Still, a couple of notes:
But my complaint isn’t really with singers, shock-jocks, comedians, or whatever category [Miley] Cyrus falls under. They’re not merely immune to finger-wagging on this score, they actually think such criticism is proof they’re rebels. The wiser course is to simply yawn and move on.I like the idea of Goldberg willing himself to yawn -- though I'm unclear as whether this is meant to convince the Miley Cyruses of the world that he doesn't care, or his own limbic system, and also wonder if it isn't just a ruse to make room in his mouth for an extra Hostess Fruit Pie.
Finally, anyone who writes the world's least funny comedy sketch about buttsecks one day and gurgles about "vulgarians" this next should be declared brain dead and taken off life support.
Woah. You weren't kidding about the the world's worst sodomy skit. It is particularly creepy when posted under the image of the lone streeth light which is The Corner's symbol, like stumbling on a Klatsch of elderly, wrinkled, homophobic, flashers all flashing each other and then shouting at passersby "whaddya lookin' at honey? Its natcheral."
ReplyDeleteMy water seems to level off at absolute "why?" at everything these days. There's nothing I really like these days, and nothing that's worth the hate. Slight urpy disgust is what I'm at.
ReplyDelete"But, as Lee Siegel wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, vulgarity has become so common in the culture that Lee Siegel writes for the Wall Street Journal."
ReplyDeleteFixed.
golf claps all around jonah. alas, the rest of us can't yawn and move on when that guy on the radio who "uses absurdity to illustrate absurdity blah blah" and the end times unfunny wanna-be spielberg with his own web channel have their daily hatefests. unlike miley cyrus and louis c.k., they have a profound influence over things like policy, which affects people who aren't named jonah goldberg. yawns indeed, asshole.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, have never concluded a delicious meal with the exclamation...
ReplyDeleteThat would require two things: first, concluding a meal. Second, being able to speak through a mesocyclone of Ho Hos and Rold Gold.
Vulgarity has become cultural shorthand for everything from seriousness
ReplyDeletePerhaps vulgarity has become associated with seriousness because we're inundated with so much bullshit ("a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care") that bullshit, in the definition offered by Harry Frankfurt, is the only worthwhile term.
The two most rebellious comedians in my youth were Bill Cosby and Jerry Seinfeld...
ReplyDeleteThat's....that's some sheltered upbringing right there. First off, being alive during the seventies myself, I can assure everyone that Bill Cosby was about the least rebellious comic on the face of the Earth. His albums contained nothing unsuitable for a six-year-old's ears. Also, the Seinfeld sitcom didn't start until young master
Goldberg was nineteen years old. Well, I guess your twenties can count
as "youth". It's hard to keep track of the years when you run out of
toes to count on.
Also, too: thank heavens they're finally getting old. I was getting so sick of that South Park Republicans barf. Never have I been so relieved to find someone prematurely yelling at clouds.
ReplyDeleteI can assure Jonah that Miley Cyrus has not spared a thought - or what passes for one in her brain - for his opinion.
ReplyDeleteYes, hello Jonah? Richard Pryor, George Carlin.....even the Smothers Brothers were more rebellious than either Cos or Seinfeld.
ReplyDeleteAnd a Jonah of twenty years ago would absolutely be shaking his finger at Seinfeld for doing episodes about masturbation and birth control, and especially for allowing Elaine to participate in The Contest with barely an eyeblink.
ReplyDeleteAh, but they were rebellious because they went against the popular culture that lionized pseudo-rebels like Richard Pryor. You can tell because of their constant uphill battles to reach a mainstream audience in such benighted times.
ReplyDeleteJonah is quite familiar with the idea that criticism is a marker of success, having previously used that gambit to dismiss anyone who pointed out that the central thesis of Liberal Fascism made no fucking sense.
ReplyDeleteOn a slightly divergent note, I do urge people to click on over to the National Review Online and cackle at their banner ad, which is begging for money to help them defend themselves from Michael Mann's libel suit. Good luck, boys--you're going to need it.
