#991: You Can Do It, But Should You?
In this installment, Dan and Jordan kill some time while Alex is still out of studio by checking out Rob Schnieder's speech from the TPUSA America Fest.
Dec. 23, 2024 - Knowledge Fight
01:01:14
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
It's time to pray. | |
| I have great respect for knowledge fight. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge fight. | |
| Dan and George. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's time to pray. | |
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding us. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
| KnowledgeFight.com. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple dudes who like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan. | |
| Jordan. | ||
| Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Quick question for you. | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's your bright spot today, buddy? | ||
| My bright spot today is actually a podcast that I think I... | ||
| I'm not supposed to talk about. | ||
| I can't tell anybody about this. | ||
| Is it the secret unknown podcast that you're not supposed to talk about? | ||
| It's a secret one that you're not supposed to tell people about. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Tiny Dinos has a second season. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I'm very excited about that. | ||
| I'm surprised. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I almost texted you about it because we hadn't talked about it. | ||
| You turned me on to Tiny Dinos in the first place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| And then a second season popped up and I started listening. | ||
| We're not supposed to be talking about this, though. | ||
| And I didn't text you about it, which is wild. | ||
| Because you're not supposed to tell people. | ||
| It seems like that's why and it doesn't make any sense at all. | ||
| People can't find out about those tiny titles. | ||
| They're very small. | ||
| So anyway, I'm very excited. | ||
| I enjoy it quite a bit. | ||
| What's your broad spot? | ||
| Do you listen to the first episode? | ||
| I listen to the first two. | ||
| I am a little bit late. | ||
| I'm catching up. | ||
| I got you. | ||
| All right. | ||
| It's very exciting. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'll say one thing about it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Just from the opening, there's a moment that... | ||
| Makes season two valuable for me. | ||
| And that's just the moment where you get him going like, oh, you made them. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And it's like it validates him. | ||
| James? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's kind of, it's very sweet in a way. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Their friendship, their best friend. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It is kind of sweet. | ||
| It's very sweet in a weird way. | ||
| Very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a lot of heart in this dumb show. | |
| But very good. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So what's your bright spot? | ||
| My bright spot is that tomorrow, or the day that you're listening to this, my cousin and I are going out for lunch. | ||
| I know that seems like it shouldn't be that big of a bright spot, but we always want to get together, but my wife has school, and there's the whole thing, and then we just don't go out. | ||
| I mean, honestly, we just stay inside. | ||
| It's so easy to just not leave your house. | ||
| Just close the doors and lock them. | ||
| Now that people mail me marshmallows, why would I leave? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Make me go outside. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no, no, no. | |
| It's going to be fun. | ||
| There's more people. | ||
| Wrong! | ||
| I went out the other day and it was snowing. | ||
| Fuck that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get out of here. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So this is a perfect time for us to actually go out, be with them. | ||
| My wife's on holiday. | ||
| It's going to be great. | ||
| What genre of food are you going to get? | ||
| No idea. | ||
| It's their business. | ||
| Do you like how I called food a genre? | ||
| I did. | ||
| I did. | ||
| Because it feels appropriate. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because there's not just like, oh, this is Ethiopian food or Chinese food or something. | ||
| Now it's like, this is fusion. | ||
| This is postmodern food. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| This is food that defies authorial intent. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, I hope you have a good time. | ||
| Great time. | ||
| I will. | ||
| I'm sure we will. | ||
| So today we're not going to have as great a time here. | ||
| We have a bit to unpack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And so I'm going to unpack all this, but first let's say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Appropriate for Christmas. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| There's gift wrap all over this pile of shit. | ||
| Hello to some new wonks. | ||
| First, Reich and Selene's feline acolytes Maya and Flock. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now Paul's a wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, condolences to the Faheli brothers for extending their losing streak to five. | ||
| Better luck next year. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you! | ||
| And Kay from Wisconsin sending this on the eve before the 2024 election. | ||
| I hope we'll all be better tomorrow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-oh. | |
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| I have bad news about this and Dawn de Grand Prix. | ||
| I sent her, uh, or Kay, I sent Kay an email, uh, before I put it in, like, Hey, just so you know, you were coming up and maybe it is. | ||
| They were like, ha ha ha ha, yeah! | ||
| So I'm down. | ||
| I'm with it. | ||
| Well, we also got a Technicrat in the mix, Jordan. | ||
| So thank you so much to the Thought Police at the Musk Opticon. | ||
| Think I'm installing a rainwater collection system while stockpiling hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. | ||
| But thanks to my trusty bone conduction headphones, I'm secretly dialed into Knowledge Fight and contemplating whether to begin my 11th run of Stardew Valley. | ||
| Thank you so much, Jordan. | ||
| I'm a Technicrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Four stars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. | |
| Someone sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. | ||
| Daddy Shark. | ||
| Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a loser little titty baby. | |
| I don't want to hate black people. | ||
| I renounce Jesus Christ! | ||
| You ever play Stardew Valley? | ||
| I have not played Stardew Valley. | ||
| It's very relaxing and mellow. | ||
| I think it's a great game, but I don't understand why some people are so deep into it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| There's people who can play it like 11 times. | ||
| I'm not sure why. | ||
| I get it that some people really, really get into it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I'm glad for them. | ||
| I'm not judging them. | ||
| No, of course not. | ||
| But for me, I think I played it maybe once or twice through. | ||
| You know, it occurs to me, I don't know if I like any game that is relaxing in that sort of way. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| All games that I appreciate have an edge to that. | ||
| Like, I should be afraid to lose in some fashion. | ||
| I should be afraid! | ||
| I should be afraid! | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think you can be afraid of things. | ||
| It's less about maybe dying, though, and more about, like, missing windows of opportunity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh, boy. | |
| That's even worse. | ||
| It's more, I guess, maybe stressful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In that way. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| Yeah, but, you know, you farm stuff. | ||
| You plant crops. | ||
| You go down in a cave. | ||
| That's life. | ||
| You date. | ||
| It's a life simulator. | ||
| All right. | ||
| More or less, but then there's, like, little monsters and stuff. | ||
| I mean, that's not too different. | ||
| So, like I said, we've got to unpack something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And that is that Alex is still out of studio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Um, and so we don't have Alex stuff to cover. | ||
