Sic 'em on SICK Louis C.K. who is not P.C.

Let's get in one extra shot against free speech in 2018.

Let's have one more example of Internet bullying and rage and scapegoating.

It was a familiar target: Louis C.K., a comedian known for being an obnoxious truth-teller, a wiseguy, and a master baiter of anything and anyone, including himself.

Following in the footsteps of Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison, and even Mort Sahl (you recall his catch-phrase from 50 years ago, "Is there any group I haven't offended?") Louis C.K. -- JOKED.

OOOOOOOOOH.

Bob Dylan, in his song defending Lenny Bruce, noted that Lenny "Never robbed any churches, nor cut of any babies heads..."

Some people act like Louis C.K. did that.

The worst this guy did, from a legal point of view, was jerk off in front of some women who didn't turn and walk away.

He admitted what he did:

“These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my (penis) without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your (penis) isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”

Well, yes. When your career involves being obscenely rich because you're irresponsibly un-PC, you slip up. Sarah Silverman watched him jerk off and thought it was amusing, so you do have to pick your audience. Then again, your audience has the power to walk out and never pay to see you again. Or turn the dial and watch something else. Like, oh, Ricky Gervais and Bill Maher, whose tasteless and mean jokes are legend.

Louis C.K., if you're from out of town, was one of those guys witch-hunted into obscurity. It was a #MeToo trend of the times. Al Franken was forced to resign from the Senate. Various actors were fired from their TV shows and movies. This guy was fired off shows he was writing for or producing, and no comedy club would book him.

Norm MacDonald got into hot water for actually saying that Louis C.K. suffered a trauma, along with Roseanne Barr. Imagine crashing and burning; you now have ZERO income except from royalties, you're hated by millions, and considered either a pervert or insane. Isn't that SLIGHTLY awful? The women who saw C.K.'s dick were not quite as traumatized were they? The woman Barr stupidly insulted didn't jump in front of a train, did she? Norm tried to make the point...and ended up having to apologize, looking dazed and waxy on "The View" where, to their credit, the ladies on the panel offered him some understanding and forgiveness.

Meanwhile, the Twitterverse roared at Louis C.K., with the familiar cries of "Hope you never work again" and "You are scum" and on and on.

All the moral people...and none of them questioning the morality of somebody secretly taping the audio of the comedian's act and posting it to YouTube (for their monetization). It was pulled and somebody posted it again. And the jokes (or observations, really) were quoted all over the place. This, on a comedian working out his material and not yet pulling what didn't get a laugh or choosing which ones to censor if he should get another cable special.

No, on paper, what Louis C.K. said is not hilarious. But neither are the things Don Rickles said. Don even admitted when he saw them in print he sometimes winced...especially if the article was complaining about his sick, mean, counter-productive, hostile, nasty insult "humor." Awww. No question, Louis C.K. doesn't remotely have the comical voice and face of a Don Rickles, but his audience knows he's just a provocateur.

Sometimes a comedian is the opposite of the image (Don Rickles was a nice guy, Joan Rivers was a nice lady) but sometimes what you see is pretty much what you get (Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, Rodney Dangerfield).

It's possible that a problem with Louis C.K. is that he's not only pretty creepy in his stand-up character, but perhaps is just as obnoxious off-stage. Sometimes a dislike of the person (Ricky Gervais and Bill Maher aren't exactly endearing either) also influences the response to the comedy.

Sam Kinison seemed to be more likable because he was fat, balding, and people could feel superior to somebody who was screaming all the time about his failures with women. But would Sam get away with a "homosexual necrophilia" joke these days? One told DELIBERATELY just to think up something awful to say?

How about Eddie Murphy smiling and telling the world that Asian men have "little rice dicks?" Would that still go over because Eddie Murphy has charm and Louis C.K. does not?

Louis C.K. covered the Asian penis problem, and it did not go well:

Being a good actor is important in stand-up. The audience must believe that you're making it up on the spot, or they must "buy" your personality so that a rough line is acceptable. C.K., now dealing with backlash from his creepy behavior toward women, can only get away with deliberately obnoxious comedy bits for his circle of paying fans. Those hearing about some lines he uses to them, and which might never make it to a cable comedy special, have drawn righteous indignation, and worse.

An irony is that another target during his ruminations involved the word "retard," and how it USED to be an OK word and now it isn't. The irony is that when Norm MacDonald tried to defend Louis C.K., he mentioned that one would have to have "Down Syndrome" not to understand the problem. Norm said he caught himself before saying "retarded," and went for the more PC term. Er, no. He had to apologize for THAT, too.

Louis C.K. has not done what America loves most: grovel. They love a good public apology. Knock the star down, and watch him get to his knees, apologize, and beg for the great un-washed to let him amuse them. SQUIRM.

When did Jay Leno become #1 in the ratings? When Hugh Grant was booked, and Leno cried out, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"

America watched Hugh Grant squirm. Yes, Mr. Handsome, caught with a prostitute too ugly to fuck for free.

This guy said on stage, when some line presumably got silence or a few boos: “What are you going to do, take away my birthday? My life is over. I don’t give a shit."

His apology was not accepted because he didn't do it to Jimmy Fallon on the new "Tonight Show." He simply stated what what he did was, now, upon reflection and losing so much money and work, objectionable.

Is he going to apologize for his remarks about any "fags" or "retards?" Not likely.

Slate, online, declared that even given past precedents, such as George Carlin, Louis C.K. went...all together now...TOO FAR.

The shock comic was shocking. How shocking.

You want Jerry Seinfeld, go get Jerry Seinfeld. He precisely knows every line down to where the comma should be. You want somebody dangerous who is not being booked on TV anymore...well, most everyone admits that the most "horrific" thing about the man's set, was that "people were laughing!"

Get their names. Get the facial recognition infra-red cameras in every comedy club.

A few decades ago, "mental retardation" was a phrase, and children afflicted, were called "retarded."

In our PC age, the words have changed. George Carlin did a bit in which he gave new and fancy PC terms for puking and other graphic words.

What's next, by the way? Ban Three Stooges movies?

Moe used to call his stooges "imbecile," "idiot" and "moron." These are all clinical terms used, at least at one time, by psychiatrists and doctors to describe various forms of...what's the phrase...intellectual challenge. The words were, along with "retard," quickly used by people as insults.

PS oh PC brigade, is "stupid" ok, too? Or does it denote some poor moron who can't help but act stupid?

Maybe the only word to use is "ignorant," but that implies people who may not have been allowed to get an education because of their race or their financial situation. What the fuck word DO you use to yell at somebody who cut you off in traffic, dropped a melon on your foot at the supermarket, or left the gas on and blew up the house? "Neglectful." My, my. "You NEGLECTFUL PERSON!"

No doubt, anyone with a connection to Parkland, or anyone with a Down Syndrome relative, would probably be offended or chilled by the comedian's remarks. No doubt, a lot of ordinary people (not necessarily "snowflakes") wouldn't be laughing either, because everyone has a different limit on what's funny or tasteless. That's the risk comedians take. If they like to be edgy, the work the percentages. They take the risk that somebody will be waiting in the alley. Jackie Mason got beaten up for doing Sinatra jokes.

But is it a stretch to think that Henny Youngman would be called a misogynist and booted off the stage today? "Take my wife...PLEASE!" No, Henny.

He "makes fun of the survivors," does he? He jokes about the tragedy, does he? Not quite. As a "realist," he was questioning why the Parkland survivors were being heard more than anyone else. The answer, unless you're Ted Nugent, is because they suffered a trauma and wanted to offer their first hand testimony. Might as well question why various women were allowed impact statements in the Bill Cosby trial. It was done to vividly show a woman's anguish over alleged abuse.

But we're talking about some asshole on stage talking in front of a predominantly drunken bunch of other assholes. We're taking a few minutes out of a 48 minute set.

Some people are allowing that Louis was funny, ONCE, but now he's just angry and bitter. Oh, like Lenny Bruce, roaming the stage with his law books, and trying to make sense out of how he'd been dragged off to jail, threatened with never working again?