ReplyDeleteAnd have you seen what those Solid Gold dancers are wearing?
ReplyDeleteFirst off, being alive during the seventies myself, I can assure everyone that Bill Cosby was about the least rebellious comic on the face of the Earth. His albums contained nothing unsuitable for a six-year-old's ears
ReplyDeleteI think that’s Jonah’s point.
Well, sure, that Jonah sodomy skit is homophobic and unfunny…but it’s also Islamophobic. So there.
ReplyDeleteWell Jonah can't ignore Rush either. Missing the days talking points might result in him being less than the perfect cheerleader for Team Republican.
ReplyDeleteI think this is actually a refreshing change of pace, ‘cuz at least it wasn’t the usual wingnut whinge: “twerking, cursing, knockout game, OBAMA!”
ReplyDeleteI mean, I’m sure this is all liberals' fault somehow, but he never comes right out says it. Baby steps?
He and Richard Cohen should have a variety show.
ReplyDeletePresumably he didn't have access to Albums, Cassettes, late night TV or the outside world?
ReplyDeleteThey’re not merely immune to finger-wagging on this score, they actually think such criticism is proof they’re rebels.
ReplyDeleteYou know if the righties hadn't used this very argument for the past 40 fucking years to show everyone just how much the Left fears the Party of Ideas, then I'd still say Goldberg was a fucking moron, he'd just be less of a hypocritical moron.
Wait, Lee Siegel? The Wall Street Journal?
ReplyDeleteWhat, do the Masters of the Universe have a yen to hear about how vulgar it is eating ice cream cones while walking on the sidewalk?
The Souring Of Jonah has been one of my favorite subplots over the last couple of years. I think the howls of laughter that greeted his "libruls = nazis" book really did a number on him, and it looks like he'll never get over it, the poor dear.
ReplyDeleteNo one who admires Rush sLimebag or appears on Fox news has the right to complain about vulgarity in our society.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, definitions are changing. "Fuck!" and "shit!" might be everyday words, but "Nigger" is a Really Bad Word. And that's good.
Oh there might be some Islamo-fascist commie legal ruling on the shitstorm progenitors BUT they will still be right!!!
ReplyDeleteAh implies the past tense. I think his bubble is still pretty much intact. He just farts off stuff based on what his readers have scribbled
ReplyDeleteWould this comment be interested in co-watching an uncensored version of Topchef?
ReplyDeleteI've heard moral scolds argue that the fact that racial and ethnic slurs are considered more objectionable than ordinary swear words is due to political correctness. Some white people never learn.
ReplyDeleteThey'd need to hunt down and subdue some variety.
ReplyDeleteA wingnut trifecta!
ReplyDeleteDanny Terrio... or Danny Terrorist?!?!!!?
ReplyDeleteI dunno, I think he just cashed the checks from the various Koch-funded groups that bought pallets of the book and went back to watching Hogan's Heroes reruns.
ReplyDeleteAt the very least, it is central to his point!
ReplyDeleteAnd they can call it The Aristocrats</em.
ReplyDeleteA shame that the case isn't tried in a british court.
ReplyDeleteLike they were about segregation.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Dice Clay sold out Madison Square Garden because people really wanted to hear someone read them fairy tales, of course.
ReplyDeleteThe fascinating thing about Jonah's magnum opus that it employs the very same techniques and methods holocaust deniers and other historical revisionists use.
ReplyDeleteWater? C'mon, the stuff's essential, and you owe it an apology. And a wet kiss. Why not the old Russian (according to MAD in "East Side Story" anyway) proverb: 'Whether the water is salt or fresh, shit floats'?
ReplyDeleteUnless applied to Donald Trump, use of "vulgarian" is cause for a declaration of brain-death & removal of the plug. No added hypocrisies needed.for the diagnosis.
ReplyDeleteOrdinarily I'd say so but Cohen, like all conventional people, has to suppress a gag reflex when confronted with variety.