| How long has he been out of studio in total? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A bit. | |
| A bit? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A bit? | |
| About a week, maybe? | ||
| About a full week? | ||
| Give or take, yeah. | ||
| Hasn't said, uh, like, I'm in. | ||
| No, he's been shooting videos in his car periodically. | ||
| And I have not watched all of them, so forgive me if he has actually revealed this mystery, but I'm pretty sure he's in Arizona. | ||
| I'm pretty sure he's at AmericaFest in Arizona, because it looks like the desert that he's in, and it's clearly some other location. | ||
| So I think he went to AmericaFest, the Turning Point USA conference that they've been throwing. | ||
| Trump just spoke today as we were recording. | ||
| It's been a who's who of all of these folks. | ||
| Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Donald Trump Jr., Cenk from the Young Turks. | ||
| Sure, why not? | ||
| It's a big thing for the people in this form of the media. | ||
| AmericaFest. | ||
| And I thought for sure, like, oh, Alex is going to pop up and he's going to speak and then we can cover that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then he didn't. | ||
| I mean, if he did, I haven't found video of him speaking. | ||
| You think he's being relegated to the club tents at Lollapalooza, you know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, oh, everybody, you can go inside and hang out. | ||
| Oh, this is great, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, he's running the chill-out tent. | ||
| Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, not good, not good. | ||
| I don't think, yeah, definitely junior varsity if booked. | ||
| But, like, I don't think he spoke, and so that kind of is... | ||
| Problem. | ||
| So I was looking at the speakers who were there, because I'm like, Alex is there. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Let's see what's going on over there. | ||
| And I saw that Tucker spoke. | ||
| And so I was going to cover that. | ||
| But that's two Tucker episodes in a row. | ||
| That's a lot of Tuck. | ||
| And I felt a little bit like, I don't know if people are ready. | ||
| If you get two Tuckers, they're too furious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People will be too furious. | ||
| Because I did get a little bit of feedback from people that was a lot of like, I can't listen to his voice. | ||
| That's all I hear. | ||
| I can't listen to his voice. | ||
| What are you... | ||
| I can't understand that criticism or that feedback because the alternative is listening to Alex's voice. | ||
| No, I mean... | ||
| He's not, like, super relaxing and delightful tones. | ||
| You know, there's flavors of trash. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, and you know, when you're used to a certain flavor of trash and then somebody gives you a different flavor of trash, sure, objectively, you know they're both trash. | ||
| But the unfamiliar trash is worse! | ||
| Right, but I guarantee that that is an illusion. | ||
| Well, yeah, obviously. | ||
| You know they're both trash. | ||
| But also, if you've gotten used to listening to Alex's voice, you can get used to listening to Tucker's. | ||
| That's a very small hill for someone to climb. | ||
| I have no qualms with challenging that perception that you can't listen to him. | ||
| I think we can make it entertaining. | ||
| But I still just didn't want to do two back-to-back. | ||
| And so we'll save that for later. | ||
| Maybe if Alex did give an off-to-the-side speech at AmericaFest, we can cover that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That'd be sad. | |
| With Tucker. | ||
| Did a little after-party. | ||
| But there's something else that I saw at AmericaFest. | ||
| Man, you can just unironically call it America Fest and then everybody goes on with their day. | ||
| It's not like everybody goes, hey, you remember when this was a dystopian future that people imagined in the 80s? | ||
| Any punk band would be like, hey, we'll play at America Fest, ha ha ha, because that's only what jingoistic monsters would do. | ||
| Now we're just like, yeah! | ||
| That's it. | ||
| The America is awesome and it's only for us fest. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| So I was looking at the list of speakers, and obviously, like, a lot of them I don't really care. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I don't really care about what Don Trump Jr. has got to say. | ||
| I'm not particularly interested in Glenn Beck's speech, or jank from the Young Turks. | ||
| I love that Glenn Beck had a good couple of years where people were like, he's changed! | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Fantastic. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Everybody should be very proud of themselves. | ||
| Well, he seemed convincing when he cried. | ||
| See, there you go. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, I thought there was one name that stood out among the rest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I regret this. | ||
| I don't even know why we're doing this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And it's Alex's fault because he's been in the middle of the desert somewhere and not doing his show. | ||
| But Rob Schneider spoke. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Here's what's crazy about this. | ||
| I think... | ||
| I've come through to the other side where I am now interested to hear what Rob Schneider has to say. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| Like, what's there to argue about or fight about? | ||
| Let's see what Rob Schneider has to say. | ||
| That dude's nuts now! | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I think that a lot of times when there have been comedy acts at these Trump events, sometimes it's Jim Brewer. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I don't particularly care because he doesn't... | ||
| I'm not convinced he delivers sentences. | ||
| I don't think he communicates. | ||
| There's a lot of noises. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Like that? | ||
| Famously Goat Boy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But he does a lot of, like, kind of stuff. | ||
| Those are the days. | ||
| That was when comedy used to be great. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's like, I don't know if I want to delve into the waters of him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, you know, we listened to Tony Hinchcliffe at the Madison Square Rally, and so I felt like, I know that... | ||
| Rob Schneider can make sentences. | ||
| I know he has thoughts. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So let's listen to him. | ||
| Like, you can do it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can do it! | |
| Was that him? | ||
| Yeah, that was him and the water boy. | ||
| Okay, alright, alright. | ||
| I can remember one thing. | ||
| Would you believe that that is the first thing someone yells from the audience when he gets on stage? | ||
| Yes, I would! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, because it was the first thing I yelled! | |
| I was shocked that no one yelled, that's a huge bitch! | ||
| Oh, that's what... | ||
| From Zeus Bigelow. | ||
| Okay, so I'm going to throw this out at you. | ||
| While the comedians that we've seen associated with the whole movement have been of a lower caliber, I guarantee that there are higher quality comedians who are not doing it because they don't want the look, right? | ||
| Not because they don't agree. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I think so. | ||
| You know, like, these people... | ||
| What I don't think they realize is that they could be having good humor around. | ||
| They're just so shitty that people don't even want to be associated with it among our community of comedians. | ||
| Notorious dirtbags! | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| I'm looking at the SNL wiki. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'm looking at the characters that he played on SNL. | ||
| Famous characters. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the first... | ||
| I guess it's alphabetical, so I can't be too mad about this. | ||
| But the first impression that he has is Adolf Hitler. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So that's fun. | ||
| Wait. | ||
| Rob Schneider does a Hitler? | ||
| There's a picture of it here, yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It's mostly the mustache. | ||
| You know, like... | ||
| It's not hard to... | ||
| Let's face it. | ||
| In history, most of Hitler is the mustache. | ||
