Before Chris Christie deflated him in a debate over the weekend, he seemed to be surging, the establishment’s last best hope, not too weak, not too mean, not too wild, not too bland, the G.O.P.’s Goldilocks.
.. Rubio has an appealing Mickey Mousiness. Also, he can be funny, especially if you haven’t seen his shtick more than a few times. (A stump speech at a campaign stop is a lot like standup comedy.
A Few More #TrumpBible Verses
Among whom was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and the mother of James & John. Three classy ladies. TREMENDOUS class. #TrumpBible
Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old, but even young she was nothing to look at, so you can just imagine. #TrumpBible
New York Mag: John Oliver
It didn’t occur to me until recently actually that my son is going to have an American accent. Because I guess in my head that’s never how I’ve heard my child speak, and I think it’ll be odd that I’m going to sound different from him. And he’ll hear me have to change my voice for automated machines. You probably don’t have to do that. On the automated phone lines, all the time — “No. 4.” “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.” “No. 4.” “I don’t understand that,” and I have to say “No. 4” like a kind of a sedated John Wayne. And it feels like such a defeat. There’s almost a smugness in there: “Ohhh, No. 4.”
.. The lack of religion in British politics is a polar opposite. I don’t know how many people in Congress are openly without religion3; I would imagine potentially zero. Whereas in England, politicians cannot talk openly about faith. Remember that Tony Blair was a committed Catholic, and there was real concern about that. He tried to not be photographed going to church. The question that made him squirm4 the most leading up to the Iraq War was “Do you and George Bush pray together?” That was like pulling a pin out of a grenade, handing it to him, and saying, “What are you going to do with that?”
.. By taking out what seems like the funniest joke, everything else would get funnier and make more sense, because that funny joke was a digression
.. Saying someone watches the show for news is like saying to a musician, “A lot of people use your music to work out. Do you make workout music?”
.. The funny stuff is easier. You should be able to write jokes pretty quickly. The jokes are kind of the window dressing, but you need to make sure that they’re hanging on something solid, because if that story falls apart, all the jokes fall apart, too.
Dan Harmon of Community.10 He’s a good example of just, like, killing himself to make something 3 percent better.
.. From that point, it’s a lot of sweat and a lot of pain to make a piece barely perceptibly better. But if you can do that six times, make it incrementally better, all of a sudden it’s 10 percent better, and that’s actually a big deal. But it’s like athletes: If you’re running a 10.3-second hundred meters, with all the pain and not eating the most flavorsome foods to get to that level, is it worth working even harder to get to 10.2? You’re already running pretty fast.
.. You had a line I liked about falling in love with America, in all its beauty and awfulness, and how that was like falling in love with a girl while you’re holding back her hair as she’s vomiting. Do you still feel that way?
.. Then you get here and you realize it is slightly misplaced but that it’s also a more complicated country than anyone gives it credit for. America is viewed overseas as this coherent mass of people who are proud to be American and thus agree with each other on everything, and of course nothing could be further from the truth. This is as fractured a country as you’re likely to find, but that’s what’s great about it.
.. There is a power in a candidate openly saying, “Of course I gave to both parties in the past. I’m a businessman, that’s what you do.” He’s like the Wizard of Oz, pulling back the curtain, and there is something interesting in that.
.. Given that campaign news — and news in general — moves so fast — did you know when you started the show that Last Week Tonight would stay off the day-to-day news cycle?
If the news had been dominated by something all week, there’s a pretty good chance we’re not going to be doing that... “You’re never truly free if you’re without any kind of risk.”
..You’ve said before that punching down isn’t funny.
Satire works best when it is punching up, when it’s anti-Establishment.Is that why you think there isn’t a right-wing version of your show13 or The Daily Show?
.. I think the concept behind your question is a little problematic — as if to say I’m coming at something just from a liberal point of view, and not from a comedian’s, which is to point out bullshit. If you become too partisan in your way of thinking, you get less funny.
.. It’s almost inevitable that in however many more years I’ll say I can’t deal with this toxic shit anymore. But it’s still an interesting level of despair at the moment.
.. if there are three statistics on a screen at one time, you can be fairly sure at least one of those is wrong. Which is pretty scary. You think, How on Earth can ABC News put these numbers up on screen? And then you think, Well, ABC News has cut back on staff to a dramatic extent. They’re spread pretty thin, and this is what happens.
.. Some of the stuff that we’re most proud of is not those long stories but the spectacle.
The Brilliance of Louis C.K.’s Emails: He Writes Like a Politician
All this is revealing not because he’s using email to promote himself—of course he emails his fans because he wants them to buy stuff—but because Louie is so much better at this approach than the average politician. He uses the same communications vehicle as a person mass-emailing for donations and for votes, but Louie makes the genre work.
How? Because he acknowledges plainly what he’s doing. In other words, he’s in on the joke.
.. But Louie makes it clear that he knows you know what he’s doing—like when he signs off “your annoying person,” or writes something like “For any of you that didn’t go to buy it and this is just a tedious, worthless email for you, I am truly, honestly, kind of, not really sorry at all.” He tells you he hopes you’re having a great day, then immediately reminds you he’s writing to a sprawling and anonymous audience of people, as he did in January 2013:
Seeing as this email goes out to about a quarter of a million people, the odds that all of them are having a terrific day are very low. I would say at least thirty two thousand four hundred and sixty two of you are just having the worst day ever. The kind of day where, when someone smiles at you, you really want to punch them right in their stupid mouth. And here now youre getting an annoying email from that comedian you used to like, but enough already with that guy anyway. Well, in any case…. Hello. To all of you.
So his emails feel honest in a way that political emails don’t. Even when he gets sappy—or maybe especially then—Louie is able to strike a balance that most politicians aren’t
.. Meanwhile, here’s good ol’ Louie, back in January: “Thank you for receiving this email. If you hated it, or you hate me, feel free to unsubscribe. Keep in mind that I am personally informed whenever anyone unsubscribes and I cry very hard every time it happens.”