ABC has relented to objections from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and cancelled the unbelievably bad comedy “Work It” after only two episodes.

It’s my guess that with the protests from GLAAD gearing up, ABC felt it would be hopeless to try and defend (note to Canada, you can probably take Detroit).

It also bespeaks a certain prejudice inside of GLAAD who has never said a word about Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence or Eddie Murphy (who was once known to be quite transvestite-friendly despite his transvestite comedy). Of course, GLAAD has never been terribly courageous about confronting the black community. Political correctness forbids crossing racial lines.

This might reveal a hint as to why GLAAD felt empowered to attack “Work It.” The plot revolved around two men who are forced into women’s clothing just to get a job. Don’t they know that only women are discriminated against in the workplace (and only make three-fourths of a man’s salary)? Perhaps the writers’ ignorance of Women’s Studies 101 made GLAAD think it had been written by conservatives. (more…)

Because of Hollywood’s default liberal culture, it’s almost impossible to watch comedy that has any social or political relevance that doesn’t go squarely after conservative targets with gleeful and mean-spirited offensiveness. For the most part, conservative comedy lovers would just do well to fasten their seat belts and get ready for the bumpy ride, because attack comedy on right-wing targets is just part of the territory.

But does it have to be that way? Imagine a sketch comedy show that pokes fun at clueless liberal mayors, politically correct feminists, and entitled hipster butt-inskys. Sound impossible in today’s climate? Surprisingly, the most politically incorrect comedy show out there right now might just be IFC’s “Portlandia.” All six episodes of the first season of the show are currently available for streaming on Netflix, and the second season starts January 21^st on IFC.

“Portlandia” is the brainchild of “Saturday Night Live”’s Fred Armisen and musician Carrie Brownstein. It’s a half-hour show set entirely in the left-wing magnet city of Portland, Oregon. In the very first episode, they say that Portland is a city where the 1990s never ended (it’s “a place where young people go to retire”) and sure enough, Armisen and Brownstein have created a cast of Portland-based characters with the requisite tribal piercings, chin beards, and indigenous pantsuits. (more…)

Interesting analysis below, but what’s most glaring is that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi received enough attention from our brave Late Night gang to even rank on this list. However! Two years-plus out of office, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney got hit 36 and 66 times respectively.

Takes an awful lot of guts to Speak! Truth! To! The! Out! Of! Power!

U.S. News and World Report:

Republicans were joked about by a margin of 3 to 1 over Democrats on late-night talk shows last year, but the biggest joke for Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon was President Obama, according to a new George Mason University study provided to Whispers.

Republicans took the top title because so many of them were speared by Fallon, Leno, and David Letterman, according to Robert Lichter, president of the school’s Center for Media and Public Affairs. …

But when it came to the top target of the 2011, Obama and shamed former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner came in first and second. Obama was gored by 342 jokes, Weiner 220. Third was former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, followed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 186 and Osama bin Laden at 172.

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Audiences lining up to see the new bird-watching comedy ‘The Big Year’ probably couldn’t tell a pink footed goose from a stifftail duck. The niche hobby of bird watching is far less popular than most leisure pursuits.

And when they leave the theater they won’t know much more about the wonderful world of birds.

‘The Big Year’ illustrates the pitfalls of being a “birder” – the sudden travel, the pricey hotel fees and the risk of alienating the ones you love. But where’s the joy, the sense that we’re watching nature’s handiwork up close and personal?

We’re left with a trio of comic actors rummaging for narrative scraps, let alone enough laugh lines to justify their respective paychecks.

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It must be painful to visit RottenTomatoes.com and see your film has a zero percent rating.

Or, as Dean Wormer would say in “Animal House,” “zero point zero.”

Comedian Nick Swardson is facing that reality thanks to his new film “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star.” The comedy charts the rise of a tragically under-endowed man (played by Swardson) who makes it, ahem, big in the adult film industry.

And the comic actor is not taking the news gently.

Swardson told Splitsider.com he predicted critics would be gunning for his film. And Swardson is gunning right back:

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Definitely not safe for work but very refreshing….