Judd Apatow (the guy who said he never found Bill Cosby funny in the first place), was ready to TWEET for attention:

“This hacky, unfunny, shallow routine is just a symptom of how people are afraid to feel empathy. It’s much easier to laugh at our most vulnerable than to look at their pain directly & show them love and concern. Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward.”

CK's job is not to show love and concern. That's not why he's on stage. But the Tweet is coming from Apatow, a writer whom few really want to see performing stand-up.

Also coming down on C.K. was sidekick Andy Richter, with a little reverse racist spin to his blubbering:

“You know what’s the worst, most boring kind of comedy? The kind where older white men are angry that older white men can’t do or say whatever the fuck they want anymore.”

Andy, remember when George Carlin couldn't say FUCK? When a radio station got into trouble for playing his "words you can't say" bit? FUCK! Maybe he should've stopped being an older white man and gone into accounting or banking, and left comedy to wholesome performers. In which case Conan O'Brien wouldn't be able to say SHIT on cable TV every other night. Conan would just have to stand there doing his "string dance" routine over and over and over.

Like that "white men can't do or say whatever the fuck they want" line? I guess Andy figures it's ok for black comedians. Maybe the Wayans Brothers will do another movie where they dress up in white drag. Maybe the old Redd Foxx album should get a Pulitzer...the one where he says the ugliest thing in the world is "an ugly white woman." Maybe Conan O'Brien should be kicked off the air and replaced with a young female comedian "of color." I'd favor the latter, if it means we've heard the end of a sanctimonious kick-while-he's-down guy like Richter.

Some 60 years ago, Time Magazine profiled the new "sick" comedians, centering on Lenny Bruce and Mort "A Woman's Place is in the Stove" Sahl, but also pointing a finger at Shelley Berman. The magazine said he had a face "like a hastily sculpted meatball," alluding to Berman's acne pocks. That wasn't a mean and tasteless thing to do? But they were going after Berman, who in one of his phone routines, played the part of a drunk with a hangover, who didn't remember that "the night before" he threw a party host's cat through a plate glass window. AND the host's mother.

Berman noted on stage not long after, that he got letters from cat loves, "but not one from anyone who loves his mother."

Berman's phone competitor, Bob Newhart, once did a routine about a man trying to coax a jumper off a ledge...with a lot of bad-taste suicide jokes. He also joked about a man trying to give phone instructions on defusing a bomb: "if that thing goes off, it's ME they're gonna want to talk to, not YOU."

Bad taste humor, sick jokes, ghoulish fantasies...they abound in Ambrose Bierce, Chas Addams cartoons, Mark Twain, Rabelais, etc. etc. Some say it's "healthy" and a release to tell offensive jokes. Some say it only reinforces cruelty and a lack of sensitivity and compassion.

I was on Joey Adams' radio show when I was promoting my comedy food poem book "Let Peas Be With You." Joey, an abrasive comic who had a bit of Groucho Marx tossed into his bit of desultory Alan King, spent most of the interview insulting me. In a nice way, of course. He questioned why I even wrote the book because, he said, "in comedy, you have to devastate something. You're devastating food?"

No, my food poems, probably influenced by Edward Lear and Spike Milligan among others, may have had some irony and satire to them, but the intent was just to be silly in most cases.

The question is, do we ONLY want silly comedy? Nonsense humor?

Groucho Marx, known at the time (and forever) for insult humor, recorded a children's record called "The Funniest Song in the World." It was about a monkey who made fun of a bear and a giraffe ("laugh laugh laugh at the gangling giraffe, he's such a funny sight to see! Half half half of the neck of a giraffe is just twice as much as it should be!") The bear was upset. The giraffe was upset. Ultimately the monkey took their advice: "make fun of your own kind." So he sang about a "chatterbox monkey." Only another monkey was offended. The "wise" monkey said that no song is funny if it makes fun of somebody. So the monkey sang a nonsense song ("iggle iggle sniggle sniggle latch latch patch...") and proclaimed it the funniest song in the world.

Not everybody wants that kind of humor. Rodney Dangerfield made fun of himself, mostly, but he told a joke about an ugly guy who married a very ugly woman: "they had two very ugly kids. How ugly? In their family album, they only keep the negatives!"

Think an ugly person in the audience laughed at that? Comedians often notice that ONE person in the audience who ISN'T laughing. They wonder what they did wrong. I was once in the audience for a Dame Edna Everage show, and she (Barry Humphries) was mocking an audience member who didn't seem to be responding to the funny faces. You guessed it. The man was blind.

Another classic cringeworthy moment I witnessed: David Letterman went into the audience to goof around with people at random. A guy stood up. Dave asked his occupation. "I'm a butcher," the man said. Letterman wise-cracked, "Do you have all your fingers?" And the man held up a hand to show that, no, he lost one to his trade. Fortunately he was smiling, even more so as Dave haplessly called out, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

A funny thing about comedians. They can often be super-sensitive. They can be the opposite of what you think. I remember Andrew "Dice" Clay seeming to fade into the woodwork after a comedy set...the exact opposite of the bragging Fonz character he had just played. Gilbert Gottfried's voice on stage is soft. As for Mort Sahl, I recall accompanying him to a radio gig where he filled in for Bob Grant on Grant's ABC call-in show. Grant was a conservative host who fueled crackpots on the phone, hanging up on some, and ranting along with others. For several hours, Mort listened to various loners and loonies ranting about their favorite topics and hoping to get an amen. I walked Mort back to his hotel, and along the way he said, "You know, Ron, your city is very hostile!"

The irony of that remark still makes me smile. Of course comedians can be sensitive when they take it, and not when they dish it out.

The bottom line with guys like Louis C.K. or Ricky Gervais or Paul Mooney or Lisa Lampanelli or Kathy Griffin or any number of others you could name, is that you should know ahead of time NOT to watch them. If you're in some unfortunate situation where you can't get up and leave, or turn the dial, your silence or scowl is enough.

Once again, let's remember this: we are NOT talking about a Showtime or Netflix or HBO special. We're talking about a work-out performance in a small club where a comedian is being egged on by his most hardcore of audiences, the ones who really want him to "let loose" and be logical/offensive. We don't know how much of this set would ever have gotten past even C.K.'s self-censorship.

I recall seeing Louis C.K. hosting "Saturday Night Live" not that long before the jerking-off-in-front-of-women scandal broke. Some of his opening remarks were good for a shock laugh, and some weren't. Some were definitely tasteless and unapologetically so. There was no question about what is attitude was. As Mort Sahl once said on stage, "I'm just a boat rocker. That's all I do." Louis was thinking up ways to shake people up, and stand out by saying what others might not. Kinison did that a generation ago, working the clubs. An admiring Rodney Dangerfield decided to book him for an HBO comedy special, saying, "You did it the hard way."

The public chooses who plays the big room, who plays the small room, and who doesn't get booked at all.

Dangerous people who provoke and encourage racism, misanthropy, misogyny and other forms of hostility usually lose their sponsors, get banned from social media, and face protests at speaking engagements. These people are of the Alex Jones type. They aren't professional comedians. The comedian is only trying to get some laughs and maybe make people think and see a new side to things at the same time. To equate Louis C.K. with an Alex Jones is a very dangerous, and disturbing thing. It's not funny.

Right, can't copyright a joke. And Emo Philips, instead of your name, the credit reads "old joke"

I was reminded again, that jokes "get no respect."

They get stolen. They get mis-credited.

Or both.

An article by Patrick Doyle in ROLLING STONE covered the doings of Willie Nelson.

It ended with this: "...Nelson told his daughter Paula an old joke about how he wants to go out. "I kinda like the story that said, 'When I die, I wanna go like my granddad did,' he says. "Passed out in his sleep. Not like the other screaming passengers in the car."

A good 'un, huh?

Not THAT old of a joke. Not of Jerry Clower vintage. Or Will Rogers.

