retooling the tonight show, one tool at a time.

i wouldn't call myself a jay leno fan.

well, ok, maybe that's going to far...

i would say that i hate jay leno's comedy. ok, that's a little more reasonable.

yet, somehow, like so many other things, i have seen enough of, or heard enough about it to be able to speak on it. so here i go: jay leno's WHCD schtick was totally recycled, and i knew that even before politico released this little nugget. dude, leno, your corny. hang it up, man.

look, leno, i know you're a comedian, and too be fair, you certainly ripped on the bush administration enough, but i feel like you don't know how to walk that line between lampooning the absurd, or the unfortunate, or the idiotic, and making disparaging comments that will actually hurt the cause of something positive.

this of course is only my opinion of what is positive, but i don't think that there's any subjectivity to the statement that leno skews way right these days, and his comedy doesn't just push obama toward good things by publicly shaming him where he fails, but also publicly scolds him where he succeeds, and creates a leno fan base that (often too ignorant to get their news anywhere else) will have a warped view of this administration. now, call it what you will, liberal double standard, hypocrisy, but i just feel like bush didn't do much good in the world, while obama is trying to. where leno's bush years comedy was more like pointing out the obviously comical, his obama years comedy is off in the realm of taking fox news talking points and dumbing them down (watch his show, discover that it is possible) into a bonehead one-liner formula.

so what could we have expected when he gets the political comedy gig of a lifetime, and doesn't even bother to write new material?

"cash for flunkers", jay? seriously?

that joke is hardly even funny the first time around. even if you consider things that simply rhyme to be funny, this joke is pretty elementary.

and he's standing in front of the most elite crowd of the year, dumpster diving through his own old, hack material.

comedically speaking, obama wrecked leno.

much like i advocate making dubbya and palin the new host and hostess of the wheel of fortune (because he is good at asinine banter with simpletons, and she might be able to recognize the english alphabet if it were presented to her, one letter at a time, on giant glowing TV screens) i say, give obama the tonight show. he's charismatic, smooth, funny, and he knows a thing or two about current events. meanwhile, leno is pointing out typos in small town penny-saver ads, poorly ripping off SNL skits, still dunking on paris hilton (yep... still), cackling his way through his completely hacked "jay walking" man-on-the-street bits, and sticking his tongue up celebrities asses.

what's more, i can stand to listen to obama's voice for more than 3 consecutive seconds. leno, on the other hand, gets the dogs in my neighborhood all worked up, and then i'm listening to blood curdling squealing from all directions (yeah, that's right, leno's voice sounds like the loosing party in a chihuahua fight).

and frankly, i'll take gaffin' joe on guitar any day over kevin eubanks. fuck, man, eubanks is such a toooooooool. but even better, lets go trans-administration. let's get gaffin' joe in the announcer booth, and get slick willy clinton on sax as the band leader. at least gaffin' joe can put a sentence together. can't say as much for stuttering john. besides, with slick willy as side-kick, all the jokes about chasing young tail will ring comically true, not just creeppily plausible, like with eubanks.

obama set up shop on leno's face at the WHCD.

come on, man, "you know what really tickles me? ... eric massa." that's fucking gold.

"true love is the hardest thing to find... well, that and a birth certificate" dude, that's conan level self-deprecation right there.

having recently had the chance to see conan o'brien live, i can comfortably say that there is no one i'd rather watch on late night TV.

he truly was the rightful heir to the tonight show throne.

but that throne has been sullied. sullied by leno and his tired ass captain sully jokes, and conan doesn't want it anymore. so fine, i will follow coco to TBS. he has more than earned my adoration. but as for leno, by presidential decree, i say we air drop his ass out in the middle of the sahara with kevin eubanks, stuttering john, and nothing but one of his old stanley steamer million dollar classic cars with the water tank running low.

it could be a new NBC reality show. now that's a leno i'd watch in the 10PM slot.

joe wilson is afraid of illegal immigrants getting a hand out, later, asks you for some fast cash...