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In this insufferably PC era, defending America and this kind of openly proud patriotism is the very definition of edgy.  Via HuffPo, here’s a portion of the transcript. The audio is pretty garbled in spots:

“… it appears to me, y’all like it over here a lot… If y’all had California and you loved it, then you shouldn’t have given that mothaf*cka up. You should have fought for California, goddamnit, since you love it… Are you Mexican? Do you know where Mexico is? No this ain’t Mexico, it used to be Mexico, motherf*cker, and now it’s Phoenix, goddammit. USA! USA!… No n*gga, do you know where you at? USA! USA!… No n*gga, this is my hood… [security comes] F*ck him! Mothaf*ckas think they can live in this country and pledge allegiance to another country… Do you remember when white people used to say go back to Africa? And we’d have to tell them we don’t want to? So if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*ck over there! [breaks into the National Anthem]… We were slaves bitch, you just all work like that at the landscapers…”

Naurally, the Huffington Post is all bothered, bewildered and offended by this:

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Bill Maher recently complained that “We can’t throw around the word (sexist) just to stop people like me from point out that Michelle Bachmann, now running second for the Republican presidential nomination, is a dangerous nincompoop.” Hm, sort of sounds like the argument of “racism” used toward Obama detractors doesn’t it? 

This video explains the subject in a little more depth: 

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(more…)

The one (and only, I’m afraid) good thing that can be said about Bad Teacher is that it has some wonderfully pungent lines. My hopes were certainly raised when Cameron Diaz’ character stormed into her fiancé’s house yelling “Get yourself hard, ‘cause I’m gonna suck your dick like I’m mad at it!” All right!

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Unfortunately, the rest of the movie speed-races downhill. The usually appealing stars—Diaz, Jason Segel, Justin Timberlake, and the great Lucy Punch—are sadly miscast. And the ill-shaped script—by two writers whose only previous feature credit is the woeful Year One—constitutes an affront to the gods of plausibility.

Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, a hot-tramp teacher at an Illinois middle school. Elizabeth arrives in her classroom in tight red sheath dresses, stiletto heels, and impenetrable black shades to hide her hangover eyes. She keeps bottles of minibar liquor in a desk drawer and smokes pot in the parking lot outside. She’s hostile and insulting to her fellow teachers, and her classes consist of screening DVDs for her puzzled students of old movies related to the subject of education. (We see her starting off with Stand and Deliver.) Her only goal in life is to snag a rich man to support her; so when her wealthy fiancé understandably dumps her, she decides that her sole hope of corralling a well-heeled husband is to purchase “a new pair of tits.”

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This Orwellian moment brought to you by GLAAD and their fascistic Leftist enablers so resembles Winston Smith’s final confession in “1984,” it seems too obvious to even reference it. The video below is a little blurry, so it’s impossible to tell if Tracy Morgan’s blinking some kind of S.O.S…. If he has any pride, he’s blinking some closer to f-u-c-k-a-l-l-o-f-y-o-u:

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Could anything be more un-American than a comedian being trotted around the country to apologize for his … comedy?

Talk about chilling free speech.

Obviously the old saying about not agreeing with but still fighting to the death to defend someone’s speech is all but dead on the Left, especially where the sentiment should be most true … in the world of entertainment.

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One of the reliable joys in entertainment during the Bush years was knowing that despite the relentless, insipid hate passed off as comedy about our President, every week South Park would serve up truly independent, politically incorrect satire which skewered actual sacred cows. When virtually all players in the film and TV industry were brown nosing Al Gore as though they were born without lungs, Trey Parker and Matt Stone mercilessly mocked him. When Hurrican Katrina was the cause du’jour for leftist hatemongers, fictional 4th graders Kyle and Stan called them out for exploiting the tragedy. And, even early on in the show, the hyperventilating, totalitarian dark side of the green movement and multicultural “tolerance” received scathing send ups.

L'homme s'accroche amèrement.