That's an Emo Philips line.

Funny (not so much), if Willie Nelson quoted a few lines of a SONG, it would involve PERMISSION and CREDIT. And ROLLING STONE would have an asterisk noting that the precious lines were owned by a certain publishing company.

When Don Adams stole, almost verbatim, jokes from Jackie Mason's act, there wasn't much Jackie could do about it. He told me, "It didn't hurt me. They're buying our personalities, not jokes." Still, there should be ways for the people who create humor to get the same respect as those who create lyric lines.

686 Mort Sahl Fans Can't Be Wrong (and a look at other comedians over 80)

That's a screen-cap from Mort's Dec 20th show.

You might remember the back cover of Phil Ochs' last album: "50 Phil Ochs Fans Can't Be Wrong."

It's not the size of the audience; it's having an audience. Phil's album was ironically titled "Greatest Hits," even if it was all-new material, ending with the prophetic "No More Songs."

One day at WABC Radio, when Mort was subbing for Bob Grant, I brought in a Phil Ochs CD. "You're in for a treat," Mort told his listeners. He played "Love Me I'm a Liberal."

These days, at 91, Mort can still offer a mordant and salty comment on liberals, but as usual, on everyone else, too. He's still an iconoclast, and he's one of the oldest stand-ups standing.

I remember Mort asking me once, "Find me a place where I can work out. Weekends would be ok." But in New York City, it was hard to find a suitable club that would pay a reasonable price for him. Especially hard for me, since I was not then, nor am I now, an agent or manager. Friday night, and a topical comedian is in competition with Kimmel, Colbert, Meyers, O'Brien and Fallon on comfy stay-at-home TV. Saturday night, there's SNL. Sunday night, and people are tapped out.

Fast-forward a lot of years, and Mort is actually getting his wish. It's a Thursday night each week, playing a small room in a theater located in Mill Valley, California. Augmenting the fey staff and the dozens of patrons, somebody sets up a camcorder on a tripod. It picks up the ambient sound, and the show is streamed on a website called Periscope. As you see, that brings in an average of 650 or so extra viewers.

If you're wondering who, of Mort's contemporaries, are still out there, the answer is: few.

Mel Brooks has sometimes done a one-man show of anecdotes. He's 92.

Bob Newhart performs now and then, at 89. Jackie Mason has scheduled some dates in Florida for 2019, and he's 87. Also 87, Rusty Warren maintains a website and has DVDs and other goodies for sale. Probably the oldest comedian still getting around to parties and events, if not doing solo shows, is Woody Woodbury at 94. Rich Little and John Byner are young old-timers at 80.

Split the difference and you've got the Smothers Brothers, who retired their "sibling revelry" act, but who knows, might be persuaded to perform a song or two. Dick is 79, and Tommy is 81. Tommy's old sparring partner, Bill Cosby, 81, dropped into a Philly jazz club one night, despite his blindness and pending trial, to offer some laughs to the patrons. Would he accept an offer to entertaining the inmates?

I'm not sure if some of the other vintage performers can be persuaded to take the stage, but I'm sure fans would applaud Freddie Roman (81), Dick Cavett (82), Woody Allen (83), Pat Cooper (89), Norm Crosby (91) and Shecky Greene (92).

My Julie Newmar Letter on Facebook or..."The Penis Mightier than the Pen Is?"

I wrote an email to Julie after she posted a "Batman" scene on Facebook.

The clip she posted had, of course, gotten instant waves of lusty enthusiasm, as you'd expect.

I wrote an appreciation of the scene and when she said she was posting it, I wondered if anyone would read it.

Well, yes and no. A percentage did, but most repeated their lusty enthusiasm for the scene itself.

I figured that's what would happen, and as I read the comments, I thought of how the faux Sean Connery on an SNL parody of "Jeopardy" pronounced a category as "THE PENIS MIGHTER." The category was "The Pen Is Mightier."

Yes, the lusty picture of Catwoman is a might more interesting than anything written about her!

When Julie posts one of her own editorials on current events not many read it. BUT...if she posts a photo...the comments explode.

That's what happened on December 12th when her webmaster Pablo imbedded the clip on Facebook (not linked to fuzzy YouTube) and offered a high-definition 3 minutes of a classic seduction scene. Over A QUARTER OF A MILLION watched!

I hadn't seen the clips in years, and not in such Hi-Def. I watched and (curse of the writer) it had me thinking. So I knocked out some thoughts about it, and sent it to Julie.

She called me a day or two later, and asked if she could put my email on her website (JulieNewmarWrites, which is for her memoirs and editorials etc.) and post it to Facebook.

Here's the email :

That thing, or part of it, on Facebook?

"Love Letter" was of course, her header, not the one on my email! But sure. When my book "Sweethearts of 60's TV" came out, a guy who had a local TV show commented, "the chapter on Julie, that's like a love letter!" And I thought, well, I've known Julie longer and a lot better than Diana Rigg or Dawn Wells (only met them once each), but I thought I treated all 16 chapters with equality.

When I saw the comments, which were competing with a re-post of the visuals...

...another quote came to mind: "Well I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph..."

Yes, just another "Day in the Life" for Julie's Facebook followers. The photo is MUCH more important than the prose!

I'd say the response was 20% liking what I wrote, and 80% commenting on the picture.

The Penis Mightier than the pen? One picture of Julie is worth a thousand words. Although to be fair, I shouldn't limit this to "The Penis Mighter," as some of Julie's FEMALE fans were more enraptured with her image than my prose, too.

Back in the day, the professionals who worked on weekly TV shows were able to do some amazing and enduring things, and make them look easy.

I think writers often make it seem easy. Go ahead, your assignment would be write even 500 words on that scene between Catwoman and Batman, and don't just repeat WOW and PURRFECT 250 times each.

I once mentioned to Norman Mailer (speaking of name-dropping) how impressed I was with a moment in the film "When We Were Kings." Over some clips from the Ali-Foreman fight, Norman's DESCRIPTION of it (from his book "The Fight") didn't merely serve as play-by-play. It enhanced the viewer's appreciation of the action and, "informed" it.

I suppose there are museum guides who will rotely tell you when the painter lived and died while pointing to a masterpiece, and others who will explain the symbolism and point to the technique. (And there will be people who just want to glimpse the painting, say they saw it, take a cell phone image of it, and move on!)

I'm fine with one fifth of the comments having any reference to me. It wasn't a "piece," after all, just one of the many emails and letters I've sent to my friend over many, many years. It wasn't intended for "publication." To have it appear as is (unedited) is a nice compliment.

You might be moved to check the clip on the Internet somewhere. And if you say "well, it speaks for itself," that's fine with me.

FINALLY, we can all "SHARE" a Robert Frost poem from 1923 and a 78rpm of "Yes we Have No Bananas"

The Smithsonian (no relation) tells us that material copyrighted in 1923 (and earlier) is "FINALLY" in PUBLIC DOMAIN. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee. Freeeeeeeeeee

The writer of the copyrighted piece (Glenn Fleischmann, who presumably didn't do it free just for "the credit") is especially glad not to be restricted to quoting only four lines of a Robert Frost poem. As if teachers in poetry classes ever worried about copyright royalties while xeroxing a poem for their classroom. As if the Frost estate or his publisher would ever bother to take somebody to court and prove monetary damages for the quote. Basically in Frost's case, it was "if you want to anthologize it, clear it with us." That's all.

Christ knows, there's not enough FREE shit in the world already. Archive Dot ORG anyone? GUTENBERG, anyone? BLOGSPOT, everyone?

Happily, Fleischmann got somebody to agree with him that it's FINALLY about time. Further into the article: “There comes a point when a creative work belongs to history as much as to its author and her heirs,” said Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild.

Er, why, Mary? Because the author of a work published in 1923 is now dead and his grandson should make a living on his own? 95 years is the rule? Why not 75? Or 50? Or as soon as an author kicks the bucket? Hell, why should any heirs, be it sons of Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney or the daughters of Norman Mailer preserve the integrity of their parents' work and protect it from commercialism and abuse?