ReplyDeleteBut the Hogan's Heroes reruns are a defense mechanism! As much as wingnuts love to hate intellectuals and academics, they love equally to put on an air of faux-academia themselves. They look about as much like a real academic as a little kid with a plastic gun shouting "BLAM! BLAM!" looks like a real cop, but the point is on some level, they understand the prestige of being academically accomplished, and they yearn for it. Oh how they yearn.
ReplyDeleteBill Cosby's whole shtick was being palatable to middle-class white people. He's about as rebellious as Andy Griffith.
ReplyDeleteBut I suspect that Goldberg believes that Cosby was rebelling against his skin color by embracing sweatervests and upper-middle-class careers rather than hip-hop music and gangs. Not that Goldberg is racist or anything...
"Today's headline: 'Mandela was a conservative hero.'"
ReplyDelete"No, Jonah, that was yesterday. Today, Mandela was a commie terrorist."
"Crap, where's the delete key? I can't see anything through this layer of Doritos dust!"
I'm not sure who to blame - maybe OWS for starting strong and then turning stupid? - but the brief flare of populist anger 'round about 2008 or 2009 seems to have given way to the default malaise of "eh maybe a few tweaks here and there, but the system's fine as it is, quit yer partisan scaremongering." Browsing the internets is very tiresome these days.
ReplyDeleteNuh-UH. Otto was a "true vulgarian". Of course Archie was the REAL vulgarian, that fuck! Wanda, on the other hand, was just a fish.
ReplyDeleteA sniveling pegboy who works the NR CruiseAPalooza should be the last person in the world making fun about what other people shove upside their fundaments.
ReplyDeleteCohen has had considerable experience in suppressing his gag reflex.
ReplyDeleteVulgarity? Do you think Jonah remembers the time of the Great Purient Giggling, about oral sex in the White House?
ReplyDeleteI did so type 'prurient'. FYD.
ReplyDeleteHow old was DoughBob during the 70's? 5? 11?
ReplyDeleteI'd guess they're all good suppressing gag reflexes, given their constant fellating of Murdoch, the Kock Bros., etc. etc. and so forth.
ReplyDeleteHogan's Heroes is funny as hell dubbed into German. I watched it as a kid in Germany, even our German neighbors laughed their asses off.
ReplyDeleteMaybe its the current expression of Social Correctness, AKA: good manners.
ReplyDeleteRemember it? He was born in that fire!
ReplyDeleteI think BBBB has the right of it about Jonah's book. If anything has soured the Pantload, I think it's that the Bush years didn't go on forever - consider what a time that must have been to be a wingnut! The Permanent Republican Majority meant that you were set for life just for finding new ways of saying "liberals are bad" and the libs would all be too scared to contradict you because the terror level was already at Orange.
ReplyDeleteBut now, look. Ultra-hyper-mega-liberals talking back to him and the President would take their side.
Hell, CHEECH AND CHONG were more rebellious than Cos and Seinfeld. And funnier. Why doesn't he mention people like Andy Kaufman or Bill Hicks. How about Richard Sherman? 'Camp Granada' is an underground masterpiece, I tell ya!
ReplyDeleteIf he's hired that intern, it may not be him at all. Shit, who knows if he even reads what gets published under his name these days; he'd need another intern to do that. (Which leads me to muse as to whether or not we got an alicurati mole in that pseudo-job...)
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I would have thought Seinfeld was too overtly Jewy Jewy Jew for Jonah's taste. Yeah, he's a Goldberg, but he likes Iceberg lettuce.
ReplyDeleteCould someone please explain that to me? I could never for the life of me figure out how a show like that got on the air at all, let alone only 20 years or so after WWII ended. Yeah, Nazi POW camps, fun-nee. I've never even been able to so much as think about that show without giving an automatic side-eye.
ReplyDelete(I completely understood the satire Mad Magazine did back when about a hypothetical sitcom set in a rollicking fictional Nazi concentration camp.)