| I think... | ||
| I mean, look. | ||
| Rob Schneider is what he is. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But he was a big part of, like, comedy. | ||
| In the period that we came up in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Or that we grew up in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Not came up in. | ||
| No, but SNL at the really important time for SNL when it was a murderer's row of a cast. | ||
| And then Adam Sandler is one of the most influential people of the 90s in terms of comedy. | ||
| And he was a hanger-on that was in all of his movies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| To the point where I don't know if I remember a whole lot about the Waterboy outside of You Can Do It. | ||
| There was the old guy. | ||
| You couldn't understand him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Cajun Bayou guy. | |
| His name was Bobby Boucher. | ||
| I remember that. | ||
| That was Adam Sandler's name. | ||
| There's an alligator, I think. | ||
| What was fun about them, I feel like, at the time, for me, was that they were almost a... | ||
| Okay, let me try and make this make sense, right? | ||
| So you've got your mainstream people and you've got your kind of alt kind of people, that kind of thing. | ||
| Adam Sandler and that kind of area were just mainstream enough that you could enjoy a Norm Macdonald as being like oh these are different while at the same time still enjoying Adam Sandler, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was like, oh, I'm allowed to rebel against this thing and see comedy as something greater than that, but at the same time... | |
| This is a good thing. | ||
| This is good, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, there's only a certain amount of distance between Dirty Work and Deuce Bigelow at that time. | ||
| 100%, yeah. | ||
| And, you know, I think that that makes him exist in a sort of place that's similar to how it's with Roseanne. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, he's somebody who is like, wow, you were around and you were actually important in a pretty interesting place. | ||
| And so, I don't know. | ||
| Let's hear the man out. | ||
| Let's do what we gotta do and see if we survive. | ||
| So here's where we open things up. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I'm honored to be here. | ||
| President Joe Biden just pardoned Lee Harvey Oswald. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| If President Trump wants to make Canada the 51st state, one stipulation, at least one of the senators has to be a moose. | ||
| So it's tough to tell what the commentary on the joke is for his opener. | ||
| The moose-senator thing is just silly. | ||
| But Biden pardoning Oswald, there's supposed to be some meaning behind that, right? | ||
| I mean, you'd think. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| I think it's, I mean, it's supposed to be like... | ||
| He would pardon the most evil? | ||
| Guy, right? | ||
| I don't think it's just that. | ||
| I think it's supposed to be a play on the attempted assassination of Trump and Butler. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And somehow it's meant to bring to mind the image that Biden's pardoning that guy because he would be letting people who shoot at presidents off the hook. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think that's what he's trying to evoke. | ||
| There's something there, yeah. | ||
| Rob should revisit this joke after Trump pardons people who tried to overthrow the government last time around, but whatever. | ||
| Biden's given out some bullshit pardons, and I could give a list of horrible people Trump pardoned in order to try and be like, Yeah, look at this. | ||
| But that's actually, it doesn't address the issue. | ||
| The problem is unequal access to clemency and the misapplication of the justice system, and that extends to pretty much all elected leaders ever, so we need to look at that holistically. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| What gets me about this joke and this opener is how unedgy it is. | ||
| Like, Rob Schneider's coming out and telling a joke at the place where joke-telling is legal now. | ||
| They're supposed to be the people who can say whatever you want. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This speech was on December 22nd, so Oswald and the attempted assassinations, it's all kind of a cooled-off subject. | ||
| It's a little bit dull. | ||
| It feels like he should have done a Luigi Mangione thing if he wanted to be topical and make a riff off of Biden's pardons. | ||
| Like, for example, he could have come out and said something like, can you believe that Biden pardoned his son? | ||
| The only thing more shocking was that finding out he's got a secret son named Luigi! | ||
| Something like that would have, you know, there's ways... | ||
| That you could go with this Biden pardons thing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| There's an angle there. | ||
| Yeah, but this is just dead on the floor. | ||
| Do you know what? | ||
| There's a significant part of me that suggests that unless we start hearing the N-word more, they're all full of shit. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, now that we are where we are, really it boils down to these people. | ||
| They want to say the N-word more, so say it! | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's this bullshit of like, hey... | ||
| You're all complaining about how you're the only ones who speak freely, but you're clearly not. | ||
| Speak freely. | ||
| Go for it. | ||
| Toss it about. | ||
| See what happens. | ||
| And even more than that, that's just one signifier. | ||
| That's just one thing. | ||
| There's so much more. | ||
| You should be talking about how you don't think some people should have rights. | ||
| No, absolutely. | ||
| Just speak freely. | ||
| Be the truth teller that you imagine yourself to be. | ||
| This isn't edgy. | ||
| I hardly believe that I'm going to say this, but... | ||
| I kind of want to hear them say the Edward boy. | ||
| At least would have less dissonance. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Of like, okay. | ||
| Oh, you're actually just whiny little babies. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, Rob, I think he's trying to, he's making a point in this next joke. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But I don't, I think it's a little, a little bit confusing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Unlike Oprah, I am not being paid to be here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
*crowd cheers* | |
| I'm here because I love my country and because Donald Trump surrounds himself with intelligent women who are very good looking. | ||
| What a crowd. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| What? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So the message that Rob was trying to send with that joke was that Oprah only showed up to Harris events for money, whereas he's actually there because he believes in Trump. | ||
| Unfortunately, the way he decided to deliver that joke was a bit off, and he ended up implying a couple things that he might not have intended to. | ||
| The first is that no one is willing to pay him an appearance fee. | ||
| Even if he believes wholeheartedly in Trump, it's kind of silly to imagine that he wasn't paid to go to AmericaFest. | ||
| Like, if he's not getting paid something for this, Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Charlie Kirk may have pocketed his money or something if he didn't get paid. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I would be angry on his behalf if he wasn't. | ||
| Who's your agent? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| This needs to be handled. | ||
| The second thing that he's implying is that he was booked at AmericaFest because Trump surrounds himself with intelligent, beautiful women. | ||
| The implication was supposed to be that Oprah isn't intelligent or beautiful, but Rob is comparing himself to her as a booking choice. | ||
| He should have said that Trump surrounds himself with intelligent, beautiful people, not specifically women, because now it seems like Trump booked Schneider due to his policy of booking intelligent, beautiful women. | ||
| The way out of this is to say that Trump surrounds himself with intelligent beautiful women which is why Rob is there. | ||
| He's drawn to the intelligent beautiful women that are around Trump which is why he said yes to appearing at this event. | ||
| This unfortunately calls into question the sincerity of the claim that he's there because he really believes in Trump, whereas Oprah just wants money. | ||
