Roseanne Barr? Drug addled sell out of the Millenium. I would consider it a badge of honor to have rated her disapproval.

Who's the snowflake now? Good, I'm sick of Democrats using a knife in a gunfight.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/frank-rich-roy-cohn-the-original-donald-trump.html

The Huckabee pity partiers can suck on this:


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html

Quote:

---

You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn't sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you.

He's helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you're profiting off of him. And if you're gonna profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn't have any.

---

This is Michelle Wolf's core criticism of the establishment (journalists), and what they're objecting to. In reality they've been called out as complicit with Trump. If you read or listened to David Cay Johnston, he said the mainstream media failed miserably in vetting Trump. They totally snoozed on all the details coming out now, yet we knew everything about Obama way before he was elected.

I love this. The dinner dedicated to "free speech" winds up with conservatives freaking out about speech and pus$y hats defending the Trumpinista in some kind of Stockholm syndrome #metoo and the Association apologizing for Wolfe.You can't make this stuff up. And these are the grownups.

Here's some counter reactions from the press...

Quote:

---

Michelle Wolf Does Unto the White House as It Has Done Unto Others

Controversy at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner underscores that Trump's staff demands decencies and courtesies that it denies to others. (From the Atlantic)

---

Quote:

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Shut Up About Michelle Wolf If You've Been Silent on Trump's Offenses (from WaPo)

---

Quote:

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The Real Reason Michelle Wolf is Under Attack is Because Her Sarah Sanders Jokes Are True

Sarah Huckabee Sanders can dish it, but Republicans can't take it. (Vox)

---

Are people really feeling sorry for Sanders and Conway? These two individuals have done some of the worst destruction to journalism in modern times ever with their constant spewing of misinformation and alternative facts. I seem to remember conservative media attacking a certain first lady with unwarranted ugly characterizations and descriptions. Get The *****Out Of Here!

Typical bully behavior. The can dish it out but can't take it.

Mike Huckabee says Sarah Sanders is doing fine: 'She didn't go home and cry her eyes out or anything like that'

Gee whiz, your dad, former governor, covers for you professionally or personally...and you're the damn WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY? This is so messed up on so many level. For christ sake, they're playing the victim here, calling in daddy to protect her but she disses the crap and lies like few others yet she running behind daddy's skirt? If this isn't some kind of twisted double standard then it's a straight out duplicity and having it both ways while blaming everyone else. How convenient.

The real target of Wolfe was journalism. From the reaction, they predictably lived down to her descriptions being both clueless and craven.

As history shows, when autocratic regimes are overthrown, the spokespeople who disseminated the lies and hate are also hunted as war criminals ( See Joseph Goebbels and Baghdad Bob). Huckabee and Conway should tread lightly as Heisenberg warned.

hahaha
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050302202.html

John Kelly the WH Chief of Staff who lied about removing Rob Porter and who lied about the reason that he called a Congresswoman a "Empty Hat" is alleged to have called the President an idiot on several occasions. The clock is ticking and the bookies are taking bets on the exact day and time Kelly will be booted from the WH like so many other Trump WH staff. This has to be some kind of record on the sheer number of WH staff that has left the WH in the first 18 months of an administration.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/kelly-thinks-he-s-saving-u-s-disaster-calls-trump-n868961

It certainly has to be a record for high-level staff who have more-or-less publicly called the President an idiot.

BearNIt said:

---

Are people really feeling sorry for Sanders and Conway? These two individuals have done some of the worst destruction to journalism in modern times ever with their constant spewing of misinformation and alternative facts. I seem to remember conservative media attacking a certain first lady with unwarranted ugly characterizations and descriptions. Get The *****Out Of Here!

---

I've been lurking for a place to say this (although I kind-of did in a cameo post):

The issue is not that Conway and Sanders are not monstrously evil, and don't deserve being attacked for it. They are and they do.

And the issue is not that Michelle Wolf is not brilliant, nor that there was anything wrong that she intended to aim there and hit hard.

But, for me, one of the main things I learned being a musician is that great art is a collaboration between the artist and the audience; and I think the truth is that she lost the audience - not just in the room, but the wider millions watching on TV and online and in perpetuum.

