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.

Lichter noted that far down on the list were the winners of Tuesday’s Iowa GOP caucuses, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. “This shows,” he says, “that it’s hard to vote for somebody while you’re laughing at them.”

But, he adds, it’s probably not an ominous sign for the president that he’s late night’s biggest joke target. Lichter tells Whispers that his totals are far below the 500-plus that used to slam former Presidents Clinton and Bush every year. “Obama is substantially lower than any other president,” said Lichter.

And this was during an off-year without any kind of major election.

These brave establishment Palace Guards will be much, much worse this year.

Perhaps that was the real purpose of Obama’s routine appearances on late night television as president of the United States, an unprecedented breach of traditional decorum: he wanted to make it routine for all candidates to appear on the shows run by his allies.  By appearing himself, Obama essentially dared anyone who opposes him to take the seat opposite the Jon Stewarts and Jimmy Fallons of the world – and, as they have to, Republicans have taken the bait.  That’s why we’ve seen Rick Perry reading a top ten list on Letterman about his debate foibles.  That’s why Bachmann was on Fallon.  That’s why McCain deigned to appear with Stewart, even knowing what was coming.

Dennis Miller​ was both brave and correct when he bashed Jay Leno​ for kissing Obama’s royal arse last week.  He actually recommended that Leno hire Obama after Obama loses his re-election effort: “I could see you guys doing comedy bits on here where you come out as Carnut the Magnificent and you have the turban on and the mechanic overalls and he reads ‘You are correct, sir!’ off a teleprompter.”

More likely, Obama will end up hiring all of these comedians as his court jesters sometime in the near future.  Their ratings are dropping, and their biases are now obvious.  And we already know the relationships are good: the Comedy Central writers are Obama’s brain trust of hilarity, writing jokes for his speeches and giving him tips on how to win over an audience.

What happened to Rep. Bachmann is nothing new.  It’s just the most obvious crack in the solid wall of propaganda put out by the late night left that it bashes both sides equally.  The “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” slam was planned in advance – Questlove tweeted shortly before she appeared, “aight late night walkon song devotees: you love it when we snark: this next one takes the cake. ask around cause i aint tweeting title.”

Read full article at Front Page Magazine.

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The video above confirms that the National Broadcasting Company’s house band for the “Jimmy Fallon Show” serenaded a sitting Congresswoman and presidential candidate with more than a few notes from Fishbone’s “Lyin’ Ass Bitch.”

What a cruel thing to do, and it’s the last thing you’d expect from someone like Jimmy Fallon, who does come off (or used to) as a pretty decent guy. Michele Bachmann was a “guest” on Fallon’s show and yet he and his house band sucker punch her with “Lyin’ Ass Bitch”?

Unbelievable.

Actually, it’s not.

The game is rigged and has been since the beginning. Candidates today are expected to go on Late Night as part of the presidential ritual, but the outcome more often than not is something like this. Democrats receive respect, Republicans get grilled, gotcha’d and humiliated, and Obama gets his boots licked.

No doubt some misguided leftists will try to compare this to Michelle Obama getting booed at NASCAR, but she wasn’t set up to get booed and she wasn’t booed by her hosts at NASCAR. Bachmann was obviously set up, but because it’s now acceptable to attempt to humiliate and denigrate Republican women, even with the use of the word  ”bitch,” don’t hold your breath for those outraged by the NASCAR incident to say a word about this.

This is also a  political move on NBC’s part, a way to undermine a candidate by turning them into a joke. They might as well have put a “kick me” sign on her back.

Hey, look, no outrage at WaPo.

ADDED:

In August, Jimmy Fallon attended a $35,800 Obama fundraiser.

He was really concerned that with President Barack Obama’s dismal approval ratings the Republican primaries would become a winner-take-all contest, with the popular Christie making it all the way to the White House.

Louis believes that political satire is the finest form of the comedic arts, and he has seen it die twice over the last two decades. When the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal broke, every hack in America became a political comic just by appending Bill Clinton to their favorite oral sex gag. As we moved into the new millennium, comics who specialized in blonde jokes could call themselves political just by substituting President George W. Bush into the punchline.

With this new administration, political humor became very tricky, and only a few comics will attempt to make fun of the President. Heck, even the guys who did those “What if a Brother ever got into the White House?” routines were forced to write some original material or abandon the political arena altogether. Louis believes that the political edge of his club is part of what has kept him afloat three years into a recession.

But with the buzz surrounding Christie, there was suddenly a resurgence in hack political comedy. Late night hosts, who have been incapable of finding anything funny about a pair of big ears for the past three years, have stumbled on a new way to market fat-based humor.

