As I am a very well-connected person, I was able to secure a statement from the White House Intern who was caught in the power struggle between President Donald Trump and CNN reporter Jim Acosta last week. As you may recall, Trump thought that Acosta was taking too long with his questions and asked the Intern to take the mic away. She tried, but could not complete the task.
**********************************
“It’s embarrassing to me that this distraction has taken the focus off of Antibiotic Awareness Week where it should rightly be placed. Antibiotics save lives, and are one of the great tools that America can use to ensure her security.
Nevertheless, “Micgate” has become a central story in our news cycle, and I realize I need to address it. This is the one statement I will make regarding the incident.
Many of you have been asking how this has been effecting me. Well, it has certainly brought me an awful lot of unwanted attention and a vast number of offers from various porn sites. Obviously, most of them involve microphones, as has been widely speculated, but the rumour that Pornhub offered me $300, 000 to star in a video called, “Enemy of the People,” is true. In spite of a more complex, layered plot, one in which I was to be driving alone on a rural road in Mexico when my car breaks down in the midst of a migrant caravan that’s just been refused entry in the US, I will in no way be connected to this venture, as it is not reflective of my values.
I think the most impactful thing that I have felt in being a part of this spectacle, is experiencing celebrity, of being reduced to a symbol. When most people watched the clip of me trying to get the microphone from Mr. Acosta, they saw a poor, helpless Intern caught between two powerful men. There was the President, commanding me to perform a humiliating and difficult task, while Mr. Acosta made sure that the world saw, vividly and clearly, that I could not not complete this difficult and humiliating task because, of course, he would’t let me!
If it wasn’t so mortifying, it might actually have been funny!
I feel I must also point out the irony of me, a young woman, reaching out for a microphone, as if maybe I had something valuable and worthwhile to say in this temple of performative masculinity. But of course, like so many other women, I was ignored and then mocked.
Many of you have also wanted to know if I was a member of the KKK, a nazi or a racist. I am not, nor have I ever been, even if my local Starbuck’s barista has now taken to writing RACIST SCUM on my coffee cup.
That will be all I have to say on the matter. Thank you for your time.”
]]>As many of you will have heard, I have started a Podcast with Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund.
This is an excerpt from our second episode:
*************************************************************************
Me: Hey! Welcome back to The Breakfast Club with Heidi and Mike!!
Heidi: Heidi hungry! Where Heidi breakfast?
Me: We talked about this. You’re supposed to say, “We’re all bark AND all bite!” after I introduce the show.
Heidi: Heidi no say lame catch-phrase, Heidi never say lame catch-phrase! If Heidi in Breakfast Club, Heidi want breakfast!!
Me: Whatever.
Heidi: ( Growling sounds)
Me: Here’s a liver treat, okay? Now let’s just do this, dammit. Alright! Well, that sure was nice of Madonna to stop by to chat with us on her 60th birthday! She’s quite the woman!
Heidi: Madonna big influence on Heidi. Very big.
Me: What do you mean?
Heidi: Madonna help Heidi discover her feminine power. Help Heidi be sexually liberated.
Me: I have to say, I was really suprised to find out you’ve had more sexual partners that she has.
Heidi: Heidi very cute. Heidi always very cute, but Madonna help Heidi understand power of cuteness and unleash sex beast within. She gave Heidi Big Dick Energy.
Me: How many partners did you say you had?
Heidi: Heidi no say, but Heidi not finished. Heidi still counting.
Me: You have to respect that.
Heidi: Heidi Alpha. Pack always respect Alpha. Madonna understand. Pitiful four-eyed two-legger like you never know feeling of Alpha, never understand.
Me: Well, maybe we should move on.
Heidi: Heidi not saying Vanilla Ice. Not saying not Vanilla Ice.
Me: You had sex with Vanilla Ice???
Heidi: Heidi no say that.
Me: What are you saying?
Heidi: Heidi mysterious. Only see Heidi through glass darkly.
Me: Whatever.
Heidi: You stupid face.
Me: Personally, I thought Madonna was kind of dull and I was really suprised by how weak her handshake was! That’s what struck me the most. It was creepy.
Heidi: You creepy fart head!
Me: Moving on.
Heidi: Creepy fart face!!
Me: Moving on.
Heidi: Creepy fart brain!
Me: Bad dog!! Bad, bad dog!!!
Heidi: Ha! Heidi good dog! Heidi Alpha dog! You bad dog! You very bad dog!
Me: Whatever.
