Posts Tagged ‘Andy Kauffman’

Iowahawk

I Guess You Had To Be There: The Barack Obama Celebrity Roast

by Iowahawk

(Thundering tympanies, swirling spotlights)

Announcer

Live! From the fabulous Turtle Bay Ballroom at United Nations Headquarters, it’s the Rat Pack of Evil All-Star International Celebrity Roast of President Barack Obama!

(orchestra fanfare: ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’)

With Pyongyang funnyman Kim Jong-Il! Borscht Belt headliner Vlady Putin! Queen of Mean Liz Windsor! Saudi Sheik of Schtick King Abdullah! Beijing jokeslinger Hu Jintao! Wacky al Qaeda Caveman Ayman al-Zawahiri! Nick ‘the Knife’ Sarkozy! Sassy Wanda Sykes! South-of-the-border slapstick team Hugo Chavez and the Castro Brothers! Taliban Madman Mullah Omar! Jon Stewart! Lovable Libyan lush Muammar al-Ghadaffi! Grovelin’ Guvner Gordy Brown! Bashar “The Chin” al-Assad! The Hamas Fattah Dancers! And starring your Master of Ceremonies — that suntan man with a plan from Iran — that Persian with a nuclear perversion — Sheckyyyyyy Ahmedinejad!

(applause)

Shecky Ahmedinejad

Okay, okay, pipe down. Let’s get this thing over with, this straitjacket is a rental and my magic carpet is double-parked on East 43rd. Mohamed H. Prophet, will you get a load of the evil on the stage tonight? I haven’t seen this many bombs since Janeane Garofalo played the American Legion convention. (more…)

Leigh Scott

Performance Art Taken to New Levels

by Leigh Scott

The more I watch clips like Janeane Garofalo’s appearance on the Olbermann show, the more I’m convinced that its not real.  That’s right.  Allow me to introduce to the world a new form of “trutherism.” I have discovered a new conspiracy.  I think leftist talking heads are faking it.

In the late 1970s the brilliant Andy Kaufman created an alter ego, Tony Clifton.  Kaufman demanded that his “friend” Tony get a role on the show Taxi.  He then proceeded to cause such a disturbance on set (including hiring hookers to accompany him) that his co-stars walked off the production. Not once did Kaufman admit or acknowledge that he and Clifton were the same person.  He never broke character. It was a brilliant, immersive piece of performance art.

Kaufman’s legacy of blending performance art, comedy, and audacious behavior continues today.  Witness Jon Stewart, Garofalo, Ed Shultz, Olbermann, Susan Roesgen, Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell and countless other performers.  How else can you explain such over the top examples of derangement?  What better way to distance yourself from the pack by espousing views and analysis that fly in the face of history and common sense?  When Olbermann looks at the camera with a straight face and talks about Dick Cheney’s secret assassination squads, you have to admire his ability to not loose composure like Horatio Sanz in the middle of an SNL sketch.

How could anyone consider the philosophies of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, witness the awesome display of grassroots demonstration that is the Tea Party movement, and hear the pleas of average citizens to stop government spending and boil it all down to “racism”?  You can’t.  It’s a joke.  An elaborate hoax.  It’s funnier than Gallagher smashing a watermelon and more intricate than the Punk’d episode where Ashton Kutcher totally set up Frankie Muniz. (more…)