Category Archives: Humor

Humor, Political Commentary

More Good Advice From Barry

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Let’s hear it for the ‘tards:

But for all I’ve given to the program, I’ve gotten much more in return; the beaming smiles of appreciation for a well-folded towel, the many times the team worked together to tug me out after I got my head stuck in the ball return. I’ve learned much from the experience, including the fact that these bowling tards really have some great policy ideas, like Jimmy’s brilliant “free Skittles for everybody.” That’s why I invited the team to join my Council of Economic Advisers, where they are hard at work on my next stimulus plan. I’ve also learned that tards are people too, and they don’t like to be condescended to or patronized. When Jimmy suggested spending cuts, for example, I sent him to the corner without a juice box — just as I would for any non-tard member of my cabinet.

That’s the kind of bold leadership many of us voted for last fall.

Humor, Political Commentary

It Was Inevitable

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President Obama’s teleprompter has started blogging:

Well, last night didn’t go well. What can I say? I was tired. By the time Barack and the Irish PM stood up, the President and I had already done two major policy speeches, three nomination announcements, and light dinner banter for a table of twelve. And by the way, that “ad lib” last night about Guinness? Mine.

So why am I going public now, when for the past two years I’ve let others do the talking? Well, this is a thankless job, and I sure don’t want to take the fall for communications missteps. But more important, I expect you’ll be seeing a lot more of me over the next few months and years. Barack and I don’t go anywhere without each other; we even complete each other’s sentences … well, more mine than his, but let’s not split hairs.

I sense new text being loaded now, so I’ll have to be going.

Hail to the TOTUS! Next stop, TMZ!

[Early afternoon update]

I wonder who the teleprompter’s picks are for the final four?

Obama spent part of Tuesday making his tournament picks for ESPN, which posted his completed bracket online Wednesday and showed the First Fan filling it out with Andy Katz on the noon edition of “Sportscenter.”

Of course, the president’s choice drew a reaction from the Tar Heels’ most intense rival.

“Somebody said that we’re not in President Obama’s Final Four, and as much as I respect what he’s doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said from the Blue Devils’ first-round site in Greensboro, N.C.

Actually, given how disastrous the president’s plans for the economy are, I’m glad that he’s distracted from them by something.

Humor, Popular Culture

The Dummy Killer

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Lileks reviews (his assessment) the greatest comic-book cover ever.

If he’s really a dummy killer, we need to send him to Washington.

Also, a screed on the NEA:

The Federal-funding argument was lost a long time ago. As with so many things, opposition to Federal funding is equated to opposition to the thing itself. The existence and healthy survival of these things before Federal intervention is meaningless; what seems to count above all is the satisfaction some get from knowing there is a National Something or other, complete with assistant special directors for coordinating things, because God knows we couldn’t produce art if someone in Washington wasn’t coordinating it all.

But before we go on, consider the National Endowment. I’m just guessing, but I’ll bet the National Endowment for the Arts was conceived as some sort of middlebrow self-improvement program – sending Pablo Casals LPs to schools, helping small towns put on “Our Town,” subsidizing museums so they could put on challenging works like gigantic Calder mobiles, and paying off the survivors when the damned thing snapped a cable and carved a tour group in stir-fry slices. I’m sure it still funds good things. But let us risk a headache and try to think of a few art forms we managed to create without its assistance:

Jazz

Blues

Rock and Roll

Every movie made in America

Skyscrapers

Painting that looks like something

Sculpture that looks like someone

As it happens I like modern art, so this isn’t some philistine sneer at funny pitchers what don’t look like Whistler’s Mama. I’m not even opposed in principle to state funding of the art, for two reasons: 1) the monarchs and the church did a fine job of it for millennia, and 2) if some small town wants to help defray the cost of a play in the school gym, fine. But I have to draw a line, because if I say it’s good to support orchestras in large cities with Federal money, then anyone gets to support their favorite kind of art, even if it happens to be guillotining paper-mache replicas of the Founding Fathers on Presidents Day. You get your art, I get mine.

Read all. The banks are discovering what artists should have long understand — when you start to take handouts from the government, your integrity is hopelessly compromised.

I should note that it gets better:

What does he propose?

. . . and move into a broad, far-reaching series of projects that question the role of religion and commerce in the life of the nation

Ah. Of course. It’s the perfect distillation: take the money from people who have used commerce to succeed in the arts, so we can question the role of commerce in the life of the nation. Ideally, common people will become Aware and have Consciousness Raised from its gutter-state to the Olympian heights where one can see a magnificent future, a time when the role of commerce has been questioned with the force and incisive detail you only get from people who can’t get anyone to pay them for what they do.

To quote the Iron Lady, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.