In case you missed it, here is the back story: Tracy Morgan, stand-up comic and one of the stars of the NBC hit sit-com “30 Rock” was busted doing a stand-up routine at the Ryman Theater in Nashville. Unlike back when St. Lenny was being busted the cops didn’t rush the stage and drag Mr. Morgan off. No, a single audience member got offended and reported Mr. Morgan to “the authorities” through Facebook.

The verboten topic was lack of empathy for homosexuality. The “authorities” are the liberal media. A gay man in the audience, Kevin Rogers took offence and wound up on CNN chatting about how horrible the show was.

I wasn’t there and I doubt there is a recording or transcript but from reports the “bit” was pretty raw. What I have read and seen on the Internet is that Mr. Morgan was doing a rant where he imagined his son came home and announced he was gay. Mr. Morgan said if that happened he would stab him.

Yeah, I know, it’s not exactly knocking me of my chair either but that’s not the point.  

I have seen Mr. Morgan perform and found a lot of his act to be tasteless. I didn’t find a lot of his material to be funny. I don’t condone bullying or violence against anyone. However I also don’t condone drawing lines for performers or establishing sacred cows. Does anyone think that this was the first Mr. Morgan performed this routine? Doubt it! Now, under pressure from NBC, Tina Fey and uber-hypocrite Alec Baldwin, Mr. Morgan says his rant was “not funny in any context.”  Even though according to one person who attended the show, “No one was booing him. Everyone was laughing…”

Let’s step back and imagine for a minute that instead of the word “gay’ in his routine he had used the word “Republican” or “conservative.”  What if he had said, “… if my son came home and said he was joining the GOP I would stab him!” The audience and liberal media would still be praising his talent. Genius! Let’s further imagine the next day Reince Priebus issued a statement asking for an apology. More howls of laughter and perhaps a statement from Mr. Morgan telling the GOP leader he could plant one where the sun don’t shine. High fives all around!

So why isn’t the outspoken Mr. Morgan telling the GLAAD folks to kiss off? Simple, he’s worried about his job. He’s got plenty of reason to worry.  Isaiah Washington got canned from Grey’s Anatomy after using a gay slur and he did the entire apology tour. The movie “The Dilemma” was roundly criticized for using the dreaded “f’ word.  The “f” word, by the way, is not “fuck.” If you tried to stop comedians from using that word because you find it offensive Hollywood types would brand you a Nazi, fascist or worst some sort of Christian zealot. 

Meanwhile a congressman is sending pictures of his penis around the country and is being defended by Charlie Rangel who is saying “He wasn’t going out with little boys. He wasn’t going into men’s rooms with broad stances.”  That statement sounds offensive and more that a little homophobic to me. GLAAD, where are ya?

In the past I have tried to guess the Oscar winners by trying to decide which films best fit into the current liberal Hollywood zeitgeist. My favorite nomination this year is the truly mediocre “The Kid’s are Alright.” It’s about a lesbian couple’s kids who seek their biological father and realize the moms make better dads! If this movie had ended with the one woman admitting she digs guys and leaving her lesbian partner, do you think it would have been nominated?

This year I have decided to add my own category. The category is: Which liberal cause will come up most often during the evening. And the nominees are:

Republicans Destroying Unions:  Starring: The State of Wisconsin, Screenplay by John Trumka and Mitch Stewart.  I predict that at least three people will mention how they stand in solidarity with the government workers in Wisconsin, and around the world. Forget the fact that the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA, the two largest performer’s unions, don’t allow their “poorer” members access to the union health care plan or pension at any price. Multimillionaire union actors will stand with their brothers and sisters who are being asked to fork over a few bucks for their lavish benefit packages. As we already know, SAG has been drumbeating for the folks protesting in Wisconsin already! I love how my unions spend my money on causes with which I don’t agree, but I’m getting off the subject.

Revolutions are Us: Starring: Countries throughout Africa and the Middle East, Screenplay by Google and The Muslin Brotherhood from an original work by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I’m sure someone will mention how great all the revolutions are in Africa and the Middle East. Forget the fact that the first people who an Islamic government will line up against a wall are Jews, homosexuals and artists.  

