96 thoughts on “Getting the Last Laugh”

  1. Dodo just emulating his master? Rick Stengel reminded Nicole Wallace yesterday of what happened in Russia some years ago. Here’s a clipping from 2016:

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/08/08/no-laughing-matter-a54892

    No Laughing Matter: Comedy and Censorship in Putin’s Russia
    In today’s Russia, there are limits to what you can and can’t joke about.
    By Ola Cichowlas
    Aug. 8, 2016
    An angel and two demons live inside President Vladimir Putin’s brain. Every day, they decide how to rule Russia. The angel, being outnumbered, always loses, and the demons are left to do as they please.

    Such is the repeating motif of “God, How Embarrassing,” a pilot animation series that never, in the end, reached Russia’s television screens. The show proved too provocative even for Dozhd, Russia’s only independent television channel.

    “They told us it was a step too far,” says the series’ author, Belarussian sketch writer Sasha Filippenko. Having previously worked in state television, Filippenko was excited by the prospect of doing comedy without being censored. But, as he soon found out, in Putin’s Russia, there are always limits on what you can and can’t write about.

    Political satire comes under particular scrutiny in Russia. In the 16 years of Putin’s rule, many Russian comedy shows have suddenly been axed; others have been subject to restrictions. Perhaps the first prominent victim of the new rules was the “Kukly” puppet satire show, which featured an unflattering puppet of the president, and was pulled early in Putin’s reign.

    At the same time, Filippenko says Russia still offers more breathing space than back home. “At least you can still make political jokes on television in Russia,” he says. “In Belarus it only happens online.”

    Changing Rules

    Slowly but surely, Russia seems to be heading that way too. During Putin’s time in the Kremlin, the very nature of jokes have changed. At the beginning of the Putin era, Russian comedians were relatively free to joke about anything. When he first came to power in 2000, Russians loved to laugh about their president’s KGB past. “There used to be loads of jokes about Putin and the way he carries himself,” says Alexandra Arkhipova, a folklore historian specializing in Russian humor.

    She cites one: “A hungry Vladimir Putin woke up at night and made his way to the fridge. Inside, there was a portion of meat jelly. “Stop trembling,” he said. “I’m coming for the yogurt.”

    When Putin began to fight the oligarchs in the mid-2000s, sketch artists began to present him as a cynical and power-hungry leader. The longer he stayed in the Kremlin, the more Russian comedians recycled old Stalin jokes. But today, Arkhipova says, Putin is almost never the butt of a joke.

    Instead, the overwhelming majority of political jokes in Russia today are about the people who surround Putin — never the president himself.

    “Russians laugh at the elites but not directly at Putin,” says Arkhipova. The Russian president himself is never seriously exposed for any gaffes he might make, whereas the same protection is not afforded to ministers.

    Most recently, those opportunities came from Russia’s former Children’s Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Astakhov, who has since stepped down, had asked children who survived the sinking of a boat in northern Russia in which 14 people drowned, “How was your swim?” The Russian Internet immediately reacted to the untactful question. “How was your dinner?” said one meme that depicted a photograph of Holocaust survivors.

    But the gaffe of the year went to Medvedev, who told angry Crimean pensioners “There’s no money but you hang in there.” It kept Russia laughing (and crying) for weeks. On average, Arkhipova says, jokes that follow a political event have a life span of three days; more significant events will keep people laughing for seven to twelve days. “The Medvedev joke lasted over three weeks,” she says.
    [continues]

  2. in case you didn’t read the whole article, here’s an interesting (relevant to what may happen here the way things are going) note from the newspaper at the end of that story:

    A Message from The Moscow Times:

    Dear readers,

    We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has designated The Moscow Times as an “undesirable” organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a “foreign agent.”

    These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work “discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership.” We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate, unbiased reporting on Russia.

    We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help.

    Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It’s quick to set up, and every contribution makes a significant impact.

    By supporting The Moscow Times, you’re defending open, independent journalism in the face of repression. Thank you for standing with us.

  3. also see this published in febuary this year
    https://doxaenglish.substack.com/p/if-this-keeps-up-stand-up-in-russia

    “If This Keeps Up, Stand-Up in Russia Will Disappear Entirely”: How Russian Comedians Struggle With Tightening Censorship Amid War and Repression
    DOXA analyzed over 200 YouTube videos from popular independent stand-up clubs and interviewed comedians still in Russia to understand what subjects remain safe for jokes—and which are off-limits.

