New Poem: MEL AND KANYE

 Mel dug a deep hole

 so Kanye could dig it deeper

 both using Jesus as a Holy Shield

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 Jesus voices his disapproval 

 but Mel still has a career

 and Kanye keeps setting fires

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 people freeze in place

 say can you believe this

 think they’re insulated from danger

SLATE on Shane Gillis and the comedy swamp.

Excerpts from Seth Simons’ article in SLATE https://slate.com/culture/2019/09/shane-gillis-snl-conservative-comedy-legion-of-skanks.html

Sources inside SNL told Variety last week that, in hiring Gillis, the show was explicitly looking to add a comic who would “appeal to more conservative viewers.” But Gillis’ isn’t the mass-market, family-friendly conservatism of Jeff Foxworthy or Sebastian Maniscalco or dozens of inoffensive network sitcoms. It’s rooted in the scene he belongs to, a community bound less by love of small government or Christian values or the nuclear family than by cruelty and misogyny and grievance. It’s a world in which rape jokes are common currency, where slurs are just a normal part of the lexicon. Its members don’t have the critical acclaim or high profiles their work might have earned 20 years ago. They’re not starring in TV or movies; they’re not headlining Madison Square Garden; only a few have released specials on Netflix, Comedy Central, or HBO. What they do have are their own platforms, their own fans and subscribers, and a hearty contempt for the industry that’s passed them by even as they form the backbone of its oldest institution: the comedy club.

Treating “funny” as an unqualified good, no matter who or what is the butt of the joke, explains just about everything: the overlap between club comedy and reactionary podcasts, the coziness with the alt-right, SNL hiring a comic for his red-state appeal and firing him when that appeal became a liability. They’re of a piece, linked by the nakedly capitalist belief that products are justified by demand—that if people laugh at a joke, you were right to tell it. (Chappelle, at least, once believed otherwise.) Never mind that the product pollutes. Never mind that the joke is cruel. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. If you don’t watch it, it can’t hurt you. What, this swelling mass of people who hate you? Don’t mind them. They’re with us. We’re in the business of giving people what they want, and business is booming.

Poetry Audio R.I.P. DUKES OF HAZZARD

Written a few years ago—and posting this here after hearing a Bobcat Goldthwait/Dana Gould routine at Largo last night.

Mel Gibson’s current career, explained.

Marina Hyde via THE GUARDIAN:  

Mel Gibson not only has a slate of talked-about projects on the go – despite his numerous racist, sexist, homophobic, violence-threatening, violence-admitting, Holocaust-questioning meltdowns over the years – but that this particular one sees him play the paterfamilias of the “Rothchild” family, an astronomically rich New York clan.  

Over to Mel’s spokesman [Alan Nierob]who delivers one of the more shameless statements I have seen, even in his line of work: “‘Rothchild’ is not about the actual Rothschild family,” this ran, “and the only similarities between the two are that they are wealthy and their names are similar.”

Right. Totally. Imagine the misfortune of the movie-makers landing on the epicentre of this particular antisemitic trope, changing one letter in a way that, arguably, makes the point even more sledgehammer, and then casting Mel Actual Gibson in it. What are the chances? You simply can’t legislate for unforeseeable sensitivities.

“Whatever has happened in the past it doesn’t seem to affect his international value at all,” mused the producer of one of the star’s new projects this week, before delivering perhaps the most deathlessly understated verdict on Mel Gibson. “He might be a little polarising on some things.”