Heidi: You like when Heidi talk to you like this. Heidi know. She see history on laptop.
Me: I was researching Madonna for this interview.
Heidi: Not naked interview.
Me: ( Sigh)
Heidi: You no have Big Dick Energy. You have stinky fart face energy!
Me: ( More sighing, a few seconds pass) So, what’s your favourite Madonna song?
Heidi: Heidi like “Don’t Tell Me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRLHro9EPD0
Me: “Just Like A Prayer,” for me.
Heidi : Should be “Like A Virgin.”
Me: Okay, well it looks like we’ve run out of time, thank you all for tuning in to The Breakfast Club with Heidi and Mike!!
]]>The event first came to my attention back in 2006 when Stephen Colbert delivered a lacerating, satiric monologue to George W. Bush and his dubious assembly. I was astonished and exhilarated by the performance. It struck me as incredibly brave, a truly patriotic display of dissent that deserved all the awards. It was the sort of thing I could imagine being taught in university classes.
Of course, this was during the era of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, and I was already a huge fan of all things Colbert. The emergence of their shows changed the way that I, and a lot of people, digested their news. Network News Hours were no longer the sole, or even primary means of disseminating “the news.” The dull, superficial theatre of traditional networks was giving way to the faster, more entertaining curation of the Comedy Network. News was changing, becoming something like sketch comedy, and each night we got to choose what sort of news we wanted. Colbert and Stewart were the new Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw.
Stewart and Colbert’s were always very persuasive and funny, and it was easy enough to forget that they were in no way balanced or objective, but as Stewart was always at pains to point out, he was performing comedy, not providing a comprehensive analysis of American politics. Nevertheless, it was around this point that we all started to migrate into separate news camps, existing happily amidst our tribe without ever having to intersect with an idea outside of our chosen position.
And now, about a dozen years later, Donald Trump is President.
It’s my theory that the age of Trump has put a kind of freeze on comedy. You simply cannot satirize the man, as everything he does is so far beyond the range of expectation that he completely obliterates the idea of expectation, and without that there can be no satire. I mean, not a single person on the planet would be surprised if one day he removed his human face on TV.
To make matters worse, we’re so polarized in our beliefs that we no longer have a shared understanding of what is true or what should be funny. People aren’t even certain where power lies right now– just that they have enemies, so, so many enemies! And one of the shadows cast by living this way is that comedy has become little more than simply mocking your enemies.
At any rate, this brings me to the White House Correspondents Dinner that just took place, the one that featured Michelle Wolf from the Daily Show taking the piss out of Sarah Huckabee.
I didn’t watch all of it, and only saw snatches of her performance as it repeated throughout my social media feeds. I guess what I really saw was a meme, and my response was instinctive rather than analytic, and in this peripheral reading what I saw was not justice triumphing, but a person in a moment of power hurting someone else. Huckabee didn’t look like she was acting hurt, she looked like she was hurt, and it made me feel badly to see that.
I’m not sure why this is. Huckabee doesn’t align with my politics, so shouldn’t I take pleasure in seeing her receive her just comeuppance in front of the entire world, all dressed up as she was in her finest dress? Well, I don’t know. I have been furious in my life, wounded so deeply that all I wanted to do was verbally destroy a person, and I’ve followed through on that and let me assure you, there is no pleasure to be had in making somebody cry. It felt horrible to see the consequence of my words made manifest in the face of another human being. I don’t know, maybe now that I’m old and mortal, and a father to a young son, I’ve started to value mercy over justice. Maybe I just can’t find anything funny in this absurd mess we’re all in.
I honestly have no idea.
What is clear is that The White House Correspondent’s Dinner is a ridiculous anachronism, a kind of entertainment award’s show, that should just be cancelled. It was obviously designed as an insider event, an acknowledgment that although the media and the political class they covered had to sometime assume adversarial positions, they were still both privileged, with much more in common than not. And for one night they would all admit they were actually in the business of entertainment and just relax, but now they’re not so much on the same team. Now there are many teams, each one feeding on whatever it is that’s bubbled up from our collective unconscious and now lives in the swampland of social media. Its’ a war now, one with too many fronts to count, and humour is hard to find.
]]>
The bland and genial-appearing host of The Today Show was fired by NBC News after they received a detailed complaint about his inappropriate sexual behaviour in the workplace. Perhaps it’s not surprising at all, as women have always known, and men have always presumed, that the entertainment industry is one in which sexually predatory men feed on the ambition of women.
