"...If You Can't Have It Both Ways, Laughing At It Seems Like A No Go, Too..."

We have a problem with pounds in this country.

And I ain't talkin' spare tires, muffin tops, beer bellies or thunder thighs.

I'll "weigh in" shortly with a clarification.

Comedy, at least comedy as defined for our chit chat as the utterances of those who list "comedian" where any given form asks for an "occupation", had a pretty stressful week.

First, there was the photographic falderall of Kathy Griffin and the severed head. Not to be confused with any aspiring satanic leaning, grunge soaked, death metal garage band that might coincidentally be named Kathy Griffin and the Severed Head.

Then, Friday night on his live HBO show, Real Time, Bill Maher's medulla took a smoke break and left him alone just long enough for him to wander into the traffic of tastelessness and tell his guest he wouldn't be "working in the fields, because he was a house n***er."

By the way, not for nothin', but, boy, don't I wish that I had bought mucho stock in whatever companies manufacture asterisks. I would have leapfrogged right up to the tippy top of the tax brackets, by now, fer sure.

The "reaction" to Griffin's head and Maher's "ass"terisk (see what I did there?) was, if absolutely nothing else in existence, predictable.

Cries of outrage, calls for arrest and/or firing, depending, and the standard issue variety of flailing, wailing, hand wringing and threats of neck wringing that operate these days on a schedule so precise that they have become the envy of every single rapid transit authority from sea to shining sea.

Okay, let's amuse ourselves for a few minutes by wandering down that road, the riskiness of which I always enjoy reveling in, a little slippery slope I like to call "perspective."

First, controversy and comedy have been together longer than A has been with T and T. And we're not necessarily talking about intentionally comic provocateurs like Lenny Bruce or Andrew Dice Clay or Sean Hannity.

As far back as 1964 (I know, it doesn't seem like far back to me and my peeps, but, to the hip and groovy of today, it's practically Jurassic Park), comic Jackie Mason made hot water headlines by supposedly responding to TV host Ed Sullivan's off camera"two minutes to go" finger gesture with an on air gesture of his own. Hard as it might be to imagine, in those days, even the hint of that defining digit on air was considered a complete and absolute violation of socially acceptable behavior. It wasn't until 2008, give or take, that the middle finger went mainstream, in no small part, thanks to the pretty much hourly offering of it to Barack Obama by Fox News.  As a result of Mason's middle, meanwhile, Sullivan banned him from the, then, very influential weekly variety show and it took years for Mason's career to get even close to back on track. 

In more recent funny people faux pas presentations, Michael Richards, who endeared himself for ten years as the hipster doofus, Kramer, on the mother of all shows about nothing, "Seinfeld" self immolated his success by letting a couple of hecklers get to him during a stand-up and responded with a meltdown level spew of N-words that would have made my stock in asterisks jump twenty points, easy. As opposed to Mason, Richards' career became the stuff of cheesy Hallmark Card-esque poetry, "that which once burned so bright / hath now gone down-eth in flames."

Other comedy contributors, from Louis C.K. to Wanda Sykes to Dane Cook to Margaret Cho to Amy Schumer, even, again, all the way back to the Paleozoic era of  Joan Rivers have not only pushed envelopes, they've managed to turn more than a few of those envelopes into confetti.

America, by the dozens of millions, have giggled, guffawed, laughed and applauded, and applaud, them.

And don't bother coming back at me with the ridiculous notion that "that kind of so-called humor" is the kind of crap that "all you snowflake libtards" think is funny while "we, good, God fearing, freedom loving real Americans find it repulsive and offensive".

There simply aren't enough snowflake libtards in the universe to account for the total number of people who find these comics and their comedy funny.

If there were, it's a safe bet that Donald wouldn't have been selected to open the mail addressed to "Occupant" at 1600 Pennsylvania.

But, let's get back to our conversation regarding Kathy's severed head and Bill's appalling asterisks.

And the real issue in play here.

A perplexing and persistently pesky inability to determine, decide and declare, once and for all, no more exceptions, forever and ever, amen.....

...where to draw the line.

Common sense, you say?

Nice try. Common sense, like its currently M.I.A. cousins, common decency, common interest, common ground, common taste and common values, is undefinable without a ground zero to serve the function of being a starting point.

Which requires the...wait for it....drawing of a line.