Anyone who DOESN'T create seems to have the gripe of "Aw, why can't we all SHARE it...COPY it..." and in the case of eBay bootleggers and bloggers who use Rapidgator and want Paypal donations..."MAKE MONEY OFF IT?" 1923 or 2018. SHARE IT! Down with Capitalism!

Oh, yes, Sweet Jesus, FINALLY! FINALLY everyone can quote that Robert Frost poem with IMPUNITY.

The irony is that ANYONE can do what I just did, and reprint a hunk of somebody else's copyrighted work and NOT have to worry about it. In this case, I can claim "fair use," right? I didn't copy the WHOLE article. You can't prove I damaged anything from the screen-cap above. Prove your damages. Show how you lost money because of what I just did.

See what I did?

Today, copyright (aka COPY WRONG) is almost meaningless.

Google (who gives me the free bandwidth on this BLOGSPOT they own) barely recognizes copyright infringement. Anyone who wants to file a complaint can't PHONE them or EMAIL them or expect a reply sent to their Calfornia office/compound/stalag. Google only allows a copyright owner to fill in forms on a website template. State everything about yourself, give away your privacy, accept that Google will actually POST your complaint for all to see, and then...be frustrated when they ignore the DMCA. If you follow up you might get a cryptic notation about insufficient information or incorrect input. Try again and again. And then give up.

The Smithsonian is cheering the fact that anyone can now print out and even try to make money selling:

OK, things published 95 years ago tend not to be "relevant" to today's millennials, or anyone else. Nobody can make money SELLING a download of "Yes We Have Bananas" recorded in 1923. But, oddly enough, foiling the joy of The Smithsonian and cheap Mr. Fleischmann, some things from that era ARE still of value, and protected. Charles Chaplin's famous short films circa 1915-1918 are only public domain in blurry condition. The digitized stuff from the vault was either copyright-renewed in the 50's, or considered a fresh new work in its improved condition. Tough luck, Glenn Fleischmann; FINALLY hasn't come to the Chaplin items still being sold on DVD.

The last book The Smithsonian mentioned now being in public domain: anybody HEARD of that book about BOOTLEGGERS? Anyone going to try and digitize it and make money selling it on eBay? Nope. There's TODAY'S BOOKS to bootleg instead. COPYRIGHT BE DAMNED.

For example, check the sale list below from a bootlegger in Sri Lanka. He's got over 20 titles that steal from 20 best selling authors. He's offering their entire output via eBay digital downloads. It happens to be technically illegal to sell digital downloads on eBay, and you can "REPORT THIS ITEM" over and over. But this seller isn't worried. Why?

If a concerned fan hits "REPORT THIS ITEM" and figures out the drop-down menu and sends it to "LISTINGS" and "DIGITAL DOWNLOADS" an employee-drone who may very well be minimum wage help in Sri Lanka (English a second language) won't stop it. Quoth eBay phone support (also somebody in Sri Lanka for whom English is a second language?) "Oh, sorry for this problem. But we have a million new auctions every day. We can't be expected to respond to all the complaints we get. Keep trying." If an author is actually offended at seeing the work being offered with a perjury statement of "I own re-sale rights" or "I am licensed" he can contact vero@ebay.com and ask that the item be removed. It will be. But the seller will stay on because eBay will insist "we have no idea the other authors haven't licensed this seller, and we are JUST A VENUE so we won't ask for proof." Lah-dee-dah.

Yes, Yes, YES INDEED, cheap Glenn Fleischmann, FINALLY the Internet is so corrupt and everyone is so used to bootleg thievery that you can get today's best sellers FREE in Forums and Torrents and Blogs. On high profile site EBAY you can BUY an entire set of books that would take you years to read...for hardly the price of a second-hand paperback. Just type in an author's name and EBOOK or KINDLE on eBAY and see what happens.

FINALLY...The Smithsonian might say, some SANITY in this awful-awful game of COPYRIGHT. It's called BOOTLEGGING.

Oh, you BEAUTIFUL DAHL, you great big anti-Semitic ROALD DAHL

The creator of Wonka was a wanker. He was openly anti-Semitic.

"There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity...I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.”

He also was contemptuous of Jews who, with German machine guns pointed at their heads, went to their deaths:

"“I mean, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I'd rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me; but they [the Jews] were always submissive.”

Right, Roald. Better to "have a go" at a Nazi with a machine gun, who might decide NOT to blow your head off, but subject you to a week of slow torture. My late friend Brother Theodore recalled his time in a concentration camp, and how German guards would sometimes string someone up, upside down, and let the dogs chew on the victim's face. But that's just ONE little atrocity story out of many.

But what's an atrocity story compared to the DELIGHTS that children have in reading Dahl's darling and delightful flights of fancy?

The term "inconvenient truth" comes up.

SOME minority groups are not treated as well as others. Their indignities are dismissed. These are usually the minorities who aren't known for carrying around explosives and machine guns, or rioting and breaking into stores and stealing TV sets. For example, there are the Native Americans who have quietly rotted on reservations. While we hear all the time about slaves brought over to America, nobody wants to hear how boats came to America and pushed the Native Americans off their land, and fought bloody battles that killed off thousands of them.

Here's THE INDEPENDENT and the full quotes from DAHLING Mr. Dahl:

Dahl, like Peter Gabriel, Patti Smith, Roger Waters and many others, sometimes hid his Jew-hate behind what he considered a very reasonable wish for Israel to be blown off the map. Hating Israel is NOT hating Jews, even if it IS the "Jewish State" and where you find Jerusalem.

In 1982, as quote in The Independent, Dahl declared that after a skirmish with Lebanon, "we all started hating the Israelis.”

He isn't quoted as hating Russians for their genocide. Or South Africans. Or North Koreans. Or the Africans who ate Michael Rockefeller. Or the Turks or the Syrians or whoever was engaged in a skirmish with a neighboring country.

He never even joked that he hated the French for their attempts to take over England, or the Germans who bombed the shit out of London.

Nope. He only endorsed HATING the ISRAELIS.

Sighing loudly, he moaned, "Must Israel, like Germany, be brought to her knees before she learns how to behave in this world?”

AH. He didn't HATE the Germans, though. And Israel had not, and has not declared that they should rule the world. Jews don't even try to convert people to Judaism while missionaries constantly try to convert "heathens" into following Christ (the Jew). Israel didn't sink British ships. But "we all started hating Israelis" and for such good reason, huh?

Can you imagine if Dahl had substituted BLACKS or MUSLIMS for ISRAELIS? Would his books be in ANY libraries today?

It would be inconvenient to have to pull all those Wonka books off the shelves. It would be ironic to ban the Wonka movie that starred the Jew named Gene Wilder. And so it goes; some intolerance is tolerated.

SPIN DOCTORING GOOD DOCTOR SIMS

Today’s news is about headline-grabbing “Tish” James, promising to go after Donald Trump. Rah rah. I hope this newly elected attorney general, who doesn’t have much legal experience, has a staff that can deliver her promises. Trump and his slippery cronies and creepy sons have done a lot of deplorable things and gotten away with it. Trump's record of bankruptcies and bullying is well known. So is his morality.

On Twitter I mentioned my doubts about her. While the Twitterverse cheered her as the next Oprah, I took a more cynical view. I find that most politicians, of either party, are motivated by power, and often don't do the right thing because to get elected they make so many compromises to their backers. They also have to make deals with the "enemy" so that they can get a law passed and look good. They often promise something innocuous and don't even come through. Take Mayor DeBlasio. Please. This hack promised that the FIRST thing he'd do after the election was ban the suffering carriage horses in Central Park. It still hasn't happened. I find that very disappointing, and only confirming that "politics as usual" is more important to a guy like him. He made a promise and had no intention of keeping it?