This week, David Letterman speculated that Cristie was the only candidate you could view from space (gosh, Dave, no; “when he’d sit around the White House, he’d sit AROUND the White House” … or, “New Jersey would lose a zip code”).

For full disclosure, I have been guilty of the occasional fat reference. Usually though, it’s directed at Michael Moore, who happens to be the world’s fattest Communist (and takes more than his “fair share” of the pie, whether it be economic or boysenberry). I lamely excuse these jokes because the underlying theme is hypocrisy — the same reason why others might make fun of gay Republicans or Al Gore’s private jet.

So what will the comics do now they won’t have Christie to make fun of? Letterman took off running with the “Rick Perry’s Racist Ranch” angle; it seems that a painted rock at a hunting camp is enough to make him the token racist of this election cycle. Fortunately, there are a total of fourteen other Republican candidates to choose from, including a couple that will even allow jokes about race and gender (though oddly enough, racism and sexism are only derogatory when the candidate is a Democrat).

Personally, I think America is ready for a fat President. I’m tired of seeing Presidents jogging (shirtless leaders are so Eastern European). After three years of being told by Michelle Obama that we shouldn’t be eating like the First Family, I’d love to have a President who has more important things in mind than his daily carb count. We’re in a depression; who really cares about the President’s health?

Heck, that’s why we have a Vice President — to allow the President a vice.

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President Obama’s joint-session, prime time, pass-it-now jobs speech was so feckless that even Jon Stewart’s ridiculing it.

The American people aren’t all that impressed, either.

Obama becoming a late-night punchline and subject of ridicule might be the most glaring example of how much trouble he’s really in. The easier the jokes are to write and deliver, the more of “a joke” the subject becomes. Watch the first clip of Conan O’Brien. All he has to say is “jobs plan” to get a laugh.

The very idea that President Obama can create jobs has become a joke — which is as it should be.

Tina Korbe at Hot Air has more.

This is two days in a row where a glib, lefty comedian has taken off his clown nose, engaged in a serious debate with someone from our side they disagree with politically and found themselves caught off guard by a prepared presentation of facts and logic.  Wednesday it was Jon Stewart being schooled by Donald Rumsfeld on the Iraq War and last night a calm, cool, and educated Senator Rand Paul gave David Letterman a terrific lesson on the basics of economics…

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Like Jon Stewart, you have to give Letterman credit for his willingness to seriously engage on this issue. You just have to wonder how long that will last if our side keeps presenting our ideas so well. Will the clown nose and cheap shots return soon?

What is great, though, is that thanks to Secretary Rumsfeld and Senator Paul’s willingness to enter the hostile territory of popular culture, a whole new audience has been exposed to a range of ideas unheard of on these shows before. Instead of our worldview simply being ridiculed or marginalized as punchlines, it’s being presented in reasonable and even attractive ways.

If Letterman and Stewart want to expand their audience; having more of our political stars on, engaging them on the issues, but doing so with this kind of respect would be an excellent way to go about it. 

Fox Nation has some of the transcript here.

In the entire gaggle of Late Night Hosts, I believe that Craig is the only one who comes close to filling the big empty shoes left behind when Johnny retired. While Leno and Letterman each have some of Carson’s characteristics, Ferguson is able to capture both sides of his genius. He is warm and goofy like Leno, but he’s also cool and sophisticated like Letterman. Like Johnny, he can handle a shy guest with disarming charm; hold his own against a tough guest; then put on the buck-teeth, the big fake ears, and do an impression of Prince Charles that is both ridiculously silly, and satirically eviscerating.

Craig Ferguson’s latest book is entitled “American on Purpose.” It’ spans his career  from the beginning as an alcoholic punk rock drummer, to becoming one of Late Night’s brightest stars. There are some marvelous insights about what it’s really like growing up in Europe, from a person who has seen the side that the tour buses usually avoid.

He grew up in one of the bleak concrete housing projects that popped up all over Europe in the wake of World War II. (You’d think a continent so ravaged by central planning, would have lost their affection for it.) Craig talks about his longing to be an American from the time he was very young, and made his first trip abroad; admiring the Americans for their beautiful straight teeth. Because he isn’t here by accident of birth, he is the only network talk host who recognizes American Exceptionalism. (He is also quite visibly the only host who actually had to pass a test on the U.S .Constitution.).

Every year on this day, Craig Ferguson has mentioned the terrorist attack. While the rest of his colleagues safely avoid the subject, Craig has been quite bold about marking September 11th in his show opening. Here is his first September 11th monologue done back in 2006 [transcript here]. It still chokes me up every time I watch it. 