And the X factor in any, and all, efforts to chart that starting point, name that ground zero, define the undefinable is an insurmountable and impenetrable circumstance.

Or, more accurately, condition.

The human condition.

You say potato and he says pahtahto.

She says tomato and I say tohmahto.

Someone says "tit for tat".

And someone else gasps audibly and insists on asterisks.

Let's just call a spade a spade. (No racial inference intended or admitted to).

There's a whole lot of people in this country who would proudly stand up next to her, defend her to this day and will follow faithfully any effort put forth to keep, or at least fake keeping, the promise to make America great again who spend a fair amount of their leisure time enjoying the old fashioned, family friendly, wholesome whole grain goodness of such contributions to comedy as....

"2 Broke Girls"...Laverne and Shirley for the T&A/it's okay to say "vagina" on national TV nowadays crowd, complete with an Asian supporting character who makes that "Seinfeld! Four!" guy seem like the dictionary definition of politically correct.....

" Family Guy"...the animated, warmhearted day to day adventures of the Griffin family, featuring misogynist, racist dad Peter, lisping homosexual Bruce, elderly pedophile Herbert, drug dispensing date rapist Glenn, whose dad, at one point, hilariously transitions to a woman and sleeps with the family dog, Brian....all of whom spring from the "cutting edge comedy" mind of Seth MacFarlane who, as I've suggested more than once, is really just the grown up equivalent of that kid in our high school class who got laughs by making fart noises with his armpit, but, much to his, and our, chagrin discovered that his only comic skill turned out to be the ability to make fart noises with his armpit.....

MacFarlane, by the way, is also the acclaimed arm pit-ster responsible for "American Dad" , "The Cleveland Show" and other slices of American pie that rationalize their putrid by labeling it "parody", as in "we're not showing you gross and disgusting, we're mocking gross and disgusting and showing you that.."

Songwriter Randy Newman used that methodology frequently in his 70's writing heyday, most successfully in the song "Short People" which brilliantly sounded like a ridicule of people lacking height but was, in fact, a vicious indictment of the cruelty of people who ridiculed people lacking height.

That said, I grew up on Randy Newman, I respect Randy Newman, I often feel like I almost know Randy Newman. And, Seth...you're no Randy Newman.

And among those who laugh heartily at the sophomoric Seth and laugh bigly at broke girls and their Asian fall guy, there are, bet the bwahahas, a sizable number of folks who would like to see Kathy Griffin end up like Donald did in the photo and Bill taken down to the big oak tree and shown what gets done to uppity white guys who make very bad jokes about an entire race of asterisks.

Because Kathy and Bill went over the line.

That line that either continues to move wherever and whenever, based on personal opinion or lack of, taste, or lack of, personal judgement, of lack of, from those who simply don't understand the principle of physics that explains the impossibility of placing a definitive, permanent mark on a constantly moving surface...or that line that doesn't exist in the first place. For the same reason.

No such thing, daddy used to wisely counsel us, as a little bit pregnant.

No such thing as a little bit offensive or inappropriate.

No such thing as a little bit tasteless.

There's a lot of people in this country who have a problem with pounds.

Not as in spare tires, muffin tops, beer bellies or thunder thighs.

As in "in for a penny...".

And, not for nothin', but the pretty much unnoticed irony that both Seth MacFarlane's much loved and enjoyed Peter and the much reviled and scarlet lettered Kathy have the same last name?

Now, that's funny.

"...Occam, All Ye Faithful..."

Today, for insight and perspective, we turn, as we have so often in these times of need for insight and perspective, to our friend Occam.

And his razor.

First, because we are a full service informational provider around here, let's put aside, for a few moments, our petty partisan rancors and share an NPR-esque ponder of the razor.

And the Occam.

Turns out, first, that Occam wasn't really Occam.

He was William. Of Ockham.

Ockham is a small, rural village located in the borough of Guildford, in Surrey, England, a nation which has given us, among other things, English toffee, English muffins, London bridge, The Beatles, Big Ben, a whole lot of various and sundry teas, Princess Diana, Shakespeare, Wimbledon and, once, a long time ago, in a just formed nation, far, far away....independence.

William, of said Ockham, meanwhile, was a Franciscan friar who studied logic in the 14th Century. He was also a philosopher and theologian who wrote on matters of logic, epistemology, natural philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics and ethics.

