You can study Shakespeare and be quite elite
And you could charm the critics and have nothing to eat
Just slip on a banana peel, the world is at your feet
Make ’em laugh, make ’em laugh, make ’em laugh.
For comedic performers and writers there is nothing more gratifying than gales of laughter. For the targets of the laughter there is nothing more devastating, particularly for politicians.
Combined with facts, laughter is formidable and memorable. It spreads like wildfire. How many people recall co-workers asking: “Did you see Johnny Carson last night when he said …….”?
Political targets rarely recover from public lampooning whether they are the targets, or it is self-inflicted. Examples are Democrat presidential candidate Michael Dukakas looking like a kid at an amusement park while sitting in a tank, Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” speech, Kamala Harris’s cackle, or Joe Biden just being Joe Biden.
Humorless commie Saul Alinsky, socialist author of “Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals,” described ridicule as “the most powerful weapon of all.”
However, humor is an alien concept to Democrats. They’re continuously looking around to see what’s so funny, oblivious that it’s them that are the brunt of the joke. Democrats are the Republican’s enduring foils or straight-men, like the clueless Maragret Dumont in Marx Brothers films.
Nobody was better at ridiculing stodgy, arcane, and expensive useless institutions and gasbag pompous politicians than the Marx Brothers, particularly Groucho. Then, like today, there were no larger targets than leftist radicals and their useless money pit institutions.
In their classic 1932 movie “Horse Feathers” Groucho portrays Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff the new president of Huxley University, a fictional liberal arts college.
The movie knocks down everything it encounters. For example, liberal arts education is devalued in Professor Wagstaff’s introductory exchange with the faculty.
Groucho: Have we got a stadium?
Faculty: Yes.
Groucho: Have we got a college?
Faculty: Yes .
Groucho: Well, we can’t have both. Tomorrow, we will start tearing down the college.
Faculty: But professor, where will the students sleep?
Groucho: Where they always slept. In the classroom.
British comic Roland Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, a childish, selfish, eccentric who brings chaos to everyday situations is a composite of the Democrats. Like Mr. Bean Democrats turn easily solvable issues into chaotic disasters.
One of the most recent and effective examples of career politicians playing straight men and being publicly destroyed by their own deadpan absurdities and dismal track records was the Los Angeles mayoral debate.
Newly minted Republican candidate Spencer Pratt devastated inept Democrats Mayor Karen Bass and LA City Council member Nithya Raman on stage. All Pratt had to do was cite their blatant failures and lack of leadership during the LA wildfires while the dim duo stammered helplessly trying to defend their obvious incompetence.
Following are the most effective political ads I’ve ever seen, that were created for Pratt’s campaign. How can any LA resident vote against him after viewing the following hilariously accurate and devastating parodies?
https://x.com/i/status/2051739409611907344
https://x.com/i/status/2049497051793412557
Joe Biden was the perfect unsuspecting foil, mumbling and shuffling like Inspector Clouseau from pratfall to pratfall. Major absurdities included opening the U.S. borders to millions of illegal aliens, discouraging the enforcement of US laws with irrational No ICE and De-Fund the Police movements, and supporting the socialist Stop the Oligarchy fruitcakes and Black Lives Matter and Antifa, both domestic terrorist groups.
He retreated from Afghanistan abandoning billions in military equipment and deserting our allies. He mimicked his mentor Barack Obama who let Iranian fanatics almost create a nuclear weapon and even financed them, and so much more.
This doesn’t even include Biden’s scolding from the Easter Bunny, wandering aimlessly into a forest, falling upstairs, his corrupt son, the autopen, etc.
Democrats say they have good intentions but are dreadful at fixing anything, just the opposite. They are good at creating problems, then telling voters they are the solution to fixing the very problems they create.
Despite polling showing that citizens favor voter identification by a massive margin, the Democrats are fighting it. If they can’t cheat, they can’t win.
They operate like the mafia’s insurance protection racket. They bust up things, then tell the owners if they don’t want it to happen again, they better get on board.
They may look and act funny. But they’re dangerous and fatalistic.
Popular Florida “Covid & Coffee” (Coffee & Covid coffeeandcovid@substack.com) columnist Jeff Childers summed up the juvenile antics of the Democrat party while describing the violent tactics of Tennessee and Alabama Democrats following the successful Republican redistricting efforts in those two states:
“This is not the behavior of an organized, effective political party. It smacked of desperation. It was pure mob mania; petulant, childish emotional blackmail — nothing more sophisticated than do what we want or we’ll throw a tantrum right here in the cereal aisle.
“These twin cacophonous conflicts are a metaphor for, or a preview of the midterm elections. The volume of the noisy chaos will increase over the next few months, as the Democrat party continues devolving into dissolute anarchy. If the Polycrisis theory is correct, we are witnessing the feverish death throes of a major political party with all its beneficiaries and hangers-on — sinking beneath the waves for the last time.”
“Hopefully!”
***
Speaking Of Groucho, Cigars & Aging: At a celebration of his 70th birthday in 1906 Mark Twain spoke of habits that would appall many folks today and proved his wit was still sharp as he aged.
His cigar smoking would have today’s health-conscious crowd wincing. “I have made it a rule to never smoke more than one cigar at a time…It has always been my rule to never smoke when asleep, and never to refrain when awake. I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off.”
Exercise was taboo, he said. “I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome. And it cannot be any benefit when you are tired; and I am always tired.”
My favorite article from you, thus far, Dave. The title is dead-on. I never know whether to laugh or be angry at these lefties – scary. The Pratt ads are priceless. Keep up the fight!
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
EVERYONE should read Jeff Childers’ Coffee & Covid EVERY DAY and you, EVERY WEEK.