Category Archives: Ethics

Comedian Ricky Gervais Brings Back REAL, Roasting Satire

Celebrity, Comedy & Humor, Culture, Ethics, Film, Hollywood

Ricky Gervais’ opening monologue at the 77th annual Golden Globes was neither left nor right, it was just right: uproariously witty.

Here is the full transcript of Ricky Gervais’ roast of Hollywood, courtesy of The Daily Mail. The best parts I highlighted: 

Hello and welcome to the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel here in Los Angeles. I’m Ricky Gervais, thank you.

You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting these awards, so I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did. I’m joking, I never did. NBC clearly don’t care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets — hello?

Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax. Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.

But you all look lovely all dolled up. You came here in your limos. I came here in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. No, shush. It’s her daughter I feel sorry for. OK? That must be the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs.

Lots of big celebrities here tonight. Legends. Icons. This table alone — Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro … Baby Yoda. Oh, that’s Joe Pesci, sorry. I love you man. Don’t have me whacked. But tonight isn’t just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They’re all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He’s coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland, Two Popes. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. Hollywood Foreign press are all very racist. Fifth time. So. We were going to do an In-Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn’t diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year. Let’s see what happens.

No one cares about movies anymore. No one goes to cinema, no one really watches network TV. Everyone is watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out, going, “Well done Netflix. You win everything. Good night.” But no, we got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of Afterlife instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself cause his wife dies of cancer and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert, season two is on the way so in the end he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he’s your friend but I don’t care.

Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I’ve heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie’s Choice. I mean, that would just be Meryl just going, “Well, it’s gotta be this one then.” All the best actors have jumped to Netflix, HBO. And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn’t acting anymore. It’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we’d know who’d win that.

It’s the last time, who cares? Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f*** off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.

UPDATE III (1/09/020): Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller DOES AXE Dissident Voices

Conservatism, Critique, Ethics, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness

Here, Tucker Carlson loudly protests the habit of expunging dissent voices, right and left.

OK, but Tucker Carlson is affiliated with Daily Caller, right? And Daily Caller axed my very dissident column because a hate-group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, persists in telling nasty lies about me and my views. (Along the lines outlined in my refutation of “Slate’s Resident Idiot” when he “Slandered this Jewish Woman — Me.”)

How is that resisting the status quo? Daily Caller also removed op-ed editor Robert Mariani and replaced him with indistinguishable neocons.

I think they all swim in very polluted waters.

UPDATE I (12/30/019):

Tucker markets a syndicated column with a buddy, Patel, who is editor-in-chief of Daily Caller. As its founder, Tucker has plenty sway. Other dissident columns have been removed, too. Love Tucker, but can we stop making excuses for our idols?

https://twitter.com/jesse31522/status/1211568797141762049

UPDATE II (12/31/019): 

Regarding this comment on Twitter: Then Tucker must NOT wax fat against dissidents being expunged, when his pride-and-joy site, the one he founded, does that very thing to those of us who were Old, Hard Right before Tucker was. And there are other thinkers who’ve been purged from Daily Caller. Mencken warned about this kind of mindless mindset among Americans. Find a hero, usually a celeb or a politico–and worship, worship the idol, excuse his every incongruous stance. You can be sure Tucker HAS PLENTY INFLUENCE @DailyCaller. It’s likely a choice.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), arguably America’s foremost hate group, had maligned me, a hard-right, Jewish individualist (daughter of a rabbi), who is frequently and mercilessly attacked by anti-Semites (a taste in the Comments to my column, at the Unz Review). So, at the same time that Tucker Carlson was doing magnificent exposes about the SPLC—his website, Daily Caller, was expunging my column because the SPLC demands it.

Intelligent, honest sorts will admit there is a contradiction here. The rest are, as Mencken would have said, part of the “commonwealth of morons”—mindless followers, who refuse to recognize  that the object of their worship (Tucker) might be in violation of his own principles.