Yet since Obama’s election, their aim has tilted right. While they revisited the nonpartisan issue of censorship over fear of jihadist violence in their 200th episode, the only overtly political targets of the past two seasons have been Glenn Beck in “Dances with Smurfs” and the Tea Party in last week’s episode, “TMI.” In “Smurfs,” Cartman starts to do the school’s morning announcements, quickly transforming into a conspiratorial nut who accuses the school president of murdering the titular cartoon characters. Now, Glenn Beck’s TV show is certainly ripe for parody (not a fan myself), but the episode plays as though Parker & Stone have only seen second-hand accounts of the program (which they’ve admitted regarding other episodes’ source material), and the satire, because it’s only mocking a straw man version of Beck, lacks the bite of their previous work.

In the same way, on “TMI” (spoilers ahead), South Park rips on the Tea Party– which, again, could be a source of truly funny jokes, even mean-spirited ones– with recycled second-hand stereotypes.  Cartman’s principal sends him to a counselor when he measures his and his classmates’ penis sizes. Eventually, the counselor recommends an anger management session, wherein a Tea Party member complains about “stupid-ass blind liberals” while wearing tea bags draped over a tri-corner hat. The counselor quickly surmises that all the anger management attendees act out because of insecurity over their penis sizes. (more…)

If you look over Seth Meyers’ IMDB page, he isn’t listed as a writer or performer in any of the high-profile celebrity roasts on Comedy Central. From his performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Saturday, it’s rather obvious why. In a role that traditionally sends up the Commander-in-Chief, the closest Meyers came to skewering Obama was making a remark about him not being as inspirational as he was in his 2008 campaign, and, of course, turning it into a joke about how white the Tea Party is (to which the virtually all-white crowd applauded uproariously).

What really upset me about Meyers, and all progressive “comedians,” is that their kid-glove treatment of Obama isn’t just because they have a condescending view of him– that he can’t take it. If you listen to the rest of his speech, Meyers is a Racer– an individual who sees race and racism where it is irrelevant or not present at all– so, since he attributes virtually all political motivation to race, he avoids offending Obama because he thinks that, as a black man, Obama can’t handle a roasting.  Note how his Republican targets don’t include Allen West or Herman Cain; Meyers the Racer only goes after whites because he thinks that only they have the ability to withstand jokes at their expense.

Now, to give Meyers credit, the jokes he made onstage weren’t the worst jokes he came up with. Yes, that’s right; we’ve “Breitbarted” him with a hidden camera video sent to us by an anonymous celebrity journalist citizen journalist. We’re currently working on digitally doctoring all cuts in the video so that it looks like one continuous take without any selective editing (the lifeblood of all content at the Bigs), but before that’s ready, here are some highlights of the “jokes” Meyers almost used onstage:

• So, have you heard about those Republicans? Yeah, I hate them and I think they’re stupid.
• The funniest thing about Obama is how SO MANY people don’t get how cool and smart and physically attractive he is.
• Q: Why did the blonde get confused by an ordinary household object? A: Cuz she was a Republican. And Republicans are stupid.
• “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Republicans.” “Republicans who?” “Republicans sure are stupid and evil.”
• So, a Republican walks into a bar, and I get super upset.
• A black man, a Hispanic, and a Jew enter a bar. They all say in turn, “Voting Republican would make us traitors to our races!”
• So, what’s the deal with the Tea Party? Is it racist, or is it SUPER racist?

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Sam Kinison. I was never a huge fan.  Not from a “make me laugh” standpoint, anyhow. I didn’t mind him, I just never found him to be all that uproarious. Nevertheless, I respected the hell out of him. Of course now that he’s passed, the entertainment industry has made him into a martyr. A more modern if slightly chubby Lenny Bruce, if you will.  But I have to wonder if Sam were still alive, would Hollywood still fawn over him, or reprimand him as a homophobic race-monger?

I think we can all take a wild guess.

Whether it’s the feigned offense from the derogatory use of the word “gay” in Vince Vaughn’s “The Dilemma” or Tinseltown’s constant hurt feelings over the op-ed journalists at Fox News, one’s thing’s for sure; Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a thick skin.

At least not when it comes to the things that the media elite love to huddle around.  Sure there are the old whipping-post standby’s like Christians, conservatives and white men. They’re fair game. Turn the guns on the politically correct cause du jour however, and “funny” seems to go right out the window. Even equal opportunity offenders aren’t welcome (see Sean Penn’s feud with Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park).