We’re Still Here: Starring: Whoopi Goldberg.  The Whoopster made a lot of noise on The View about not being mentioned in a New York Times article about the lack of Black nominees this year. Please note she wasn’t upset about the lack of Black nominees but that she wasn’t mentioned as an Oscar winner. Maybe Ms. Goldberg has made so many turkeys since Ghost in 1990 that the writer was trying to be nice to her by not reminding people that at one time Whoopi was considered a serious actress.

One could make the case that winning an Oscar is a bad career move for an actor or actress of color. In addition to Ms. Goldberg the careers of Jamie Foxx, Cuba Gooding Jr. Louis Gossett Jr., Jennifer Hudson, and Halle Berry have certainly not been on the upswing lately. Even the great Sidney Poitier was never recognized again after winning in 1963. To be fair to the Academy, most of his movies after 1967 were very forgettable.

I know people will be critical of me so let me state for the record that I don’t say Mr. Poitier or Ms. Goldberg shouldn’t have taken any of the less than stellar roles they were offered. Trust me, if they make “Sister Act VII” or “They Call Me Mr. Tibbs 4” and offer me the most minor roll, I would jump on it like Bob Goldthwaite jumped on “Hot to Trot!”  Hey you gotta pay the bills and make the minimum to get your union health care.

The real minority in Hollywood that gets ignored every year are conservative actors, directors and producers. Are any conservative actors, directors or producers up for an award this year?

Who do we see about that?

Before I get started on my review of this year’s Super Bowl commercials I want to come to the aid of a lady in distress. Can we lay off of Christina Aguilera and her muffed line in the National Anthem? Look, she was nervous, under pressure, and out of her element. The NFL asked her to sing fully clothed and without a stripper pole to hang onto. While I’m on the subject of the Nation Anthem why can’t the football players show a little respect when the country is being honored? Their sideline slouching was shameful! Roger Goodell, get out your paddle and take some of those guys to the woodshed.

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Once again, the folks who thought Super Bowl 45  was a good way to spend their investors dollars, spent slightly more than the gross national product of Niger and Ethiopia combined with, in most cases, very mediocre results. With so many ads it’s hard in a short piece to hit them all so I am skipping all the promos and movie trailers although the Fox/House parody of the 1980 Mean Joe Green was one of my favorites.

I think I have finally figured out that GoDaddy.com is run by a horny fifteen year old boy out of his parents’ basement. What in the world does trying to make me think Joan Rivers is hot have to do with getting a domain name? Joan is a safe distance from “hot” no matter how many body doubles they used. I don’t know how much money Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels are paid to debase themselves in what year after years have been the unsexiest and unfunniest ads, but it isn’t nearly enough. The ads beg us to go to their website to see the “uncensored” endings to the ads. I wonder how many frustrated high school boys went to GoDaddy thinking they were going to see Ms. Patrick and Ms. Michaels in the buff but only found a lame joke/dance number instead. Can someone tell me who GoDaddy’s biggest competitor are because I am moving my domain name.

The Groupon ads with Timothy Hutton and Cuba Gooding Jr. were clever and, as a conservative, I liked how tweaked liberal causes. This series was among my favorites until I had to explain to my 12 year-old boy what a “Brazilian Wax” was after the Elizabeth Hurley ad. Do we really need to make jokes about crotch waxing during a sporting event watched by families?

Pepsi Max/Doritos continued their series of homemade ads, which this year fell woefully short of the high standard that had been set in previous years. Cans to the groin, spousal abuse and felony assault: hilarious! The finger licker and pants sniffer guy was just creepy and made me wonder how the HR person at this company still has a job. I must admit, though, I did like the “tiny dog through the door” ad, and if I were picking the winner “house sitter who revives grandpa” would get the money.

Some brief takes some of the others… Eminem doesn’t normally do commercials but he had two. Is anyone convinced the rap star is pimping down Woodward Ave. in a Chrysler 200?

Coke Dragon ad: Predictable.

Faith Hill’s Teleflora nice “rack” joke ad: Please refer to Elizabeth Hurley comment.

Richard Lewis and Roseanne Barr for Snickers: Not bad for variations on a theme.

