably a fine text that would have killed if delivered with the intensity and commitment — the passion and intrigue — of a Daily Shower like Samantha Bee.
Now, Donna Edwards is to be mocked — on Politico! — because the nitwits in the audience couldn't get jokes like: "Come on, help me y’all: I want to give a really special shout out to Nancy Pelosi and all my sisters in the libido caucus — holla'!"
That's Part 1. Here are: Part 2 (in which Bush shows the portrait of Leno he painted and talks about the times Putin insulted Barney), Part 3, and Part 4 (with some cute dancing).
"I know what he is doing. I mean he's trying to make Russia a big power again. But there are good ways and bad ways to do it. Good way build up the economy, create some freedom and strength... Bad way, step on somebody else's back. That's what he is doing."
Early news reports lauded Jewell as a hero for helping to evacuate the area after he spotted the suspicious package. Three days later, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the FBI was treating him as a possible suspect, based largely on a "lone bomber" criminal profile. For the next several weeks, the news media focused aggressively on him as the presumed culprit, labeling him with the ambiguous term "person of interest," sifting through his life to match a leaked "lone bomber" profile that the FBI had used. The media, to varying degrees, portrayed Jewell as a failed law enforcement officer who may have planted the bomb so he could find it and be a hero.
Two of the bombing victims filed lawsuits against Jewell on the basis of this reporting. In a reference to the Unabomber, Jay Leno called him the "Una-doofus." Other references include "Una-Bubba," and (of his mother) "Una-Mama." Jewell was never officially charged, but the FBI searched his home, questioned his associates, investigated his background, and maintained twenty-four hour surveillance of him. The pressure only began to ease after Jewell's attorneys hired an ex-FBI agent to administer a polygraph which Jewell reportedly passed....
As I conlawprof, I find this line the most amusing:
"As India celebrates tomorrow the Constitution Day of India, I have the copy of the U.S. Constitution, and it doesn't say anywhere anything that anybody can say anything or abuse or accuse anybody's religion."
Much funnier than a Jay Leno joke.
I also think it's interesting that CNSNews — which conceives of itself as an antidote to liberal news bias — seems to fault Nuland for citing, in her response to the reporter's question about the U.S. Constitution, the "freedom of religion and tolerance for all religions" but not the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Obviously, Jay Leno has a free-speech right to mock religion and to label the Golden Temple Mitt Romney's summer home. (Maybe Nuland fretted about whether Leno had violated the photographer's copyright.)
Should Nuland have boldly celebrated the American free-speech tradition or was it appropriately diplomatic to murmur assurances about respect for religion?
Man, I hope I'm the first person who made that joke. It's one of those ready-made jokes that's just out there. I can't believe Leno or Letterman — Leno and Letterman — haven't already made it, but let it be known, I arrived at it independently.
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked.
Picture them naked. It's a great old technique for cutting the people who intimidate you down to size. It's fun too. And funny. And completely legal. At least until that day when your thought-dreams can be seen...
ADDED: Non-random excerpt from David Foster Wallace's brilliant essay about the porn industry ("Big Red Son", republished in "Consider the Lobster"):
A slight surprise is that a lot of the industry’s elite woodmen are short—5'6", 5'7"—and most of their companions tower over them. Dick Filth confirms that the contemporary industry’s 5'6" standard helps a prodigious male organ look even more prodigious on videotape, a medium that apparently does all kinds of strange things to perspective.
Let's watch his effort at winning back our affection:
I "live-blog" the clip:
0:35: The numbskull audience cheer like hell as if he hadn't just done something offensive... either because hey, he's a celebrity and they came to see celebrities and bask in their shining light or because some damned cheer like hell sign lit up.
0:53: Leno butters him up disgustingly, telling him how brave he is to come on the show in his time of tribulation.
1:15: West feels so bad because "I only wanted to help people, you know. My entire life, I've only wanted to give and do something that I felt was right."
1:47: Although West just said "I immediately knew in this situation that it was wrong," Leno gets all jazzed up by what he thinks is the probing question "So when did you know it was wrong?" I assume the conversation was planned, and West put one of his lines too early in the dialogue, and Robot Leno didn't even notice. Lameness.
2:01: West now says — with dull, flat affect — that he knew it was wrong when he gave the microphone back to "her" — say her name, idiot — and she didn't keep going. The audience laughs at this "joke," and Leno awkwardly progresses to the next (planned) question, which is, paraphrasing: What would your dead mother say?
2:42: West tries to show his hurt, giving us the cue remember that his mother died and to realize that it is terribly sad when one's mother dies. He asserts the theory that his hurt led to another person's hurt, as if his macho seizing of the mike from a teenager and outraged touting of his preferred pop star (Beyoncé) came from a place of grief over his mother's death. Feel sorry for meeeeeeee. Bleh.
3:05: West vows to improve so he can "make it through this life." Okay, he has groveled enough. Leno calls an end to what I assume is a planned, mapped-out PR routine. And the audience cheers inanely, on cue, once again.
I don't much like Jay Leno, but after all these years, a "10 Best" set of clips has got to be pretty good. Let's check out the best of — the surprisingly smutty — "Headlines":
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