to give those who don't know yet, a little bearing on this story, the other day during president obama's speech on healthcare reform, the republicans trumped their own low (which was saying that the president urging kids to stay in school crosses some sort of boundary of political decorum). republican representative joe wilson of south carolina (which i think is now only allowed to remain a state out of sheer pity) stood up during obama's speech, precisely at the moment when obama was pointing out that universal healthcare doesn't mean that the US will pay for the entire universe's healthcare, and yelled, "YOU LIE!!". good one, wilson. with that kind of witty repartee, how could south carolina resist electing him? what a silver tongued charmer.

it's come to this, has it?

our political debate, once held to some degree (i said some) of dignity, and decorum, and the maniacal ranting left to pundits, and the loud mouth q publics who listen to them, has degenerated into shouting absurdities at one another in the forum of the very debate.

at first one figures, 1,000 page healthcare bill, the average citizen won't read it, but certainly they might get an accurate clifs notes from some media outlet. then it gets a little more grim, when we come to find that the media has not read the bill either, but still reports and opines to the citizenry as though they have. but the whole shebang really falls off the rails when it becomes quite clear that the politicians who get paid to read this stuff, either haven't done so, would rather act as though they didn't to serve their own ends, or simply don't have the reading comprehension skills to digest what they have read.

to steer away from the joe wilson comment for a moment, i recall hearing a lot of bitching and moaning about the length of the healthcare bill, as well as some questioning as to whether politicians can even be expected to read such a leviathan.

to respond to both of those concerns: there are 300,000,000 people in this country, each with a very different health and wellness situation, let us consider ourselves lucky that the bill wasn't 300,000,000 pages long. this is healthcare reform, after all, and it is a complicated issue to begin with, let alone when we begin to discuss reforming not just the system, but the coverage for every single person in the country.

as to whether politicians can be expected to read a bill of such girth, short answer: yes.

long answer: that is literally the job of a politician. what exactly are you doing in your office all day if not reading, writing, and analyzing political documents? that's exactly what we voted you into office to do. so somehow these fucks have time to sneak in a few tweets during the state of the union, and a long weekend at martha's vineyard once a month, but don't have time to knock out a few pages during their lunch break? as i said before, it is literally their job to do so. don't tell me it's too long, you owe the american public, at the very least, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on the job, so shut your office door, and get reading. the fact that politicians get to take vacation time to begin with simply blows my mind. the world does not stop, if it did, don't you think it would be a lot easier to negotiate a state of world peace (hey, everybody, can we just call a time out for like, the rest of eternity? i want to go on vacation)? it's all well and good that people like ted kennedy can be in office long enough to recall that time that a dinosaur got loose on the floor of the senate, but i think that we must consider term parameters as not just a good way to kick out the bad apples before they do too much damage, but as a way to let the politicians, even the good ones, get out of office for a while, since, as far as i'm concerned, they should be working with the people and for the people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, until such time as they are not re-elected, or they decide not to put themselves up for re-election. instead our government is peopled with slackers who are in the office usually between the hours of 10am and 2:30pm on monday, tuesday, and wednesday, approximately 30-35 weeks a year, and complain that the healthcare reform bill is too long, that's real hard readin'.

then we get into the halls of debate, and it's much much worse. grown men, i mean god fearing, adult, wealthy, white men, debating(?) by flipping novelty sized presentation cards covered with comical caricatures, and punny sloganeering, rather than facts and well thought out arguments. we allow as reasoned debate, stories about how little jane doe with the toeheaded child, was struck with lupus and had to miss work, and won't you contribute to my campaign? anecdotes about how when they were a child they used to love playing with their pet turtle, skippy, and why do you hate jesus and want america to die? complaints about how this 1,000 page bill full of words and numbers and bullet points, and lord, the legal mumbo jumbo, is not exciting enough to read through, but here's our team's bill, it's a one page accordion style pamphlet (3 flaps, mind you, so you know we're serious), full of nothing more than 2 or 3 word catch phrases, and some clip art that the cute new intern cut and pasted between lunchtime handjobs. she's real good at that photoshop, you should see the cans she pasted on that picture of pelosi from last nights address, big as her head, man, big as her head.