Motorola Xoom: Let me see if I have this right; if you have a Xoom you are a rule breaker and not at all like the zombies using that other Smartphone. So let’s all run out and get a Xoom, so we can all be the different again. Do I have it?

Chevy Truck/Lassie: I chuckled.

Bud Light/ Home Improvement: Weak.

Bud Light/Dogs: Weaker.

Chatter.com: Forgettable.

Mercedes Benz/Diddy: Look who we spent too much money on to get in our ad.

Chevy Cruse/Old Folks: Oops I think you missed a cliché.

Career Builders: Monkeys are always funny!

 E Trade/Babies: Apparently as babies get older they lose their sense of humor!

The cream of the crop for this year were very good. The Bud Light “product placement” ad was an example of taking a joke and running it into the ground until you can’t help but laugh. When the Bud Light truck comes screaming into the frame I was laughing my butt off. 

Both Bridgestone Tire ads were clever and well done. The “reply all” ad was my runner-up favorite of the evening. Is there anybody under the age of 90 who hasn’t sent an e mail they wish they could pull back? The other Bridgestone ad had a high cute factor with the beaver repaying the driver who swerved to avoid hitting him. I liked Kia “Epic Ride” but my overall favorite for the day was the CarMax, “I Feel Like…” ad. Though both ads followed a series of connected vignettes, the quirky similes of the CarMax ad made it my big winner!

Agree, disagree or maybe I missed your favorite, let me hear from you.

Dr. Gribben is afraid that the language in the book has stopped people from reading Twain. I am sure this brilliant move will encourage students everywhere to put down the video game controller. It will also save overworked teachers from actually having to teach the context of the use of the word. In order to do that, they might have to do some research and, heaven forbid, read the books themselves. What teacher has time for that when there are condoms to be distributed and prayer circles to be broken up?

Of course, elitists who have jumped up to protest this censorship. Movie reviewer and social gadfly Roger Ebert made the mistake of using the word that shall not be spoken or written in a tweet opposing the new edition. He thought because of his lifetime of liberalism and marriage to an African-American woman he was on the white guys allowed to use the word which shall not be spoken or written list, but alas he was not and was roundly “critweeted.”  (This is a new word I have invented to describe the criticism of a tweet by tweeting.)

Now that the looming “Huck Finn” controversy is finally behind us, we can get to the business of creating jobs. Think of all of the unemployed and underemployed English majors we can busy doing the task of politically “correcting” the rest of the great and not so great works of literature. We could hire half a Bryn Mawr graduating class just to edit the works of Toni Morrison.

Think about it: just by editing the word which may not be spoken or written out of  “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Heart of Darkness,” “Go Tell it On The Mountain,” “Lord of the Flies,” and a thousand other works of literature, we could drop the unemployment rate a point or two. Then we could start on other ethnic insults which are more subtle. I see full-employment on the horizon.

The real problem is when we get to books like Dick Gregory’s autobiography.  Its title is… The word that shall not be spoken or written: An Autobiography.

Maybe we should ask him?

Gregory has said that the word that shall not be spoken or written should not be censored nor should euphemisms be used. He finds it intellectually dishonest. The same sentiment has been expressed by Professor Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law School instructor and writer of books and essays on the use of  the word which may not be spoken or written.

Ahhh, what do they know?

Vive la censorship! Vive la revisionism!

Unfortunately for the Americanized version of the long running BBC hit Top Gear, it is trending into the third category. The show is lacking three elements: originality, chemistry among the hosts, and humor. That’s a shame because it has a lot going for it. The best asset of the show, after the cars, is comedian Adam Ferrara. I will readily admit that I have a bias towards my fellow comics doing well but the problem is that the producers of the show seem to lack the humor gene. In the six episodes I have seen thus far they haven’t let Adam loose. The closest they came was when he got a ticket for speeding on the causeway to Key West.  After watching the rest of the episode I wasn’t sure if this was an actual event or staged for the camera.