Put in a more relatable context, the chances that he would have ever been asked to be a Fox News contributor are zip, zero, nada.

Oh...and he was also brought to court on charges of heresy in 1327, fled his teaching post and spent the rest of his life living among the friars who,also, weren't all that jiggy with the considerable power the Church had in the day.

Proving, once again, by the way, that Trump deserves to have a little slack cut in his direction because he's a long, long way from being the first narrow minded, overly self important, wanna be authority figure to be be-boppin and scattin' all over the the logical and ethical of their time.

But I digress into rancor.

One of William's contributions to the lexicon, meanwhile, was his oft quoted razor.

Again, for those who are heart broken at the cancellation of "2 Broke Girls" and are confidently sure that PBS is that attitude that women get every 28 days, give or take, the razor of William is not the razor you assume it to be.

It's not a blade, it's not sharp and it will neither cut you, nor remove hair from places where you prefer hair not to be. It does, however, have the capacity for doin' a little shaving.

In philosophical circles, a "razor" is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (or, "shave off", as it were) unlikely explanations for a given phenomenon. And while William's particular savvy shave is probably the best known, it is certainly not the only principle present.

There's Hanlon's razor...which states one should never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

Hitchen's razor...what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Alder's razor...if something cannot be settled by experiment or observation than it is not worthy of debate.

Popper's razor (better known as Popper's falsifiability principle)...for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable.

And, among the lesser, lesser known, there's Kanye's razor.

No matter who wins any music or video award at any given time, it should have been Beyonce.

William, meanwhile, gave us the razor that winnows away the chaff of multiple options when it comes to choosing a "wazzup wit dat?" on any given question requiring a "wazzup wit dat".

And, by the way, not really sure why it's always been known as Occam's Razor as opposed to Willliam's razor although experience and instinct lead me in the direction of surmising that it took that label because "William's Razor" is nowhere near as sexy and/or mysterious and it sounds more like either a band that opened for Nine Inch Nails somewhere along the way or it sounds more like, well, just a razor. You know. Belonging, you know, to a guy named William.

Meanwhile, the razor, the whole razor and nothing but the razor cuts through the crap pretty simply.

"In any situation or occurrence where multiple explanations exist, the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation."

This concludes our ponder of the razor. Let's resume our petty partisan rancor.

Chris Isidore and Julia Horowitz wrote the following piece for Apple News and published it online Friday afternoon.

Maybe the most amazing thing that occurred Thursday wasn't that President Trump pulled out of the Paris climate deal. It was the response from the corner office: A string of CEOs loudly voiced strong opposition to his action. 

"It's an absolutely bizarre and unprecedented moment in American history," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. He called the reaction a sign of just how damaged the Trump brand is in the eyes of corporate America.

"Donald Trump is such a pariah figure that companies want zero association with his brand," Brinkley said. "He's championing dirty air and polluted water. He's anti-science. Why would a Fortune 500 CEO want to be associated with that?"


Critics of Trump's decision worry that U.S. companies will miss out on opportunities to profit from a global move to reduce carbon emissions. Countries, businesses and consumers will spend trillions in the coming decades on greener vehicles, equipment and sources of power. 

More immediately, CEOs might be worried about selling their products abroad, where Trump's decision is overwhelmingly unpopular. 

"There could be a stigma attached to every U.S. firm," said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist with Horizon Investments. "If you're marketing a movie or a product in Western Europe, you've got to be worried about how this is being perceived. They can now say, 'Don't blame us, we came out strongly against this.' It's in their own self-interest." 

And it's not just people in the rest of the world who are upset with the president's actions. The decision plays well with his base. But a joint poll by the Harvard school of public health and Politico found 62% of Americans supported staying in the Paris agreement. 

"You can not run a major American corporation appealing to Donald Trump's 38%," said Brinkley.
Opposition came from Silicon Valley environmentalists like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was the first to quit a presidential advisory committee in protest. 

It also came from Wall Street bankers like Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who happens to be the former boss of Trump's top economic adviser. Blankfein tweeted for the first time to criticize the deal.


Jeffrey Immelt, who runs that quintessential industrial conglomerate General Electric , also tweeted his disapproval. And he did so knowing that GE depends on the federal government for more than $3 billion in sales and $600 million of government-sponsored R&D spending. 

