Sanford Wins

[Westside Steve]

Anybody surprised? Anybody care?

 

WSS

[FairHooker11]

no not surprised - look at what Anthony Wiener is doing?

 

Id say I care more for his exwife (who I guess was the reason to his past success) than his newfound love and faith?

 

hard to defend a guy with a character like that

 

Colbert should have a field day on this?

[FairHooker11]

term limits and character reference requirements needed before another career clown goes in.....

[heckofajobbrownie]

Not at all. A hugely conservative district. Romney won there by 18 points.

[calfoxwc]

This is not the best dems and reps can do. You couldn't get Heckbunker to talk about clinton and lewinski for nothin.

 

But he'll pony right up about a republican. and so it goes.

[heckofajobbrownie]

Nate Silver: "...the First District is about 22 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole."

"Mr. Sanford defeated his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, by nine percentage points instead - so one quick-and-dirty estimate is that Mr. Sanford's personal history cost him a net of 13 percentage points. It just was not enough to flip the election result in such a conservative district."

[Westside Steve]

well maybe the fact that the Democrats offered up little more than somebody related to a hack comedian...I wonder if peewee Herman has a sister.

 

but seriously you've heard some of her stump speeches attacking the guy for his questionable morals. Yep pretty rough. And similar to Bill Clinton I think that may have earned him a little sympathy.

WSS

[heckofajobbrownie]

Steven Colbert is a hack? Funny coming from the guy whose new album cover is a dude dressed up as a pirate.

 

You might be right that some of her attacks fell flat, but I tend to think she over-performed because of who she was related to. But it really didn't matter who they put up. That district isn't voting for a Democrat.

[Westside Steve]

sure she did, name recognition is a big deal.

plus I think the Democrats smelled blood in the water and came out in force but still...

and yeah I think Stephen Colbert is a hack that shtick has been running an awful long time.

we get it you're doing a parody of O'Reilly ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

 

but not to worry, amigo, if you buy my new CD when it comes out its 100 percent guaranteed.

if for any reason I'm not 100 percent satisfied with your 15 bucks I will send it back immediately.

 

 

WSS

[Westside Steve]

by the way I don't think Stephen Colbert is a hack because he's a left wing Shrike its just that I don't think he's very funny. And not all that clever. As I've said before I think Jon Stewart is funnier and more clever and so is Bill Maher who's the biggest asshole of the bunch no doubt.

your mileage may differ.

WSS

[MLD Woody]

Colbert is funny and clever, but alright.

[heckofajobbrownie]

Yeah, there's no arguing personal taste, I suppose.

 

I think Colbert is the most talented political comedian to come along in ...a long time. I'd have to think who is better.

 

Stewart is the one who is feeling tired to me. I can only take so much of the "Isn't CNN/Fox News silly?" coverage of the coverage of the coverage. Much of it isn't jokes so much as "Hey, look at these idiots!" and then him straightening his tie and doing a funny face. Even if his critiques are usually on point.

 

Maher has the most balls of the three. I like that he doesn't care about being loved. He tells his own audience to fuck off every other show.

 

Used to like Dennis Miller a lot in the old days. He tried to do Maher's thing, but from the right, and he couldn't do it. Now he's on some radio station no one has ever heard of.

[heckofajobbrownie]

As for Sanford, other than disappearing and using state funds to take the plane for his fuck fiesta, and seeming to be an incredibly self-involved man, I don't really care if he met a woman from Argentina and fell in love and left his wife for her. It's not something he should be lauded for, but I don't know anything about his marriage. Maybe it sucked. It's not my business.

[Westside Steve]

I liked the Dennis Miller panel show a lot. I think his politics and mine are closer than most. Unfortunately it didn't sell enough tickets so he jumped aboard the O'Reilly train. I cringe every time I hear O'Reilly step on his punchlines. But a bucks a buck. and doing 3 hours of radio is a completely different things.

I always liked PJ O'Rourke too.

but like you say personal taste. Speaking of which let me ask you: Janet or Chrissy?

 

WSS

[heckofajobbrownie]

Ha. I'm 39. You might as well be asking me, "Veronica Lake or Betty Grable?"

 

I wonder what Miller thinks about his career. I know a couple of his former writers. They were both wowed by his smarts - though he did very little of the writing for those rants - and mystified by his conversion, which they thought was part genuine, but also part calculated. Turned out he hitched his boat to the wrong guy.

 

It's just really hard to do comedy from that side of the aisle. No one seems to have been able to, mostly because you end up defending the status quo, which isn't where comedy comes from.

 

Go back and watch some of his earlier stuff. It features jokes like this:

 

"The NRA. I love their slogan "You'll get my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hand!" ...Whatever! ...in an ideal world."

[Westside Steve]

oh I've liked and read Miller since Saturday Night Live.

and I have no doubt peoples outlooks are shaped by the gigs they fall into. But he's my age and I have not necessarily become more conservative but more distrusting of the left that I used to admire when I was a kid.I remember thinking the SDS and so forth was cool, but I was a stupid kid.

 

but do you recall the short lived panel show he had? I always thought his opinions were pretty reasonable, still do.