More on that in just a few minutes. Let me back up and admit I am a huge fan of the British version or the show. The three “presenters,” as they are called in the U.K., seem to have a real friendship and mutual respect even though they constantly “slag” on each other.  I realize that relationship has been built over the years but even when I go back and look at older seasons of Top Gear on DVD that chemistry is still there. The two other hosts of the American show, Tanner Foust and Rutledge Wood, seem to be a little out of their element as hosts, despite the fact that Mr. Wood has experience as a reporter for NASCAR and Speed Network.  I don’t want to be too negative about Mr. Wood. He has a “good old boy” hominess that I think could work to his and the show’s advantage, but it seems that the producers haven’t figured that out just yet.  Secondly the British version is anchored by Jeremy Clarkson; though one of  three hosts, he’s obviously the boss and the center of the show.  I believe having a “boss” on screen would help give the American show some definition and Mr. Ferrara would be a natural fit.

The problems with Top Gear USA are greater that the hosting duties. Thus far every “challenge” given to the hosts is a direct rip-off from the BBC version. Car vs. skiers, seen it! Boat, car, and plane race to a destination, been there. Many of the shots seem way too staged to have been just captured by the roving camera. It the episode where the guys race from Miami to Key West, there is a beautiful shot of all three modes of transportation in the same frame as they head South. What are the odds?  This is the scene which called Mr. Ferrara’s traffic citation into question. Call me crazy but I think a realty show should be realistic!

They also use the “Star in A Reasonably Priced Car” segment from the original series. This features a celebrity driving an underpowered car around a European style formula one track.  This feature of the show could have been easily “Americanized” by using a typical “NASCAR” banked loop track (perhaps the producers failed to notice just how popular NASCAR actually is).  They could have also used a drag strip, the most American form of racing.

Despite its faults, I still set Top Gear USA on my DVR. I am hoping the show matures and finds its stride because like millions of Americans, I love cars! When the host gets behind the wheel of a Bugatti-Veyron, McLaren, or some other supercar I will never own, I can’t help but think how cool that would be. When they take a challenge in a “beater” I can identify with, that feeling of hoping my car makes the next exit after driving several of the POS I have owned in my life.  I hope the show runs long enough for them to get so far down the list that I might get invited to take the reasonably priced car around the track because I know I could leave Jay Leno in the dust!

Following my recent article on the dust up over the use of the word “gay” in a joke in the movie “The Dilemma” I engaged in an email discussion with our fearless leader, Big Hollywood editor John Nolte. The question John posed to me was in the new era “everything is deeply offensive to someone” could guys like Sam Kinison, George Carlin and even Saint Lenny make it today?  Could three of the greatest comic voices ever survive in today’s comic environment?

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My first impulse was to say a quick yes, give John a virtual eye roll, and get back to making funny Facebook status updates about the TSA. Then I considered his question a little more deeply. I was too young to have known or seen Lenny Bruce and only got to meet Carlin three times, so I didn’t know him well. Sam, that was different. I got to know him pretty well back in the late seventies in Texas. We stayed friends and even worked together a few times through the years. I’ll get back to Sam in a minute.

Lenny Bruce got arrested a number of time for his language. Back in the sixties few people objected to making ethnic jokes. The word “gay” still meant filled with joy and to most Americans a “fag” was a Lucky Strike. Lenny got in trouble for his scatological references. “Cocksucker” was a big one. Most of the stuff Lenny suffered for seems mild in comparison to today’s cable fodder. However, one of Lenny’s greatest bits, which heavily features the notorious “N” word, couldn’t be broadcast today even on cable. Today it couldn’t even be written in a transcript without serious repercussions. It is however one of the most brilliant bits of comic social commentary ever performed. Dustin Hoffman does it justice in the movie, “Lenny.” Lenny also foreshadowed today’s political correctness in another bit featured in the movie when he substituted the word “blahblah” for “cocksucker.” Quoting Hoffman as Lenny in the movie, “It’s the dirtiest bit I have ever done and they can’t touch me!”

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Carlin had his transformation for the slick ex-adman comic the hipster we all know in the late sixties and early seventies. His most famous piece featured the “seven words you can never say on television.” Ironically, all seven are now heard with regularity on television, in movies, on Broadway and in teen conversations. Later in his career the seven words became about seven hundred. I heard him do an extended version of the original which took at least fifteen minutes on stage. If he did the bit today he would have to change the bit to, “ There are only five words you can’t say on TV , “N” word, “F” word, “R” word, “G” word, “  and Islamic Extremists!”