Sam Kinison made fun of all of it. Actually “assaulted” is probably a better word. The man was a former minister, so he had his finger to the pulse of Christian hypocrisy and he knew how to push the right buttons within the community. Just as surely, he’d turn around on a blistering rant about neo-Liberals and their pansified antics. If there were targets, he would hit them. (more…)

[Ed. Note: Video is NSFW]

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!” (more…)

Upon reading “Would Sam Kinison Have Survived in Today’s Brave New PC World?”, as a stand-up comedian myself, I felt the need to opine on what was a very insightful question. Sam Kinison was a genius for his time and theoretically still is. The Pentecostal preacher-turned-comedian took a would-be sermon and used his thunderous delivery, vendi-quadruple espresso shot-energy and viewpoint of the obvious to pontificate some of the funniest bits that the 80’s and very early 90’s had ever heard. While his peers, comprised of Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Rosanne Barr, were humorously talking about not pulling the tag off the mattress, catching tuna and not dolphins, and refusing to vacuum until Sears made one you could ride, Sam’s mind worked on other angles that today would have put him on a Hate List somewhere between Sarah Palin and Pat Boone. 

His great bit about world hunger, that there would be no world hunger if starving Africans “lived where the food is and not in the desert where nothing grows,” in 2010 would have been construed as anti-Muslim, since Muslims live in the desert. Sam likely would’ve been exiled like Jyllands-Posten, the Danish cartoonists. Then there’s Kinison’s rapper bit which would have no doubt caused Kayne West to tweet “Sam Kinison hates black people” and then bag out on some a previous commitment ala the Today Show. Kinison’s bit on Rock Hudson was spewed not with malice but with a mix of commentary about a screen idol keeping one of Hollywood’s biggest secrets and how heterosexual men may view a gay sexual experience. That bit today would have created blogs upon websites blaring on how Sam is a homophobe and one of the causes of bullying. 

Clearly Sam was not without his well-documented personal problems and had many demons he struggled with, but his comedy was straightforward, poignant and his subject matter was that of what many people where thinking about with their inside voice, all of which are the elements of being one of the greatest comics of your time. (more…)

Director Ron Howard’s “The Dilemma” isn’t going to be released until January but is already generating big press. In case you haven’t heard, in an early trailer for the film one of the stars, Vince Vaughn, who plays an auto designer, says:

“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… (more…)

Ever since the late great John Hughes stopped cranking out classic high-school films like “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink” at the end of the 1980s, finding a teen movie with any true psychological depth has been a nearly impossible feat. But every once in a while, a filmmaker surprises audiences with a heartfelt, genuine effort – and “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is a happy addition to that list.

Starring Keir Gilchrist (Showtime’s “United States of Tara”) as its unlikely central character, a depressed teenage boy named Craig, “Funny” follows the bittersweet dramedy that unfolds when Craig tries to check himself into the teen ward of a Brooklyn mental health clinic but accidentally winds up being placed on a five-day psychiatric lock-down in the facility’s adult wing.

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Craig’s problem is a broadly defined depression, a sense of melancholy towards the world around him that contradicts the seeming cheeriness of his supportive parents. Yet the mind is an inscrutable thing, and he feels the need to break out of an indefinable rut, so Craig makes the most of it even as he’s surrounded by longtime patients who have been locked away from the world for far longer than he can even imagine.

Along the way, Craig finds hope in two relationships: the friendship he finds with a dad in his late 30s named Bobby (Zach Galifianakis), and a tentative romance with a beautifully sad girl named Noelle (Emma Roberts). As they peel away the painful truths underlying their stays, Bobby must learn to lighten up a little, resulting in an affecting series of funny-sad life transformations that feel very real. (more…)

Several weeks ago, “Lottery Ticket” appeared and then quickly disappeared from movie theaters nationwide. It wasn’t around long enough to have a major box office impact but the film was bad enough to disappoint anyone who bought a ticket for the tasteless comedy.

