Salon Headline of the Day

The simultaneously funniest and saddest thing about Patton Oswalt's #SalonArticles trending topic game over the weekend, which sought to create the most ridiculous liberal outrage porn headline in the name of skewering Salon, is that in the end Salon will always show up everybody. That's the joke: Nobody can parody Salon better than Salon can parody itself.

Salon, I salute you.

Quote of the Day

Patton Oswalt: A Salon I Used To Know/7.15.13

Incensed of Humor

Yesterday's column over at the Daily Banter took a look at a piece in Salon from last week that targeted Patton Oswalt. The problem, according to the author, is that Patton hasn't used his considerable forum and eloquent voice to speak out against the very serious problem of rape and "rape culture."

Here's an excerpt, and you may recognize some of it from a quickie post here on Saturday:

"Patton Oswalt didn’t do a damn thing wrong. He’s a comic. He believes in being funny. He believes in doing whatever’s necessary to ensure that he and other comics like him — male and female — continue to have the freedom to take chances when it comes to being funny, because humor is so subjective and, one more time, no one has the right to tell somebody else — or to dictate as the voice of an entire culture and for the alleged benefit of society as a whole — what is or isn’t funny, what can and can’t be poked fun at as long as there’s no genuine malice intended. Patton’s history as a comic is one of brilliance, insight, and, yes, a lack of malice toward anyone; what Molly Knefel did to him was cheap and unfair and the only person it should make look bad is her. Maybe her intentions were pure, but as she so piously lectures Patton on, intentions mean shit."

Read the Rest Here

Since being posted yesterday morning, the piece I wrote has picked up quite a bit of steam, mostly due to Patton Oswalt thanking me for it via Twitter. That of course brought out a lot of very angry women and men who took me to task for what they believe is my insulting and condescending tone and, well, my "just not getting it." Once something takes off, you tend to go back and reread it and try to see it through someone else's eyes, particularly the eyes of those having a problem with it. I did that. And I stand by what I wrote and the overall point I was trying to make.

That said, there is something in the column that I want to apologize for. While I may think that what comedian and writer Molly Knefel said was wrong in the sense that she was blaming Patton Oswalt for something he didn't do and was under no obligation to do -- and I'm sorry, but the "if you're not part of the solution" argument is just ridiculous since you could make that claim pertain to anything -- it was wrong of me to refer to her as a "small-time" and "quasi-professional" comic. It truly did sound petty, condescending and insulting and that wasn't my conscious intention. I don't think Molly's heart was in the wrong place and I believe she was trying to be respectful to Patton even if her overall goal of dragging him into a fight that she personally deemed should be his was more than a little questionable. I'm sorry if I personally belittled Molly Knefel; I shouldn't have.

Again, it's a damn shame that I have to say this since it shouldn't need to be said, but I'm pro-women and stand against rape unequivocally -- no hedging, no excuses, no "legitimate or illegitimate," none of it. Rape is a despicable wrong, full stop. There are rotten men working in our government right now trying to either chip away at women's rights or swing a wrecking ball at them, and I suppose that's why, in my view anyway, there are far bigger and more important battles to fight on the subject of women's sexual sovereignty and authority than raising hell over a bad joke made by a comedian or, certainly, the lack of a soapbox stand by a comic who's proven time and time again that he's a good guy and someone who espouses liberal politics in the best possible sense of the term. No, by saying this I'm not telling you what you can and can't get angry over or be offended by; I'm offering up an opinion, the same way you are, which has as much value -- or lack thereof -- as all those other opinions that people are free to shout into the ether.

The issue I've always had when it comes to call-out culture and the outrage "machine" that ramps up whenever someone finds himself or herself offended by something these days has been well-documented: Thanks to social media, indignation can now snowball until it becomes an avalanche, the resulting cacophony vastly disproportional to the original offense. Our furious quest for satisfaction can sometimes have unintended consequences and can take a toll far greater than any sane person should be hoping for. That's the danger of reacting to everything with the same level of outrage. And the way that a column that may have been written with good intentions and meant merely to start a conversation can spiral downward into a guy who didn't hurt anybody being accused of making jokes he never made and generally suppressing women through, at best, silence which a select group interprets as a tacit admission of guilt and, at worst, public displays of misogyny.

The overall fight may be a noble and necessary one, but Patton Oswalt was the wrong person to pick it with.

In-Flight Entertainment

If you haven't seen this yet, it's the funniest thing you'll read all day. I've been following along for the past couple of hours, but HuffPo of course wasted no time collating the Twitter back-and-forth going on between Patton Oswalt and Marc Maron. The two unexpectedly found themselves on the same flight earlier this morning and it's been non-stop comic brilliance ever since.

The Huffington Post: Patton Oswalt and Marc Maron Tweet from the Same Flight and It's Hilarious/5.22.12

Quote of the Day

"I think that at this point the Republican presidential race legitimately qualifies as a prank."

-- Andy Borowitz, last night in Beverly Hills

I don't need to tell you how undeniably brilliant Borowitz is, and last night I was fortunate enough to see him and the equally brilliant Patton Oswalt in a pretty intimate sit-down at the Saban Theater, as part of the L.A. Writer's Bloc program. Basically it was nothing more than a conversation between these two comic minds, which the audience was allowed to be a part of.

So, yeah -- two of the funniest people in America just shooting the shit and riffing off of each other. I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time.

Comedy Clubbed

Although comics can occasionally be as petty and vindictive as anyone else in show business -- their venom made more potent by the ability to express it through acerbic humor -- most generally shy away from publicly beating up on each other (to say nothing of beating up on comedic talk show hosts who can occasionally help make or break their careers). This is understandable, but it's kind of a cop-out -- which is what makes this clip of Patton Oswalt on Comedy Death Ray Radio so startling. He makes it perfectly clear whose side he's on in the Conan-Leno battle, comparing Jay Leno to Richard Nixon in terms of his at-all-costs drive for self-preservation.

But Patton's main issue with Jay Leno is an obvious one for any comic worth his salt -- and it's the same issue I always bring up when I talk with people about Leno: The fact is that Jay Leno used to be one of the funniest stand-ups around; the guy was hilarious. But as Patton so perfectly points out, somewhere along the line Leno "willfully threw that switch off and went, 'No more for you guys. Now this.'"

I get that Leno -- even though he's a comedian who continues to bust his ass both on TV and in the clubs -- probably considers the toning down of his material to have been a necessary and worthwhile trade-off given the kind of lifestyle his Tonight Show shtick afforded him. But it really is sad when you think about how unbelievably funny this guy used to let himself be -- not so much cutting edge or more willing to offend, just genuinely funny -- versus how tedious and bland his TV humor has become.

It's a really terrific clip: a fascinating little window into the mind of a truly gifted comedic talent -- a look at the way guys like that think about their craft -- as well as a vigorous overall argument for why Conan should stay put and Leno shouldn't.

Interlude