Speaking of the conservative humor deficit, someone (and may he or she ROT IN FUCKING HELL) signed me up for Jonah Goldberg’s newsletter at my email addy linked to this blog. It’s one of the most consistently cringe-worthy efforts I’ve ever encountered, so why keep it to myself? This is how the current edition starts off:
Dear Reader (and deer-readers, on the off chance there are any ruminant mammals of the Cervidae family who’ve managed to subscribe to this “news”letter),
People often ask me, “Why are you wearing a spaghetti colander as a codpiece?” The short answer is, “Because a salad bowl doesn’t breathe enough. Duh.”
But none of that is important right now. Because the new phonebook is here! That’s right. Since last we spoke, a man who looked like he was out on work release hurled at my house a five-pound print-out of some of the least interesting information on the Internet.
This is the obligatory moment where I link to this clip of Navin Johnson exuberantly receiving the new phonebook. Navin’s boss thinks it’s nothing to get worked up about and Navin responds, “Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 — Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity — your name in print — that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.”
Which brings me to another question I’m often asked, “How long does it take you to write a column?” The short answer to this is something along the lines of “Shut the #$%^ up! I’ve got to get this column done!” And then I bury a ballpoint pen about three inches into the intern’s forehead.
For real — this is what passes for yoot-ful humor at NRO, so quick, make with the abortion jokes, Liberty U SoCons.
pokeyblow
It’s a piece of art, in its way.
balconesfault
Dear Lord …
But when you consider there are people out there who can not only listen to a whole Rush Limbaugh show … with his ability to stretch 5 minutes worth of information, most of it wrong, over hours of show time, interspersed with quips about how f-ing brilliant he is … but tune in to subject themselves to that on a daily basis – they would probably find this perfect morning bathroom material.
PsiFighter37
That’s not even funny. But I guess that’s what happens when Dennis Miller passes for the best comedian your side’s got.
piratedan
@pokeyblow: so is a dog turd, as it shines in the morning sun
Yatsuno
:: whistles innocently ::
pokeyblow
Are they still passing Jonah off as the hip, younger guy?
I mean, doing so is no less credible now than it was a few years ago.
gogol's wife
@Yatsuno:
You are evil.
Soonergrunt
I got as far as “Dear Reader (and deer-readers, on the off chance there are any ruminant mammals of the Cervidae family who’ve managed to subscribe to this “news”letter),” before I thought (out loud) “oh, holy shit. Really!?”
pokeyblow
@piratedan: I surfed a few of those during my California days. Although the turd-surfer girls I met weren’t quite like the ordinary surfer girls celebrated in song.
Mnemosyne
So the joke is that he’s linking to someone else’s funnier joke?
Also, everyone knows that the #1 member of the Cervidae family is the pudu. No competition.
ETA: Okay, I just discovered that the pudu mephistopheles exists. I’m assuming it got its name because it’s devilishly adorable.
The prophet Nostradumbass
“My dog has no nose.”
“How does he smell?”
“Terrible!”
“Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!”
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
This is the same Jonah Goldberg who said this about Katrina:
This while people in New Orleans were still dying.
patrick II
Its like they all have read Hunter Thompson and have the mean part down, but not the funny or insightful parts.
Baud
As trolls-ridden as this blog gets sometimes, at least we don’t have to deal with that.
NotMax
Lt. Saavik: “Humor. It is a difficult concept.”
ranchandsyrup
Ya know what’s funny, Jonah? China is the People’s Republic of China. Republican has republic in it. Therefore, under the law of desperation linkage (as shown in Librul Fascists), Republicans are Red Chinese. See ya in the breadline. No cuts!
stratplayer
Do even conservatives read that crap and laugh?
The Other Chuck
All right, the codpiece joke wasn’t terrible, but it still managed poor delivery … IN TEXT. And I swear I didn’t read the author’s name or any of the intro beforehand, my eye wandered to that word as the first thing. Which, I guess is effective advertising, get their attention so hey Mission Accomplished, right?
The rest was, uh, rambling that shouldn’t even make even make it to the Twitter feed of @DullestGuyOnEarth and he puts it in a newsletter? Mkay.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Now now. Of all the people whose mother went pawing through Monica Lewinsky’s underwear, Johan is far and away the funniest and the most talented.
I imagine the three Buckleys arching their eyebrows at each other over the rims of their cocktail glasses when Rich Lowry was admitted to the drawing room to say he had hired Jonah.
BIll: “For the ‘on line’ edition? well, I suppose it doesn’t matter then, really.”