| His motivations are just as shallow as anyone else. | ||
| It's just that no one wants to pay him as much to go places. | ||
| They know that being around attractive women is enough payment for Rob. | ||
| This is just poorly written, no matter how you try and slice it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because, just from a funny standpoint, it would be far funnier if he were blunt. | ||
| If he were like, I don't find Oprah attractive, I'm not getting paid, I'm trying to fuck. | ||
| That's a good three sentence bit right there. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Comparatively to what's going on here. | ||
| This is a level of implication that I don't think anybody is prepared to unwrap. | ||
| And I don't think he is prepared to deliver. | ||
| No, but I think that that almost would be too edgy if he was like, I'm not getting paid and I'm trying to fuck. | ||
| I am here to fuck. | ||
| Because it would underline some of the misogyny that kind of underrides this entire... | ||
| God damn it, man! | ||
| This is misogyny! | ||
| Let's go! | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's my new... | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm embracing the sports people who say let's go about stuff now. | ||
| Let's fucking go! | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| That's what we're doing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, and this next... | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| This is rough. | ||
| I believe you. | ||
| This is really hard to hear. | ||
| Sight unseen, I believe you. | ||
| As somebody who has been on stage before, this is tough. | ||
| There's got to be 5,000 people here, which is double MSNBC's primetime viewership. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Well, what an election. | ||
| Wow, I haven't seen a man beat a woman that brutally since the Olympic Games. | ||
| We don't want to be like the Democrats who want to destroy American traditions like counting votes by hand. | ||
| They don't care about you. | ||
| They only care about themselves. | ||
| I didn't edit that. | ||
| That is a zero response to something that he very clearly thought was going to be a laugh line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Let's tease that out. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Why do you think he thought that the counting votes by hand was a punch? | ||
| Well, because the line right before that, the signaling to transphobia got a response. | ||
| Right, but that's different. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, it's not really. | ||
| No, I mean, it is. | ||
| It's a different reference to a thing that these people care about. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then it's confusing, the like... | ||
| Right, but it's easy to imagine that in each instance all you're doing is pointing to some right-wing social media grievance. | ||
| Shiny set of keys. | ||
| So you might think that you'd get the same kind of response. | ||
| But there's nothing transgressive about the counting ballots by hand part. | ||
| You know, like you have the edginess in like, oh, see, people will be mad if I reference this Olympic thing where I call this obvious woman a man and it'll piss people off and you'll recognize that I'm pissing people off and we'll both laugh at how I don't mean any of this bullshit and we're just pissing people off. | ||
| I don't get the hand... | ||
| Ballot counting thing, though, you know? | ||
| Yeah, I think that it's something that's really popular with, you know, excuses for why Trump actually won in 2020. | ||
| The bedrock of our democracy is in actually counting votes. | ||
| And, you know, like, I think that there is enough of a twist in the, we aren't like the Democrats, we support American values. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And then that American value is a right-wing media complaint. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, like, I think that there's enough of a, eh? | ||
| In your mind, I could see how he would think there would be a laugh there, but he miscalculated terribly. | ||
| No, this to me feels like a learning experience. | ||
| If I'm an open-miker, and I'm delivering these back-to-back, which is about the skill level required, I'm thinking, you know, like, oh, these people want me to be an asshole. | ||
| They don't want me to be, like, slightly incisive. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah, I should... | ||
| Give you a little peek behind the curtain. | ||
| If you watch this, it's clear he's reading this off a piece of paper. | ||
| There's a chance that someone else wrote these jokes for him and he's just delivering them. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Or maybe he's just not that confident in his performance. | ||
| Reasonable. | ||
| If I had to try and guess why these went off each other, maybe it has something to do with his beliefs in transphobia and gender being something that he considers to be an American value. | ||
| And then it's like, this is a tag off that? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But it's really tough to hear someone be like... | ||
| Hey, there's 5,000 people here, and that's so much better than watch the mainstream media, and then just dead. | ||
| He gets a big response to some social war bullshit that he's pointing to, like, I'm on the right side of. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And it's actually an embodiment of the very thing that they complain is what's wrong with comedy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, he's virtue signaling. | ||
| And then getting a big response, and then he does something that he thinks is a joke, and there's nothing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You think this is a joke? | ||
| Wrong. | ||
| You're saying something that signals to us that you're one of us and that we are here together without any of those weirdos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hooray! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, you want to complain that, like, ah, woke comedy is all clapter, and it's like, this is all this is. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| There is no joke. | ||
| There's no artifact, like, craft to this. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah, it is not good. | ||
| So the basic structure that Rob goes down is, like, listing off the reasons that the Democrats lost. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And so it's just a cavalcade of things for people to clap for. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like, it's, uh, you told people the economy is good, but they couldn't afford groceries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bah! | |
| Hooray! | ||
| You said that men can get pregnant. | ||
| Is he booked to be a comedian or is this like a weird speech? | ||
| Well, here's the thing. | ||
| This is why it's interesting on the back of the Tony Hinchcliffe. | ||
| He was trying to do a comedy set in the setting where he shouldn't have done a comedy set. | ||
| Wrong. | ||
| And I think that Rob Schneider's trying to do both. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because obviously when he came out, he was trying to do an opening joke. | ||
| It was an opening bit, for sure. | ||
| And I think that he tries to maintain some of that joke structure and shit. | ||
| But he's very clearly more also doing a speech. | ||
| Man! | ||
| But he does have clear points where he's like, hold for applause, hold for laughs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So here's a part of his list of why the Democrats lost. | ||
| Here's one of the beats in that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You lost because flying Haitians into Ohio in the middle of the night just to increase your voting base is kind of a shady thing to do. | ||
| Now, I have no problem with legal immigration. | ||
| I'm just not sure Haiti is sending us their best cat-eating rapist cannibals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| That was too much even for me. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| Never apologize, Rob. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| Why was that too far even for him? | ||
| Like, what about that joke was even edgy? | ||
| This is exactly what they think Haitian immigrants in Ohio are. | ||
| It's not really even an exaggeration for some sort of comedic effect. | ||
| Their media sphere obsessed about Haitians being cannibals and eating everyone's pets for weeks as part of an electoral strategy to scare their white base into voting so they wouldn't get eaten next. | ||
| Here's why that joke was too far, even for Rob. | ||