  4. fighting back

    1,010,507 views Jul 22, 2025
    Late-night’s biggest stars, including Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart and John Oliver took over the audience of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” Monday to show their support for their fellow host after the stunning announcement that the show will be cancelled. Adam Sandler, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper were also there rallying around him. NBC’s Joe Fryer reports for TODAY.


  5. President Trump is doing everything he can to distract the world from his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, including launching attacks on former president Barack Obama.

  6. more on censoring comedians
    https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2023/12/having-the-last-laugh-the-comedians-who-wont-be-silenced/

    Having the last laugh: The comedians who won’t be silenced
    21 Dec 23
    Magazine | Magazine Editions | Volume 52.04 Winter 2023
    The Winter 2023 issue of Index looks at how comedy is being censored around the world. Comedy has always been a powerful tool of dissent, but many comedians are being threatened, imprisoned or even killed by oppressive regimes wishing to silence them. Laughter is often the best medicine in dark times, and to target comedy is to try to extinguish hope itself. We highlight the extent of the problem in our magazine, with stories from Russia to Uganda to Brazil reminding us that the dangers of censorship can be experienced everywhere. Outside of our special report, Sasha Dovzhk looks at how libraries in Ukraine have played a pivotal part in the war against Russia, and we publish short stories by Alhierd Bacharevic and Xue Yiwei. Elsewhere, Samir El-Youssef highlights Palestinians who have been silenced in Gaza and Israel, Winthrop Rodgers interviews Kurdish journalist Guhdar Zebari about his lengthy imprisonment in Iraq, and Martin Bright speaks to Russian artists facing cancellation.

  9. Kind of off-kilter to fire a guy for excoriating his bosses and the acting President but then give him 10 months to bash ‘em even more .

  13. The House is set to leave early for August recess today.

    Why?

    Speaker Johnson shut down the House until September to block a vote on the release of the Epstein files.

  14. They can run but they can’t hide. Dodo will bluster and bombast but he can’t make it go away. Wherever he goes, Epstein will haunt.

    Ghislaine’s self-serving lies about Dodo’s involvement will be transparently debunked.

  15. Trump Told Park Workers to Report Displays That ‘Disparage’ Americans. Here’s What They Flagged.

    Descriptions and displays at scores of parks and historic sites have been flagged for review in connection with an executive order from President Trump.

    The bulk of the content identified for review in the internal documents addresses the struggle for equality of Black Americans, from slavery to the civil rights movement.

    “Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War,” one Park Service official noted of a plaque at the Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee, the site of one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/climate/trump-national-park-service-history-changes.html

  16. We will still have Bryan Stevenson and the work of Equal Justice Initiative to tell the whole truth. He has transformed Montgomery into a Civil Rights history destination.

    https://eji.org/

  18. The Crazy Horse Memorial will continue to tell the truth about the Native American stories.

    The most well-known portion of the work of the Memorial is certainly the colossal Mountain Carving of Lakota hero Crazy Horse. But the Dream of preservation and celebration has overflowed into endeavors like The Indian Museum of North America® and The Indian University of North America®. People are drawn in by the largest Mountain Carving in Progress, but once they’re here, they’re able to discover the whole story of the Native American People.

    https://crazyhorsememorial.org/

  20. guess what the late show comedy writers are writing about for tonight’s shows
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/22/trump-cbs-settlement-stephen-colbert

    Trump claims new CBS owner will gift him $20m worth of airtime after $16m settlement

    Donald Trump has claimed that the future owner of the US TV network CBS will provide him with $20m worth of advertising and programming – days after the network canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

    The US president recently reached a $16m settlement with Paramount, the parent of CBS News, over what he claimed was misleading editing of a pre-election interview with the Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris.

    While CBS initially called the lawsuit “completely without merit”, a view shared by many legal experts, Paramount is in the midst of an $8bn sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media, which requires the approval of federal regulators.

    In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed the settlement had been paid – and that he was expecting much more from the new owners of Paramount.

    “Paramount/CBS/60 Minutes have today paid $16 Million Dollars in settlement, and we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs [public service announcements], or similar Programming, for a total of over $36 Million Dollars,” he wrote.

    CBS and Skydance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Trump’s claim that he has been offered millions of dollars’ worth of programming is likely to exacerbate anger over the axing of The Late Show, which CBS announced on Thursday.

