In case you missed it, comedian Jenny Slate, a new cast member of the still-atrophying Saturday Night Live, caused a stir by saying “fuck” on the September 26 show in a biker chicks sketch with Kristen Wiig. (In an already clapped-out attempt at political correctness, this is known in our current media, accompanied by insincere expressions of shock and horror, as “dropping the f-bomb.” Phillipe and Jorge kindly demur.)
In P+J’s world, this incident, of course, harks back to 1980, when our late, deeply missed old friend Charlie Rocket (nee Claverie, a RISD grad, former Leo’s tarbender, and Channel 12 anchorman), truly shocked SNL viewers by doing the same thing. At the very end of a show that had featured a skit on the hugely popular TV show Dallas, which played off the season’s final episode in which Ewing family patriarch J.R. has been shot by an unknown gunman, the cast was assembled and host (and Dallas star) Charlene Tilton asked Rocket his reaction to being shot. Rocket said, “Oh man, it’s the first time I’ve ever been shot in my life. I’d like to know who the fuck did it.”
Instead of carrying on without blinking, as Wiig did in Slate’s case, hoping perhaps the audience and especially censors hadn’t heard it, the cast erupted in embarrassed and put-on horrified squeals and chortles. This, of course, made it quite obvious Charlie had stepped over that TV Carlin Line, though his uttering the “f” word was far less noticeable than Slate’s.
In the ensuing uproar and clamoring for Charlie’s head by the oh-so-upright defenders of decency and purity — all of whom, of course, were asleep at the time and never saw the incident, he was called in by SNL head ramrod Lorne Michaels two weeks later and given his pink slip, no doubt making the world safe for women and children everywhere.
Once again, however, it took the pride of a Casa Diablo charter member to first journey where no man has gone before. Phillipe and Jorge can only admonish Ms. Stone by saying, “You did a great job. Charlie would be really fucking proud.”
‘Ya, ve vere just following orders’
You have to hand it to those screaming, frothing, wild-eyed right-wing GOP muttonhead activists we are enduring so frightfully these days. They are terrific at following orders. Just like the Nazis in World War II.
We are seeing the Republicans’ choreographed rebellions firsthand here in Little Rhody, with the obviously orchestrated attacks upon our pal, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, because he dared to vote to keep federal funds flowing to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The kerfuffle is because of a bunch of ACORN staffers were punk’d by a pair of right-wing-trained muckrakers for giving outrageous advice to people on how to beat the system and receive funding for things like tax evasion, setting up whorehouses, and smuggling illegal immigrants. Heinous and appalling? You betcha. Reason for firing everyone even remotely involved? No question. Grounds for cutting off all ACORN funding and throwing out the baby with the bathwater? No way. And that’s what the estimable senator voted not to do, leading to a flood of letters to the editor in local papers claiming that Weldon had betrayed them, the Biggest Little, the US of A, God, motherhood, and perhaps life forms in a few galaxies as yet undiscovered by the Hubble space telescope.