I own that book. It is amazing. Recommended reading for the Alicurati. I did some discourse analytics in grad school, so it wasn't exactly new news to me, but his argument is very compelling, and excellently laid-out, as well as well-written.
ReplyDeleteThat guy has mayonaisse all over him. And not figuratively.
ReplyDeleteSame way MASH made a triage hospital funny.
ReplyDeleteRight, it's why they created these "think tanks" and call the WnW recipients there "scholars" and "fellows". They abhor conventional academia as "liberal" but then they wanna be perfessors and wear cool hats and robes and have degress. Hell they even have wingnut universities like that Liberty diploma factory.
ReplyDelete"Conservative think tank", there's an oxymoron for ya.
It's much like their anti-communism: they really wanted to have the same power to silence their critics that they excoriated communism for.
The 3 rules for analysing RW thought: Projection, projection, projection.
I have forgotten whether the public use of trenchant words and gestures is a form of vulgarity, or a brave fight against Political Correctness. Please advise.
ReplyDeleteMayonnaise? So that's what it is.
ReplyDeleteMe, Je vinaigrette rien.
My grandfather ran prison camps for Patton across N. Africa into Sicily. Even the mention of that show made him throw beer cans in rage.
ReplyDeleteI can't even. I'm gonna pretend you didn't type that. Even thought I started it.
ReplyDeleteI believe LeBeau actually had been in a German concentration camp.
ReplyDeleteYup, here:
Born in 1926 in Paris, France, Clary was the youngest of 14 children. At the age of twelve, he began a career singing professionally on French radio and also studied art at the Paris Drawing School.[1] In 1942, because he was Jewish, he was deported to theNazi concentration camp, Ottmuth. He was later sent to Buchenwald where he was liberated on April 11, 1945. Twelve other members of his immediate family were sent toAuschwitz. Clary was the only survivor.[2][3] When he returned to Paris after World War II, he learned that some of his siblings had not been taken away and had survived theNazi occupation of France.
Two words: Redd Foxx
ReplyDeletewhy do I hear that in Jimmy Durante's voice?
ReplyDeleteYeah, he was 11. In 1980.
ReplyDeleteHe was born under a Nixon administration, and entered puberty under a Reagan administration, but acts like he is fighting the Andrew Jackson administration--"How dare the President open the White House to all and sundry, and put punchbowls on the grounds?"
ReplyDeleteYes.
ReplyDelete~
Hogan's Heroes is ok. I like the idea of making fun of nazis. The bad guys were always made to look ridiculous. I think that's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteOf course you're right. The thing about Seinfeld's episodes on "master of your domain" and the girlfriend whose name rhymes with a female body part - Jerry remembers too late that it's "Dolores" - is that they aired when dewy-cheeked young Jonah was only an amateur ignorant bore.
ReplyDeleteI shudder to think what Jonah Goldberg has got a million of.
ReplyDeleteTrue, although the majority of Klan rallies seem to share the same fate as urban porn theatres: They all just migrated to the Internet.
ReplyDeleteNow that's what I call versatile!
ReplyDeleteI believe the official wingnut line on that was "Not our fault. Clinton made us joke about cum."
ReplyDeletePro-tip: If you must slather yourself with condiments, Thousand Island Dressing avoids many possible misunderstandings.
ReplyDeleteOf course there is always soft cheese.
Miley Cyrus immune to finger-wagging? That wasn't MY takeaway.
ReplyDeleteHow come we haven't gotten a $200 million reboot of Hogan's Heroes? James Franco as Hogan? John Goodman as Schultz? That German dude that wins all the Best Supporting Actor Oscars playing all the other Nazis? C'mon, Michael Bay, make this happen.
ReplyDeleteI wonder when we'll get a sitcom based on Gitmo? What will it be titled?
ReplyDeleteRead Reason and you can get both.