 

 

WSS

[heckofajobbrownie]

I haven't heard anything he's done in years, so I wouldn't know. But yes, remember the MSNBC show. Knew some people that worked on it. He was trying to do Maher's show from the right - him, monologue, three panelists discussing issues, branded bit (News in pictures versus New Rules), into closing monologue. But it didn't work.

 

His problem was that he had an audience, went for a different audience, and then lost what people liked about him. Now he's got a small audience and a much smaller platform. Plenty of cash, though. Those Vegas dates pay. Does lots of endorsements too.

 

This is the reason no one gets why guys like Limbaugh and Maher have stayed on the air for two decades - those shows are really hard to do. There's a long list of people who have tried those formats and failed. Talking on the radio for three hours a day is hard. (And pointless.) Doing a live hour-long topical show is hard. You can find other people who can do it periodically, but they can't do it week in and week out.

 

Dennis stopped doing the work. You know his HBO show? By the end he was helicoptering in from Santa Barbara to LA to shoot it (no joke) reading it off the prompter, getting back in his helicopter and going home.

[Westside Steve]

plus it's probably hard to sell any show on MSNBC that isn't hard left. Be like asking Rachel Maddow to do a half hour on Fox everyday. I remember in the 80's there was a barup around North Olmsted or somewhere that was a black dance club. These guys decided they were going to do country night once a week. needless to say that never took off.

but I wouldn't think that a weekly show would be very tough if you had any chops at all especially with good writing and the opportunity to go blue once in awhile.

3 hours on the radio or a show every night, that would be a chore.

WSS

[heckofajobbrownie]

That wasn't it, but that was my fault. I wrote MSNBC when I meant CNBC. He was on CNBC. So the leftist bent didn't doom him. Nobody watched it. There were something like 100,000 people watching that show, so they canned it and replaced it with a stock talk show.

 

As for Maher, he's done 5 nights a week taped and now he does an hour long live, so he's done both. And other networks have tried to duplicate it, trying just about every comic they can think of. It's tough to find a guy who is funny and knows enough to debate with some politician or a woman from the Council on Foreign Relations. That bench isn't deep.

 

Chelsea Handler does it, but that's for pop culture. Stewart does it. Colbert does it. Maher does it. That's pretty much it.

 

I can think of about ten comics billed as the next Maher or Stewart that have gotten tryouts. They never get past the test shows.

 

Every studio wants younger and hipper. But they haven't found one yet. That should tell you something.

[heckofajobbrownie]

PS - Key to talk radio longevity is to talk slowly and say the same thing over and over, but in different ways. It's a three hour block but what you say could fit into 25 minutes of script.

[Westside Steve]

My bad. I watched and recorded the show every week. Day in day out.

Anyway I really liked it and thought he was moderate right.

 

But sure I know how to fill 3 hours RadioTime repetition repetition and uh I forget the third one oh yes repetition still that's hard to do.

Sometimes I feel really sorry for sports guys on Saturday afternoon and Sunday when no one is listening and nobody calls in.

 

And we know most people only listen for a little while at a time.

There was a station in New York that played I think the top 5 songs. Over and over and over.

WSS

Somebody calculated the average drive time and played those of songs so the average listener heard just the biggest hits.

[heckofajobbrownie]

You and 99,999 other people really enjoyed it. But that doesn't pay for daily helicopter trips to and from Santa Barbara and a Guild writing staff.

 

But here he is the other night on O'Reilly, explaining why no one cares what he says anymore:

 

“As far as these two kids go, I got veterans calling in and telling me they’re getting their aid cutback and [Tameran Tsarnaev] is getting welfare, the one on the left,” Miller said as a picture of the brothers appeared on screen. “One of these days, somebody is going to trigger one of those homemade bombs with an Obama phone. Can we at least cut the welfare off now? If possible we, in an effort to be more evolved, don’t pay for this kid’s funeral? I know if we do this in kind that brings us down to their level — that’s a misnomer. It takes us six feet below their level. And we better wake up to this, for God’s sakes.”

 

Obamaphone? Jesus.

 

That kind of crankery leads you here:

 

Trampled by Turtles, 3 former SNL cast members booked for state fair

[Westside Steve]

so $21 for the turtles and all those other hit making artists and 38 bucks for Miller?

 

but, how dare he fuck with the Obama phone!?!

 

WSS

[heckofajobbrownie]

The premise of a political joke should be true and relevant. That's what gives it the chance to be trenchant.

 

Obamaphone was just a crank obsession. Again, this is why right wing comedy never works, or has a limited audience. They don't aim at the targets of comedy.

[Westside Steve]

Maybe right wingers like me can actually see humor at our expense.

The bitter left...... Not so much.

WSS

[calfoxwc]

PS - Key to talk radio longevity is to talk type like me - slowly and say the same thing over and over, but in different ways. It's a three hour block but what you say could fit into 25 minutes of script. Heckbunker

*********************

Fixed.

[heckofajobbrownie]

Maybe right wingers like me can actually see humor at our expense.

The bitter left...... Not so much.

WSS

 

I think there's some truth to that - liberals are often lousy, uptight audiences.

 

But the Obamaphone isn't a good example, because it's a stupid non-issue. The premise is that Obama invented this program that gives out free phones to poor people. Ha-ha! What a socialist! Except that isn't true. That program has been around for years.

 

Again, the premise of the joke has to be true.