just when you think it can't get any worse, the whole ordeal dissolves into people standing up in the middle of speeches, speeches, mind you, not even debates, and blurting out obvious misinformation, like, "you lie!". so articulate these politicians, these days. and what serves as an apology is a poorly written, mechanically read,1 minute and 35 second teleprompter session in which wilson tries real hard to pretend he knows how to read, and ends in the offender asking for money?

well, i'm not planning on asking you for money, but i think it's safe to say that we can wrap this up right here. it has been proven once again that anything we do as a species is driving by one singular motive... money. and it has reached the point that we don't even hide this from each other any more. like wild invalids, we struggle to grasp what it means to even be alive, and attempt to create some semblance of the human condition through a series of violent, frightened or territorial outbursts, in between which we cower in mortal fear or out of shame.

so what really separates us from the wild invalids? technology? religion? politics? sure, but at the heart of all those ideas is but one simple thing: money.

and if you think different, allow me to assemble a well thought out rebuttal...

YOU LIE!!

brainCandy

canada fears zombie attack more than i do. see? i'm not crazy!

a group out of canada used the most common factors associated with theatrical zombies, to assemble a "study" about potential future zombie attacks.

sadly, the brits are taking the "results" of this "study" seriously. using the "data" to assemble an attack plan if a real deadly, previously unknown, plague should hit the human population, and begin to spread out of control. so, as long as we're using hypothetical scenarios, to find hypothetical solutions, does anyone over on that side of the pond think, perhaps we should consider using hypothetically "possible" concepts to work out the kinks? i'm not sure i want to get some new strain of swine flu, and have some cheeky british comedian come at me, trying to cut my head off, because england is using blood and guts movies to plan out their new extremely liberal healthcare plan.

hmm, well guv'nah, i don't fancy i've seen a mole quite like that before. the nurse will be in directly, to shoot you with a silver bullet. nice knowing you, mate.

says the BBC, "if zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilization unless dealt with quickly and aggressively."

well, i think we can all agree with that, but what's more troubling is that, apparently in countries where healthcare is handled by the government, there is serious concern about zombie attacks! good god, what are we in for, obamacare? mothers in texas have already started eating the heads off of their zombie babies, for lack of proper biological, or ballistic defenses, and we haven't had nearly as much time to dedicate our sharpest minds to the zombie defense concern.

still more troubling is the fact that, if we are basing this potential disaster on the most common factors associated with theatrical zombies, then the black guy dies first. great! so obama socializes our healthcare system, then dies in a zombie attack, leaving us all to deal with our zombie problem by waiting in ungodly lines for generic anti-zombification pills! thanks, obama! what's next? you gonna cure cancer by unleashing the vampires on us? solve the auto crisis by genetically mutating us all into centaurs? bring peace to israel with a diplomatic team of hyper-intelligent wolfmen?

i didn't vote for wolfmen, obama! down with barack ozomba! no more ozombacare!

oh, wait, did that quote say, "if zombies actually existed"?

my bad, i guess i should make sure i have all the facts before i start yelling my head off about things in a public forum. boy, if i had, like, gone to a town hall meeting and yelled out crazy stuff like that, i'd probably look like a total idiot...

the incredible mr O doesn't care what you think (until we actually tell him what we think. like that one time, when we all thought he would be a good president), and i like that about the guy.

sometimes it takes a person with the pelotas to implement an unpopular or controversial idea to grease the wheels of progress.

he's not about to kowtow to a bunch of rubes who pick apart every little thing he says and place it under an electron microscope. i mean, how ballsy was it for him to promise to bring us the one axiom of existence that we cannot anyway avoid?

i'm talking about change people.