ReplyDeleteAlan Sherman, you mean. Richard was (I think) one of the brothers who wrote songs for Disney--such anthems of rebellion as "Chim Chim Cheree" and such inspirational lyrics as "Let's go fly a kite/Up to the highest height."
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Hogan's Heroes was sold on the basis of the okay-ness of Stalag 17:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046359/?ref_=nv_sr_1
("Comedy-Drama")
This. I'd love to read a detailed analysis of this idea.
ReplyDeleteSo the guy is holding out his experience of the comedians he was allowed to listen to as a six-year-old -- specifically allowed because "his albums contained nothing unsuitable for a six-year-old's ears" -- and citing those memories as a representative guide to the wider culture?
ReplyDeleteNot entirely clear on the concept of "sampling bias".
Roles for Udo Kier and Mads Mikkelsen. Otherwise unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteAlso my vote for director is Lars von Trier.
Uh, I think there should either be unrestricted garnishing,
ReplyDeleteor a single, Olympic standard mayonnaise.
a single, Olympic standard mayonnaise
ReplyDeleteThe Olympic tradition demands Taramasalata. Or Tzatziki.
Free Lee Siegel!
ReplyDeleteI believe the serious predecessor was "Stalag 17." Hogan and crew are in Stalag 13, cuz 13 is inherently funny, I guess. And the show actually makes sense in the post WWII, but not "too" post and not insufficiently post, era.
ReplyDeleteFolks whose formative experience was WWII were watching TV sitcoms by the mid Sixties.. McHales Navy was on about the same time. I believe there was a comedy movie called something like "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" too.
WWII had gone from contemporary documentary fare (like Why We Fight) to after the fact documentary, like Victory at Sea, to clearly entertainment but dramatic movies like "The Sands of Iwo Jima,". "The Fighting Seabees," "Back to Bataan," "From Here to Eternity," "The Caine Mutiny," etc. The prison camp milieu, besides being explored in Stalag 17, was the setting for "Von Ryan's Express" and "The Great Escape," too. The latter of which was a huge hit (and had lots of tunneling!). And there were "serious" but still entertaining TV shows like "Rat Patrol." Even a big musical, "South Pacific," on Broadway and in the movies.
So, why not comedy too? As has been said, the laugh is on the Germans, and the only people I ever ran into who had a "problem" with the show were ethic Germans, who, while not pro Nazi, thought the show made Germans generally look stupid or gutless (as in Schultz and Klink), or actually were crypto Nazis, of whatever ethnicity.
Basically, WWII was as close to sure fire box office success as possible, when it came to themes.
"Nothing But a Man" is a great movie. I did feel bad that Kinch, as an African American, couldn't usually participate in the off camp hijinks on HH. And the whole cast was a hoot. Richard Dawson as the Cockney con man, petty thief, pick pocket was particularly memorable. Only the goofy explosives guy seemed kinda dopey. Even the recurring Nazi characters were well played too.
Let's not forget Brother Dave Gardner.
ReplyDeleteNo, Duke's.
ReplyDeleteYou're quite correct. Dammit, the mind is the second thing to go. I forgot what the first thing was.
ReplyDeleteLenin pulling on his pants?
ReplyDeleteI suspect that Frankfurt had young Goldberg in mind when he fleshed out his paper into a book, since there are so few people in the world capable of treating the utterly, disdainfully, conventionally banal (and wrong) as if it were profundity itself. No so-called public intellectual has taken the emperor in "The Emperor's New Clothes" to heart and mind so much as our Doughy.
ReplyDeleteThat was no finger!
ReplyDeleteThere is an edit function, old chum!
ReplyDeleteHe's making a list,
ReplyDeleteChecking it twice;
Jonah's gonna tell you who's naughty or nice.
Doughboy pantload is farting to town
Your back.
ReplyDeleteFree Lee Siegel!
ReplyDeleteStill too much.
I'd forgotten about Nicole Kidman's unforgettable ass.