| It's not that it was edgy or pushing the boundaries of what you're allowed to say. | ||
| It's that it was too close to a reducto ad absurdum of his entire belief system. | ||
| These people don't believe that American cities are being overrun by cannibals. | ||
| They're just beholden to a political machine that benefits from making them pretend to believe that. | ||
| Delivering what's a sincere argument of their political media in the form of a joke like this kind of lays bare how it isn't even really a belief. | ||
| This is a joke to Rob. | ||
| A joke where the actual punchline is that people actually had their votes swayed by shitheads pretending that Haitian immigrants were cannibal rapists. | ||
| The joke is on the audience, and the really lazy way that Rob does comedy is a little bit close to making that punchline too clear. | ||
| And that's why he's like, oh, sorry, that was a little bit much even for me. | ||
| I think it's almost impossible to understand the joke except as a joke on the people it's being told to. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because if you believe that half of a population in a city is... | |
| Sure. | ||
| Is there a political solution you're advocating for this? | ||
| Then the bit, though, is they did send us their best cannibals. | ||
| You know, like, oh, they're... | ||
| They sent us their best cannibals, now they're starving. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, the bit is that you go even further than you could imagine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well. | |
| That's where the humor comes from. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| In terms of, like, a joke. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| As opposed to, like, I get that maybe it's not funny or whatever, but in terms of, like, how a joke works. | ||
| I agree that there's a better way to approach this if your point is making a joke. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I agree with that. | ||
| But what's being communicated really isn't, like, a good or bad joke. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, that's... | ||
| What's being communicated is Rob realizes kind of like this is an insane thing to say. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To imply that this immigrant population, these refugees are cannibal, rapist, animal, like pet eating folks. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that is actually what they have been demanded that they believe. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| And perpetuate as part of Trump's electoral strategy. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Living in that space, in that moment, on the stage has got to be kind of tough. | ||
| You know, there's a part of me that wonders if it is, like, one of the things that we're constantly running up against and that whole concept of, like, oh, conservatives aren't funny. | ||
| It has more to do with just simply joke structure tilts toward the powerless. | ||
| If you can't find a way to make the powerless powerful in your joke, then you have failed. | ||
| Anything that's punching down is just ultimately not funny or only funny to the people who are punching down together. | ||
| So it's just like you can't tell a joke like that and not understand that it's not a joke. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm struggling with it. | ||
| Because the structure of the joke is the transgression against the status quo. | ||
| And in this case, the status quo, as you pointed out, is we think they're cannibal rapists. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you're just going like, oh, those people we think are cannibal rapists were there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's not a bit! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| And I think that it's kind of tough to imagine thinking that it is. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| But, hey. | ||
| I guess he didn't get paid to be there, so good for him. | ||
| Listen, hey, I get it. | ||
| Comedy's hard. | ||
| It is. | ||
| But that's one of the dynamics that I thought was actually kind of interesting about this set or this speech. | ||
| More than just being like, haha, this is bad comedy or whatever. | ||
| There's something that's happening in terms of the language of comedy. | ||
| Like, that is an example of... | ||
| Your comedic exaggeration is actually exactly what your media says is the reality. | ||
| There is no exaggeration here. | ||
| There is no point. | ||
| This isn't a bit the way you're constructing it. | ||
| However, at times, there is the like, oh, hold on. | ||
| This is kind of like what a joke is. | ||
| And lastly, you lost... | ||
| Because you can't give $100 billion to Ukraine and only $700 to American fire victims in Maui. | ||
| And only $800 to American hurricane victims in North Carolina. | ||
| Zelensky is obviously a cokehead. | ||
| All the signs are there. | ||
| You give him a billion dollars, the next week he's broke. | ||
| He's always wearing the same dirty t-shirt that Sean Penn gave him. | ||
| He's always saying delusional shit like, I'm gonna defeat Russia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Well, 29 days until President Trump takes office. | ||
| Giving money to Ukraine and not to U.S. citizens is a fine complaint, but he's speaking at Turning Points America Fest on a lineup full of speakers who have absolutely nothing but contempt for government spending on public welfare. | ||
| They don't want the government giving money to hurricane or fire victims. | ||
| That's what insurance and charity are for, according to them. | ||
| It feels really good to point at Americans not being taken care of because that sucks and it doesn't feel right. | ||
| But Rob would probably get roundly booed out of the building if he wasn't just doing that to attack supporting Ukraine. | ||
| If he just got up there and advocated for public works administrations or universal housing for Americans, I don't think he would be getting this unpaid gig. | ||
| Now, that bit about Zelensky is pretty close to joke structure, and I gotta tip my hat a little bit. | ||
| The premise is that Zelensky is like a cokehead, which is then expanded upon by giving examples of how things he does are similar to things that you associate with people on coke. | ||
| They need more money, they wear ratty clothes, they associate with Sean Penn, they think they can defeat Russia. | ||
| These are all solid beats for a joke, but this is still bad, because there's no punchline. | ||
| If the punchline is supposed to be that Zelensky is like a cokehead, then the setup is the punchline. | ||
| The examples aren't building to anything, they're just tags being added onto the setup, which feels incomplete. | ||
| That's why Rob gets lost in a laugh there. | ||
| He knows, from his time being a comedian, that this is actually how a joke works. | ||
| This is building, and the audience is on board. | ||
| This is what it's like to do comedy. | ||
| You establish an idea, take the audience along with it, and then you land the plane. | ||
| But Rob realizes mid-flight that he has no landing gear, so he just laughs weirdly. | ||
| This is a joke that's on the open mic level. | ||
| It's the kind of thing that you might say at an open mic, and then later that night, you and your friends would get drunk and think of some way to crack the nut. | ||
| Try to find some angle that would take what you've got... | ||
| elevate the point into being something that's like, oh, that's a bit now. | ||
| But it's not. | ||
| This is just an unfinished... | ||
| Unfinished, unpolished piece of shit. | ||
| Yeah, there's too much personal bullshit in there. | ||
| You can edit out tons of that where you're like, oh, I'm talking to my weird shithead friends. | ||
| You've got four examples, so you've already cut it down to rule of threes. | ||
| But I think he combined the ratty shirt and Sean Penn in a way that makes it three, and I think that's okay. | ||
| But I disagree, because I think the third one should be, I can defeat Russia. | ||
| So you cut down, you get rid of the money, you go, Zelensky, he's exactly like a cokehead. | ||
| You give him money. | ||
| All of a sudden, the next day, you see him wearing a worse shirt. | ||
| The day after that, he's doing the whole thing. | ||
| Then he comes to you scratching his neck going, I bet I can defeat Russia this time! | ||
| That's your bit, because that's the escalation beyond what you would expect from just a cokehead. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think you need something else. | ||
| I think you need a whole lot of something else. | ||