Walt Disney  CEO Bob Iger also quit the president's advisory council in protest. And tech executives who head some of the most valuable companies on the planet also criticized Trump. Apple's Tim Cook, who said he had lobbied the White House not to pull out, denounced the move, as did Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft  president Brad Smith, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
In stark contrast, few executives voiced support for Trump's move. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has raised questions about the Paris climate deal, but it did not endorse or oppose withdrawing from the agreement. It issued a somewhat neutral statement after Trump's announcement. The American Coal Council issued a statement supporting Trump's action but did not immediately post it on its website or tweet it.


There's a key phrase, a very, very key phrase that comes and goes with barely a notice in that piece from Isidore and Horowitz. Just after "people in the rest of the world who are upset" and just before " a joint poll found 62% of Americans supported staying in the agreement."

"...the decision...plays well to his base..."

William of Occam, paging William of Occam, please stand by.

Trump has, basically, two speeds. Bully. bluster and blowhard forward. And reverse, back up, beep, beep, beep when and where necessary to avoid any possible contact, let alone collision, with blame or responsibility for anything. Ever. Eh.Vah.

Regardless of which of the two gears he's in, at any given moment, though, the destination is always, and ever, and only, the same.

It's all about the base, bout the base. No exceptions.

Making good on the promises. pledges and other poses and postures he offered up in his bid to become the sole United States distributor of snake oil to those whose buttons he pushed and, in return, flipped their voting booth switch on his behalf is all, and only what, he cares about.

In one context, it's actually a strategy. Not to better the nation, let alone the world, for heaven's sake, we're talking sociopathic narcissist here, not statesmanlike natural born leader, I mean, come on.

It's a strategy with, primarily, two purposes. To keep the base hap, hap, happy so that they will continue to want to vote for him, no matter what kind of shit he shovels out or how high that shit stacks up, again, not necessarily because he actually wants to do the job of being President or even keep the job of being President but because he "won" and in Trump's alternate reality, he's Vince Lombardi with a really bad hair style, "winning isn't everything...it's the only thing." Holding on to the power is what matters. Using that power for the greater good is irrelevant. Losing the power is to be avoided, prevented, ruled out at any and all costs. Because Trump doesn't lose. More to the point, Trump cannot lose. Losing, to Donald Trump, is like sunlight to a vampire.

The second purpose is even less noble than the first. Losing the power would be catastrophic to the man/child who was long, long ago anointed the boy king. Losing the love and adoration and worship of his peeps would be like that bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

Total meltdown, man. Metaphorical. And literal.

And, in the Ahab-esque quest to keep a death grip on the both the power and the pampering, Trump will say, do, commit, un-commit, join, un-join, build, tear down, spring forward, fall back, flip, flop and/or two and half, with a half twist, tuck position as needed for no other reason or purpose than to keep a death grip on both the power and pampering.

He promised the base he would pull America out of Paris.

So, he's pulling America out of Paris.

And it matters absolutely the aforementioned zip, zero, nada that the actual process of detaching from the Paris Accord will not bring American involvement to a conclusion until 2020. All that matters to Trump is that Trump promised the adoring, worshiping Donald devotees that he would pull America out of Paris.

That's why there's still a pretty good chance there will be a wall. Not even close to because a wall is either financially doable, let alone practical, or that it will actually serve any other purpose on the planet than symbolic or provide some walled states that don't have a Grand Canyon or a Mount Rushmore some of those ever pleasant tourist dollars as visitors show up by the carload to selfie the crap out of that concrete.

We should probably just count blessings and be grateful that he didn't promise the "come let us adore you" rally crowds anything really stupid like, say, putting somebody like Rick Perry in charge of the Energy Department or make his fashion peddler daughter a top advisor or, when in need of input and insight on making a key decision about the future of America's commitment, or exit from commitment, to a global initiative hoping to make it easier for our children and their children to breathe clean air and drink clean water, he turned to that noted expert on environmental and geopolitical dynamics, Kimberly Guilfoyle....thank the good Lord there has been none of that foolishne.....oh...wait.

William of Ockham said long ago that when faced with multiple explanations of an occurrence, the simplest is usually 'the' explanation.

Here's the simplest of the explanations regarding current occurences.

Donald Trump is not the President of the United States.

Donald Trump is the President of the Donald Trump Admiration Society.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And, at the same time, a lot, lot....lot less than this nation deserves.

No matter how you cut it.

Or shave it.