NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump, Christie, and the Kübler-Ross clusterfuck of the rightbloggers, who seem to be experiencing all the stages of grief at once.

One of the weirder aspects of last week's events was the brethren's call for Cruz and Rubio to employ the dark art of humor as a weapon against Trump. As I've observed before, these guys don't really understand humor. They don't think of it as balm to the human spirit -- they think of it as ordnance, something Saul Alinsky taught Hollyweird Liberals to use against them, and they stay up nights studying files marked "set-up" and "punch line," trying to crack the code. "Cruz and Rubio Unveil Plan to Mock and Dismantle Frontrunner," announced Jonathan V. Last at The Weekly Standard, as if "mock and dismantle" were a military operation. When Rubio managed to get in some jokes at the debate, they were delighted, but seemed not to know or care whether the jokes were funny. They issued reviews like "Rubio mocked and belittled Trump in the humorous, mocking and highly effective manner that Trump used to make Jeb look small" (William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection) and "Obviously this strategy, of diminishing Trump as a clown by clowning on him relentlessly, is worth trying... we can sit here and spitball the strategic virtues of the 'mock Trump' strategy all day long — it shows Rubio’s not a beta male who’s afraid of Trump..." (Allahpundit, Hot Air). Sounds like fun, huh? Zhdanovism's a tough gig.

Anyway, I've got some jokes in my column, but they're the funny/keep-from-crying kind.

UPDATE. Speaking of ugh, Robert Tracinski at The Federalist:

Call it the 1980s Underdog Movie Theory of the Republican Primaries. This was practically its own genre. It was not just “The Karate Kid.” It was a theme in “Back to the Future”.. and in “Top Gun.” (Though that’s a better analogy for the Rubio-Cruz relationship, with Cruz as Iceman.)

And Megyn Kelly as Charlie. After more like this ("Rubio certainly found the 'Eye of the Tiger'") we get the konservetcult comedy angle:

Actually, this is a darker variation of the narrative in which the hero has to learn to fight the villain on his level. So the guy with a command of policy whose brand is his positive, optimistic style has had to learn how to win by using his opponent’s weapon of ridicule. 

So that's why Rubio was talking about Trump pissing himself.

You know what last week was? It was that moment in “The Untouchables” when Sean Connery says to Kevin Costner, “What are you prepared to do?” And he eventually realizes he needs to fight the Chicago way: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue.”

With Trump creeping ever upward in the polls, it's clearly time for Rubio to escalate. Prepare the joy buzzer and the fart cushion!