| Right, but this, unlike a lot of the stuff that you end up seeing, and a lot of the shit that just ends up being like, Haha, clap for this complaint that we all have on Twitter. | ||
| Like, I think that this actually is what a lot of pretty basic joke... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This has a recognizable form. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It's just it doesn't lead anywhere. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| But I think he knows that in the moment as he's delivering this, which is why he just gets lost in a laugh of being like, oh, it's kind of funny. | ||
| He's reading off this page. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's like, it's kind of funny. | ||
| Oh, man, he is like a cokehead. | ||
| I don't have a point there. | ||
| I wonder what it would be like to, like... | ||
| I'm not comparing it to some sort of Alzheimer's in a way, but to gradually age to the point where you can remember joke structure, but only in the form of a Mad Libs. | ||
| You can't understand what goes where and why, but you can understand what it's supposed to look like from space. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That would be horrifying. | ||
| I guess, but I mean, I don't... | ||
| Gun to your head, I don't think you could remember a single Rob Schneider joke. | ||
| I think you could definitely remember characters and, like, make a cafe! | ||
| You know, like, you could do that, but you couldn't remember a single joke. | ||
| Oh my god, that's right. | ||
| To be boiled down to making coffee. | ||
| Right, but he did a number of making coffees. | ||
| You know, like, in terms of characters that you have in your mind of little moments and stuff, he has a fair amount of utility that he's served. | ||
| In that space. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But I don't think there's ever been, like, a, God damn, that was a really well-constructed Rob Schneider bit. | ||
| So I think that he knows, like, some of the sketch ideas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| Some of the A and B and C and whatever. | ||
| But, like, this is a guy who seems like he caught a fish here. | ||
| And he's not reeling it in. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think you've inadvertently revealed the whole thing by saying he's made a bunch of making copies. | ||
| And so far as, yeah, it's a bunch of different characters, but it is reduced to the same basic thing. | ||
| He goes, yeah! | ||
| You can do it! | ||
| Exactly, that's it! | ||
| He goes, yeah! | ||
| In a different way than you. | ||
| Right, but they're words. | ||
| Whereas with Jim Brewer, it's noises. | ||
| Right, it's right. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's different. | |
| But it's the same. | ||
| It kind of is. | ||
| So anyway, I was confused by this sort of cokehead runner, and then it didn't really have a punchline. | ||
| Here's what happens right after. | ||
| Well, 29 days until President Trump takes office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And the Bidens... | ||
| Are already starting to pack up. | ||
| They're going through their drawers, checking under beds, looking, you know, they're looking under closets, and that's just, you know, gathering up 100 Bidens, a coke stash. | ||
| I wrote this late last night. | ||
| That was a huge missed opportunity. | ||
| So Rob has delivered this incomplete joke about Zelensky being a cokehead, and then he gets distracted by his own joke kind of being a joke, and it leads him to completely botch the delivery of this Hunter Biden coke stash joke. | ||
| He tries to save it by saying he wrote this material late last night. | ||
| And the audience lets him off the hook. | ||
| But there would have been a perfect opportunity here if he put a finger up to his nose. | ||
| He just made two Coke jokes in a row, and he needs a bomb-saving line because he screwed the second one up. | ||
| He had the sense to say he was up late writing the set, but why not just say that he was up doing Coke writing these jokes? | ||
| The audience probably wouldn't take it seriously enough to care, and even if they did, he was Deuce Bigelow male gigolo. | ||
| It would have tied everything up nicely, but oh well. | ||
| I was watching it, and I'm like, put your finger in your nose, but do it, make a joke. | ||
| Do something. | ||
| And he doesn't. | ||
| It sucks! | ||
|
unidentified
|
This sucks! | |
| It sucks! | ||
| It sucks in the way that it sucks if I went back and watched... | ||
| Dave Chappelle's block party. | ||
| You know, that, like, what, like, 2000? | ||
| You know, you got the roots, you got everybody, and you got Dave Chappelle at the height of his Chappelle show powers. | ||
| And then you watch it now, and you're like, oh, fuck me. | ||
| Time kills, man. | ||
| This does not suck in the same way. | ||
| No, this sucks in a hugely worse way. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But in the same way that, like, Deuce Bigelow was not Chappelle's block party. | ||
| No. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So, like, the relative quality, the highs are different highs and the lows are different lows. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't think that... | ||
| Oh, you know what was Dave Chappelle's block party with Rob Schneider, though? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Deuce Bigelow European gigolo. | ||
| The sequel is really where they figured it out. | ||
| Was that the one where they put it all together? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Finally. | |
| I just was bummed out that he... | ||
| I even thought that if he was up late writing this set, I think even that would have been kind of edgy in this room. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think, like, that would have been a comedic choice that would have been challenging to the audience. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| And I just felt kind of sad. | ||
| We're making fun of Hunter doing coke, but also, guess what? | ||
| I'm a little fun guy, too. | ||
| You were on SNL in the 90s. | ||
| Yeah, have a little impish, like, listen, I'm the bridge between what you think is evil and I'm the comedian, you know? | ||
| Holier than thou us, Rob Schneider. | ||
| Be a clown, for fuck's sake. | ||
| So, this next joke I thought was like, well, there's some potential here, but I think... | ||
| the audience maybe doesn't care. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You got to give credit where credit is due, though. | |
| Last week, Joe Biden achieved a major foreign policy breakthrough, and a literal al-Qaeda terrorist is the new president of Syria. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| Look, man. | ||
| He's a bad dude. | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably dementia. | |
| You know how senile people sometimes, you know, they put, like, you know, their clothes in the oven, you know? | ||
| They do weird shit. | ||
| Sometimes they install a literal al-Qaeda terrorist that's president of Syria. | ||
| We are the party of compassion, the Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boof! | |
| So Rob shouldn't have tried to get a laugh on the line, a literal Al-Qaeda terrorist is the new president of Syria, twice. | ||
| I think the first time when it just laid there on the floor, he shouldn't have gone back to the well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| A couple of missed shots here, too, though. | ||
| One is that his Biden impression kind of sounded more like George W. Bush. | ||
| I thought it was Bush. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Was it supposed to be Biden? | ||
| That was supposed to be Biden. | ||
| Jesus, man. | ||
| Yeah, he has dementia. | ||
| He's a good guy. | ||
| He should have said Jack, at least, or something. | ||
| Sounds like somebody else. | ||
| Some malarkey. | ||
| Just throw something in there to signify Biden. | ||
| Instead of literally doing a Bush impression. | ||
| That was a Bush impression. | ||
| That was a Bush. | ||
| Another problem is that it felt like he was going to play around with how Syria sounds like seriously, but then that went nowhere. | ||
| It went nowhere! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think he heard it in the moment and was like, is there something there? | ||
| And then just, nope, there's nothing there. | ||
| And then moved on. | ||
| Well, because this whole set is essentially being delivered off a page. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right? | ||
| It feels kind of dead. | ||
| Where that Syria, seriously, it felt like, ooh, playfulness? | ||
| Is there playfulness here? | ||
| Is there something? | ||
| Nah, I quit. | ||
| I'm lazy. | ||