ReplyDeleteClary came to my high school in the late seventies/early eighties to talk about his experiences in the camps. Left several students in tears and the rest of us in shock.
ReplyDeleteRecent MetaFilter thread on Combat!, with links to episodes on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteThey used Kinch to explore the issue of Nazis and Racism, as well--there was an episode about Boxing in which Kinch outboxes a Nazi but that has to be hushed up. And McHale's Navy, for all its awfulness, had a subplot about their Japanese cook and the reality of anti-Japanese racism. The crew is always having to hide their cook from being imprisoned as a Japanese by the higher ups.
ReplyDeleteI know what the manufacturers of Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra think is going out, and it's not my back.
ReplyDelete"Umbriago, was she ever mortafied"
ReplyDelete"The Wackiest Ship in the Army"
ReplyDeleteGood movie, too,with Jack Lemmon and Ricky Nelson, about getting a shallow draft vessel in for a coastwatcher. First half teaching how to sail, pretty light and comedic, half racing against the Japanese to save the coastwatcher.
I was going to go with erection, Honestly, your answer makes me feel better.
ReplyDeleteCome on now, Ed. It's true that NRO is a magical place, but even they can't get Hostess products anymore. Jonah has been making do with Little Debbies.
ReplyDeletePretty sure his intern is checking it the second time. Heck, the first time too.
ReplyDeleteWe, the citizens of the Democratic Republic of Vulgaria strenuously object to the unfair stereotying and denigration of our proud people and demand that Mr. Goldberg cease and desist and retract his defamatory comments forthwith!
ReplyDelete" Well, I guess
ReplyDeleteyour twenties can count as "youth". It's hard to keep track of the years
when you run out of toes to count on."
Slightly off topic but worth noting is that if, shall we say, "indiscretions" are involved, wingnut youth has been known to last well into their forties.
Nah... by the time Jonah was sentient Redd Foxx was better known as Fred Sanford, and was gainfully employed as a "refuse recycler".
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, when you're an actor it's most of the time about working.
ReplyDelete"But now, look. Ultra-hyper-mega-liberals talking back to him..."
ReplyDeleteI've just returned safely from an expedition to the NatRev, commenting on a Jay Nordlinger piece on "The Handshake". I think all of the commenters here could hold their own quite well over there.
Perhaps the comedies about WWII were a bit of anti-propaganda? Our govt and media really laid it on thick during and after the war.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing him on a talk show back in the '70s (Merv or Mike, probably) and talking about his early life. I distinctly recall a story about when he first showed up on the set (or maybe it was audition) for Hogan's Heroes, someone noticed the number tattooed on his arm and made some teasing remark, assuming it was a fake temporary tattoo just for the occasion, only to be shocked when Clary explained that, no, he had actually been a concentration camp inmate.
ReplyDeleteYou should'a thought of THAT before you tried to steal Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with the help of that proboscisically-'talented' Childcatcher and made Benny Hill's life a living hell of FAO Schwartz meets The Walking Dead.
ReplyDeleteSorry, my English is limited. Can you translate that into Vulgarian? The Northern dialect, if you please.
ReplyDeleteIt means you're not his little chu-chi face.
ReplyDeleteBless your heart, beloved. Rejoice!
ReplyDeleteThey’re not merely immune to finger-wagging on this score, they actually think such criticism is proof they’re rebels.
ReplyDeleteSometimes finger-wagging is merely a prostate exam.
Oh mannn, if Hogan pisses you off you'd plotz if you ever read "Hassan's Heroes," National Lampoon Magazine's parody about an Israeli-maintained Palestinian camp.
ReplyDeleteMerv Griffin will be the judge of that.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of the foam finger.
ReplyDeleteJG says "they're … immune to finger-wagging" and that "the wiser course is to simply yawn and move on," and then he spends the rest of his time finger-wagging.
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't he take his own advice?
I suspect your suspicions are right on the money. It suits JG's way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, he did end his article asserting that decency is the real taboo.