and who among us can say with 100% certainty that we have never, nor would ever, declare one of our athletic deficiencies worthy of the special olympics?

my concern is not that mr O is uncomfortable being himself when it comes to public relations.

my concern is that mr O is not uncomfortable being himself when it comes to public relations.

look, the guy's under serious scrutiny, here. he can't afford to let gaffin' joe rub off on him now. sure, it's funny when you or i say, "hey, i bowl like a retard". but there's an awful lot of people out there, who are going to blow this out of proportion when the president says it.

so some moron cop arrests a guy for being black in his own house, and suddenly we have to have a beer bash at the moon tower? this doesn't seem like the smartest move.

first of all, it sets a dangerous precedent. now every time somebody has a problem with the way their lives are going, they are going to expect the president to respond to the issue, and he has much more important things to do than help you find your car keys. hey, simpletons, just because you were late to work because road maintenance backed up traffic on the interstate, don't expect mr O to hold a press conference reprimanding the DOT for not staying the fuck out of your way. and i don't care if the safeway didn't have any decent bananas, i don't want to hear that obama called an emergency produce summit between the FDA, NAFTA, and the farm workers of america. there's real problems going on in the world, and i'm not saying race relations in america isn't one of them, but treating two pouting idiots like bickering toddlers, and forcing them to kiss and make up is not going to solve the problem, in fact, it might cause more problems than it even addresses. meanwhile, people are starving, dying, fighting, and suffering for real, all over the world, and bono can't hug all of them himself. mr O has more pressing items on his agenda than putting a band-aid on your ouchie.

to stay on the subject of dangerous precedents, my second concern is that this will fan the flames of america's arrested development. we are already a nation of pathetic midlife crises. we are such an immature, self important group of a-holes to begin with, that i don' think we need the president offering to play daddy to our mundane disputes. hey, i think it's a great idea to resolve issues by sitting down like sensible people, and discussing them in a friendly manner, but this is something grown ass people should already know how to do. i don't care who the president is, he or she is not here to teach us how to shake hands and apologize. we're adults now, and it's time for us to take responsibility for our own lives. don't go crying to mommy every time life isn't going your way, when the way to resolve the problem is obviously just to be a big boy and figure it the fuck out yourself, or, here's a thought, get over it. shit happens. we're not going to get an apology from the universe every time something goes wrong, and we don't need reparations for every little thing.

my third and final concern is this: they say you never talk about religion or politics at a party. well, for a guy who has already proven that he can't get away with insinuating that he is a retarded bowler, or using any form of the modifier "stupid", or showing any sort of respect to the leaders of other countries without the whole country jumping down his throat, maybe it's not the best idea to invite the media to film you getting drunk and talking about race relations...

...and for the love of god, don't invite biden to the party.

guantanamo prisoner torture outsourced to palau. pork legislation has nowhere to hide, now that we can hunt it in national parks. wait...what?

hey, look, i like obama as much as the next liberal progressive democrat, but i think it's time to face up to one big fact: he ain't as great as we think he is.

bottom line is, politicians are politicians, and now that campaign cycles begin the day after the most recent election (the only competition longer than the NBA playoffs. at this rate the 2010 season will start sometime in 2016), buckle up and prepare for a whole lot of idling in the garage until the US breaks down into independent, poverty stricken, war-torn stans, republics, and soviets, like the USSR. what? them again? no. us, this time.

and now that iraq has more money in the bank than we do, get ready for a 40 year run of aziz bond movies, in which an international militant of mystery repeatedly saves the world from total destruction at the hands of over-the-top american stereotype villains with cool scars over their eyes, all the while having tawdry affairs with conveniently named women like "skimpi burkha"; wooing them with lines like "let's liberate you from those wet clothes and rebuild you with a democratically elected interim shirley temple (no drinking there, and all)", "i've got an IED in my pants and i want you to drive your hummer over it", and "let's go back to my place, so you can occupy my former arab dick-tatorship".

