when i was a kid there were only two shows my mom gave me a hard time watching, SNL and Soap

i was only 9 when SNL debuted and even though she told me she didn’t like me watching it, i could never make it too long into it before id fall asleep.

a few years later Soap premiered and it had a parental warning. she’d hear it and shout, turn the channel.

i was like Awwww Ma!

and she would say you’re 11. you are precisely what that warning is about. i am the parent and it is warning me.

somehow i got the idea of watching it With her and even the intro and summaries at the beginning of each episode were hilarious. but yes, they did have adult themes: death, homosexuality, divorce, aliens.

i need to rewatch that show.

here’s Robert Guilliaume talking about navigating the idea of playing a butler when youre a proud black man in the late 1970s

bloggers could have told you decades ago that writing what you really feel

in public

is a risky proposition, especially if you are a bad person deep down.

now im one of the few people who didn’t vote for the president who liked the new Rosanne reboot.

sure it was cheesy at times and dumb at others, but for the most part it was funny

and a few of the people wore Cubs stuff.

also, Rosanne was an Uber driver, which is hilarious to me, now more than ever.

the fact that her character was a Trump supporter, i thought was punk rock

because the majority of Trump supporters have this weird false idea that this allegedly rich dude

who has never done anything for working people like The Connors

is suddenly looking out for the average American family.

and the new Roseanne show painted that twisted image beautifully in all of its shabby chic pathetickness.

but TV Rosie would have never known what Real Life Rosie was all about because TV Rosie didn’t use Twitter or get shoutouts from the president or did she have 685,5000 followers.

she was just a grandma with bad knees with a decent one-liner every 2 minutes.

Real Rosie believes in conspiracy theories, thinks racist jokes are funny, and just tweeted millions of dollars down the drain.

which is to say nothing about her cast and crew who are now jobless.

the funny thing about twitter is it is fire and it can burn those who don’t respect it

and one way to respect it is to respect others.

Rosanne is old enough to know that comparing black people to apes is like suicide by cop.

she waved her gun around hoping to get shot and they shot her down.

what i wish she would have done is taken that devil-may-care attitude to having her character express

really

why she, who prospered during Obama, suddenly is backing the opposite of that.

but sometimes intellectualism doesn’t reach across the aisle.

even if it would have meant even bigger ratings.

RIP

if you cant take a joke about you, then fuck you.

if you invite a comedian to your event and you have dressed up and all your friends dressed up and if theres some serious parts, some boring parts

and then a part for 19 minutes where what amounts to the court jester points his or her stick at you

and lampoons you in exactly the same way that they have been doing for centuries and centuries

and you sit up there and make a face like you just ate a bad lemon

and in reality you are a very not nice person in your actual job and the jester is IN JEST talking about it

then fuck you, your friends, the people you work with and the people who raised you

because you have not learned shit about life and your peers have not supported you in how to behave.

we have a president who says and does whatever the fuck he wants to do and no one is apologizing for his behavior

likewise we have had a White House Press Whatever dinner for decades

and man after man after man after man has got up on there and played the role of the court jester

but now that a woman does it in a comedically whiny scratchy delivery

then OMG THIS TRADITION MUST END BECAUSE OMG WHAT IF THE KING AND HIS COURT ARE OFFENDED

OFF WITH HER HEAD!

fuck that, fuck you, fuck this

i decide whose head gets chopped off and for now i want everyones head on

and looking at each other and when the funny lady says the funny things, fucking laugh

like a human fucking being for once in your stupid life.

flint still doesnt have clean water.

will the sun come out ever again

will the moon rise?

do the birds even wanna chirp chirp chirp in the morning for us

do we even deserve it?

CBS the Morning was my jam, it woke me up.

i loved it because there wasn’t any fucking bullshit in there.

it was gale and nora and old man charlie rose

and charlie had seen it all so he sat there a little slumped over, smiling , cute little southern drawl slipping out

and nora and gayle pretended to flirt with him every now and then

sometimes theyd bring in the new kids from different CBS news shows but no one wanted them around.

i loved how only now and then all three were there.

i loved how one of them was always on vacation.

i loved it because it made me thing, i wanna be super famous one day.

so famous that i get to take vacations every six weeks.

yesterday charlie wasn’t there and that was ok with me.

but last night we learned why. we learned that Charlie liked to invite female staffers to his home in long island

and then casually walk around naked. allegedly.

one woman said he reached down in her dress and she cried the whole time.

allegedly.

will the stars ever twinkle again?

are me and my friends the only gentlemen alive?

are we from a faraway land where we feel slightly ashamed of our not 20yearold bodies

and thus we would never invite a super model we barely know to watch us shower

and we would be heartbroken if we made anyone cry.

at our house.

in long island.

allegedly.

and allegedly.

and all

aged

ly.

also all of my friends are amazing and have accomplished great things

either they were in bands, or are in bands

or theyve created adorable little humanoids who will cure all our ills

or they have big smokin fancy jobs

or they are super talented in amazing ways

or they have hearts of literal gold, which is not as easy as it looks.

so when i go through my day and i learn about things i usually say meh

the simpsons did it first.

when i was at the Times i used to have lunch with Sarah A and sometimes also Ali M in Metromix

and sometimes Ali would say blah blah blah Katie

and i would say Katie who?

and ali would say omg she has the most beautiful hair and shes a great writer, surely you saw her in our office?

and i would said that office is filled with beautiful haired writers

which was an understatement.

well now Katie has done something that will make me remember her forever

tonight she is appearing on the world famous

Wheel

Of

FORTUNE!

and i hope she wins a fortune.

and i also hope i can watch it somehow now that ive cut the cord.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_759-ohqkY

When you think about what the term House Nigga is —

the House Nigger (if we are to OMG keep it real) was the one who didn’t have to work in the fields because he or she tended to the owners of the plantation, kissed their ass, and pretended everything was a-ok.

Shit wasn’t a-ok. The House Nigger’s brothers and sisters (often literally) were being abused, raped, treated as animals and objects, and had to watch as their children were raped and used and sold and abused.

But the House Nigger would fan the Massa and make lemonade and soul food and play the piano and violin and encourage and enable the slave owner to continue its tyranny… all so the House Nigger could avoid the hard work of the fields and enjoy the House food and House comfort.

So I ask you, is everything a-ok today in your world?

And if it is not, what are you doing to let Massa know it’s not A-OK?

The worst answer is: Nothing, I’m smiling and encouraging him as if this is the sunniest day of the year

Even though it’s raining cats

and dogs.

So if we are to get all pissed off about the use of a single word by a white comedian

Perhaps we should consider the entire phrase, which is worse

and tragically so when we consider

that some of us

may be the embodiment of it.