"It's as though the turkeys mounted a counterattack. It's almost as if they were...organized."

[kpete]

From the estimable Mr Pierce, re one R. Doouthat:

ISOLATION BOOB
By Charles P. Pierce on October 21, 2014


- I wonder how, in a nation born of Enlightenment values, dedicated to reason in all things, in the country that sent men to the moon, conquered polio, and invented the Internet and Tang, the citizens could have been induced to abandon science and retreat into primal superstition, how they all could have climbed so deeply in what was thought to be a vestigial national lizard brain. It's almost as though there were a political movement that came along that found that it could deploy fear and superstition, and bogus economics, to gain political advantage. It's almost as though there were a political movement that sanctified the notion in the public mind that the government, the ultimate product of the ongoing creative experiment of self-government, was the problem. It's almost as though there were a major political party, in a country that only allows itself two, that gave itself over to this political movement and proposed and enacted policies that recreated the old class divides while sowing distrust of empirical solutions and of expertise in every area from climate science to the making of war. It's almost as though there was a class of ambitious journalists who saw promoting this movement as the golden stairs to fame and riches, and is now looking over the rubble of what that movement caused and blaming it on a natural disaster, or the intervention of the brain from planet Arous. --

To quote, not George Eliot, but Les Nessman, five-time winner of the Buckeye Newshawk Award: "It's as though the turkeys mounted a counterattack. It's almost as if they were...organized."

It gets pretty strange after that.

the rest:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Moral_Hazard_Returns_With_A_Tale

[LondonReign2]

1. Best. WKRP. Ever

[In_The_Wind]

2. +1 !!!

[kpete]

3. yep

[pinboy3niner]

4. Oh, the humanity!

[hifiguy]

12. "The turkeys are hitting the ground

like bags of wet cement!!!"

[sarge43]

14. "Film at eleven"

Booger.

[bullwinkle428]

8. K&R on the basis of the WKRP turkey reference alone!

[KansDem]

15. A classic!!

[Scuba]

5. "Almost if"

[Sinistrous]

6. Excellent !

[hifiguy]

7. Pierce nails it yet again.

If the man played baseball he would bat .995.

Wish I could rec it a second time for the Les Nessman reference. One of the two or three funniest moments in the history of teevee, right up there with Ed Ames and the tomahawk on the Carson show:

ETA - money quote in the comments section: "That Les Nessman, were he made real, would instantly become one of the more credible journalists in the world tells us everything we need to know about everything."

[calimary]

29. Oh YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn - I remember this. Don't remember whether I saw it the first time it actually happened, but they replayed it on every anniversary show. It was a must-rerun. And it was ALWAYS funny. Never wore out!

It really IS one of the two or three funniest moments in the history of television, hifiguy! Hands down! Nothing else comes close - except maybe John Oliver's Supreme Court of Dogs...

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/john-oliver-supreme-court-dogs

[hifiguy]

31. I read somewhere, many years ago, that it was the longest sustained laugh

in the history of network television. And it will be just as funny a thousand years from now.

[calimary]

32. Yeah, come to think of it, I think I read that, too.

It was a LANDMARK moment in comedy. I swear - that clip ran in EVERY anniversary show. People looked forward to it and evidently they wrote in about it, too. It was always one of those "back by popular demand..." things. No anniversary show was complete without it. That, and clips like when Dean Martin and George Gobel and, I think, Bob Hope. The one where, every time Gobel leaned in at Carson's desk (cuz he was in the chair next to the desk, where every big name or the newest guest always sits. Everybody else moves down onto the couch with Ed McMahon), while holding his coffee cup or drink cup I think it was, Dean Martin would ash his cigar into it. Because Gobel would have looked away - leaning in the opposite direction toward Johnny Carson there behind the desk, instead. Always got big laughs, year after year. I think that might have been the clip in which Gobel drops the random one-liner "did you ever feel like the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?"

When I was a kid, I looked forward to those anniversary shows. I couldn't wait to see the Ed Ames clip again - 'cuz that's the only time they'd play it.

Ahh... good times.


Oh yeah - on edit, congrats, sweet kpete, for posting past the 44K mark! Impressive! We need sharp eyes like yours - and a whole lot of 'em!

[hifiguy]

33. I saw the Gobel/Martin/Hope exchange as well

on a pre-SNL Saturday night Carson rerun. Absolutely hysterical - I almost laughed myself sick watching it as a teenager. IIRC Carol Wayne - the busty blonde "Matinee Lady" from the Tea Time Movie skits was on that show as well. Martin was as drunk as a boiled owl that night and Hope had clearly had a few belts. When Carol, who had a breathy, squeaky little voice, spoke up from the end of the couch, Dean Martin turned around and asked "Who turned on the cartoons?" and the audience fell out of their seats.

And then there was the time Carson pushed Don Rickles into the seal pond that was on stage for some animal segment. Rickles came out going great guns after Carson said he "was out walking his rat" in the monologue and Johnny gave him the what for. Rickles cracked up completely while on his ass in the pool.

I loved and grew up with Johnny and stopped watching late night talk shows when he retired. He was irreplaceable. Those anniversary shows were great, great stuff.

