Kinky Friedman always struck me as a reasonable Texan – one of the two reasonable Texans I’ve ever encountered, in fact. And his songs are good. Unfortunately, he’s now outed himself as a fuckwit, or Bush supporter – the two terms are interchangeable.
His suggestion that "the worldwide mafia of France, Germany, China, Russia" is responsible for the suffering in Darfur is offensive and ridiculous. His claim that everyone is picking on America, rather than vice versa, is completely insane.
Even decent liberals seem to be being suckered into the absurd myth of American victimhood, which is sad. Oh well. I guess it’s back to Billy Connolly (incidentally, all the sanctimonious pricks who criticised his Ken Bigley joke thoroughly deserve decapitation…)
Update: only the sanctimonious pricks who criticised the joke on the grounds that it was offensive to the Bigley family deserve decapitation. People who criticised it on the grounds that it wasn’t funny are excused.
As far as humour is concerned i’m of the anything goes school of thought.
Having said that i thought Billy Connolly’s joke about Bigley was simply not very funny. While bearing in mind what i said above it was also rather crass.
Do i deserve decapitation? Probably for my other sins, but not for criticising a normally funny comedian.
…and what’s the betting that most of the people who complained about the Bigley ‘joke’ (I’d have called it more of an ‘aside’, but there we are) are the very same people who complain about ‘Political Correctness Gone Mad’?
I can’t comment on the joke because I haven’t been told the context – and this is usually critically important.
Anyone basing their opinion of the 2001 Brass Eye on the media furore as opposed to the programme itself would almost certainly have got (and perpetuated) completely the wrong impression, and I’ve seen at least one Connolly defender claim that he was making a similar point about media sensationalism.
Incidentally, I’m seeing Connolly live in a fortnight or so, but I suspect that particular part of the act will have changed a bit by then! Fittingly, it’s my wedding anniversary – because I first met my wife online after I expressed the opinion in a public forum that no subject was taboo as far as humour was concerned, except possibly the death of a close relative. She e-mailed me out of the blue to challenge that qualification, and we hit it off immediately.