But still, the nearly universal breadth of female experience, as evidenced by the #MeToo movement, and the scope of the charges laid and jobs lost, is staggering. Even though none of us should be surprised by any allegations, or whom they might be directed at, I found myself particularly saddened by the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs:
Doc:
In the home that Snow White shared with six other dwarfs, Doc allegedly summoned her to the bathtub, where he was nude, and pressured her to take off her clothes and, “Help polish the diamond.”
Grumpy:
After making sexual comments over dinner about Snow White, Grumpy allegedly went to her room, pushed her onto the bed and groped her. When she complained to other dwarfs about this, they all said, “Oh, that’s just Gropey!”
Happy:
After Snow White rejected Happy’s sexual advances, he locked the door, exposed himself and began to masturbate into a potted plant while blocking her exit. As he was unlocking the door and leaving, he turned and commented, “Don’t you just love a happy ending?”
Sleepy:
Sleepy asked Snow White if she would sweep the floors naked and when she refused he then requested that she let him rub himself against her. He then threatened her with violence if she said anything about the encounter to the other dwarfs.
Dopey:
Snow White awoke from a nap to discover Dopey, completely nude, ejaculating on the sleeve of her nightgown. When reached for a comment, Dopey admitted that he had, “engaged in conduct that was inconsistent with his core values.”
Sneezy:
After serving lunch to the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White asked if they needed anything else, to which Sneezy replied, “ A blow-job would be nice.”
Bashful:
Bashful repeatedly came up behind Snow White while she was doing the dishes, pressed himself against her, grabbed her breasts and tried to rip her gown off before she would escape to the basement. Bashful made a statement saying, “I did flirt with her, and I remember trying to help Snow White with the dishes as part of what I thought was a consensual seduction ritual that went on and on for many years,” he said. “I am horrified and bewildered to discover that it wasn’t consensual. I didn’t get it. It makes me reassess every relationship I have ever thought was playful and mutual.”
]]>Last year there was a play-off game between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays that was perhaps, one of the weirdest, most entertaining, anarchic ball games in the history of the known universe.
Part ayahuasca trip, the game culminated when Blue Jay superstar Jose Bautista absolutely crushed a three-run homer that for all intents and purposes, ended the game, time and the universe.
It was that epic.
The Rangers were ruined.
You could see the post-traumatic stress disorder forming in their glassy eyes. You could see the days of boozing and aimless driving. You could see that recovery was going to be impossible.
And if that wasn’t enough, Bautista performed a now legendary bat flip that saw him standing motionless at home plate, like a statute of a Greek God, as he watched the ball sail to glory,
before dropping the mic by tossing the bat, as if it was now something repellent to him, about a mile away.
This got under the skin of the broken Rangers, and it stayed there.
Jose Bautista has big, rat-like ears, the physical rectitude of a matador and a self-confidence that radiates from him like some sort of X-Man power. He is arrogant, this man, and although he’s an intelligent and astounding baseball player, he’s still a prick. I mean, he thinks of himself as a corporation and acts accordingly. He knows how great he is, and if for some reason you forget it, his body language will surely remind you, and if that doesn’t, well, he’ll tell you. You get the sense with Bautista, that he really does see the rest of the world as, “The Little People.”
At any rate, this bat flip, this losing in the playoffs to the Jays has stuck in the collective craw of the Rangers for the better part of a year.
Sunday was the last meeting of the two teams this year (barring a playoff match-up) and the Rangers pitcher hit Bautista with a pitch. This was pay back, and although Bautista gave him the slow, threatening stink-eye, he didn’t do anything, until he did do something. This something was a hard, illegal take-out slide of Ranger second baseman Rougned Odor on an ensuing play.
Now this sort of thing has been happening in baseball for a hundred years, but only recently was this kind of slide (in which you try to knock over the second baseman rather than achieve possession of the bag) made illegal. Odor, the second baseman, shoved Bautista in the chest. Bautista, who could buy and sell the little man, moved toward him like a God toward a mortal, and as he was pulling his fingers together to make a fist, Rougned clocked him in the face with a stunning punch that saw Bautista’s $13,000 glasses, helmet and ego go flying.
It was awesome.
Of course, there are all sorts of people who are upset about the savagery of the act, but not me. It was cathartic and shocking, a David and Goliath moment that saw the preening, entitled 30 million dollar a year athlete get what his behaviour actually warranted. It was, for a moment, a kind of justice, a blow for the little man, and it made me happy.