Pat: “Gold-berg?”
Bill: “Thank you, my boy. Hobson will show you out”
Pat: “Gold-berg and a Lopez? One hardly knowsh which country oness in theshe daysh”
Spaghetti Lee
Spaghetti Lee, Joke Doctor, checking in:
The short answer to this is something along the lines of “Shut the #$%^ up! I’ve got to get this column done!” And then I bury a ballpoint pen about three inches into the intern’s forehead.
This could have been funny, in a Three Stooges/calculated assholery kind of way, but not only does it just drag on too long, but if you’re playing the comedic asshole character, you’ve got to give some sense that it’s a character, knowing that you’re overreacting but doing it anyway, or dropping some ironic line that lets the audience in on the discrepancy. Here, it just looks like Jonah Goldberg, in real life, likes stabbing people.
Omnes Omnibus
Jesus wept.
Mnemosyne
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
This is why I’m not eager to hear their “pro-life” jokes. Given how amusing they seem to find the pain of others, I can only imagine how funny they find it that some women are so desperate to end a pregnancy that they’ll drink bleach or use a coat hanger. Women bleeding to death is funny, peeps!
Baud
The odd part is, I would think that Republicans would hate the phone book. All the job creators have unlisted numbers, and everyone else is listed as equals, regardless of race.
Tonybrown74
Maybe the press a button to cue the laugh track whenever they write something down that is “funny” …
Omnes Omnibus
Accordion lessons for this one too.
Joseph Nobles
Ted Cruz just tweeted that he has filed an amendment to the immigration reform bill to correct today’s Supreme Court ruling about voter ID. Will the poison pill make it in and kill the bill, thus dooming the GOP to its demographic ashheap destiny? Stay tuned!
https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/346764671258333184
pokeyblow
@Spaghetti Lee: I bury a ballpoint pen about three inches into the intern’s forehead sounds more graphic than something an ordinary person (who never contemplated doing exactly that) would say.
The Other Chuck
@Baud: Pretty sure the demographic of the Republicans is the only one that even uses phone books now.
Well, I’ve got two of them propping up a monitor, so I guess I use them.
NickT
Well, at least I now know what Ted & Hellen does for money in its spare time.
bill d
Heard that Snowden is going to release the contents of that phonebook next week.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: Rhythmically, it is horrible as well. Awkward and it doesn’t flow.
MonkeyBoy
Betty, to make up for that here for you is an ani-gif of a boxer: “Dog Relaxing in a Chair”.
gocart mozart
A fetus walks into a bar, the coat check girl hands it a coat hanger, fetus screams and runs away. Feel free to steal that one young wingnuts.
The Other Chuck
@Joseph Nobles: Someone might want to tell Ted that you can’t overturn SCOTUS decisions with more legislation, you kinda need to do the whole constitutional amendment thing.
Ah what the hell, like these people even care.
ranchandsyrup
This made me laugh: https://twitter.com/Gus_802/status/346758215129788416/photo/1
The Circle of Derp/Moonbat-Wingnut Convergence.
ruemara
I thought the Geneva Convention forbade torture and weapons of mass destruction.
Warren Terra
Forget about the Conservative Humor Deficit: what about the Conservative Hyphen Surplus?
. Surely a “deer-reader” is someone who reads deer (or perhaps a device for the reading of deer). Jonah means “deer readers”.
PS also, shouldn’t “Cervidae” have been italicized? Bad editor, no Cheetos.
ETA After posting the above snark, I read to the end of the quote, and am appalled:
Let us all now contemplate someone who would Bowdlerize “fuck” while good-humoredly depicting the maiming and possible murder of his intern. That an intern is low-status and something of a supplicant is perhaps worth noting.
gocart mozart
@Spaghetti Lee:
Too late, call in the joke undertaker.
Baud
@The Other Chuck:
I should find a phone book and see who’s listed under “grifters.”
pokeyblow
@gocart mozart: ha ha
Karmus
Was Goldberg ever an intern? This might explain a few things.
Basically he’s doing his part to render the interns suitable candidates for the next wave of GOP pundits, I suppose.
Soonergrunt
@NickT: You don’t know that. And you don’t want to know that. No healthy person would want to know that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ranchandsyrup: I always liked the term “moonbat”. Can I be a moonbat and an O-bot?
Joseph Nobles
@The Other Chuck: No, Scalia said the only problem was it wasn’t a requirement at the Fed level for everyone. Cruz’s bill amendment has pre-clearance at SCOTUS, iow.