UPDATE III (1/09/020):

An interesting postscript to the above debate. Correlation is not causation, but Tucker Carlson seems to have untangled himself from the syndicated column he wrote with Daily Caller editor, Neil Patel. More accurately, the Patel column appears sans Tucker.  Patel worked for Vice President Dick Cheney. Say no more.

Awful Adam Schiff Thinks ‘We Are All Ukrainians Now’

Constitution, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Russia

He was throwing out Ukrainian names like they were American national heroes, familiar to all.

He is Adam Schiff, Democrat from California, and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump’s rap sheet as recounted by this colossal moron:

Trump withheld a White House meeting from Ukraine. OMG!

Trump failed to release aid to an incorrigibly corrupt Ukraine for a sorry few hours. OMG!

Trump linked aid to an obstacle course the recipient country, Ukraine, needed to traverse.  The outrage!

Imagine not squandering taxpayer funds as fast as Congress instructed Trump to!

That, apparently, put America’s national security in peril. OMG, again.

Trump, cries Schiff, doesn’t give a flying f-ck about Ukraine. Here’s a little secret: Most Americans don’t give a tinker’s toss about Ukraine.  Trump voters, at the very least, want peace with Russia; they don’t wish to fight Ukraine’s wars.

Trump only sweats the Big Stuff, bleats Schiff. A Big-Idea president? We can’t have that.

Spoiler alert: We voted for a Big-Idea president. MAGA, America First, less immigration: Those are Big Ideas.

I’ll tell you what puts our very lives in peril, Adam Schiff, you colossal moron: poking the Russian bear. Some serious Russia experts even warn of a nuclear conflagration because of America’s Russia monomania.

Laughable Impeachment: Libertarians (The Good Kind) LOVE Undermining Foreign Aid

Constitution, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Government, Law, Natural Law, Republicans

President Donald Trump will be impeached and then tried and acquitted. That’s the platform on which the Democrats are running a presidential campaign.

As to the substance of the articles of impeachment against President Trump:

First up is “Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine.”

At the behest of Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, Devin Nunes, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and with the active participation of Vice-President Mike Pence, and Mick Mulvaney, the chief of staff—the Office of Management and Budget implemented a hold on Ukraine’s assistance funds.

What’s not to like about a hold on foreign aid? It was a short-lived hold, but it was good while it lasted.

What we libertarians don’t like is that the funds were eventually released to Ukraine. No matter what, libertarians want to see foreign aid imperiled in any way possible, for as long as possible, preferably for good.

By contrast, the Beltway libertarians, the ones Tucker Carlson entertains, will map the ins-and-outs of the impeachment with the fastidiousness of a government bureaucrat. And they’ll go into the weeds of the Ukraine affair, what the Democrats and their supporters are calling “a sprawling, months-long campaign spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer.”

From where I’m perched, it’s a big yawn. “Impeachment [Is] Uninteresting To A Certain Kind Of Libertarian“:

Democrat or Republican initiated, impeachment as we’ve come to know it intimately, showcases the might of the American Administrative State in all its muscular display of extra-constitutional powers. There is nothing constitutional, and very little that is naturally licit, in this process, despite all the “solemn” references to the poor, unused document.

The second part of the Democrats’ report, leading up to the drawing up of articles of impeachment, entailed Trump and his “officials declining to take part in the impeachment inquiry …”

The report argues that Mr Trump’s blanket refusal is unprecedented—Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton all complied with House requests for information—and that such defiance represents “an existential threat to the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances…and rule of law”.

Did you hear that? This is midriff-splitting funny.

Trump defying a corrupt and ossified body (that gave America one unjust, criminal war after the other) is said to constitute “an existential threat to the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances…and rule of law.”

To libertarians, the good kind, that idea that congress represents some sort of bulwark against a mortal, existential danger is just uproariously funny.

  • Image is Adam Schiff courtesy “Cowdog“