************************************
Rachelle: Is everything okay?
Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: Well, I don’t know why Netflix would be down.
Rachelle: But you’ve already seen Making a Murderer three times.
Rachelle: Yes, your thirst for justice is unusually obsessive.
Rachelle: No, strong. I wrote strong.
Rachelle: Must have been autocorrect.
Rachelle: Well, you’ll just have to be be brave, my love, I’m sure Netflix will be up and running soon and you can return to your Making a Murderer studies.
Rachelle: But tell me, how is Jones doing?!
Rachelle: Oh, he’s such a strong, little boy!
Rachelle: Well, you can’t take your eyes off him, you really can’t.
Rachelle: You should always be looking for his left.
Rachelle: Look, he always hits you with his left first. It’s his plan.
Rachelle: It’s not a dirty plan. He’s just a sweet, playful little boy!
Rachelle: So, just so you remember: The left comes first. And then when you’re dazed and trying to put your glasses back on, he will hit you with the right and then start kicking. Both feet. Every time, Pickle. You have to prepare for it.
Rachelle: I know he thinks it’s funny.
Rachelle: Well, I disagree, sometimes a bleeding nose can be very funny.
Rachelle: I know you get nose bleeds from the blood-thinning medication you’re on.
Rachelle: Sure. It’s not because Jones is stronger than you.
Rachelle: Yes, it is entirely possible you could still take Jones in a fight, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Rachelle: He has muscle definition in his back. Do you?
Rachelle: So, he’s sleeping now then?
Rachelle: And you fed and changed him?
Rachelle: What does he look like sleeping? Does he look like an angel?
Rachelle: I don’t believe you’re in his room.
Rachelle: I think you just made that up.
Rachelle: He’s not talking in his sleep.
Rachelle: Send me a photograph of him sleeping.
Rachelle: Oh, you’re very clever.
Rachelle: I know you got over 130 on an online IQ test.
Rachelle: Pickle, you tell people you meet at parties that. You tell everybody that.
Rachelle: Yes, you are a genius, yet you still can’t drive or hold down a job. It’s fascinating, that.
Rachelle: Yes, the wildly misunderstood genius community is subject to a lot of bullying.
Rachelle: You’d think all those geniuses would be able to band together and cast a spell, but I guess I just don’t understand how genius works.
Rachelle: What?
Rachelle: Jesus.
Rachelle: Look, there is no way that Jones’ Exersaucer is haunted.
Rachelle: Yes.
Rachelle: It is creepy that it plays music of it’s own accord, and only when you’re in the room, but I don’t think it means it’s the Exersaucer of a dead child.
Rachelle: Well, no.
Rachelle: I don’t know the history of the Exersaucer.
Rachelle: Yes, I did buy it used.
Rachelle: Yes, so in theory it could have been sold by a grieving family that lost their child to a possessed and murderous Exersaucer.
Rachelle: I must say, watching Making a Murderer so obsessively really has really made you a better lawyer.
Rachelle: Netflix is back up, isn’t it?
Rachelle: I thought so.
Rachelle: Just don’t watch the horror stuff, okay?
Rachelle: It’s not good for you. Your doctors said so.
Rachelle: No, your doctors do understand genius.
Rachelle: Look, just throw a blanket over the Exersaucer if its scaring you!
Rachelle: Okay.
Rachelle: I will be back in about half an hour. You wanted the low sodium Triscuits, right?
Rachelle: Yes, I got it, LOW SODIUM.
Rachelle: Love you, see you and Jones soon, you’re doing great! xoxo
]]>
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The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom Press Conference, January 12th, 2016
Ammon Bundy: Our intelligence officers have informed us that David Bowie has passed away. After careful study we have confirmed this as true, and not some prepared government disinformation constructed to demoralize my patriots. The news came as an absolute shock to The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, and we feel that we’ve lost a brother in our fight against tyranny.
Ryan Bundy: He was our Diamond Dog, may the Lord hold him in his sweet embrace! Swing low, sweet chariot!
Ammon Bundy: David Bowie was a formative presence in my life. It was difficult for many of us, confused young militia men marginalized by government tyranny, to come to grips with the strange and new feelings we were experiencing while growing up in remote Nevada.
Our constitutional urges were so strong and they felt so true, yet still, the mainstream shunned us for them.
