Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Republicans do not pay their debts.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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Open Thread: Happy Thought for the Day

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Scott Raab: Like many nice Caucasians, I cried the night Barack Obama was elected. It was one of the high points in American history. And all that’s happened since the election is just a shitstorm of hatred. You want to weigh in on that?
__
Chris Rock: I actually like it, in the sense that — you got kids? Kids always act up the most before they go to sleep. And when I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last — this is the act up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them — and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now. — Chris Rock: The ESQ+A

I think many of us know a right-winger or two we’d like to see knocked out… in Mr. Rock’s totally inoffensive and non-violent sense, of course.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  3. 3.

    Violet

    I really hope he’s right. Demographics are on the side of him being right eventually. When Peak Wingnut will hit though…sheesh.

  6. 6.

    tPirate

    I don’t even know who Chris Rock is, but I agree – have agreed since early 2008, when I predicted this last bout of energy before sleep. Palin was the Snickers bar, and she’s gone now, so they’re gonna get sleepy.

  10. 10.

    EconWatcher

    I’ve long thought that once Chris Rock has made enough money and gets tired of the comedy circuit, he should run for office. The man knows how to frame issues. I think he’d be great.

  11. 11.

    Legalize

    This Chris Rock fella probably has a career ahead of him making humorous, off-color remarks about timely topics, in front of large numbers of people.

  13. 13.

    PeakVT

    I say Peak Wingnut is still valid, but trying to predict the exact timing is a mugs game. Rock is just the latest to fall into the trap. We won’t see the peak until we are past it.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    Chris is an eternal optimist. I only hope he’s also a prophet here as well.

    @gnomedad: The thing that concerns me there is the precedent that might make that illegal originally was ruled to protect brown folks, so I bet if it goes all the way to the SCOTUS the 5-4 decision ruling for the employers won’t be good.

    @suzanne: Mmm…orecchiette. Though it seems a bit odd eating what literally means “little ears”.

  15. 15.

    Warren Terra

    I’ve never really paid much attention to Chris Rock, but that was a good interview, an interesting conversation.

  16. 16.

    LGRooney

    I see it another way: they’re fucking insomniacs and they keep waking us up in the middle of the night!

    Civil War Peak, Reconstruction Peak, Jim Crow Peak, White Flight Peak, Civil Rights Peak, Assassination Peak, Southern Strategy Peak (this has been the toughest one to get back to sleep)…

    I’d love to believe it the way Rock sees it but I am neither that optimistic nor that forgetful.

  17. 17.

    Kryptik

    He has more faith in the threshold of crazy the country can sustain more than I do. The problem is that the country is like the parent that coddles the kids who go crazy because they know, deep down inside, they’re ‘good children’, simply giving them more incentive to be little shits, because hey, it works.

    @gnomedad:

    Yeah, this is old news. When the trend first hit, I was galled, because the rationale the firms that refused to hire the unemployed was ‘They must be unemployed for a reason’. In other words, lack of job is proof of guilt, you must be a shitty worker and not worth their time if you dare not have any employment, so fuck you and the bus you had to catch to get here.

    It really is such abominable shit. And it’s more of that Economic Calvinism that has fucking gripped this whole country like a stranglehold.

    @EconWatcher:

    They tried that movie already. It wasn’t very good.

  18. 18.

    Cris

    @EconWatcher: I’ve long thought that once Chris Rock has made enough money and gets tired of the comedy circuit, he should run for office.

    Why not? The usual dismissal is “He’s a comedian, not a politician.” Let’s ask Senator Franken his opinion of that.

  19. 19.

    Console

    Chris Rock is probably my favorite person to see interviewed. No matter what he’s talking about, it’s like he’s always giving setup, punchline, tag, tag, set up, punchline, tag… yet he’s still saying these insightful and great things.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them — and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out.

    Right on target. The thing is, though, you hope that they will finally give up before doing more damage to the country. And this is where the problem lies.

  23. 23.

    Suck It Up!

    Interesting. I thought along the same lines as Chris Rock. I pictured all this hate as the pus that oozes out of a healing wound.

  24. 24.

    gil mann

    @Console:

    “Bring the Pain” was too awesome for Rock’s own good–no way there’s not a massive drop-off in quality after that–so I’m not a big fan of his stand-up these days, but as a guy who sums things up/distills things down he’s peerless. He’s reaching Vonnegut levels of saying offhanded shit that’s both revelatory and eminently quotable.

  25. 25.

    Calouste

    @Cris:

    “He’s a comedian clown, not a politician.” typically only applies to people after they have been elected.

  26. 26.

    RP

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I know the standard response is that they’re ruining discourse by moving the “Overton Window” way over to the right, but I think the political spectrum is balanced on a table or something, and that if you move too far in one direction, eventually you’ll fall off and cede the table to the other side. I think the tea party and the extreme hatred and nuttiness will burn itself out in near future, leaving a lot more space for the grown ups.

  28. 28.