Now there's this situation with Dr. Sims, where his statue was torn down and he's been convicted...without facts. As far as I've researched it, there's nothing here but "he may be a controversial figure." No smoking gun. If he was alive today, could be be brought to trial? On the basis of what evidence? Some hearsay? Where's his diary? Where are documents from contemporaries pointing out how much of a racist he was? When he came up North, was he spouting complaints about how much he missed slavery? What's his deal, factually, not based on spin doctoring, or perhaps somebody bad-mouthing the guy because it makes good copy.

DeLousio was a hack politician who got into office because the other Democrats in the primary imploded with scandals and bizarre behavior. He was the lesser of the perverts, loudmouths and weasels. All anyone knew about him was, in David Letterman's words, "that he's freakishly tall." Dave would never have Bill on his show, and often say, "I liked the little mayor." (Bloomberg). DeLousio was nothing but the "public advocate," a useless job that most people want to eliminate as a waste of taxpayer dollars.

DeLousio became mayor and “Tish” James became public advocate. What did she do while in that office? ANYTHING? Why be suspicious of Dr. Sims and not the motivations of DeBlasio or James, who wanted to get into positions FAR more powerful than his? Before riding cronyism and hack politics into a nomination for Attorney General, she declared that a statue in Central Park should be removed. Yeah. A statue in Central Park. Take on a dead man. Champion the homeless? Crime? Bad subways? Help minorities who need better housing? Nah. She made headlines for getting a statue removed...after several others had muttered about it before her. Fact: the white public advocate DeLousio and the black public advocate "Tish" James were both hacks. It's not about color it's about hackery and not being effective. DeLousio STAYED a hack. What has he ever done? There's a hope that James may, unlike DeLousio, use the position to create change. She may actually become effective (and going after Trump is an excellent start).

So far, nobody (including The Guardian and other reputable newspapers) has come up with a racist diary entry from Dr. Sims, an eye-witness account that shows he did something to black women he didn't do to white women, or anything to counter his reputation (which led to the statue) of being a devoted physician.

The Dr. Sims "controversy" seemed to simmer when “POLITICALLY CORRECT” witch hunts were at a fever pitch. Several statues of Confederate soldiers were being removed, so why not go after more statues? That's safe. Go after Stephen Foster. Go after Dr. Sims. Who'll dare object?

Here's The Guardian stating oNLY that Dr. Sims might be a “controversial” figure:

"Controversial" means what? That nobody knows for sure? Why is that? A conspiracy? What's the truth? So far, and I'm not being paid to do research and I have limited time for it, I've found no credible evidence against Dr. Sims.

How can somebody be the “Father of Gynecology,” known ALL OVER THE WORLD, and actually be nothing more than a vile monster loaded up with hatred? Another Dr. Mengele? It's easy if you spin it. Spin it, and they will come. The Twitterverse is loaded with angry people who want any excuse to write "HE A RACIST" or to scream out whatever their agenda might be. "Force Al Franken to Resign!" "Leave Britney Alone!" Whatever.

I’ve studied writing technique since high school (summa cum laude) and college (magna cum laude in English, my major) and I went on to witness the publishing world and tabloid journalism first hand. I know how the game is played. It applies to all forms of publishing, too. For example, when I was with international agencies as a working photographer, I was told to hand in all the unflattering celeb pictures I took. Why? So that innocent people could be victimized. Like so: publish a photo of a celeb with his eyes closed and caption it: “Celeb drunk! Couldn’t keep his eyes open!” That kind of thing. I know exactly how spin-doctoring is done, and how innuendo can pass for truth.

The Guardian: “The 19th-century doctor performed experimental surgeries on enslaved black women throughout his career, and chose not to use anesthesia.” That sounds pretty damning, doesn’t it?

The truth is more like this: slave owners, knowing Dr. Sims’ reputation, went to him and asked for help. They asked him to save these women. Would it not have been just as easy to shoot these women in the head and bury them in a ditch? Many slave women were raped. Do we doubt many were murdered? There is NO evidence that Dr. Sims took out ads saying, "Black women needed for experiments." No. The slave owners came to HIM, and they would've come to him with their own wives and daughters, too.

Dr. Sims wasn’t the one who “enslaved black women." He treated them. He treated them just as he treated white women. The spin is suggesting he carved up black women but used anesthesia on white women and...got that wording, he “chose not to use anesthesia" on the blacks.

Wrong. He “chose not to use anesthesia” on white women too. Guess why. Anesthesia was not invented yet.

Can we agree to call this spin doctoring?

What’s the most famous anesthetic used 100 years ago? Chloroform? Go back further than 100 years. Records show that it was first used in Scotland in 1847, so it was not available to Dr. Sims when he began his operations.

Ether was also very new. The best evidence is that Dr. Sims either did not know it existed (it dates from 1842), or didn't know where to get it, or didn't trust it.

Here's the truth about what Dr. Sims did. Not guess work. Not spin doctoring. We know that back then, he was considered just about the BEST doctor in Montgomery, Alabama, especially for “woman troubles.” Did anyone in 1845 ever year of a gynecologist? The general practitioner did it all. It just so happened that Dr. Sims had a special interest in helping women.

Do you want to spin doctor this and say he was a pervert who had a thing about exploring vaginas, white or black? You want to portray him as some madman who invented torture devices for vaginas? The man created THIS:

You can spin doctor that and call it a torture device. It isn't.

The current speculum is quite different. I know that for a fact, because for a while I helped my father, a general practitioner in the Bronx, and among the chores, I boiled speculums and sterilized them for the next usage. (Yes, primitive times when metal speculums were common). I helped perform EKG's and other nurse-type chores.

Do we spin doctor and say that Dr. Sims was a cruel misogynist who subjected women to hideous and intrusive exams? No, I think women appreciated that Dr. Sims created, from a pewter spoon, a less intrusive and more professional way of examination.

One of the big problems back then was childbirth. Women had a lot of babies. Five, ten...not uncommon. The survival rate was not great. Quantity meant...SOME would survive.

At what damage to the mother?

Dr. Sims had to deal with women who had vesicovaginal fistulas.

What? Huh?

Wikipedia will tell you:

"Vesicovaginal fistulas occur when the woman's bladder, cervix and vagina become trapped between the fetal skull and the woman's pelvis, cutting off blood flow and leading to tissue death. The necrotic tissue later sloughs off, leaving a hole. Following this injury, as urine forms, it leaks out of the vaginal opening, leading to a form of incontinence. Because a continuous stream of urine leaks from the vagina, it is difficult to care for, creating personal hygiene issues that may lead to marginalization from society for the woman, and vaginal irritation, scarring, and loss of vaginal function."

Giving a lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine on November 18, 1857, Dr. Sims said he was still not using anesthesia for fistula surgery, even though it was now available, “because they are not painful enough to justify the trouble and risk attending their administration."

Dr. Sims was a compassionate and dedicated man. He was living in ignorant times, when there was hardly much scientific evidence that all races were equal, and had the same blood types and brain cells, and that superficial differences in facial structure or skin color didn't matter. He was living in a time of superstition, sexual repression and utter confusion over what or who was in the clouds overhead.

While Dr. Sims had concerns about anesthesia during an operation, he had no qualms about using available pain relief after the operation. If he didn't think those black women were human, and suffering, he wouldn't have given them opium. Opium was well known and accepted at the time as a pain reliever, and he gave it to these women. He trusted it would help them, and it did.

In hunting around for a FACTUAL piece on Dr. Sims, I came across a Wordpress blog from Dr. Jen Gunter. I have no idea who she is, or what her credentials are, but her aim was to declare that the doctor was a creep who should not have any statues honoring him. She apparently read his autobiography, and was pissed off that the guy seemed "egotistical" and motivated by money. Gosh, doctors motivated by MONEY and wanting to have a well paying job? How surprising.