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Sam was different. He seemed to invite harassment. Reviews of his show that called him obscene and offensive he wore as a badge of honor. He sometimes sent them out with his press kit! He defied authority at every chance. Once, at The Annex, a small club where we started, he smashed a wooden stool on stage during a bit. The club manager told Sam he had to pay for the stool and warned him that he would be charged for future damages.  The next time Sam went up he took the new stool and smashed it against the wall and flipped some money down on the stage. He told the manager to get a few stools because he would need them. As I remember it, that event led to Sam being banned from the club for awhile and the infamous “crucifixion for comedy” incident.

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At times I think Sam wanted people to hate him, it was good for business. He would antagonize those who protested his antics and language. He demeaned women onstage because he knew how it enraged NOW and other feminist groups. They would scream about it and the tickets to Sam’s shows became the hottest around. Some of his most famous bits sent howls of through the gay community even back then. His famous “Rock Hudson” bit where he imitated Mr. Hudson performing numerous acts of fellatio and then regretting the last one which Sam imagined gave him AIDS was universally panned by the politically correct even back then.  

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If Sam were starting today would he have a chance? You know it! Genius is a hard thing to stifle and Sam was a comic genius. Sam also would have succeeded today because back in the eighties he was already aware that those who presumed to speak for “the masses” were usually out of touch. He never worried about what people thought of him. He spoke his mind and used words he knew his audience would understand. As I am traveling today I am imagining what Sam would have to say about the TSA and enhanced pat downs. I would give just about anything to watch him go through an airport today and “engage” the security.

That would be national news.

“Ladies and gentlemen, electric cars are gay. I mean, not ‘homosexual’ gay, but, you know, ‘my parents are chaperoning the dance’ gay.”

Even though Universal Studios withdrew the trailer after protests, Howard says he will keep the line in the film. Now more protests are threatened unless the joke is cut entirely from the actual movie. This line has sent gay activists into a tizzy and has now made any reference to “gay” in a humorous way, the moral equivalent of carrying Mein Kampf into a synagogue.

One gay activist is quoted as saying the joke promotes “hate and homophobia.” Ellen DeGeneres says it is a form of bullying. Anderson Cooper of CNN agrees, ”We’ve got to do something to make those words unacceptable ’cause those words are hurting kids!” Good for you, Andy. And I’m sure you’ll be apologizing to all the Tea Party activists you called “tea baggers” (indirectly mocking them as“gay”), now that you have seen the light.

I’m sure the people at GLAAD would have come down on Mr. Cooper had they realized what he had said, but they were probably just really busy that year and missed the “joke” that was all over TV and the Internet. Thankfully the folks from GLAAD have finally spoken up and are now trying to end “gay” jokes. I say “bravo,” it’s about time to end all of this “attack” humor.  

We must take a stand and stop letting comedy and comedians offend people.

I know! Let’s get a whole list of banned words and topics together! For the children…

Let’s see, we have the granddaddy of all banned words, a word so bad we can’t even print it, we can only refer to it as the N-word. Then we have the F-word, and I have to be honest and admit that I don’t know if that’s “fag” or “fuck.” We also have another contender for the F-word, “fat.” As someone who has struggled with a weight problems, I find fat jokes offensive. In fact I find those “phat” references offensive too. Would “fag” be any less offensive to leftists if it were spelled “phag?” So let’s knock off the fat jokes. I’m sure thin people find jokes about being skinny hurtful as well, so they are now o-u-t out. Short, tall, unattractive, blond and any other reference to any appearance or feature must be banned, as well.

Then we have the “r” word. We wouldn’t want an actor calling an electric car “retarded” now, would we? Jokes about people with or any reference to any type of limited abilities are now forbidden. We also need to be sensitive to how smart people are portrayed — so jokes about geeks, nerds and dweebs are banned. As a Southerner and hillbilly let’s put an end to all of those hurtful references to how stupid people are in the South. No more NASCAR or incest jokes. Then too, we will have to agree to stop making jokes about New Yorkers and folks from Jersey. No jokes about California or its “dude” culture. In fact, let’s just stop jokes about where people are from and how they behave.