He repeated his commemoration with a different monologue on September 11, 2007, performing what was for me the pinnacle of a stand-up routine; the most brilliant monologue I have ever seen on television. Topics like terrorist attacks are avoided by even the bravest comics, but Craig seamlessly wove somber recollections, the Gettysburg Address, and hilarious comedy lines into a tapestry of genius. It was the kind of stand-up routine every comic should aspire to. Unfortunately, it disappeared from the Internet, and is nowhere to be found today. (I wish I had made a copy. If anybody out there works for CBS could you PLEASE put it up again?)

Craig couldn’t even do a monologue about the day in 2008. It seemed like he set the bar so high the previous year, that he didn’t even want to attempt the leap. He did however make a short mention of the attack in his pre-show, that was just as poignant and commemorative.

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He followed up by bringing his sister and Drew Carey on as guests, mentioning later in the show, that he felt spending time with friends and family could help him through, what is obviously still a tough day for him.

Last year, he did another pre-show mention that was almost as good as his 2007 monologue:

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September 11th doesn’t fall on a weeknight this year, so that was the last monologue we can expect until 2012 (Nielsen willing). 

To fill the void this year, I’m posting an excerpt from the final chapter of his book. In it, Craig outlines why he made applying for American citizenship a running gag on the show:

“It seemed to me that American patriotism had been hijacked by politicians who used it for their own jingoistic ends, and I wanted to use my television show to get away from that. I wanted to get back to the image of the gum-chewing GIs who brought swing dancing, fruit, and hope to Scotland when my parents were kids. I wanted to share the feeling I got when I received my big color poster from NASA in the mail. I wanted as many native-born Americans to understand the thrill and exhilaration that comes from joining the land of the free.”

If this sounds trite, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I believe in it. America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has come up with so far. Not only because we value Democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are our own effective voice of dissent. The French may love Barack Obama, but they didn’t f***ing elect him. We did.”

God save Craig Ferguson.

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First off, David Letterman should never feel the need to remind us he’s ignorant.

And good for Donald Trump, who hits the nail on the head when he says that the Ground Zero Mosque builders would engender a tremendous amount of goodwill if they would, of their own volition, move someplace where — as Roger Ebert was good enough to remind us – the ashes of the dead don’t still lay.

Below the fold you’ll find a video of Letterman taking a shot at His One. This makes a total of two jokes (I’m aware of) Letterman’s told at the expense of chronic vacationer Barack Obama. Think about how divisive and biased Letterman is that the strange occasion of his making a joke about our sitting president is found worthy of a mention.

If memory serves, night after night, the great Johnny Carson was pretty scrupulous about making sure he went after Democrats and Republicans equally. The TV legend apparently understood that “The Tonight Show” wasn’t a political forum and that as an American entertainer his job was to make everyone laugh and not to grind his own personal partisan ax.

How far Letterman has fallen.  

You never get the sense Letterman’s heart is in the jokes told at Obama’s expense. He certainly doesn’t relish them in the same way he does ripping on Sarah Palin’s family. In the video below, Letterman appears to be warning the President as much as teasing him, offering up a little friendly political advice in the hopes of helping the poor guy out: 

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Hollywood A-listers avoiding Obama at fundraisers, Jon Stewart declaring the Race Card maxed out, and now the President’s number-one Late Night Palace Guard sees that he has no other choice other than to point to the vacationing elephant in the room.

Obviously Letterman doesn’t read “The American Prospect.” Which is about all the creepy Palin obsessive has in common with the rest of America.

By the way, does anyone know if Letterman’s been to Alaska recently…?

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Actually, I’m pretty sure Mr. Shakin’ So Bad Videographer is this guy:

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The reports are that the Jay Leno Show will stop producing new episodes on February 1 or possibly February 12 when NBC begins broadcasting the Olympics, and will not return thereafter. Leno will go back to 11:35, and O’Brien-well, nobody is quite sure what’s happening with him yet. NBC execs are reportedly considering having a half-hour Leno show at 11:35, the Tonight Show with O’Brien at 12:05, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon at 1:05. Carson Daly will presumably remain the only thing in the world that’s not funny at 2 in the morning (hat tip to my number 2 son for that joke).

Last spring, you may recall, the Peabrain Network announced the big change designed to accommodate O’Brien’s ambitions while giving Leno a good time slot. Most industry analysts questioned the move, wondering how NBC could hope to obtain good enough ratings from the Leno show. Although the show’s low budget (when compared with original programming, especially scripted dramatic or comedic shows) would ensure that NBC would probably turn a profit on the time slot, the affiliate stations were expected to take a beating in the ratings for their local 11:00 news shows, which are a major profit driver for local stations.