"it's a good day to die, vice general greenspan, and it looks like it's time for you to cash out." oh my god, somebody make this movie!

wait...where was i?

oh yeah. less progress, more of the same. a good slogan for miller genuine draft, perhaps, but we're trying to run a country, here. so, what's new? or should i say, what's old? aside from the fact that this financial bailout is all happening with the same players and the same playbook as the bush administration's financial fumbleruski (again with the russians?), which is how we got in this mess in the first place (well, in the first place, we deregulated the banks, well before w got his grubby mitts on the country).

what's old is that obama, while making some strong and progressive moves, is no golden god, and it shows. don't get me wrong. i love the guy, partly because elmo would seem like a great president compared to w, and partly because he is making some strong moves toward a better US (that is just the opinion of this liberal progressive, however). but like i said, politicians are politicians, and at the end of the day, mr o is a politician.

let's discuss guantanamo bay, shall we? ok, so it's going to be closed. hip hip hurray! so what does that change? not a damn thing. all those prisoners are going to be sent to other prisons. look, the important thing about guantanamo is that we stop using it to hold prisoners without fair trial, and stop using it as a dungeon for sick and perverse modes of "information extraction". the prison itself isn't the problem. it's not like it's built on an old cuban revolutionary burial ground, and the ghosts of che's army are returning from the dead to torture people and refuse them due process. the important thing is not the empty gesture of closing the prison. the important thing is that we prove that we've learned our lessons. so we've stopped torturing (so i hear) and we are going to start putting these people through the court circuit (one would hope), so why do we need to start this argument about where to keep them, and whether or not regular, stateside maximum security prisons will be able to hold these super powered evil geniuses? just leave guantanamo open and stop treating it like thunderdome.

let's discuss progressive legislation. i don't know where everyone got the idea that, if elected, obama would legalize pot, and gay marriage, but apparently those ideas got out there in the ether, somehow. neither of those things is going to happen. look, obama said he wants equal rights for the lgbt community. but never did he say that, without following it with that fine print item: i believe marriage is only between a man and a woman. he may have said that he would be willing to open a discussion with the pro-pot folk, about the state of marijuana policy, but he never said he was even going to try to legalize it. in political speak, "open a discussion" could very well mean he invites them to stop by his office so he can tell them to fuck off, in person. but it's so deliciously vague, that it's pretty much assumed by the rubes that it means the flood gates are open and everything's coming up milhouse. we need to understand that there are going to be a lot of things that we thought obama was going to do, but unless he said it specifically (and in many cases, not even then) we're living in a fool's paradise (perhaps my 420 savvy readers are more comfortable with the term "pipe dream"? then again, maybe some of my lgbt readers are more comfortable with that phrase, too...).

let's talk fixing the mess we're in. i pointed out the non-progress of the financial bailout already, as well as the guantanamo affair. but what about the other turds w left on the white house lawn? we've renamed the mission in iraq, but the "exit strategy" is nothing of the sort, and in fact, aside from the name change, it's essentially the same plan w had laid out by the end of his term. so let's chalk that one up to another empty gesture. about GM... you know what? we've been over and over this. my problems with the GM plan were discussed explicitly in who needs capitalism... (06-01-09). about healthcare. somehow the terms universal, and socialized keep getting copy pasted to the front of his healthcare plan. this idea has a snowball's chance in hell of coming to fruition. which brings me to my next point.

mr pork slayer, mr lobby buster, mr transparent, himself. b to the o. transparent, maybe. he certainly seemed to be on tv a lot during the first months of his term, apologizing for things, taking the blame for things, swallowing his pride. so maybe he is transparent. but that's actually a call that history will have to make. as for mr lobby buster, i thought he had his justice league of filibuster proof superfriends to push all this shit through. what happened? every time obama talks about his new healthcare plan, he walks right up to the edge, then takes two steps back. i can just barely make out the health insurance lobbyists hiding behind the door, clearing their throats a little too loud, right before he disclaims the ways in which his new plan won't be universal healthcare, or socialized medicine. and what about mr pork slayer? i think this topic needs to be dealt with via a very sharp left turn, much like mr o did. when it was time to reform the credit industry, mr o sure showed those greedy fat cats and wall street slicksters who's boss. he passed a credit reform and regulation bill that allowed visitors to carry concealed weapons in national parks. shocked and a little thrown off? i was, too. so there goes mr pork slayer, right?