The article is just a lot of slants. She finds every reason to criticize the man as not to competent, not well liked by his peers, not compassionate, etc. etc. But nowhere does she PROVE that he was RACIST. In fact, just the opposite. At one point she describes how he treated a white Irish woman. Guess what. This woman was given the SAME treatment (or lack of it...no anesthesia) as the slaves:

Dr. Sims built an area where he could house the slaves. This is slanted to be some kind of torture chamber. The man did the best he could in finding these woman someplace to stay. You can read the article for yourself, and if you feel like it, you could easily spin all of her remarks the other way, and find reasons to praise Dr. Sims, and to excuse any flaws as the same ones doctors today have: not giving patients enough time, not being perceived as empathetic, and actually running a BUSINESS and wanting to be paid.

Where are the reports that would convince a jury that this man was a racist, or that he did anything that any other doctor at that time would have done? Answer: there ARE NO REPORTS.

The Journal of Medical Ethics, 1993, documented the case of Dr. Sims. There is nothing in the report to indicate he was some kind of Dr. Mengele or that he was acting like the fictional Dr. Moreau and conducting fiendish experiments out of sadistic racism. Aged 27, he had created his speculum after CORRECTLY diagnosing a way to correct fistula. That he conducted some operations on slaves was, according to the Journal, the result of simply having been asked by slave owners. Would any other doctor at that time and place have acted differently? Can any juror turn in a verdict of guilty? No. There is no record of whether the slave women did or didn't want to be helped. Being slaves, they probably knew that their wants were not even worth voicing, but that's not the fault of Dr. Sims.

According to the journal: "...all of the slave-women who had been the subjects of his experiments were cured and sent home." Does that sound like a racist monster to you?

The Journal quotes a defender of Sims as writing: "he was a man of his time and should not be judged by present-day standards. It is easy to derogate Sims by applying 1975 social standards to 1850 decisions and conduct..." The Journal also notes that "significant medical breakthroughs were accomplished without the use of slaves..." But whose decision was it to bring slaves to Sims, how do you hold him responsible for acting recklessly, and what do you make of his success rate? Again, would any jury convict this man for malpractice or charge him with racism? Is it not clear that aside from creating the speculum, and discovering new treatments, the statue for him was also built because of his many decades of other achievements? Isn't it easy to slant any list of facts to portray the person involved as vainglorious, opportunistic, cold or devious? Have you not had someone spread a lie about you or engage in character assassination? Is not quite possible that revisionist historians looking for an easy target found one in Dr. Sims, and twisted facts just to bring down a statue and get glory from it at the expense of his reputation?

You can read the Journal for yourself. There is speculation but there is nothing to suggest Dr. Sims was evil or a racist, or that he treated white women differently from the slaves. These were very tough times for ANY operation on ANY person, and Dr. Sims didn't choose to give anesthetic to SOME women and not others. It is way too easy for people to twist and slant and spin doctor for their own agenda, and to engage in blame and scapegoating. When Lucy, for example, experienced problems after her operation, Dr. Sims did everything he could to save her life. Why is that? Wouldn't a racist simply let her die because there were plenty more slaves? Do you want to theorize that he kept her alive just to torture her some more? That's your conjecture, that's not fact.

A sample from the journal, a journal that it's doubtful Letitia James ever bothered to read. It's much easier to sensationalize the story and shout that a doctor operated on slaves without anesthetic. Why bother adding that white women didn't get anesthetic either, and that the doctor did not request slaves to experiment on, or act any differently than any other doctors of that era? What if he turned down the requests to operate? Do you spin that as racism because he refused to touch black women? How easy it is to play with motives. How disgusting it is to revise history without factual basis.

Dr. Sims was not a racist. It's too easy to throw that word around, or to use it out of context. Francis Scott Key was also called "racist," even though he often went to court (he was a lawyer) to help slaves. If anything, he was just a product of his times, and what is FAR more troubling, is that with all the evidence that people of any race or color are equal, we STILL have racism. We STILL have genocide. We STILL have people in all countries who will kill others who have even slight differences.

Can we always tell a Palestinian from an Israeli? One Muslim sect from another? They can and they kill about it. We still have "the Washington Redskins" as a football team. We have Orthodox Jews sucker-punched in the streets because of how they look, and the same with transgenders and gays and everyone else. A white guy from Australia, here to learn how to play baseball, was shot in the back by some blacks who had nothing better to do. That's racism too. Puerto Ricans couldn't get their lights on following a hurricane. Boko Haram rapes and kills Nigerian women and children. There is a LOT more going on to be concerned about than a statue of somebody who has been spin-doctored into a symbol of racist evil.

Let's also remember that this is NOT the case of some hick quack in Alabama who did nothing but conduct weird experiments on slaves out of sadism. He was asked, based on his expertise, to help. He used the same techniques on all his patients and gave anesthetic when needed. He rose from nothing to be a versatile, respected physician who helped found hospitals and helped treat people in foreign lands. You can spin that he came to New York because he was after money. You can claim all kinds of motivations. You can twist his honest recollections in his autobiography to prove the sin of a man choosing a profession that could make him financially secure. But where are the facts to insist he is a racist villain, or another Dr. Mengele? Various reputable non-fiction sources find no such evidence.

The statue is down. It is now in the cemetery where Dr. Sims lies. The statue will be what it's always been: a place for pigeons to crap. The important thing now is for "Tish" James to use the press wisely and well, and that ALL politicians do the same, and stop fomenting hate and whipping up the loonies with the pitchforks and the self-entitled sulkers and the sad haters who gotta hate.

"Gimme some truth," Mr. Lennon sang. When Edgar A. Poe died, Rufus Griswold offered an obit declaring Poe a disgusting drunk whom nobody liked. Poe had enough defenders to declare that this was unfair, but that's because the attack came right after he died. When did these attacks on Dr. Sims start? Long after any defender had died? Prove the charges. Prove them so that any jury would agree and that nobody could shrug and say that there are "controversial" allegations. Let's clear the muddy waters if we can. That's what journalism is about. That's what makes journalism a little cleaner than politics. Most of the time. Spin doctor journalists, like hack politicians, are low and they bring down the good writers and the good people in office.

I took the time to write this to defend a doctor AND to warn about the dangers of spin doctoring. I wrote it to supply some facts to counter the people who can only say "Sims was bad" and not be able to back it up with facts OR persuasive speculation. You want to tell me this was a bad man, then tell me how he differed in his treatment of white and black women, or how he used anesthetic selectively, or how he wrote ignorantly OR with malice about any race. One thing that we sometimes forget in discussions of Black and White. There are shades of gray.

We have seen the downfall of a gray statue of a man whose good work benefitted all women, and whose good work benefitted cancer patients, and whose good work saved lives in distant parts of the world where he was called for his service. We have seen too many people maligned, hounded, railroaded and defamed, and unlike Dr. Sims, they are still alive and suffering because of ignorant witch-hunts and unsubstantiated accusations.

Actually, Snoopy, the former Snoopiwitz, is "passing"

Of Nimesh Patel and Lenny Bruce

Hear the one about the comedian "yanked off stage" for telling jokes?

It happened a few nights ago, not 50 years ago when Lenny Bruce was handcuffed and arrested.

According to the NY Post (and if any group knows bad taste, it's them), Nimesh Patel was invited to perform at Columbia University. The students apparently were open to hearing the views of an "edgy" comedian. ALL comedians are "edgy," really. They generally get laughs by surprising (shocking) audiences by talking about things using an original perspective.

Patel, who spent one season as one of a gigantic load of staffers on "Saturday Night Live," was "yanked off stage...for telling jokes about race and sexual orientation that made students uncomfortable." As Lenny Bruce proved years ago, one can't rely on being quoted correctly, and a comedian's delivery is important to how a joke is perceived. But according to the Post, Patel riffed about someone who is black and gay: "no one looks in the mirror and thinks, ‘This black thing is too easy, let me just add another thing to it.'”

Not much of a joke? It's also not much of an insult. Who's to say Patel was being sexist or racist? This "observational" line, to use a black expression, "is what it is." Whether, to use a gay expression, "it sucks," is a matter for individuals to decide.