This is, for me, a correction to my earlier cameo remark which was that I think she's great; but silencing the audience was not a good reaction. Rather, a better reaction would have been for the audience to start yelling, at her, at each other, and throwing things. As I think of it, what I'm bemoaning is that, by silencing the audience, she became vulnerable (truly) to the charge that her presentation was "in bad taste", which minimizes what has to happen, which is that the truth has to be laid so bare that the only reaction to it can be either to exult in it (if you like truth), or to desperately do whatever evil you can (for those who can't deal with it) to suppress it, which, properly should produce a kind of Armageddon.

I know that the above is idealized; and events like that all too rarely actually occur, where everything comes together just right. Mario Savio comes to mind. But as much as or more than anything, the fact that he was able to catch that magic only once or twice is of major significance. But, in any case, I think that the above-articulated dynamic illuminates the meaningful thing about the event which has been missed by the discussion up to now.

And, for that reason, I do not fault Michelle Wolf for not being perfect. I think what I'm saying, rather, is that, just like you have to go with what the other improvisers in the band are going (intentional bad syntax), and build on that - like, often, if not always, you have to take what the defense gives you, she failed to go with where the room really was, and instead she built her structures into a crescendo as if the room was going with her, whereas they were really dropping like flies.

I think it's something she'll learn - if she's as brilliant as I think she could be. The "trick" is to live on a knife-edge going with the ups and downs of the audience and calibrating your mood and intensity to keep the vibe going so as to wind up communicating what desperately needs to get across (like Joseph Welch's famous retort to Senator McCarthy:"At long last, have you no shame?", somehow placed at the precise, exact point in history where it needed to be, and was unanswerable.)

The technique is not unlike reeling in a big fish, or a major league pitcher mixing speeds, locations, hard/soft, angles, until, at the right moment, the change-up (or fast ball from Romo) is so utterly and completely, not only un-expected but unexpectable, that the batter might as well be suffering from some kind of mysterious illness that absolutely prevents him from moving in response. Or like making love, riding the big waves of your partner 'til the differences lose their significance.

Finally, I feel it important to say that, through all that performance art (which, as we know from bitter history and current experience, can be used for great evil), it is perhaps most important to remain rigorously faithful to the truth (as we are given the light to see it, both from science and from revelation, neither to be ever ignored), and therefore to accept our shortcomings, and, as in all creative endeavors, make something better because of them than we otherwise would have been given the light to see.

Disagree Mike. Losing the audience is the only choice because the audience isn't in the room. Winning the audience would mean participating in the fiction-this is a civilized night with civilized people in a civilized time. We are all here as members of an exclusive club to poke fun at each other and tomorrow we will return to friendly sparring in our elite bubble. Aren't we clever and magnanimous?

No, as a comic and an anarchist Wolff knew that she needed to blow up the room not with quips but with explosives. She got right down and told the truth not just about Trump and his crew of misfits but also took aim at the Democrats- Ted Kennedy joke, Clinton joke- and especially journalists.

And this about the Dems : "People think you might flip the House and Senate this November, but you guys always find a way to mess it up. You're somehow going to lose by 12 points to a guy named Jeff Pedophile Nazi Doctor."

The fact that the audience didn't "get it" made it a virtuoso performance. They shouldn't get it because they are being called out for their insidious self-regard and cronyism. She was obscene in the face of obscene people, called out racists as racists, p$ssy hounds as p$ssy hounds and her last line about Flint was the perfect coda.

We got it though and if you read the transcript you realize it will be a case study on how to do this- which is why it won't happen again. On the other hand, if it results in the demise of the correspondents dinner it will have fulfilled its purpose.

mikecohen said:

---

BearNIt said:

---

Are people really feeling sorry for Sanders and Conway? These two individuals have done some of the worst destruction to journalism in modern times ever with their constant spewing of misinformation and alternative facts. I seem to remember conservative media attacking a certain first lady with unwarranted ugly characterizations and descriptions. Get The *****Out Of Here!

---

I've been lurking for a place to say this (although I kind-of did in a cameo post):

The issue is not that Conway and Sanders are not monstrously evil, and don't deserve being attacked for it. They are and they do.