| I'm an old man. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| I'm going to do a George Bush impression to pretend that it's Biden. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Shit. | ||
| Man. | ||
| I just. | ||
| I don't even... | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Maybe I'm... | ||
| I guess I'm just expecting too little because I'm not even asking for base funny. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I'm asking for base competency. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And this is worse than that. | ||
| I'm asking for comedy on your terms. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| Like, when I say that that Zelensky bit... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm not saying it's funny. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| But I am saying that this is what the expectation is of you're introducing an idea and you're making it funny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You're adding these details in a way that expand your thought and umbrella it out in a way that the audience can go along with your train of thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I expect that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I want something. | ||
| And yeah, this is not that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| If we were in the Comedians Guild, you know? | ||
| Friars Club? | ||
| No, different. | ||
| More like Medieval Comedians Guild. | ||
| We would be like, hey, don't take those words that you just said outside of this room. | ||
| But! | ||
| They do have the language of a joke. | ||
| So now we can work together to make them a language. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's an open mic level joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And the rest of this, a lot of it's not even open mic level jokes. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's barely a tweet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like some of this stuff. | ||
| It's brutal. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It is brutal. | ||
| But he does have some decent points here and there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And maybe this is one of them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Nancy Pelosi fell down and broke her hip, and as much as I disagree about her politics, I feel horrible about her fall because I had all my money on Mitch McConnell in the office broken hip pool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
*laughter* | |
| That's a joke. | ||
| It's a bit of a misdirect. | ||
| That's not terrible. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And the point that he's making is essentially that the leadership in the country is too old. | ||
| That's fair enough. | ||
| I mean, relatively speaking, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I mean... | |
| That is a bit. | ||
| No, when we were talking about baseline competence, it's like, that's baseline competence. | ||
| That is baseline competence. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Thoroughly. | ||
| Some perspective, though. | ||
| Like, Mitch McConnell's 82. These guys, these ding-dongs, they all love Trump, and he's 78. He's going to be the oldest president ever at the end of his term. | ||
| So, like, I think that the point that's being made is good. | ||
| It's, you know, missing the forest for the trees a little bit. | ||
| But, at the end of the day, all you can ask for is a joke, and he gave a joke. | ||
| That was, that was, uh, yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| If I was at a place... | ||
| In the back of the room, having listened to the rest of the set, my ears would perk up at the sound of like, aha! | ||
| I see, sir. | ||
| So it is somewhere. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You do know what you're failing at the rest of the time. | ||
| Or whoever wrote this. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Oh, I hear it now. | ||
| You are failing. | ||
| You're not just bad at this. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, you know, like, hey, Nancy Pelosi fell and broke her hip. | ||
| That's really bad. | ||
| It's really terrible. | ||
| You know, I feel so awful about this because I lost money on a bet that it was going to be McConnell. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| At least in terms of A, B, C, D. Like, aha, we have a joke. | ||
| If it could be boiled down to something so very basic, it would be just, good, at the end, where they thought you would zig, you zagged. | ||
| Congratulations! | ||
| I performed compassion, and then I turned it into something else for the sake of a joke. | ||
| Ta-da. | ||
| Yes, that is about as good as it gets. | ||
| It's a magic trick, yeah. | ||
| The next joke is not. | ||
| I did not get paid to be here, like I said, like Oprah got paid because I got doged by Elon and Vivek. | ||
| I'm just grateful that the American people saw through Oprah's lies, saying that you will never vote again if Trump wins. | ||
| America didn't fall for Obama in his mama jeans. | ||
| Trying to shame black men into voting for Kamala just because they may have mommy problems or issues. | ||
| I'm glad nobody listened to Kamala Harris because she never really said what she stood for. | ||
| Because at the end of the day, just like her party, she stood for nothing. | ||
| The Democrats had no policy this year. | ||
| I mean, that's just claptor there. | ||
| I mean, like, there's nothing... | ||
| That wasn't even... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They weren't even interested in clapping for that. | ||
| I feel like some of that applause was like, we gotta give him something. | ||
| We gotta give him something. | ||
| Something rough's happening on that stage. | ||
| He's talking about Obama being in mom jeans. | ||
| It feels like this is a moment to give him support. | ||
| That's what that applause felt like. | ||
| It felt like, no, you can make it to the end, buddy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are you trying to say that black people voted for Obama because they have mommy issues? | ||
| Because that felt like what he was saying. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't know we could just, like, as far as offensive stereotypes go, I didn't know we could just alter those at will. | ||
| I don't fully understand what he's hitting on here. | ||
| Absolutely no idea. | ||
| No. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| I think it comes back to, like, I remember very early, starting out, And being in these low-stakes showcase rooms where the headliner, quote-unquote, would be the guy who could do ten minutes compared to everybody else doing four or six or whatever, you know? | ||
| And then I would watch that, and that guy would do four minutes of, here are the family guy impressions I can do. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I know exactly who you're talking about. | ||
| Yes, you do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yes, you fucking do. | ||
| Yes, you did! | ||
| Yes, you fucking did. | ||
| We all did. | ||
| We all opened for that guy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Me and Nick Rowley down in... | ||
| Where was that? | ||
| Oswego, I believe. | ||
| Yeah, probably Oswego. | ||
| Yep, probably. | ||
| I'm getting too specific. | ||
| I had a fine set. | ||
| I'm sure you did. | ||
| But I remember just sitting there with a certain amount of awe that... | ||
| In all reality, it was just the spark of recognition. | ||
| That's what it was. | ||
| I recognize that from elsewhere. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You have brought it here. | ||
| Now we laugh together. | ||
| And I feel like so much of these words are just like, if I say this word, I think these people will have the spark of recognition. | ||
| And it's him doing his, hey, Peter. | ||
| Like, it's that. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| Doing an impression of, like, a family guy character or whatever in the context of something that is interesting is not, that's nothing to be ashamed of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| If you can say something through that impression, it is what... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I suppose. | |
| But the recognition, the pure recognition where it's just, I have a laugh because I sound like Peter Griffin, is exactly the same thing as Alex taking Adrian Dittman seriously because he sounds like Elon Musk. | ||
| It's like this recognition, this surface-level shit, is enough, and it's not. | ||
| Listen to me deliver this line from that show you watched in the exact same way that you watched it. | ||
