The world is going to end — two brits agree with each other

Brit 1: Funny, ain’t it?

Brit 2: What is? Trump’s total and utter meltdown? Won’t be as funny as watching him on election night, after he’s made Barry Goldwater look like a winner.

Well, that and the whole shit-storm kicked up by our editor pulling the Readers’ Choice award from some alleged comedian living in Nicholasville, Kentucky. I mean, if he was an alleged comedian from Louisville I’d be more sympathetic. But apart from anything, he appears to be about as funny as turning up in an SS uniform to a bar mitzvah.

I think that for once we’re going to be in total agreement. This piss-flap, whatever his name is, has got his knickers in a right twist over it, to say nothing of his legion of pathetic fans. I mean, come on, no matter how much we love LEO, it’s a free, weekly publication in a city hardly any of them have been to. And somehow we’re the pansies? You’d think he’d won a Nobel Prize. I haven’t seen a bigger bunch of bed-wetters since the RNC.

Although, personally, I think that anything can and should be laughed at.

Agreed.

But it has to be, you know … funny. If you make a joke about an ethnic minority, it has to be laugh-out-loud funny, otherwise you’re just being a racist prick. It’s a fine line, granted, but like that humour-defying, dead-horse exercise in satire, “Saturday Night Live,” he commits the cardinal sin of satire — to wit, he’s not funny. And as I said, if it’s not funny, it’s just egging on the most deplorable elements of society.

I haven’t watched any of his videos, and I’m unaware whether he ever does stand-up. I know plenty of funny people — and, before you ask, no, you’re not one of them — and none will readily admit to sharing a stage with him. The bare minimum for any local comic award ought to be getting on stage locally. On that basis alone the award shouldn’t have gone to him, no matter how many people voted for him.

LEO also has to decide where it stands on issues. If it stands with Black Lives Matter, then it doesn’t hand out awards to people whose sole contribution to race relations appears to be nothing more than fanning the embers of bigotry.

But just to play devil’s advocate for a moment, don’t we also have a “Best Strip Club” category? I’m not defending any of his fans — LEO’s staff has more balls than all of them put together — but isn’t it slightly disingenuous to claim to be defending women while, at the same time, handing out awards to strip clubs?

I’ve seen that argument several times, and I’m not buying it. It might be a long time since I’ve been in one, but they don’t encourage sexual assault. Neither do they defend it. Tell you what, go to a strip club and try to pull a Donald Trump. Fisticuffs at dawn with a strip-club bouncer is not my idea of a good night out, especially after I’ve had a few, and the bouncer is stone-cold sober. So while it’s perhaps an uncomfortable juxtaposition, it’s also not the same thing.

Exactly. And as far as being politically correct, I’m all for it. It’s called correct for a reason — it’s the correct thing to do. It means that you don’t get to throw your casual racism or sexism around with impunity. This ponce does exactly that, and condones sexual violence, and then the second he gets called out for it, he throws his toys out the pram. And there has to be some form of editorial control over these things. It’s an unscientific online poll, and as we know those things can be very easily manipulated. Good job, LEO.

Speaking of good job — got to give a shout out to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Journalism, too. What a great story about the UofL Foundation buying that dilapidated factory in Oklahoma. As bent as a three-bob note.

True. The radio version on 89.3 WFPL was even better, because you could literally hear everyone involved panic and squirm. Bang to rights. How anyone could read that story and not come to the obvious conclusion is beyond the limit of my understanding. Everyone involved — including that wretched spokesman — should be looking for a new job.

This feels weird now. Two agreements in succession. People will think we’ve gone soft. But hats off to Kate Howard for doing a great job and a public service, and to Ed Hart, among others, for supporting great journalism. I’ll gladly keep on going to Kentucky Kingdom.

Investigative journalism is a dying art form; newspapers either don’t have a pot to piss in, or they have zero interest in anything beyond covering amateur sports, paid-for obits and gossip. Our once-esteemed local paper being Exhibit A, obviously.

A little harsh. Lots of good, honest, hardworking hacks there. But when amateur basketball practice makes the front page, you have to ask yourself if they’re trying to be funny too.

This article appears in October 19, 2016.