And the issue is not that Michelle Wolf is not brilliant, nor that there was anything wrong that she intended to aim there and hit hard.

But, for me, one of the main things I learned being a musician is that great art is a collaboration between the artist and the audience; and I think the truth is that she lost the audience - not just in the room, but the wider millions watching on TV and online and in perpetuum.

This is, for me, a correction to my earlier cameo remark which was that I think she's great; but silencing the audience was not a good reaction. Rather, a better reaction would have been for the audience to start yelling, at her, at each other, and throwing things. As I think of it, what I'm bemoaning is that, by silencing the audience, she became vulnerable (truly) to the charge that her presentation was "in bad taste", which minimizes what has to happen, which is that the truth has to be laid so bare that the only reaction to it can be either to exult in it (if you like truth), or to desperately do whatever evil you can (for those who can't deal with it) to suppress it, which, properly should produce a kind of Armageddon.

I know that the above is idealized; and events like that all too rarely actually occur, where everything comes together just right. Mario Savio comes to mind. But as much as or more than anything, the fact that he was able to catch that magic only once or twice is of major significance. But, in any case, I think that the above-articulated dynamic illuminates the meaningful thing about the event which has been missed by the discussion up to now.

And, for that reason, I do not fault Michelle Wolf for not being perfect. I think what I'm saying, rather, is that, just like you have to go with what the other improvisers in the band are going (intentional bad syntax), and build on that - like, often, if not always, you have to take what the defense gives you, she failed to go with where the room really was, and instead she built her structures into a crescendo as if the room was going with her, whereas they were really dropping like flies.

I think it's something she'll learn - if she's as brilliant as I think she could be. The "trick" is to live on a knife-edge going with the ups and downs of the audience and calibrating your mood and intensity to keep the vibe going so as to wind up communicating what desperately needs to get across (like Joseph Welch's famous retort to Senator McCarthy:"At long last, have you no shame?", somehow placed at the precise, exact point in history where it needed to be, and was unanswerable.)

The technique is not unlike reeling in a big fish, or a major league pitcher mixing speeds, locations, hard/soft, angles, until, at the right moment, the change-up (or fast ball from Romo) is so utterly and completely, not only un-expected but unexpectable, that the batter might as well be suffering from some kind of mysterious illness that absolutely prevents him from moving in response. Or like making love, riding the big waves of your partner 'til the differences lose their significance.

Finally, I feel it important to say that, through all that performance art (which, as we know from bitter history and current experience, can be used for great evil), it is perhaps most important to remain rigorously faithful to the truth (as we are given the light to see it, both from science and from revelation, neither to be ever ignored), and therefore to accept our shortcomings, and, as in all creative endeavors, make something better because of them than we otherwise would have been given the light to see.

---

I've read many interviews in the past with comedians, particularly Jimmy Kimmel, that basically the job is a no-win situation. It's just the way the whole thing is structured. They're going to say you bombed, no matter what. So she said, essentially, "If I'm going to bomb anyway, I should not care about the room at all and only play to those not in the room."

Read on....



This was published in GQ last Thursday:
https://www.gq.com/story/michelle-wolf-white-house-correspondents-dinner-interview






This is from Wolf's interview with NPR's Terry Gross today:

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/607099827/fresh-air-interview-with-michelle-wolf

That's good stuff from NPR and Chappelle. I didn't know who she was before but she pulled it off. She made the best of the opportunity. She made a name for herself in a no-win situation. That eye-liner line was well crafted and clever.

There is a difference in how the audience works in music, comedy and other live performance. That seems a fair take on comedy. You play through no matter what. And I think they train for it. They have, don't have a choice.

In music, you know if and when you have the audience. The audience can be a big part of the whole experience, changes everything. There seems to be an energy exchange, if not equal or measurable than still perceivable. There's a buzz and a vibe. In some genres that's the whole point, the audience. In stand-up comedy it's more, "okay entertain me, make me laugh funny person". Also you're up there alone.