| Yeah, let me give you a complaint that you all have from social media. | ||
| We'll clap. | ||
| Remember when we saw this yesterday? | ||
| It feels like that. | ||
| It feels like what he's doing is a version of America's Funniest Home Tweets where he goes through yesterday and he goes like, hey guys, I don't know if you saw this yesterday or if you did, you'll also enjoy it. | ||
| Nothing really matters here. | ||
| But that's why the like... | ||
| Biden pardoned Oswald as an opener is even weird, because if you're trying to get applause from familiarity and all that stuff, it doesn't seem like the best route to go. | ||
| Yeah, that sounds just like an insane person. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, that's an insane person's thoughts that were on the notebook, and then he was like, well, it's there, so I might as well say it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Someone else wrote this here. | ||
| I didn't finish it or do anything, but I might as well say it. | ||
| I also, I don't know about this, but I wonder, because that felt a bit racist. | ||
| Yeah, it was very racist. | ||
| It felt like there was something going on there about, like, was there a stereotype of Obama wearing mom jeans? | ||
| Never heard of it. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I know, like, tan suit. | ||
| I know some of these other references about Obama. | ||
| But mom jeans is not one. | ||
| So when I try and analyze what that means, he had a white mother. | ||
| So mom genes could be G-E-N-E. | ||
| If, if, okay, let me throw this back at you. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| If what you are saying is true, and they gave this level of thought to those words that he spoke. | ||
| I take back everything I said. | ||
| We're operating on some sort of genius-level intellect here that has figured out a way to make a Sudoku puzzle out of bad jokes that will eventually culminate in some sort of racist... | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| There is no way there is that much thought applied here. | ||
| There can't be, but also... | ||
| There cannot be. | ||
| But also, the surface of it doesn't make sense either. | ||
| It makes no sense! | ||
| I just don't know. | ||
| It makes no sense! | ||
| Rob... | ||
| It just does not make sense. | ||
| So I got one last clip here. | ||
| Here's how the man, the myth. | ||
| How are we going to dismount? | ||
| Right. | ||
| America has decided that Donald Trump will make America great again. | ||
| Let's help get Donald Trump, President Trump, all of his appointments in by the Senate. | ||
| Just like Americans stood up and said no to this bill, thanks to Elon Musk and Twitter. | ||
| We need to get all his appointments in, including Tulsi Gabbard. | ||
| Let's get them all in to make America great again. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| God bless all of you for fighting and loving this country, and God bless America. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| We'll see you now. | ||
| You can do it, America! | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Just say that 15 times and leave. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's all you need. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Done. | |
| Worth every penny. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I would pay more for that than I would for whatever it was. | ||
| You can do it, America! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know why he needed a speech spot. | ||
| I would have given him shorter. | ||
| I think. | ||
| I think he had too long to work with. | ||
| I think he didn't have a lot of material. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I thought this was strange. | ||
| Because it's... | ||
| It satisfies a lot of the complaints you have about Tony Hinchcliffe's comedy set, which is like, that's too much comedy. | ||
| You know, you're trying to do something, and you're pretending you're doing crowd work in Madison Square Garden. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| What are you fucking doing? | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| This is less comedy, but still clearly trying to be funny, still trying to have some bit structure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's solving that problem, but it's still bad. | ||
| I just, I guess I realized, maybe... | ||
| Maybe I would rather just hear Jim Brewer make noises. | ||
| I 100% agree with you. | ||
| I think Goat Boy is now the height of comedy. | ||
| Yeah, maybe this is worse. | ||
| It has to be worse. | ||
| And here's why, to me, it's worse. | ||
| Because I don't care what you believe. | ||
| Period. | ||
| In terms of being a comedian. | ||
| If you are a comedian... | ||
| And you are saying we need to get some blankety-blanks appointments through? | ||
| You have missed every part of what a comedian is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Like, just... | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Right. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| There's a feeling of, like, I'm trying to grease the wheels of power for the elected president and the richest man in the world who are clearly up to no good. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Yeah, it doesn't really feel like there's a comedic angle that's worthwhile there. | ||
| And it's interesting to see him try. | ||
| I would love if there was a good comedy thing at one of these. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I would be interested in seeing what a gifted hand could do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, but here's the thing. | |
| The thing that's crazy about it is I think what Rob is secretly reacting to and maybe is why we get where we get is because if you did have somebody who shared... | ||
| These types of general beliefs, if you will. | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know anybody. | ||
| Let's call them Big Bay Hokerson. | ||
| Something along those lines, right? | ||
| Who has an angle on these things and who escalates to the right points. | ||
| These people would be mad. | ||
| It wouldn't sound right to them. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like, it would be more alienating for them to live the comedy version of what it is they think they want. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Than it would be for them to just suck. | ||
| A good version that isn't based around just, like, clapper and feeding these complaints right back to them for the sake of recognition. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Would be... | ||
| Somewhat challenging, even if it is closer to their belief system. | ||
| And I think that that would be really difficult. | ||
| Yeah, even if they leaned into the, we believe in your stereotype stuff, but because I'm a comedian, I'm going to take what you think, I'm going to put it in a different angle and make you see it in a different way. | ||
| It's the seeing it in a different way that's the problem. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To these people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It doesn't matter how good you are at getting people to see it in a different way. | ||
| The problem is they just don't want to see it like that, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's pretty indicative of this mentality. | ||
| And I think Rob Schneider is almost like a perfect comedy guest for this event. | ||
| Because when they say, I don't want to see it like that, he says, you can do it. | ||
| You can do it! | ||
|
unidentified
|
And, yeah. | |
| Anyway, maybe we'll cover the Tucker Carlson speech another time, but like I said, I didn't want to do two back-to-back. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So this, look, I'll be, I'll own it a little bit. | ||
| This is kicking the can down the road a tiny bit. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Let's talk about Rob Schneider's dumbass. | ||
| But, hey, it is what it is. | ||
| It's the holiday season. | ||
| Enjoy. | ||
| Happy Xmas. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We'll be back with another episode, but until then, we have a website. | ||
| Indeed we do. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're back, but until then. | ||
| I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZXClark. | ||
| I am the Mysterious Professor. | ||
| Woo! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| Woo! | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Woo! | ||
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for holding. | |
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. |
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