As IF Times

link Jon Stewart, a force in comedy and news, will leave The Daily Show – LA Times.

If this ‘event’ has any traction with real people outside of the liberal echo chamber, I haven’t seen it.  For a while, there was much moaning about how  a generation had lost a credible news voice.  Really? Losing Jon Stewart as news source is the same as losing Mad magazine as a news source.

All credit to this guy for pushing the shtick for as long as he had, but even Stewart knew he couldn’t keep it up any longer.  Widely lauded as being ‘ironic’, satirical and devastatingly witty by the ‘intelligentsia’, many of his diatribes were sophomoric and naïve.  It’s quite possible that his reach affected not only vapid hipsters but also to people having positions of influence.  Just the other day, a State department spokesman, Marie Harf opined that the ISIS terrorists currently creating havoc may best be neutralized not by bombs and bullets but by providing them with adequate career opportunities.  Not making that up, check it out.  Marie Harf  There is an outside chance that Ms. Harf is working to replace Stewart as host of the Daily Show, because her utterances are comic gold.

While we can’t confirm that Ms. Harf’s opinions were formed by watching Stewart, this kind of naivete is reflected many times over by a wide swath of people so isolated from reality that they live in alternate universes which includes, rainbows, unicorns and of course, organic food.  While people are being roasted alive, beheaded, dismembered among all other sorts of unspeakable things, people like Harf think all they need are job opportunities.   No less than the current White House resident thinks that the battle is all about changing hearts and minds.  You can’t make this up.

While all of this mayhem is going on in the world, the guys on MSNBC still feel that Global Warming is the number one crisis facing the world.  Global Warming. We can begin to understand Stewart’s decision to vacate the show because there is so much more fodder for humor by skewering the left.  And it doesn’t have to be made up.

link GoDaddy pulls Super Bowl puppy ad after outrage from animal rescue groups | Fox News.

In the wake of the outrage over the Charlie Hebdo events, life goes on as usual on this side of the ocean.  While everyone’s figurative heads are nodding like bored parents at a school play when it comes to the principle of rights of free expression, the exact same practices of restriction are tolerated or encouraged here.

Outraged Muslims (are there any other kind?) were upset about a caricature of their guy.  Outraged pet nuts (are there any other kind?) are upset about a caricature of pet ownership.  To be fair, there has been no violence or threats thereof directed against Go Daddy, but the resulting nix-ing of the ad is the same kind of censorship that was so objectionable when applied to the events in France.  Je Suis Go Daddy? Seldom is the main course of sanctimony served without the side dish of hypocrisy.  I guess it really depends upon whose ox is being gored.  Relax, that’s just an expression, no ox’s were harmed during this piece.

If we’re going to head down the road of having certain topics being out of bounds for humor, who’s going to be the arbiter? It’s not a huge stretch to see legislation drawn up to categorize the types of humor that are eligible for public consumption.  It’s ridiculous that just anyone should be allowed to make light of anything; maybe it makes sense for people to be licensed to convey humor.  That way, there are boundaries, codes of ethics, penalties etcetera to protect the public from sensitive topics and nobody gets any hurty feelings.

Rational people would say that the Muslim response to any or all slights to their beliefs registers a 37 on a scale of 1 to 10 for overzealousness.  Well the PC guys in this part of the world are rapidly moving up that scale as well as they ‘defend’ their particular cause of the day.  Only they aren’t armed with guns; they use lawyers.

Perhaps the best advice on this kind of stuff is expressed by a dialogue from the 1981 film, Stripes, featuring Bill Murray.  The dialogue is between a Sergeant and a tightly wound young man named Psycho:

Psycho: The name’s Francis Soyer, but everybody calls me Psycho. Any of you guys call me Francis, and I’ll kill you.

Leon: Ooooooh.

Psycho: You just made the list, buddy. And I don’t like nobody touching my stuff. So just keep your meat-hooks off. If I catch any of you guys in my stuff, I’ll kill you. Also, I don’t like nobody touching me. Now, any of you homos touch me, and I’ll kill you.

Sergeant Hulka: Lighten up, Francis.

And that’s the relevant message to everyone.