    Elizabelle

    Thanks for spotlighting this, Annie. Would have missed it.

    Hope Chris Rock is correct. He’s whipsmart.

    Agree with Rooney’s comment at 16, though.

  29. 29.

    trixie larue

    I like his perspective on this. It’s optimistic, despite what we are seeing in the present. Kids go to sleep and they do wake up; but every day they are a little older and little wiser. Sounds good to me.

  30. 30.

    RedKitten

    @Zifnab:

    I was a big fan of Chris Rock’s gun control policy.

    Heh. Me too.

    Chris Rock is another one who proves that the best comedians are blisteringly intelligent individuals. And yes, he really does have a gift for looking at things from a completely unusual perspective, summing it up, and delivering it in such a pithy fashion that we’re all left smacking our heads and wondering why the hell we never thought of it that way before.

  32. 32.

    R-Jud

    @LGRooney:

    Civil War Peak, Reconstruction Peak, Jim Crow Peak, White Flight Peak, Civil Rights Peak, Assassination Peak, Southern Strategy Peak (this has been the toughest one to get back to sleep)…

    Hmm. I think the whole “slavery peak” was the toughest one to put to sleep, no? It took 200 or so years to go from the establishment of a slave trade in the American colonies to to emancipation.

    And if you notice, each of your “peaks” accounts for fewer and fewer dead from violence as time goes on.

  33. 33.

    Shinobi

    Eh, I think Chris Rock is only partially right. Some of this is generational, and that means bedtime is a long time coming.

  35. 35.

    alicia-logic

    @Cris:

    “He’s a comedian, not a politician.” Let’s ask Senator Franken his opinion of that.

    His usual reply is “I’m a satirist, not a comedian.”

  37. 37.

    cyntax

    @Warren Terra:

    I’ve never really paid much attention to Chris Rock, but that was a good interview, an interesting conversation.

    Check out his documentary Good Hair:

    According to Rock, he was prompted to make the movie after his 5-year-old daughter Lola asked him, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?”[3] During the film, Rock delves into the $9 billion black hair industry, and visits such places as beauty salons, barbershops, hair styling conventions, scientific laboratories (to learn the science behind chemical relaxers that straighten hair).[3][4]
    Rock intended for the film to uphold a sense of seriousness, yet at the same time remain humorous.[4] The movie features interviews from hair care industry businesspeople, stylists (Derek J, Jason Griggers and others) and their consumers, and celebrities such as Ice-T, Nia Long, Paul Mooney, T-Pain, Raven-Symoné, Maya Angelou, KRS-One, Salt-n-Pepa, Kerry Washington, Eve, Reverend Al Sharpton, Tracie Thoms, Lauren London, and Meagan Good[3][5] as they discuss their own experiences with their hair, and how black hair is perceived in the black community.

  39. 39.

    Phoebe

    @Villago Delenda Est: I know! Has he read Nixonland? He’s my age so he didn’t quite live through that, but I read about the kids acting up last night [“Long Hot Summer” chapter — yeah I’m way behind schedule]and they didn’t exactly go to sleep then.
    But I hope he’s right. At least every time they wake up there are less of them. Maybe.

    @cyntax: I saw that recently and loved it, but wanted to see him interview his wife. That just seemed like a huge glaring screaming absence.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m very interested to see where Chris Rock’s career ends up. He’s very ambitious and, while he doesn’t always quite reach the goals he set for himself, he keeps trying new things.

    I mean, Rock wrote and directed a remake of Eric Rohmer’s Chloe in the Afternoon! Do you think Michael Bay has any clue who Rohmer was?

  41. 41.

    Apsalar

    Anyone else see the shout out from Dan Savage today?

    http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=6782602

    Writing about Representative Christopher “Craigslist Congressman” Lee last week on Balloon Juice—a blog I read daily—BJ contributor “Mastermix” said: “If we want to do something about the high divorce rate, we might want to get real [about] the role of a discreet, mutually-agreed-upon affair as a safety valve.”

  42. 42.

    Caramuru

    That reminded me of something Alan Moore said in an interview:

    I tend to think that this conservative backlash that has been going on since the ’70s is the final spasms of a dying creature; history is not moving that way, and no matter how much people dig their heels in and assume this is the 1950s or the Middle Ages, that’s not the truth of the situation. No matter how powerful our political and religious leaders think they are, they are as dust before the immense and implacable forces of history and progress. I just hope that they don’t make too much of a mess or take too many more people down with them.

    http://www.salon.com/books/int/2004/07/22/moore/print.html

  45. 45.

    marcel

    @Cat Lady:

    @Cat Lady:
    From Chris Rock’s lips to the FSM’s orecchiette.

    Pretty goddam obscure, but pretty funny once I sorted it out.

    About Chris Rock’s comment on peak wingnut – that didn’t work out so well for the Jews (or anyone else, actually) in Germany 80 years ago. Let’s hope it works out better for all of us this time around.

    (Oh my godwin!)

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