Dick Cavett in the BAD, "New York Times" -- the rappers' favorite doo-rag, y'all

With Cardi B on the cover of Rolling Stone twice, and nobody getting "Entertainment Weekly" who isn't under 40, black or gay or trans, it was nice that the Old Gray Lady, The New York Times, bothered to write about Dick Cavett.

Who? In a peculiar irony, "The Dick Cavett Show" is NOT available in his NYC neighborhood (which is also mine). The obscure cable channel DECADES owns the rights, and they can't seem to get one of the 300 or 400 channels that SPECTRUM gives its cable subscribers. I can get Korean language shows, Spanish language shows, but not anything where the language is erudite English.

This leaves me with the Jimmys, fat effeminate James, Colbert and Seth. The alternative is Johnny Carson, who anchors one of the nostalgia networks that offer nothing but re-runs. No Dick Cavett. The NY Times article tried to squeeze Dick for a name of who might be the "new Cavett." Cavett said he doesn't watch the talk shows much (obviously, he's sick of the genre, and you don't get a lot of good conversation out of a Kardashian).

Cavett, at 81, has left Montauk to the noisy and trendy rich idiots, and is now stopping and smelling the roses in his new Connecticut mansion. The historic Montauk house is up for sale, and it might be grabbed by somebody with 62 million (that's the asking price) to spare. Like, Jay-Z, who might tear it down and build a home shaped like a giant Kangol hat. It might also serve as an extra Nazi bunker for Long Island resident Roger Waters. Intellectuals are certainly not welcome on Long Island anymore, and I have no idea what they're now using the Southampton College campus for. Maybe the Russians own it, and their Trump-whores are practicing watering the grounds with pee-pee.

In mentioning some of the fine moments that made Cavett a legend, the New York Times writer wrote about the night Norman Mailer jousted with Gore Vidal. (Today, we don't seem to have any novelists who are worth talking to, especially not pudgy E.L. James or the Burger King of best sellers James Patterson and his helpers.)

"After Mr. Mailer accused Mr. Vidal of “intellectual pollution” and Mr. Cavett of being “smaller intellectually” than himself, Mr. Cavett suggested, in what was perhaps the original sick burn, “Why don’t you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine?”

How about that. Dick Cavett is now the master of the "sick burn." That's sort of, what, Edgar Kennedy with a fever?

The Gray Lady is now trying to be "of color?" As we rappers know, "sick" doesn't actually mean you're ill, or you're a tasteless comic ala Lenny Bruce (whoever he was). SICK is a good thing, yo. And "burn" is the new "snap." Know wuttum sayin'?

Hurrying to drop in "sick burn," the Times forgot to set up why Norman Mailer said "“Why don’t you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don’t shine?”

Young readers might not know what "it" is referring to. Some kind of ancient slang? No, the set-up is that Norman Mailer had been taking shots at Cavett as well as Vidal, declaring neither of them up this level. Cavett had already sassed back, "Do you want another chair to contain your giant intellect?"

Mailer responded by suggesting that Cavett was lost without his question sheet...a sheet that most viewers hardly even noticed since Cavett rarely even glanced at his prepared questions. He preferred "conversation" over cold interview. As Cavett recalled, to someone other than the New York Times:

"When he said, ‘Why don’t you just read the next question off the question sheet?’ I thought, ‘I’m not David Frost!’ — but I didn’t say that. I said, ‘Why don’t you fold it five ways and stick it where the moon don’t shine?’ Longest laugh I think I ever got. Even longer than asking Bette Davis how she lost her virginity.”