I think it goes without saying that any ethnic reference is gone, Outlawed too is making fun of people’s religion, politics or educational background. No reference will be made to a person’s economic status. This can be hurtful no matter how much or how little a person makes. Did I miss anything? Age? No “Geezer” jokes. Relationships? Off limits.

No jokes about anything.   

I once did a TV show and had a joke about Daylight Savings Time and how in Indiana they don’t observe it. “Indiana days are boring enough without being any longer,” was the punchline. The producer asked me to cut it because it might offend someone in Indiana.  I told him that every joke offends somebody and if he could tell me a joke that didn’t I would cut the line without complaint. I got to do the joke.

As a comedian I know two things for sure; there’s no such thing as a victimless joke and everything offends somebody. That is the whole point of comedy. Comedy is supposed to make fun of something. Great comedy makes us uneasy and makes us question our assumptions. Paraphrasing Twain: We are supposed to make hamburgers out of someone’s sacred cow.

Once we start saying you can make fun of everything except … (insert your favorite set-aside here) it isn’t only the end of comedy…

It’s the end of free speech.

It’s no wonder failing and flailing CNN would want to have him on for an hour and promote it heavily. I am sure that his ratings outperformed the recently acquired Spitzer/Parker yawn-fest or any given hour of the ironically named Joy Behar Show on sister network Headline News.  For the past week CNN was pushing the appearance of the Daily Show host on Larry King Live,  as an hour of Jon Stewart Opens Up.

I would have loved to see Stewart open up for an hour however that isn’t what I got. The show got off to a good start when Stewart made fun of the falling rating of CNN and the fact that Larry King was leaving just before the ship went down. I especially liked the riff he did about Piers Morgan replacing King.

Then, unfortunately Mr. King tried to take control of the show and what followed, with the exception of a few moments when Stewart wrested control back, was enough to make me want to watch an hour of Christiane Amanpour do stand up or Andy Griffith shilling seniors for Obamacare on an endless loop.

The hour largely turned into a humorless hour long promotion for three of Stewart’s projects, the very worthy “Night of Too Many Stars,” his book “Earth,” and his anti-Glenn Beck rally in Washington. Stewart denied any connection between his “Restoring Sanity” rally and Beck’s hugely successful “Restoring Honor” event. Several times Stewart made the point that he already had the idea before Beck did his rally. This was an obvious dodge of the truth. I get the joke Jon…

…Beck and his followers are nuts but you and Mr. Colbert will restore sanity. Embrace the joke, don’t run from it!

King spent several minutes talking to Stewart about the porta-potties needed for the Washington rally to set up a painfully unfunny gift of one to Stewart. Larry, if you have a great comic on your show let him do the comedy.

The show really bogged down when Stewart forgot he was a comedian and fell into Maher/Franken territory and started doing serious analysis. Why are the Democrats about to be voted out of office en masse? People are “upset with the status quo,” said Stewart. Which is why Obama got elected but we’ll let that be for now. They are willing to elect fresh fruit according to Stewart. I wonder who he might be referring to with that comment?

Perhaps Mr. Stewart was most clearly out of his element when he said that Obama was in trouble because he had failed to lay out, “a clear path of where he was going.”  No Jon, Mr. Obama has laid out a very clear path and most of us don’t care for it all that much.  You’ll see that on November 2nd.

Calling his recent appearance before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration “comedy” may leave Mr. Colbert open to legal action for lying to Congress. There were also several points in his testimony that were of questionable, as he would say, “truthiness.” Political comedy in sketch form is tricky, but as stand-up it is a balancing act that requires great skill. To my mind there are two rules: first you must, as my friend Will Durst says, be an equal-opportunity smart ass. Unless you are willing to slap at both sides of the aisle or only work highly partisan events, you lose at least fifty percent of the audience from the first joke. The second is that no matter who or what you are attacking, it must be funny. Mr. Colbert’s stand-up or sit down in the case of his Congressional gig, fails on both counts. Mr. Colbert’s one-dimensional, highly partisan act has run its course. We get it, Steve — any sincere conservative is a dim witted, xenophobic, racist, Christian numbskull who just doesn’t understand the issues.