That’s exactly what happened. As I noted when the show premiered on September 14, “NBC . . . is placing its fortunes on a very risky move. Running the show every weeknight in the 10 p.m. slot risks destroying the affiliates’ nighttime newscasts if Leno’s ratings are not strong night after night. Last night’s premiere episode provided little reason to expect a large regular audience for the show.” The premiere episode was largely weak and awkward, certainly not the must-see entertainment the network must have expected, and nothing that viewers would see as more important to watch on any particular night than the crime dramas on the other networks.

As I noted at the time, “it’s difficult to imagine that this is going to be must-see TV. Or even bearable.” Leno tried gamely to make it work, and his ratings were enough to keep the network from losing money on the time slot, it appeared, but affilates’ 11 o’clock news shows were indeed taking a beating in the ratings because of the poor audience lead-in.

NBC confirmed this with the following statement last night in support of Leno:

Jay Leno is one of the most compelling entertainers in the world today. As we have said all along, Jay’s show has performed exactly as we anticipated on the network. It has, however, presented some issues for our affiliates. Both Jay and the show are committed to working closely with them to find ways to improve the performance.

Meanwhile, The Tonight Show, with new host O’Brien, was an even worse disaster. As I noted when NBC announced that O’Brien would take over Leno’s show and the 12:35 slot would be hosted by winsome, boyish talk-show neophyte Jimmy Fallon, “It seems likely that Late Night will be less ‘edgy’ and bizarre than it has been during O’Brien’s tenure, and that the Tonight Show will be much more of both than it has been while in Leno’s hands. Given the two programs’ time slots, it seems that the movement of hosts will probably reduce the ratings for NBC’s late-night slate, given that the 11:30 audience has historically been less adventurous than the 12:30 group. NBC is evidently hoping to change either the audience or O’Brien.”

And as I noted when O’Brien took over as Tonight host, the latter was “highly unlikely except through serious shrinkage. And of course that would be a disaster for the Peacock Network.”

That proved to be truer than anyone even imagined. Ratings for the Tonight Show are down a catastrophic 52 percent since O’Brien took over. Reeling in horror at the entirely predictable consequences of their attempt to placate the overly ambitious O’Brien, NBC almost certainly has decided to do at least two things: cancel the 10 p.m. Jay Leno Show and return Leno to 11:35.

Those moves would make perfect sense. As Leno humorously pointed out last night on his show, if NBC lets him go altogether, another network, most likely Fox, will grab him and win the 11:30 slot for themselves:

That would constitute not only losing a big asset for nothing, it would also make a major late-night player out of a competing network that currently has no presence in that time of day and would further cut into O’Brien’s Tonight Show ratings. Not smart.

Of course the Peabrain Network hasn’t been smart about any of this. Undoubtedly they’ve been listening to critics over the years, which like O’Brien for his edginess and dismiss Leno as too conventional. They would do much better to trust the audience numbers. Having long ago anointed O’Brien as Leno’s eventual successor, the network created a time bomb as O’Brien naturally kept wondering: When? O’Brien’s understandable desire to get to the big time in the 11:35 slot forced NBC’s hand, but making tough decisions ought to be part of why network bigwigs get paid so much. They should have told O’Brien long ago that he could work at 12:35 and like it or he could try his hand somewheres else.

Had they done that, they would have avoided the comprehensive disaster they created in attempting to satisfy their feverishly admired choice as Leno’s eventual successor, and O’Brien, had he gone to another network, would have tanked in the ratings. NBC would have won big at 11:30, would have had a perfectly competent 12:30 host in Fallon, and could have developed the latter or someone else as Leno’s eventual successor.

Now NBC is stuck with an understandably angry O’Brien who probably will see this all as NBC and Leno both stabbing him in the back. In reality, O’Brien never was a good fit for 11:30, as the ratings clearly show, and he would have been smarter to be satisfied with what he was, a 12:30 personality. People are what they are, however, and you don’t get a star without the ego and ambition that make people stars.

Where NBC really went wrong, however, is quite clear. In thrall to the common belief among U.S. elites that the American public is a mass of ignorant, prejudiced fools who can and should be transformed into European sophisticates through cultural brainwashing imposed by their superiors, the executives at NBC thought that they could change the audience to fit their changing product, and that changing the audience is in fact their real reason for being.

The audiences, derided in Hollywood’s inner sanctums as ignorant boobs all too easily led by mountebanks, are having the last laugh.