We have a ridiculous item of the week.
Pundits are aflutter because 86 year old Don Rickles, king of political incorrectness, the man who insults everybody and has made a career of it, a very lucrative career, made a politically incorrect joke about Barack Obama.
"I shouldn’t make fun of the blacks," Rickles, 86, said via The Hollywood Reporter. "President Obama is a personal friend of mine. He was over to the house yesterday, but the mop broke."
It is not often I agree with liberal Joe Gandelman over at The Moderate Voice, but in this, he is spot when he puts those making a huge deal of this into the "The Moderate Voice’s famous Get a Life Club."
If people in the audience were in any way shocked or put off then:
– they don’t know a thing about Rickles Rickles’ who became famous as a comedian due to a) insult humor b) politically incorrect insult humor. You know, the same jokes he made about Sammy Davis, Jr. (African-American) or Frank Sinatra (Italian..but my favorite one was: “Hey, Frank. Make yourself at home. Hit someone.”)
–they must have been on living on Jupiter because Rickles has been doing the same, exact humor for years. In fact, some of his jokes are “switched” jokes: jokes where you revise a joke using a different name or make a slightly different punchline.
–they are caricatures of the tiresome P.C. reaction.
All of those who were shawked…I mean really SHAWKED….offended..had their feathers ruffled are now members of The Moderate Voice’s famous Get a Life Club.
Gandelman goes on to provide a variety of Rickles video clips from the past to make his point. Go, watch, see.
One that Gandelman didn't show but I will here. January 1985, Ronald Reagan's 2nd Inaugural.
3:14 minute mark-
Rickles "It's great though, I make fun of the President, why not, I make fun of everybody, that's America."