    Days earlier, Colbert, a high-profile critic of Trump, had branded Paramount’s settlement with Trump “a big fat bribe”. He is due to remain on air until May, and declared on Monday that “the gloves are off”.

    Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison, son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, and an ally of Trump.

    The $16m settlement was already seen by critics as a further example of capitulation by media companies hoping to smooth the waters with the US president. ABC News, ultimately owned by Disney, also agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit over its coverage.

    After Trump’s latest claim regarding $20m worth of advertising and programming from Paramount, the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter: “This reeks of corruption.”

  22. He’s a demented, deteriorating mobster. Those who bend the knee in advance are in cahoots, because others manage to speak/act against his royal edicts.

    Waiting for Rupert to destroy him with this frivolous lawsuit.

  23. “This reeks of corruption.” – Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said…

    And extortion as she also said last night on Lawrence.

  24. Just completed today’s little task that does not involve walking. Testing computers with Linux. I have two desktop computers which are running Win10 and for some mystery reasons, cannot be upgraded to Win11. So I booted them to Linux Mint. One, an older machine, powered right up. The second, had a lot of issues before finally popping up the Mint home page. It was a real pain, but worked with Linux.

    “So” you ask? Windows 10 goes no support in a few months. Windows 11 is supposed to require minimum security hardware and settings. Even though the computers meet the requirements Win11 there is some quirk that gets them rejected. I could go out and spend around two to three thousand and build new machines which would be blessed with Win11. I will wait to do that. Immediately I needed to test my computers with Linux to ensure they at least would boot up. And, that they did.

    From today to Win10 end of life plan is to spend time troubleshooting any issues when I run Linux on the current desktops. Once that is done I can switch those over permanently and run Win10 within Linux. I have been using Unix and Linux longer than Microsoft operating systems so I am not doing anything new to me.

  25. Late-night’s biggest stars, including Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart and John Oliver

    late-night’s most milquetoastiest stars

  27. I saw that AI generated video Trump posted of Obama getting arrested in the oval office, it’s incredibly racist, I am ashamed to be an American with Trump as president

  32. you asked how my guitars play unce upon a time, Mr. S

    …been making them scream, prefer them to an American strat

    the seymour duncan humbucking “single-coil” i put at the bridge on my tele-style is so satisfying

    (shouldn’t have even bothered with the twangy one at neck, not a “twang” person)

  33. Magas are personally gobsmacked by the gold.

    I’ve seen no evidence of that and I think the gold tchotchkes are a liability for Trump- not a big one, but they don’t make him more relatable

    “well you struggle to afford groceries Trump is covering everything in gold”

  34. All that gold, our worst white trash dreams. And that is who he is doing it for. I will bet you his house isn’t that trashy.
    It is all about the performance.
    Everything he does is about the performance. You protesting some silly bit of performance art and you just become part of his show.

    Jack

  35. I’m no longer retired; I have a side job. My neighbor moved and he needed somebody to mow his yard. I told him pay me what ever he thought it was worth. He handed me a big wad of cash and said I’ll see you next month with more.
    I think I may have been overpaid.

    Jack

  36. eh he wants a Putin style palace, he’s doing the HGTV version

    It’s his attempt to say he owns the White House. It’s his. It’s not yours. It’s his he owns it. This is all his.

    New flags because it’s his. Ripped out the rose garden because it’s his. It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to him

    he might not be wrong, your great grandchildren might be worshiping King Barron

    That’s what the sweet adorable trumpers in our lives did because they don’t like people of color and gay people, thanks a lot, Trumpers!

  38. Yeah, the Russian Tsars were always the white trash of European nobility.
    Just Trump’s style
    Jack

  40. I was going to add they’ve personally told me how gobsmacked and dazzled they are by the gold, but that is a small sampling, so maybe negligible.

  42. King Barron

    That was Melania’s dream when she arranged the gender-selective artificial insemination.

  43. they’ve personally told me how gobsmacked and dazzled they are by the gold

    lol i’m sorry (for your relatives)

    ✌️

  44. My mother-in-law of blessed memory looked up to rich people because they were rich. To her, you wouldn’t be rich if you weren’t somehow better and smarter.

  45. lol i’m sorry (for your relatives)

    That is not the worst of it. It also doesn’t affect their frugal habits.

    It saddens us but as Renee said on the livestream last week, we love them and we’re not giving up on them.