David Bowie…. okay okay, just give me a sec. His passing there, guess it dug deep… Giving me feelings… You know how you put stuff in a closet and you don’t look in there, and then something happens one day and it all just comes spilling out in tears, gunfire and arson? That’s what this is like. I’m just a little emotional here, but let me tell you, if there’s one thing David Bowie taught me, it’s that it’s okay to be different, and I will be different for the Constitution, knowing that it is okay to enforce my interpretation of the Constitution on the nation by any means necessary.
Ryan Bundy: Hallelujah, they named a knife after the shape shifter! Bowie was the man!!
Ammon Bundy: As you might imagine, many of the men are shaken, some so much so that all of their resolve has left them. We lost five men to grief last night. Crippled by sadness, they drove home to their wives and families, and soon will be watching the NFL playoffs and listening to their favourite David Bowie songs. We wish them godspeed. However, the rest of us have rededicated ourselves to the struggle David would want us to fight. David Bowie, apart from being a creative genius, generous spirit, and fashion icon, was first and foremost a patriot, and he would want us to continue in our battle against tyranny.
Ryan Bundy: Anybody who slept with Susan Sarandon and lists Frank O’Hara amongst his favourite poets is okay in my books! He’s my starman in the sky!
Ammon Bundy: And so, until the government– stooge to the bird lobby– cedes to our demands and gives us, The People, all the land they own, we will remain, defending freedom.
We will be heroes.
Ryan Bundy: Please, American patriots, do not forget to send in food and snack donations, keeping in mind some of the warrior’s dietary restrictions, such as nuts and gluten! Nuts and gluten are weapons of tyranny! Just press Donate on the Donate tab on our Facebook page. Long live our Space Oddity and death to tyranny!
You could count me amongst the latter.
The first three words of the eulogy were, “Friends, Romans, Countryman,” and the emotional performance was so rehearsed and needy, so over-wrought with technique, that it completely turned me off. His slight lisp made him enunciate each word with greater force, and the stresses felt unnatural, built for manipulation rather than a natural expression of feeling and sentiment.
It was as if as a child of celebrity, he craved the burning light of fame, and that there was no circumstance, even that of his father’s funeral, in which he would not step into the light of another life. He just seemed to enjoy this day in the spotlight more than was appropriate, you know?
So I was a hater, dismissing him as a “high school drama teacher,” and lumping him in with Ben Mulroney, host of a breezy celebrity news show, whom I saw as another shallow, attention-seeking child of a Prime Minister.
It was easy enough to resent Trudeau his ready-made celebrity. He was good looking, naturally charismatic, had the touch of aristocracy, and people seemed as desperate to make a star of him as he seemed as desperate to become one.
Of course, we are admonished to be kind, for everybody we meet is fighting a hard battle. That Trudeau grew up wealthy and famous is true, but he also grew up in the toxic, corrosive glare of fame. His mother, suffering from mental health issues, was often absent, luridly splashed across papers and viciously mocked,
while his father was doing the nation’s business. It must have been lonely and strange for young Justin, and then he lost his beloved brother, one of the few people on the planet who might understand. Surviving this upbringing intact is actually entirely heroic, a testimony to character rather than a “free ride”.
Throughout the campaign, throughout Trudeau’s life, he was made light of. People challenged his intellect, although it was never exactly clear why, they condescended to him by calling him by his first name and sneered at his hair, as if trying to feminize him, as if they were schoolyard bullies calling him “a girl.” As if that was an insult.
Justin Trudeau took it. He did not get bitter, he did not change or become angry, he remained the same optimistic, essentially happy and earnest person that he had always seemed to be, and he continued.
A few weeks ago during the Munk debate on foreign affairs, something the girlish and daft Trudeau was presumed to know nothing about, somebody was riding Trudeau for one of his father’s policies, again, imperiously, as if lecturing a child. And as this was taking place, Trudeau let his back stiffen just a bit and interrupted him. As if taking a step forward somehow, he asserted that he was proud to be his father’s son, and that he hoped to continue to build on the Canada that his father helped create. He was not furious or panicky. He was simply sure of himself.
And in this moment something changed. All the flimsy, lazy insults were unmasked, all the sniping and juvenile attack ads fell away.
And there, without embellishment, stood a man, a man of some substance who could not be so mocked. Trudeau, once again, for the millionth time, perhaps, was proving he was above and beyond this petty mewling. He was in a different grade than the men attacking him. He was not aligning himself with the Ford Brothers to get votes.
Trudeau was more than we had expected, not less. He has proven himself in ways we can’t even begin to understand, and we should trust in him and his decency, pushing the baser, cynical fabrications aside.