Meaning: you do NOT "yank" the microphone away from a comedian. If he's not saying something that is outright, humorlessly and insanely vicious and disturbing, you let the audience "vote with their feet."

The audience can boo. They can heckle. They can walk out. That's what audiences do. They don't need a Hitler censoring the show for them. This isn't Nazi Germany and Patel is not Werner Finck.

The NY Post described Patel as an "Indian-American comedian." Does HE describe himself that way? Would you describe Jerry Seinfeld as a "Jewish-American comedian?" What's up with THAT?

The Columbia Asian American Alliance (apparently Patel tossed in a joke about them, too?) wrote: “We acknowledge that discomfort and safety can coexist, however, the discomfort Patel caused was unproductive in this space." Patel's humor was “counter to the inclusive spirit and integrity” of using verbose words, or something.

The Post quoted somebody with an ironic first name, LIBERTY MARTIN, as justifying Patel's thought-decapitation: "Patel’s mic wasn’t just cut off because he told offensive jokes to a sensitive, snowflake audience, which is the narrative that I see being talked about. He was booted off the stage because he sucked the energy out of an entire auditorium."

Aw, the duuuuuude sucked the energy out of the roooooooom. You know wuttum sayin? LIBERTY wasn't throwing SHADE or throwing Patel UNDER THE BUS, or saying he wasn't kewwwwl, WHATEVER, he just, you know, "sucked the energy" out of the roooooom. And Lord knows, it took a lot of energy for a bunch of Millennial assholes to park their fat butts in chairs and listen to somebody.

I never heard of Patel before this. If he's a lousy comedian, well, how many GOOD ones do we have anymore? Stand-up, like progressive rock, is a rather dead medium. It's been done. All people can do is stand in the footprints of the greats and be imitative. Rock has ceded to rap, and stand-up began to give way to poetry SLAMS. Seeing anyone get up and do observational humor is pretty boring, know what I mean? Have you noticed that? As for standing up and telling one-liners, Steven Wright gave us something different from Henny Youngman, but that was a generation ago. One reason people are clinging to Jerry Seinfeld as the greatest stand-up is that he has NO competition now, and anyone who thinks otherwise might also think that Kathy Griffin was a replacement for Joan Rivers.

The bottom line (and there's no Bottom Line where comedians can get well paid), is that there are very few comedians around, good or bad, and the PC craze has made it even more difficult to find anything to laugh at. Most comedy is like fungo...the fun is tossing something up and smacking the crap out of it. It releases tension and hostility. It is a release. Was it ever "PC" for Chaplin or the 3 Stooges to hit a policeman with a pie or punch a cop in the stomach and then kick the cop in the ass and run?

The late Barry Crimmins titled a comedy album, "Kill the Messenger." He could've called the next one "Cut the Microphone," but he IS the late Barry Crimmins. Is comedy dead? It's not doing well when anyone on stage, risking silence or boos, also risks being "yanked off stage" after having been invited to perform.

Hey Spielberg, VA A CASA, ADIOS. It's not PC to have ANY part of "WEST SIDE STORY."

What a shocking headline. Do we REALLY let that Steven Spielberg guy...that SCHINDLER'S LIST guy...produce or direct "WEST SIDE STORY?"

Look, mi AMIGO, it's very PC of you to go to PUERTO RICO to try and find a suitable "MARIA" for your re-make. PERO...

QUE LASTIMA, Rabbi Spielberg, you are NOT LATINO. Aiiiii POPI. You don't KNOW that LATINO experience. While it's nice that you won't make the hideous mistake of casting an ACTRESS to PLAY a Puerto Rican (Natalie Wood...aiiii aiiiii), YOU are NOT LATINO.

What's your answer to NOT being LATINO?

Whatever it is, it's not good enough.

Scarlett Johansson was going to play a trans woman in a film, and PC heads prevailed, and she was booted out on her actual VAGINA. The role will be played by somebody with a constructed one, and that's very important. The lesson here is that an ACTRESS shouldn't simply ACT a role because she's an ACTRESS.

So, likewise, Rabbi Spielberg, though in the past you GOT AWAY WITH IT...you're not an alien but you made "E.T." and "Close Encounters," enough IS enough. This is 2018. It's the #NOT ME TOO movement. If you are NOT a transsexual you can't play one, and if you're not a Latino you can't play one, and...if you are NOT a Latino what in the world are you doing producing and/or directing "West Side Story?"

"West Side Story" should be directed by Guillermo del Toro. Thank Jesus (pronounced HAY-SEUSS) that he didn't have to call himself William Bull to get work in Hollywood. Things ARE changing, but they must change COMPLETELY.

Un momento. ONE MORE THING. When "West Side Story" is being filmed with the appropriate LATINA starring as MARIA...the music MUST GO.

Rabbi Spielberg, you DO know who wrote the score for "West Side Story" don't you? Rabbi Bernstein wrote the music. Rabbi Sondheim wrote the words. Aiiiiii two more JEWS.

We know, in this PC age, that JEWS can not possibly know the experience of living in a slum or ghetto. That they can't possibly be authentic. What's that line: "Maria...say it soft and it's almost like praying." Huh? The woman's name is MARIA, not ADON OLAM.

Here's what MUST be done: Hire that genius Lin-Manuel Miranda. He IS PUERTO RICAN.

It was a shameful tragedy that Lin-Manuel Miranda had to become famous via RAP music and a musical about WHITE guys like Alexander Hamilton. Oh, he did his best, and he was dutifully given every honor under the sun. But that was just to encourage him to DO BETTER. Leave the BLACK MUSIC behind. Leave the WHITE guys behind.

We are all willing to look the other way when a Puerto Rican turns White historical figures into ethnic rappers...but let's NOT keep up this insanity of allowing WHITE people to play Latinos, or anything but, strictly speaking, WHITE people. (PS, Scarlett needs to change her first name.)

"DIVERSITY" is not having WHITE people playing people "of color." ("Of color" by the way, is much, much difference than saying "colored." Please consult the PC rule book, page 384980234.)

Say, wasn't it wonderful when the off-Broadway revival of "St. John" starred a WOMAN OF COLOR? We know Joan of Arc was "of color." If she wasn't, she could be. The bending of the PC rule on page 384980234 does have a footnote that says: "It IS PC if somebody black plays somebody white, but not the other way around.")

The remake of "WEST SIDE STORY" needs LATINA and LATINO performers playing the lead, Del Toro directing, Miranda offering new music...and, come to think of it, let's call this thing "Cuento de Lado Oeste."

Gracias.

You MEME it? You really MEME IT? Gosh, I'm so HONORED...

We know that Hallmark Cards are the lazy person's way of showing affection.

Fine. Giving somebody a Hallmark card is sort of saying: "I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind...I can't put in words how lovely life is when you're in the world."

Not EVERYBODY has a way with words, and can express a thought poignantly.

But now that we have ecards, and don't even have to spend a few bucks on a card and postage, things have gotten pretty tacky.

Now that people are on Twitter and Facebook because they're too lazy to even send individual emails to people, here's MEMES.

How THOUGHTFUL, when somebody on Facebook forwards a MEME to their own page, to let dozens of friends (and dozens more acquaintances, and complete strangers) know how much they mean to him:

Oh, thank you REFLECTIONS, for posting something I can effortlessly copy over to MY followers. I wouldn't to personalize it. You've written it perfectly as it is.

Best Regards.

"YOU a RACIST, CHARLIE BROWN!" (Happy Thanksgiving, Every PC One)

While the snowflakes began to snarl traffic here and there, in our climate change world where a White Christmas can be a White Thanksgiving instead, various snowflakes began to snarl...

...that a cartoon made over 40 years ago is now RACIST. Not racially insensitive. RACIST.

When you say RACIST, you are saying INTENTIONAL, MALICIOUS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SOMEONE ELSE.