Suffern ACE
So the next year, a man in a suit shows up and knocks on his door. “Who is it?” “It’s the Vice President of logistics, I’m here to deliver your phone book”
“Why that’s impressive.” “We’ll we read your column and decided it was foolish to hire workers to deliver big heavy books. So we laid them off and now I do it myself. Here’s your book”
“It’s only the cover!”
“Well, we decided the old approach was kind of silly. Too big. So we’ve customized it for each person. Based on our research, these are the people who might want you to call them.”
Josie
I mean, really, what did you expect? It’s Jonah Goldberg, for FSM’s sake!
Litlebritdifrnt
@The Other Chuck:
And people keep telling us what a brilliant legal scholar Cruz is. At this point I think we should be checking the kerning on his degree.
Chris
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
Why is Jonah Goldberg encouraging this envy, this jealousy? You cannot make the weak stronger by making the strong weaker! He worked hard for that body structure! Etc.
pokeyblow
People pay money to take cruise vacations with people like Jonah Goldberg.
That proves something. Something awful.
Warren Terra
@Joseph Nobles:
Whether it would act as a poison pill depends on both the legislators and the courts: the legislators can write the legislation to include Severability, so unconstitutional sections disappear without prejudice to the rest. And I believe (IANAL) the Courts can basically impose Severability, ruling out some sections without invalidating the whole law (I think it may even be possible for the legislators to write laws that affirmatively lack Severability, so if part goes the whole goes). But all of this means it’s unclear without more information whether or not a “poison pill” could succeed.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I believe that it is required. When we were discussing the naming of the new Fogbow forum we toyed with the idea of “Planet Moonbat” but figured it would paint us as loonies as opposed to anti-birfers.
pokeyblow
What did Lucianne Goldberg say to the abortion doctor?
“I wish I’d met you forty-odd years ago.”
ranchandsyrup
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not entirely sure about the taxonomy, but let’s allow it. Moonbat/Obot it is.
Baud
@efgoldman:
#2 is correct.
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: in this case, you can. Basically, the federal law would be in line with Arizona law.
Anoniminous
@pokeyblow:
With this line-up who can resist?
And on a totally unrelated note, I am given to understand the Greek government is interested in selling some submarines to help reduce their debts.
gnomedad
Joker wannabe.
TBogg
This is why the Catskills went onto the witness protection program…
danah gaz
Q: Did you hear about the aborted baby that voted Republican?
A: Me neither
Q: How many women’s health clinics does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None. Women’s health clinics don’t fit into light bulbs.
Q: What do you call a clump of cells gestating in a womb?
A: Whatever you want to. People will vote for you anyway.
Thanks. I’ll be here all week.
Baud
@Anoniminous:
If their subs are as tasty as their gyros, it just might work.
Suffern ACE
@Warren Terra: if the immigration bill becomes a voting restriction bill, and those restrictions are what will pass it, then it should be scrapped.
jamick6000
@stratplayer:
they don’t just read that crap and laugh. they read that crap, laugh and forward the email to everyone they know.
KmCO
@Soonergrunt: Indeed. It was after the horrifically, unspeakably awful deer pun that my brain collapsed and then exploded all over my iPhone screen.
Sadie
@Soonergrunt: Indeed. It was after the horrifically, unspeakably awful deer pun that my brain collapsed and then exploded all over my iPhone screen.
pokeyblow
@Anoniminous: I have a friend in his 50s from Vietnam. His family was quite well-placed politically and economically before the evacuation. He says that the family left the country in American helicopters but, as a backup plan, had purchased a (South?) Vietnamese warship to make their getaway, and that numerous (sounds like hundreds) of their friends/allies did use that boat to leave the country.
Jon O
I’m certain this guy is a laugh riot around the office
Roger Moore
@patrick II:
Sure. That’s because funny and insightful require talent, but mean just requires them to be themselves.
negative 1
Don’t you think the ‘overworked’ gag would have worked better if the column wasn’t such a hastily thrown together afterthought?
Villago Delenda Est
@KmCO:
Do’h! A deer! A female deer!
SatanicPanic
That was just depressing. As soon as I can find a room to be alone in I’m going to cry.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Make mine a whole wheat on rye, hold the mayo.
I’d engage in discourse but at the moment I’m wondering what “statutory grounds” efgoldman is referring to. The Norton Simon Museum statutory grounds or which, exactly?
Suffern ACE
@Anoniminous: I think we should buy it for the blog. The only blog with a submarine. Betty could stow the chickens in it when we weren’t using it to launch missiles at The Dish.