[calimary]

34. Dang! I remember those, too!

Last edited Tue Oct 21, 2014, 09:46 PM - Edit history (1)

They were start-laughing-til-you-start-snorting funny! I always enjoyed the monologue, too. Remember how that came to be taken more and more seriously because every night, because it was kind of a whimsical wrap-up of the day's events? When one was mentioned in Johnny Carson's monologue, one could safely assume one was now on the national radar screen, pop culture or otherwise. And one nod from him would launch a comedian into the stratosphere. He was THE man in those days. If you made enough of an impression in your debut appearance that he would invite you over to sit down with him, you were MADE. When I worked at NBC Burbank, he was spoken of almost with hushed tones. "Mr. Carson." Who was widely-recognized all over the compound as singlehandedly generating 25% of the network's entire year's revenue. His "Tonight" show - alone - propped up the whole damn network! He had a prime parking space by the ramp and steps heading directly into the building where the "Tonight" show soundstage was located. There was a sign in front of it that had a big black star on it. And when his Delorean was parked there, EVERYONE steered clear of it. Nobody ever stopped and ogled. And certainly NO ONE dared to touch it.

[belzabubba333]

9. wkrp - one of the best shows EVA!

[pinboy3niner]

10. Alerted

I'm calling the Phone Cops!

[belzabubba333]

19. oh yeah ma bell's phone police

i worked for ma bell still do in a way

[calimary]

30. Welcome to DU, belzabubba333!

Glad you're here! I'm old enough to remember Ed Ames, whose clip from his appearance on Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show that you see in this thread too. Despite his career as an actor (on TV's "Daniel Boone&quot or popular singer (he had a hit or two back in the day), he will ALWAYS be remembered for THIS.

WKRP was a great one, too. For those of us in rock radio, it really rang a bell. God bless Les Nessman! AND the Band-aid that was always on his face, too!

[justice1]

11. If only there was one station willing to pay the royalties so the original shows can be seen again.

[Hekate]

18. A few years ago I found WKRP online & had a glorious binge. I had somehow missed the Turkey Show...

...when it originally aired, so that was the one I watched first of all. It is absolutely as good as people remember.

As God is my witness....

[belzabubba333]

20. hulu plus has them i ve been watching them

[kmlisle]

13. Turkeys are closely related to Velociraptor who hunted in organized packs

[JDPriestly]

23. I love this movie:

My Life As A Turkey

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/my-life-as-a-turkey/full-episode/7378/

[kmlisle]

36. will have to check it out

We see flocks of wild turkeys here in N Florida out in the pastures and you can definitely see their dinosaur past.

[niyad]

16. k and r

[malthaussen]

17. The country that "invented the Internet and Tang."

I love a man who knows how to use bathos.

-- Mal

[JDPriestly]

21. Brilliant!

Meanwhile math and science teachers eat beans and cabbage while hedge fund managers dine on caviar and drink champagne every day.

[greatlaurel]

22. Saw WKRP when it aired the very first time. We laughed so hard it hurt.

Tim Reid was wonderful on WKRP and the incredible show Frank's Place. Unfortunately, Frank's Place is not even available on DVD, which is an absolute disgrace. Tinfoil hat time, I think that show was just too effective in describing the vibrant minority communities in New Orleans and was censored. It makes no sense why it is not available on DVD, otherwise.

This column by Mr. Pierce is scathing. It will make a lot of people mad at him if they are smart enough to understand it.

[hifiguy]

24. Charlie welcomes their hatred, as did FDR.

His characterization of MoDo as a chandelier-swinging drunken loony is a thing of joy and beauty to behold.

[kpete]

25. You are SO right!

http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/000499/

[greatlaurel]

27. Indeed, Charlie is in good company in who the elites hate. Loved all the imagery.

I heard Jill Abramsom interviewed on the radio, today. She is another who it is shocking that she was ever put in charge of the Times. What a shockingly self important ninny. Where did she acquire that ridiculous accent? I know next to nothing about her, but she, like MoDo, Douthat and Chuck can barely string together enough words to make a coherent sentence. Wow. If that is the state of our media, we are in big trouble.

No wonder the main stream media is so opposed to the new technology of citizen reporting. Every person with a camera phone will be the only way to document the corruption of the elites and their stooges. Citizens with cell phone cameras are the really our only hope for the future.

It is FDR's fault we are in the pickle we are in now. He saved the rich back in the 1930's. If it had not been for him, there would have been far more drastic steps taken to rid of us of the ungrateful parasite class. (That is only partly snark) My dad repeatedly stated that if it had not been for FDR, there would have been a civil war and he was a staunch Republican.

[MisterP]

26. a lot of this new situation in science is from the MIC's 90s "rightsizing" with the Cold War over

doctrinally all our wars would require plenty of shells, bullets, counterinsurgency bombers (the ISIS war is bringing back the A-10 Warthog), and choppers rather than big-ticket items like supercolliders (the Russians weren't making one), long-range bombers (B-1 and -2), Mach 3 recon planes (SR-71 Blackbird), and of course ICBMs (Throw-Weight for Peace?)

heck, Reagan had been a bigger booster (heh) of space travel than JFK, LBJ, and Nixon combined (especially moneywise, and especially when it came to not needing results for the money): Big Business is one of the key pillars of his new GOP, but among its techno-utopian core the Space-Cadet sector were phased out late 80s by the George Gilder IT types (who knew the Three Californias Trilogy was a memoir?); Big Science was demoted from junior partner in the GOP to afterthought (I mean, high explosive has to come from somewhere) and Big Business let go its more technocratic workers and advocates

making the case for CDC funding on NASAtalgia, inferior OJ substitutes, hilariously outdated and unsupported popsci-transmitted neuroarchitectural hypotheses, and the extremely bizarre statement that "we were founded as a science-nation" isn't just not going to work, it badly distorts science from stem to stern (and I say this as someone who ran hogwild during JPL's open house, almost fell off the Palomar Observatory, and is way for space exploration)

[Major Hogwash]

28. I was a huge WKRP fan.

It was KRAP radio, to be sure, but it was good KRAP.

[NaturalHigh]

35. That was my mom's favorite episode.