Thoughtless for the Day

"Al Franken is basically a paid court jester for one side of the argument. You'll never hear him saying something funny about Al Gore, ever. It's the same with Ann Coulter or Michael Moore or Bill O'Reilly - they are all in the same business: 'Yay for our side, boo for the other side, come on, troops, let's go.' Just mindlessly getting the testosterone going. Which is not a knock on testosterone. It's a perfectly fine hormone."

- Harry Sheare:

Normally I reserve the World O' Ignorance spotlight for inbred ignoramuses who, by some strange coincidence, just happen to dwell in small towns in the American South. I like to think of it as my way of helping the common man get his fifteen minutes of shame. This week I'm bending that rule, just a little bit, and focusing the laser beam of humiliation on a celebrity: Dennis Miller.

Dennis Miller is a celebrity in pretty much the same way that I'm a celebrity. We both had careers in the entrainment industry, once. We both were mildly relevant, once. And neither of our managers will return our calls. The only difference is that I occasionally pop up in front of sold-out crowds of adoring fans (OK, they're really there to the other Milkmen), while Miller's only paths to pin money are celebrity bowling and his sporadic appearances on the O'Reilly Factor (which is rapidly becoming the new Love Boat for has-beens). Oh, and I'm pretty sure that my wife is hotter than his.

Anyhoooo, it was during one of these recent O'Reilly gigs that Miller actually said the following about inflatable Alaskan figurehead Sarah Palin:

She's a great dame. People are fascinated by her because the Left hate her. I think the Left hate her - mostly women on the Left hate her - because to me from outside in it appears that she has a great sex life, all right? I think she has non-neurotic sex with that Todd Palin guy. ... I think that snow mobile looks like mechanized foreplay to me and that's why people are fascinated.

To be fair, since its inception in 1956, Saturday Night Live has had over 23,000 cast members, and they can't all be possible Senators like Al Franken or movie stars like Will Farrell. Shit Luther, for every Chris Rock there are easily a dozen Joe Piscopo's. And while Dennis Miller isn't the most tragic former SNL regular (That honor goes to Victoria "Fox News is the only news show that even resembles journalism" Jackson), you have to admit that it takes a special sort of sad to postulate that reason Leftists (defined by Miller as anyone who doesn't crap in an outhouse) would despise a book-banning Fundie dick freckle is because we imagine her procreating in a chandelier, if only because Miller was attempting to be funny when he said it. He was making a stab at comedy. When Dennis wrote that piece, the night before, he was no doubt thinking "this will land me an HBO special for sure!"

To paraphrase Dieter: "Dennis Miller, your attempt at humor has failed"