but with those filibuster proof superfriends behind him, at least most of the pork (after this gun thing) will be in the best interest of the progressives out there, right? i can't believe i am about to agree with (gulp) joe scarborough. too many people representing either party is a not a good thing. like bill burr says, humans are not meant to live alone, because when you live alone there's nobody to walk in and catch you doing stupid things, and tell you to put your pants back on and put the scissors away...after you've cleaned them. in a system with occasionally questionable checks and balances, the best way to make sure we don't run right off the edge of the left or the right, is to allow an open forum comprised of a good sampling of all those being represented (remember how we need to add a hispanic woman to the supreme court?). i'm about to agree with scarborough again here (super gulp). the problem is not that there are too many republicans in the government, peeing in the soup. the problem is that there are too many idiots in the government farting on the omelet bar. it just so happens that, at the moment, the republicans are in the majority when it comes to idiot production (i am still in agreement with scarborough at this point...where is this bizzaro joe hiding? you ask. certainly not on morning joe. you have to get waaaaaay deep, to find this joborough. you have to get tavis smiley deep. don't worry, the circus is here to do that for you). the term republican has grown to be synonymous with brain dead ass hat, but in reality, republican doesn't have to be a four letter word. in fact, republican is just that: a word. republicans can be whomever they wish to be, and they don't all have to act the same (dems can do this too). its perfectly ok for a person, regardless of their political affiliation, to use their own brain, instead of borrowing the collective brain that most people plug into when they choose sides. in fact, conservative doesn't, by definition, mean bigoted, whitebread, mississippi mudflappin', truck driving, gun nut (sweet virgin jesus mother mary theresa, joborough, why aren't you this intelligent and introspective on starbucks presents: moaning joe?). this is where me and scarborough go our separate ways, however. joe believes that republican stands for the obtuse idea of conservatism (this i agree with), and that conservatism is a good thing (not always).

i think that it is important to try to keep the intent of the founding fathers in mind (keep in mind, the founding fathers also had a serious discussion over the idea that the constitution they were writing should be rewritten every 19 years, even if it's rewritten word for word, to be a more contemporary, and appropriate document, imagine what an amazing country we would live in...). so if that is conservative, than i am conservative on that point. but as for clinging to their expressed written ideas? i think that we need to keep in mind that the world is a place that is itself progressive (as some of the founding fathers obviously knew), in that it is always changing, with or without us.

to look back at a document written during a time of revolution, building, and rebuilding of a small rogue state, a document that states, "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" and only see the part that says "the right to keep and bear arms" is ignorant. the world has progressed past that place. even if you wanted to look at that amendment literally, it does not give the right to keep and bear arms to random people who like to go out back and shoot stuff. it provides the right of people to keep and bear arms for the purpose of maintaining a well regulated militia. we've got one of those. it's called the US military, and those people have every right to keep and bear arms. if you're not part of the maintenance of our well regulated militia, then you have no right, or reason, to bear arms. if you plan on starting your own militia to overthrow the government, don't expect to be sanctioned or sponsored by the government you plan on overthrowing. rather, expect to receive sanctions (it's different) and subpoenas from that government. if you're planning on building a people's militia to overthrow the government, and you think you will have the legal support of that government, i don't predict your revolution will go well for you.

nevertheless, mr pork slayer, mr lobby buster, mr liberal progressive, the great and powerful mr o, has deemed it necessary toward wrangling the immoral practices of the credit industry, to allow the expressed legal consent of carrying concealed weapons in state parks. why? in case we come across a creditor while we're hiking Half Dome, and want to shoot them in the face?