It is difficult to take a sketch character and develop it into a more than a series three minute scenes. One only has to look at the number of horrible Saturday Night Live spin off character films that have been made to prove that point. It is even harder to take a character out of the sketch and build it into a stand-up routine. Mr. Colbert has now proved this to be the case…twice.

His recent attempt to use humor to “…draw attention to this important, complicated issue…” was not the first time he has bombed in the Capital. In 2006, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Mr. Colbert tried his character-driven stand up and died a horrible death when he bypassed funny and went to being personally insulting to Mr. Bush and others in attendance. In a rare bipartisan show of support, his act was panned by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Last week, Mr. Colbert started his testimony with a nice piece of self-deprecation saying his appearance might get the hearing moved up to C-SPAN 1. Unfortunately it was downhill from there until the last line of the set. He followed this with a big stretch set-up about obese Americans in order to pay it off with a weak colonoscopy reference. The next joke was a reference comparing illegal immigration to the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt and a bad pun about “food pyramids.”  The problem with this “joke” is that the comparison isn’t accurate. I’m not saying political jokes can’t stretch the facts, but there is a breaking point where the audience doesn’t buy the premise.

This was followed by a series of weak attempts to humorously say that farm work is hard, hot physical labor. I don’t think anyone doubts that. His point is that these are jobs American’s won’t do. Again, the humor is rooted in a falsehood so great that we all know it to be invalid. As a teen I used to cut corn out of soybeans and bale hay. The pay was crap and the hours long. I didn’t do it because I liked it I did it because there was no other way to get money. My father didn’t believe in the welfare system known as an allowance.

Illegal immigration suppresses wages and makes the welfare system the smart choice for unskilled labor. Perhaps Mr. Colbert and his progressive friends are too dim to get that.  Just as “progressives” don’t get that raising the minimum doesn’t lift people out of poverty, it only raises the number we consider being poor. If raising the minimum wage was the answer to everything we could just make the minimum wage $300,000 a year and we would all be rich.

Mr. Colbert did do one thing right; he saved his best joke for the closer.  At the end of his “expert” opinion he said, “I trust that following my testimony – both sides will work together on this issue in the best interest of the American people - as you always do.” Since Mr. Colbert seems to be fond of bad puns, I’ll finish with one; Mr. Colbert’s act has jumped the snark.

It started at the MTV Video Music Awards. That is ironic in itself since I think that MTV stopped being a music channel sometime in the 1990’s. Ms. Gaga, (I don’t know if “Lady” is a title or simply the first part of her pseudonym) appeared in a costume made of meat. When asked the meaning of her get-up by Ellen DeGeneres, she explained it wasn’t a slam on vegans.  

“As you know, I am the most judgment-free human being on the earth,” Gaga replied.  

Wow! Did the irony of that statement knock anyone else down into their La-Z-Boy? That might be the truest thing she has ever said. It wasn’t too long ago that having judgment skills was considered a plus. Not anymore!

Be that as it may, the whole idea was to call attention to the plight of gay folks in the military. If you don’t see the linkage between “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” narcissistic self- indulgence and wearing a Porterhouse, come on over and sit on the terminally un-hip bench with me while I try to figure it out. 

Ms. Gaga went on to explain that her being accompanied by some disgruntled former employees of the military was a political protest:

“For me this evening, if we don’t stand up for what we believe in and if we don’t fight for our rights pretty soon, we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on own bones. And, I am not a piece of meat.”

I am not really sure what that means, either. I am a fairly hefty guy and I have a lot of meat on my bones. So are my rights safe? Perhaps Ms. Gaga is trying to tell us that DADT is somehow linked to anorexia in the fashion industry. Ahhh, now it’s all starting to come together.

She went on to say:

“It is a devastation to me that I know my fans who are gay . . . feel like they have government oppression on them.”

Not that there “is” government oppression but that they “feel” there is oppression.

Later she “tweeted” to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Senator was smitten with Lady Gaga. They tweeted back and forth for days! That is, if you think they do their own “tweeting.” I believe that both have people who do this job for them and the job title is “Twit.”  There is probably a Head Twit and several Assistant Twits. I imagine Lady Gaga and Harry Reid are surrounded by Twits.

Perhaps he is just looking for his next gig when he finds himself unemployed in November.