Aside from snowflake liberals needing to find something to grouse about, some blacks were ready to lapse into dialect about this:

CHARLIE BROWN, HE A RACIST.

You can't use proper English when you're making a point about race. You have to use EBONICS.

Francis Scott Key: HE A RACIST. You think the "Star Spangled Banner" isn't a racist lyric? YOU A RACIST.

Back in 1973, a lot of black people and white liberals were glad to see an "integrated" suburb where the "Peanuts" characters dwelled. Reflecting the truth about minorities finding good jobs and being able to move into better neighborhoods, the parents of "FRANKLIN," the black kid, apparently bought a house not far from snotty-named Lucy Van Pelt, or perhaps Charlie himself. "FRANKLIN" was now attending a predominantly all-white school, and was being embraced by his classmates.

OR WAS HE???

Charles Schulz? HE A RACIST.

Forget about him putting a black kid into his comic strip, and fighting for that, and for having the kid turn up in the TV cartoons.

HE A RACIST.

Look at that table! The black kid is sitting on ONE side, and all the white kids on the other.

It may have taken OVER FORTY YEARS to spot this, and decry it on Twitter and join the PC brigade about it...but DAY-UMMMMMM, RACIST cartoons have NO PLACE in America no more. BAN THIS CARTOON! BAN IT! BAN IT! BAN IT!

Or, uh, use some special effects to put a few white kids next to him? Where's Marcy, the somewhat lesbian little girl hanging around with Peppermint Patty? Get her over there. And where's Pigpen, to represent the emotionally disabled who can't clean up for themselves or do without clutter? Get that kid who plays Beethoven on the toy piano, but have him PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC WHITE BOY.

And do NOT be offended at being called WHITE BOY.

Nobody bothered to dig up the producers of the special to find out WHY the black kid was on one side of the table. Mostly, you'd have to literally dig them up. Charles Schulz is dead, and so is Bill Melendez (who also voiced Snoopy).

If the placement was at all deliberate, the logical reason for it would have been to not rile Southern affiliates. But that's probably not the case if the black child was interacting with the white kids throughout the rest of the story.

Bottom line, Twitter is one of the most hostile and ridiculous websites on the Internet, and people are so full of rage and misery that they can't help becoming trolls.

Looking on the bright side, it's quite a triumph of equality that trolls...who are usually pictures as gnarled, tiny and maybe even green...now come in every color and size.

When The Three Stooges Get Banned by the PC Brigade...

Anyone who doesn't own Three Stooges shorts already had better hurry up and buy the DVDs.

Would it be a shock to find "the boys" banned from all streaming services? Oh, not because of the violence. Violence iS WONDERFUL. Sadistic gore movies are a delight. The other night I was flipping the dial, and I saw some rotten thing which I assume was a Stephen King novel brought to the screen. A little boy got his arm bitten off by a deranged clown with viper-like fangs. Then the kid was sucked into a sewer, leaving behind a puddle of blood.

I didn't really need to see this. Flipping around, there was no channel showing a couple having sex. Not even softcore. But THAT bit of sadism was ok.

Same way you can check the Internet and the London Daily Fail, or some other tabloid, will happily show you a mutilated crime victim, an acid casualty or some other vividly disturbing spectacle, BUT...put up a "this may offend you" block on a photo of some starlet exposing her panties exiting a limousine.

But I digress. THIS is not going to be allowed much longer, is it?

You can scare the shit out of people. That's ok. You can even make fun of burn victims (hello, Freddie Krueger) and that's fine. BUT...make them LAUGH? How DARE YOU!!!

The reason The Three Stooges could be banned any day now is their blatant use of words such as, in order of mental impairment:

IDIOT

IMBECILE

MORON

These were, at one time, clinical definitions of mental retardation. In my book "Stooge Fans' I.Q. Test," I mentioned that the classifications often used by Moe, referred to unfortunates who had the mind of a six year old, an eight year old, or a twelve year old.

Now, "retardation" is not used, and most certainly, RETARD. Norm MacDonald, apologizing on "The View" for something he said during a freewheeling interview on the deliberately tasteless Howard Stern pay-radio show, referred to it as the "word beginning with R."

The irony was that he was on Stern's show discussing various PC problems and insensitivities. Headline:

Norm had dared to express the opinion that Louis C.K. losing his CAREER, and losing MILLIONS of dollars, was kind of horrible.

His mistake was that in everyday conversation, he didn't say "you'd have to be an idiot" to not feel badly for the women involved (which COULD be un-PC any day now). He was about to say "you'd have to be retarded..." but caught himself in time, knowing the word got banned after being used in an insensitive way in a Black Eyed Peas song. ("Let's get...stupid drunk" was what they were going for.).

He caught himself in time to say Down Syndrome, which was not an improvement. He's lucky he wasn't banned from ever working again.

Ask yourself this question: would you rather lose the only job you were trained for, and possibly end up working 9 to 5 at something you hate, and drain your bank account to pay your bills because you're out of work...or take a look at Louis C.K.'s dick?

Louis C.K. at various times asked women if they'd mind watching him masturbate in front of them. That's pretty flattering isn't it? This idiot (oops, let's find a different word) is SO excited by a CLOTHED WOMAN that he has to masturbate in front of her.

Is there a guy out there who'd be particularly offended if a woman asked if she could masturbate in front of him?

I mean, aren't men and women supposed to be EQUAL? Have the same job, and therefore the same sensitivities? Yes? No?

Norm admitted that it was pretty awful for a woman to have to deal with sexual harassment, but he also dared to say that maybe it was also awful to lose your job because you acted like a dick in front of somebody who didn't just walk away. OR, didn't say, "What you're doing is wrong."

A male police officer recently discussed being sexually abused and humiliated by a superior FEMALE officer. He was laughed at. Nobody said, "Gosh, that's awful...your superior FEMALE officer should lose her job and NEVER WORK AGAIN.

He had complained when she apparently washed her panties in the communal bathroom and left them to dry. He'd complained to her, so she rubbed them in his face, and/or pushed them into his mouth. Amid various insults. Something like that. But hey, she's still on the force and wasn't suspended, so let's move on. Back to our theme:

If RETARD is now up there with the N-word and the C-word etc. etc. then the M-word (MORON) is not going to last much longer.

As it is, there are some uneasy moments in Three Stooges shorts (as in Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, etc.) where there might be a blackface moment for a laugh (Moe hit with a bottle of ink) or there's a stereotypical janitor or porter popping his eyes over some ridiculous sight gag. The Marx's "Room Service" ends with Groucho imitating Black dialect while everyone sings "Swing Low Sweet Chariot."

There's no question that comedy is the flip side of tragedy, and what is funny to one person, might NOT be funny to somebody else. A person who has just lost a loved one, may not want to watch "The Loved One." Someone with a Down Syndrome child may wince at Moe shouting "IMBECILE!" at Curly. But there's a difference between accepting a dated reference in its context, and banning it. "The Jolson Story" is not a DVD that many libraries would buy these days, and the Stooges may join the uh, blacklist.

How many people shout "IDIOT" or "MORON" at somebody else today? Should that change?

Funny (not very) that some things are sort of ok, and some things are not. "Washington Redskins" is ok. Why?

If Norm MacDonald had said "You'd have to be a moron to not feel sorry for a Down Syndrome person," what would have happened? PS, there are spokespersons for Down Syndrome who have it and can still function very well, who'd simply say, "Nah, don't feel sorry for ME, treat me like anyone else" and leave it at that. It's not that much of a surprise that some people with infirmities are not sensitive about them, and laugh about them. Others don't like it at all, and that can include ageist remarks. Some people at work "kid" an older person, and ask about their virility, or if they still have their own teeth, and shout "Grandpa" or whatever. Funny? A release of tension for people afraid of growing old?

Comedy is a fragile art. Anger is an emotion that can't be bottled up, because that's unhealthy. So, some people will laugh at Moe being angry and calling one of his stooges an IMBECILE. Laugh or don't laugh. But ban it? What kind of nitwit would do that?