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When “Lottery Ticket” begins, the audience meets Kevin (Bow Wow). Kevin lives with his Christian grandmother (Loretta Devine) and works at Foot Locker. In the opening scenes we watch as Kevin walks to work with his best friend Benny. Along the way, Kevin stops to take a convenience store order from a friend, listens to gossip from a neighbor and is confronted by a local thug. He does all of these things even though he is running late for work and is supposedly “in a hurry.” This long sequence drags on for several minutes and foreshadows the insipidness of the entire film.

Eventually, Kevin buys a lottery ticket and wins over 350 million dollars. He tries to claim his prize but the state lottery office is closed for the 4th of July weekend. Kevin and Benny then have to protect the lottery ticket from their overzealous neighbors.

From there, this already disappointing movie gets worse. (more…)

A recent article from Big Hollywood’s Jeffrey Jena alerted me to an article in the American Prospect where Paul Waldman is recycling the meme that there is nothing funny about the current President. Utter nonsense. Every human is fallible, and from those flaws the funny gushes; flowing like the effluence of a major national disaster, under an incompetent Administration.

To say there’s nothing funny about this President is elevating him to the level of a deity, the way leaders are looked at in some third world totalitarian state. I’m quite certain that North Koreans cannot see anything funny about Kim Jong, Il, although the majority of the world thinks he is as entertaining as a circus midget. Ditto for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Paul Waldman’s piece is just another apology for the inability of the American Humor Industry to construct a proper satire on this President; a topic as ripe for satire as November apples. It’s such a shame, too.  Epic ineptitude has been a comedic staple since before the Three Stooges, all the way through to the era of Tim Allen. When Moe Larry and Curly are accidently mistaken for plumbers, you just know there’s going to be a flood. (more…)

I was surfing the internet yesterday and came across an article about the current state of political comedy by Paul Waldman. The article “The Joke is on Us” was posted on the far-left website “The American Prospect.” The subtitle of the site is “liberal intelligence” which is, of course, an oxymoron. That aside, the premise of Mr. Waldman’s article is that there is a dearth of humor about Barack Obama. It reminds me of when Nixon was elected and New York Times film critic Pauline Kael being shocked because only one person she knew voted for him.

Mr. Waldman postulates that this lack of Obama material is because Obama is so cool, so intelligent, and so unflappable that he is immune to being made the butt of any jokes! He actually says, “…our current political leadership isn’t all that funny.”  I assume he includes the Vice President in that statement – so apparently he and I hear different Joe Biden sound bites. I strongly doubt he has ever listened to Rush or Glen who daily skewer Obama, Reid and Pelosi.

Mr. Waldman, like Ms. Kael suffers from having a limited circle of exposure.

Before I get further into that, let me just say a big “thank you” to Mr. Waldman for reinforcing a concept that I have written about several times: Conservatives have a better sense of humor and are more willing to be self-deprecating than lefties. You see, my fellow right-wing nut jobs, in Walden World, Bush, Rush, Palin and anyone else who isn’t hastening the “Marxization” of America is a moron who should be belittled for their obvious lack of intellect. Leftist, on the other hand, never do anything foolish. All of their causes are above mocking.  Let me illustrate: (more…)

As a conservative I can’t afford to limit myself to entertainment choices that I agree with politically. I read Ms. Silverman’s book hoping to get some insight into why so many people seem to think she is the modern Lenny Bruce. My thinking was even if she isn’t my particular cup of Earl Grey at least I could see what all the buzz is about. I also figured that if Rush and Sir Elton can get along maybe I could find something to like in Ms. Silverman’s comedy.

I went to Amazon.com and read the forward, afterword and figured if I selected the “surprise me” tab often enough and opened and closed the browser several time I might get to see the whole book for free. After an hour of being cheap and trying to scam a free read I saw a used copy for $14 and rationalized that this money was going to the reseller and not to Ms. Silverman, so I ordered the book.

I have a number of comedy pet peeves and one of them is the “fake funny quote” on a comic’s resume or promo material. The problem is that that has been done to death, and most of the time it isn’t really funny. Yet, there on the cover of a book written by a comedian who is reported to be on the leading edge of comedy are the quotes from her childhood “friends.” (At least I think that is what the joke is supposed to be.)   (more…)