Don’t be scared to vote for Justin Trudeau. He deserves our respect and support, so, so much more than those he is running against. I am proud of him, and I cannot say that about any of the other leaders.
]]>
This was greeted by jeers and laughter from the crowd, and pretty much immediately, John Tory, Ford’s primary opponent, issued a statement accusing him of using “the classic refuge of racists, anti-Semites and homophobes” when he said this.
The next day, Doug tried to clarify his remarks:
“Matter of fact, my wife is Jewish. Her mother is Jewish. And they have to come after me? You got to be joking. My wife was furious last night at John Tory’s statement. It’s disgusting.”
But as it turns out, the Fords are a well—known family of evangelical Christians, including Ford’s wife, Karla.
As I used to drink with Rob Ford back at Carleton University in Ottawa, I am considered a trusted member of the Ford inner circle, and was asked by Doug to come in and consult on the election, offering some advice on the campaign and how best to deal with the sensitive matter of race relations.
These are some of the thoughts that I shared with Doug:
Come out swinging against ISIS!!
Paint your opponents as people who are weak on beheadings, and then in classic Doug Ford mode, intimidation level set to 11, issue a challenge to ISIS to just come and try to behead you. You let them know that if they want a war with Ford Nation, then they can have it! The Jewish community will love you for it! (From this point forward, the War Against Isis will be a primary plank in your election campaign.)
Exposing your neck for the cameras, ask, “Is John Tory willing to put his neck on the line for you?”
Demand to know if John Tory looked at any of the stolen celebrity sex pictures. When he denies that he did, in a mocking voice, ask, “ What? You don’t want to see Jessica Simpson naked, what’s the matter with you?”
You must then imply that you have evidence that he has indeed looked at the photographs, and that he is a sex criminal and a liar. Say it “disgusts” you, as the public loves when you do that, and then challenge John Tory to a boxing match for charity, perhaps to create a fund to keep West Africans who might have Ebola out of Toronto. When he says, no, say, “Geez, you’ve spent so much money on cosmetic surgery that I keep forgetting how very, very old you are. ”
Do not use the expression CHINGLISH when referencing Toronto’s Asian community.
Make note that the Asians are more than just a people who work like dogs, but also have a great love of gambling, and that as a businessman, you applaud both their willingness to take risks and to work hard. Let them know that you would gladly fight by their side against ISIS.
One of the repeating themes I’ve encountered is that people cannot believe that somebody who made them laugh so much could possibly have such a sad and broken interior. There’s an obvious lack of empathy in such a position, in that these people cannot see a life beyond the surface one that they so greedily absorbed. To be a celebrity in our culture is to give up one’s interior, becoming a vessel in which the schizophrenic projections of the public push everything else out. It must get awfully stormy in there, and in the end celebrities exist as sacrifices to our need, the actual person (or self) tossed beautiful and adored into the raging, all-consuming volcano of our culture.
Williams himself said that in America they really do mythologize people when they’re dead, and prophetically, he’s now being mythologized. His death means whatever we need it to mean. For some people, it’s a clarion call to awaken the public to the insidious dangers of depression, to others it’s about the dark weight that many comedians carry with them on stage. Everybody seems to have something very real and personal that they feel in his death, but usually end up cannibalizing Williams in an attempt to find some sort of meaning, and perhaps even redemption, in this small, solitary and very sad act.
However, the one thing that seems universal is that everybody is declaring Robin Williams a genius. Although I am of the right age to have experienced the full sweep of his career, I was never much of a fan. I mean, I don’t have a favourite Robin William moment, and like a lot of people I saw a riot of pathology in his performance rather than genius. His need was so great and his onslaught so relentless, that I found it completely exhausting to watch him. He drained me, and I just wanted to hug him into stillness, letting him know that everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t.
His comedy was based on recognition rather than content. Middle-of-the-road and Baby Boomer friendly, he was an unfiltered convulsion of mimicry and pop culture references. He was elliptical, swinging from one character to the next before you could think about what he was actually saying, apparently being content in simply getting a reflex response from the audience instead of a contemplated one. You laughed because you recognized his characters, not so much because of what they were saying. It was nostalgic, even old-fashioned, and in a weird way I think Williams would have made for a fantastic silent movie star, so exaggerated was his stage personality. Creating the manic illusion of edge, Williams was safe and not very challenging. He had kind and vulnerable eyes, and always seemed to want to please us, for us to feel good about ourselves, and I think we loved him for that rather than his talent.