NickT
@Soonergrunt:
Well, yer gets yer known knowns and yer gets yer unknown unknowns and then yer gets yer knowns that you wishes were unknowns….
Roger Moore
@Baud:
The RNC.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anoniminous: statutory, or statuary?
Anoniminous
@Suffern ACE:
Since pokeyblow has a friend with warship … we can start our own navy!
Roger Moore
@Jon O:
Only because the interns know they’ll be fired if they don’t pretend his jokes are funny.
Betty Cracker
@MonkeyBoy: That erases the Goldbad. Thank you!
RSA
Prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect–which actually did use humor as one of the tests:
pokeyblow
@Anoniminous: It was forty years ago, but I’m sure they’ve got it tucked away in a lagoon someplace, covered with vines to keep its location secret.
Starting a navy sounds great, but why not skip that and start our own war?
Anoniminous
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Sure. And why not?
@efgoldman:
Heck dude, I’m old as well. In fact I’m so old when I first started programming whenever we needed more memory we went down to the blacksmith’s so he would know to forge us some more Ones.
Fortunately, we always seemed to have enough punches to pound the zeros into the silicon.
Suffern ACE
@pokeyblow: we need the navy to blockade the enemy. I say we declare war on Florida and use the navy to harass the shipping out of port st. Lucie.
FlipYrWhig
Jonah’s jealous of the phone book. 5 pounds of the least interesting information on the Internet beats his personal objectives by about 262 pounds.
Anoniminous
@pokeyblow:
Start our own war? Doesn’t Haliburton have an app for that?
FlipYrWhig
@Anoniminous: How was Charles Babbage as a boss?
pokeyblow
@Suffern ACE: If Florida is the problem, we need some sort of super icebreaker ship to just cut the damned place off.
Anoniminous
@FlipYrWhig:
PITA. Keep changing the spec’s.
But I can tell you that Lovelace was a real slut. She wore her dresses so short you could see her ankles!
Johnny Coelacanth
That is some lame shit, as the kids used to say.
pokeyblow
@Anoniminous: Babbage? Be honest. I found one of your lost contact lenses while cleaning this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Anoniminous
@pokeyblow:
That’s a cool device. NOVA’s documentary is fascinating.
cinesimon
“…a man who looked like he was out on work release…”
That’s Jonah-speak for a black guy who wasn’t wearing a pin striped suit.
pokeyblow
@Anoniminous: It is extraordinary.
Not a big deal, but I saw it in the Athens National Museum before knowing what it was. It’s in the grand hall, in a vitrine right behind the famous Schliemann “Agamemnon” mask.
? Martin
@Anoniminous: If you want to see something really impressive, check out the Lego version.
If Catsy wanders by, he can articulate exactly what that is so cool.
pokeyblow
@? Martin: I am smiling so wide at that video!
But you might have to explain to gerontos Anoniminous what Legos are.
El Caganer
Sorry, but if you don’t know what the Doughy Pantload represents, you need more research.
YellowJournalism
@Yatsuno: Was nice knowing you.
Anony-mouse
@Yatsuno:
That’s truly cruel.
How do you get past the confirmation email stage, just asking?…
Jebediah
@Warren Terra:
Isn’t that one of the big differences between real humor and conservative humor, though? Poking fun at the powerful and/or comfortable can be quite funny. Punching down is just assholish.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
This is why I’m not eager to hear their “pro-life” jokes. Given how amusing they seem to find the pain of others, I can only imagine how funny they find it that some women are so desperate to end a pregnancy that they’ll drink bleach or use a coat hanger.
I imagine their idea of “humor” would be to hand out coathangers to women unable to get into a clinic.
pokeyblow
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: That’s the answer! The young republican version Monty Python sketch is to show repeated clips of women, denied by an abortion clinic, getting their jackets from a coat-check. The attendant says “wink-wink!”
Debbie(aussie)
@Omnes Omnibus: thank you!
serena1313
It is late so I did not read through the comments.
Jonah Goldberg is not funny.
However, Goldberg’s comments do not even come remotely close to the so-called “suggestions” about how the GOP could appeal to the millennial voters during the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference.
IMHO the absolute most disgusting was:
“How do we make abortion funny?”
You know, “funny” sells on social media … But what Republicans think is funny is not only not funny it is extremely inappropriate & offensive.
Just when I think there is nothing whatsoever that conservatives could possibly say at this point that would shock me, inevitably they prove me wrong!
Howlin Wolfe
@pokeyblow: It’s a piece of something, anyway.