Wanda has a few words of advice that Hitch would do well to take to heart.
Aware of the readership of this blog's incessant demands for high-quality commentary that's idiosyncratic, informative, incisive and uncompromisingly funny, I was laying in bed last night scratching the old cranium and groaning about having to put together yet another an enormously witty post on one or other of the foibles of Christopher Hitchens. This time it was to have been about his Wanda Sykes quip and Hitch's real "dyke" problem: namely, his increasingly embarrassing efforts to plug the gaping holes in the battered and crumbling old reputation-guarding embankment of sod and gravel now barely covered by a tattered tarpaulin of intellectualism that is all that keeps the rotting remains of his credibility from being washed away by the rising torrents of his own invective.
Fortunately, others have been there before me and done a fine job of describing the state of decay. The most succinct effort I've seen so far is from Tommy Christopher at Politics Daily, who filed Chris Hitchens Has More Advice for 'Black Dyke' Wanda Sykes.
Author and uber-contrarian Christopher Hitchens couldn't leave well enough alone when it came to his offensive and bigoted assessment of Wanda Sykes' performance at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.
While some folks cut him slack by surmising that he was probably drunk when he called Sykes "the black dyke," Hitchens "cleverly" wants us all to know he meant it by referring to her twice as "the Sable Sapphist" in an article at Slate. Funny stuff, you fornicating little pink star.
As if that wasn't insulting enough, the premise of Hitchens' piece was to school Wanda, and any other artist of the brick wall backdrop, on the Hitchens method of stand-up comedy. Hitchens' problem seems to be with the fact that Sykes didn't adhere to the roast-y tradition of the dinner and mock President Obama. He might have a point there, but that has nothing to do with whether or why she was funny, or not.
He also launches into the President, claiming he's not a "natural wit." That may be true, if the definition of "natural wit" is the ability to translate "black dyke" into "Sable Sapphist." I thought we were calling that "seventh grader."
Poor Hitch! If only he'd kept his pen sheathed on this, we might have thought his initial comment was just another booze-fueled and vindictive attack of Tourette's by a disappointed and bitter hack. But in devoting an entire Fighting Words column to the issue of why the black dyke isn't funny, he has merely made himself look ridiculous.
On top of that, in a faux pas that won't be quickly forgotten nor forgiven in Blighty, he managed to mix up two enormously different comics: the grossly sexist Les Dawson, who was much loved for his mother-in-law jokes, and the mildly racist Jim Davidson. To get Dawson confused with Bernard Manning would be understandable; but to conflate Dawson with Davidson is to demonstrate a level of ignorance of British comedy that is truly sublime. It is also just the sort of error that is liable to make an otherwise amusing anecdote fall flat on its face like an out-of-place pun at a presidential press bash.
A ten-minute introduction to Les Dawson, courtesy of Eamonn Andrews and co.
Hitch's extreme defensiveness on the subject of his "black dyke" outburst led him to conclude his Slate column by stretching his argument well past breaking point:
I absolutely believe that jokes should always be at some one's expense. But for that very reason they must also be highly amusing and—just perhaps—imaginable when told of one's own "community." Low score for Sykes on both counts....
Any tendency to narcissism doubles the need for a follow-up speaker who can make the president wince, not smirk. This we did not get. And Limbaugh's dependence, like Bush's dyslexia, is actually a disability. Can you easily picture any jokes from the Sable Sapphist that would in any other way breach the protocols of the Americans With Disabilities Act? Any other person of whom she would dare say, "I hope his kidneys fail"? Any other context in which torture would be funny enough for her to yell, "He needs a water-boarding, that's what he needs"? Reality and comedy check here: Would she even say this about Osama Bin Laden?
When comedians flatter the president, they become court jesters, and the country becomes a banana republic. There are probably even people who would wish to misconstrue that last phrase of mine if they felt "sensitive" enough. In which case they can take a number, get on line, and ask to suck my thumb.
Reality check here, didn't the Preening Popinjay himself actually say of Al Gore and Hilary Clinton: "I just hope they all get some sort of wasting disease before they can run"? And wasn't that bone-shattering funny at the time?
We all remember, thanks to George Galloway, just who it was that held down the job of "court jester at the court of the Bourbon Bushes." And we all know how hard life can be for courtiers who loose their place due to dynastic changes.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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