I guess the smoky eye comment got to her because she ditched it today. Honestly I think it makes her less intimidating, less Cruella Deville look.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.newsweek.com/trump-doctor-bodyguard-medical-records-907513%3famp=1

okaydo said:

---

---

Nice. I'm pretty sure that was taped at the Fillmore. Chappelle did a couple of shows there this past weekend.

Another Bear said:

---

That's good stuff from NPR and Chappelle. I didn't know who she was before but she pulled it off. She made the best of the opportunity. She made a name for herself in a no-win situation. That eye-liner line was well crafted and clever.

There is a difference in how the audience works in music, comedy and other live performance. That seems a fair take on comedy. You play through no matter what. And I think they train for it. They have, don't have a choice.

In music, you know if and when you have the audience. The audience can be a big part of the whole experience, changes everything. There seems to be an energy exchange, if not equal or measurable than still perceivable. There's a buzz and a vibe. In some genres that's the whole point, the audience. In stand-up comedy it's more, "okay entertain me, make me laugh funny person". Also you're up there alone.

---

Your distinction is tempting; but I've seen too many comedians play the audience like fiddles; and, to the degree that the audience is totally hostile to the truth you are saying, I think that the honorable play is get them really riled up to the point of riot. Maybe she just didn't have enough time to do that.

mikecohen said:

---

....but I've seen too many comedians play the audience like fiddles..

---

mikecohen said:

---

Another Bear said:

---

That's good stuff from NPR and Chappelle. I didn't know who she was before but she pulled it off. She made the best of the opportunity. She made a name for herself in a no-win situation. That eye-liner line was well crafted and clever.

There is a difference in how the audience works in music, comedy and other live performance. That seems a fair take on comedy. You play through no matter what. And I think they train for it. They have, don't have a choice.

In music, you know if and when you have the audience. The audience can be a big part of the whole experience, changes everything. There seems to be an energy exchange, if not equal or measurable than still perceivable. There's a buzz and a vibe. In some genres that's the whole point, the audience. In stand-up comedy it's more, "okay entertain me, make me laugh funny person". Also you're up there alone.

---

Your distinction is tempting; but I've seen too many comedians play the audience like fiddles; and, to the degree that the audience is totally hostile to the truth you are saying, I think that the honorable play is get them really riled up to the point of riot. Maybe she just didn't have enough time to do that.

---

The guys who slay an audience, play them like a fiddle, like Dave Chappelle are the exception, or the pinnacle. Much like how the best musicians make it look super easy. If you want to see the flip side of that, see an open mic night. Seems to me it's like public speaking but on steroids. For music, even a decent garage band can hit a groove and pull people in. Music has the ability to get past reservations or bias. Words in oratory have a more difficult time if the audience isn't into it.

I think the description of the audience and the room says the most. One of the comics (Kimmel?) says WHCD is a no-win situation given the format, room and audience. It's not an ideal location as noted by MW. It's a large open event room with round tables, people are eating dinner and there are cameras for reaction shots, so people chill. not ideal for stand-up.

I'm watching the end of The Looming Tower on Hulu, on the path to 9/11, and Condi gets a brutal portrayal.

okaydo said:

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I'm watching the end of The Looming Tower on Hulu, on the path to 9/11, and Condi gets a brutal portrayal.

---

Saw the story on Frontline many years ago. Will watch this. Is the US Ambassador to Yemen depicted as a real C ya next Tuesday?

bearister said:

---

okaydo said:

---

I'm watching the end of The Looming Tower on Hulu, on the path to 9/11, and Condi gets a brutal portrayal.

---

Saw the story on Frontline many years ago. Will watch this. Is the US Ambassador to Yemen depicted as a real C ya next Tuesday?

---

Yeah, but her treatment pales next to the treatment of Condi.

Give me a break, Okaydo. MSNBC does the same DAMN THING! MSNBC was talking about the greatest presidents in US history recently and didn't mention our Dear Leader once. You want facts? How about this: our one true God's greatest gift to our Christian nation is Donald J. Trump.

Hippie doctor needs his medical license yanked, if he has one. Cheeto wrote Doc Ronny's script too undoubtedly.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/harold-bornstein-trump-letter/index.html

Everyone in Trump's universe gets burned sooner or later. Turns out bad karma has an orange combover.