  46. i’m listening to Lovett describe that exact phenomenon on “Pod Save”, more synchronicity

  48. Tulsi has figured out a truism of the workplace: if you’re not demonstrably aligned with the boss’s thinking, you will have to get out or be put out.

  51. Anon, SD makes a lot of really nice pickups. LP had a set of Pearly Gates in one of his Ibanez instruments about a decade ago. I think it was his Satriani, but it could’ve been a Paul Gilbert. Regardless, it was shred machine but with those pickups it created great vintage tone through a Bogner amp he had, and absolutely screamed sweetly through his Mesa Mark V.

  56. I think I do better with text.
    I know I prefer to read a book than listen to an audio book.
    Or a good thought out essay than a podcast.

    Jack

  68. This is Chico’s official audition for Trail Mix Live.
    No resume. Just diagrams, voices in his head, and unhinged squirrel intel.

    📺 Full livestream (yes, he’s in it):

  71. If true this would be the best Trump defense for the cause of his break with Epstein, why he is in list, and why he is not a pedophile.

    Reached for comment on the Journal’s new reporting, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told CNBC, “The fact is that The President kicked [Epstein] out of his [Mar-a-Lago] club for being a creep.”

  72. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-told-epstein-files-doj-1235392612/

    The Justice Department told Donald Trump that his name appears in the government’s files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump that his name appears in the files during a meeting at the White House in May.

    She also told him that several other notable figures appeared in the files, and that the files contained what they believed to be, as the Journal puts it, “unverified hearsay” about people who had socialized with Epstein in the past…

    *Last week, SFB said Bondi did NOT tell him he was in the files; that’s when he started with the Obama/Comey line.

  73. Jack, You got me with Tedeschi… they are my favorite live band, and when Warren Haynes guests it’s magic. If you haven’t, you need to listen to Layla Reimagined. Whether you were a D&D fan or not, that album is phenomenal.

    I’m sitting at a harbor bar on the inner Harbor drinking an old fashion listening to Warren Haynes and watching the sun start its trip down to the west coast- coming your way.

  75. We can never let our guard down as long as he’s in there. He can take people out up to the last hour.

  76. Congress is going to depose Maxwell, who stands to get a reprieve from a long sentence, so they should hear from victims, too.

  78. Shit for brains was going to be giving her a pardon or a promise of a pardon before she ever sits her ass in front of a congressman to be questioned. Subpoena or not.

    Jack, Midnight in Harlem. And Anyhow.

  80. I was going to do an unsolved mysteries style silhouette for the yucks Mr. C, the imagining of it was enough for me though, had the yuk to myself

    you know no silhouette can conceal my unique magic anyway

  83. As Palantir Cashes In on Trump 2.0, Peter Thiel Is Bankrolling Republicans Again

    In 2023, Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech titan and investor, issued a proclamation: He would not make political donations in 2024 to any candidate, including Donald Trump, whom he had backed in 2016.

    Now, after sitting out the 2024 election cycle, Thiel is back in the game. He has quietly donated more than $850,000 this year to finance Republican incumbents attempting to retain their party’s control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

    *It won’t matter. Republican policies hurt everyone except folks like Pete Thiel. If there’s a R by their name, they are cooked…and Republicans know it, which why Texas wants to redraw districts, again, and why the DOJ wants to access voter data from 2024, as well as voting machines.

  89. under a more benevolent regime those broadcast frequencies should be public, state-funded efucational, no ads, like the BBC

    imo

  93. Finally getting near a level that will matter…

    His current net approval rating in Alabama sits at 13%, a 9% drop from the net 22% recorded in April. As the American public watches large scale immigration raids, tariffs, and the scandal surrounding billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein and his clients unfold, President Donald Trump appears to be losing favor with several of his longtime supporting states.

    https://www.al.com/politics/2025/07/trumps-approval-ratings-crashing-in-states-that-loved-him-including-alabama.html?

  94. Pogeaux, I have. They’re favorites of mine. I just found their “Mad Dogs & Englishmen Revisited.” Another treat. Oh. Not available until September it seems.

  95. Craig -I hope they do get victims to testify, because you know Maxwell will say anything to get out of jail early. She’ll get out on the last day of Pedo Donny’s term, so it won’t look like he let a sex trafficker out of prison early. It works just like the nasty budget cuts showing up after midterms and some stuff after 2028.

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