Smoove B and Michelle Obama
Saturday January 31, 2009
Categories: Barack Obama
I love Smoove B Love Man, and am pleased to see that he's developed political consciousness. Here's an excerpt from Smoove's Political Goals for 2009: Smoove is not a political man. However, during the most recent election, something changed for...
Filed Under: Michelle Obama, Smoove B
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Advertisement
Advertisement
Search This Blog
Recent Posts
About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
Subscribe
Archives
Blogs Worth Reading
- Front Porch Republic
- The American Conservative
- Patrick Deneen
- Conventional Folly
- The American Scene
- First Things
- Andrew Sullivan
- The Plank
- Eunomia
- Get Religion
- Postmodern Conservative
- Alex Massie
- The Corner
- Contentions
- Sharon Astyk
- Barry Ritholtz
- The Oil Drum
- Mere Comments
- First Principles (ISI)
- Brian Kaller
Top Features
- Inspiration and Hope from The Dolphin
- Let It Shine: Inspiring Quotes About Light
- 10 Tips for a Fearless Life
- All You Ever Wanted
- 7 Ways to Discover Joy
- Allow Good Things Into Your Life
- Seven Patron Saints for Healing and Comfort
- Love Is a Many Splendored Thing
- 'Expect God's Favor': Interview with Joel Osteen
- Spider Raid
- 10 Tips for Inner Confidence
- 7 Ways to Discover Joy
- Seven Patron Saints for Healing and Comfort
- 10 Law of Attraction Lessons in Film
- 10 Tips for a Fearless Life
- Let It Shine: Inspiring Quotes About Light
- Inspiration and Hope from The Dolphin
- A Reason to Celebrate
- Famous Scientology Couples
- Love Is a Many Splendored Thing
You might, then, get a kick out of this:
http://slog.thestranger.com/files/2008/06/obamaclicklarger.jpg
I think this is disgusting and disrespectful, and so is Richard Barrett's. Yay, Christian manhood, chivalry, etc. etc. . . . not. Scourge sl*ts and lesbians with one hand, finger and chortle over smutty innuendoes with the other. You guys make your religion look really cheap.
I'm dying laughing here. Sig, I don't know how to explain this to you, but ... Smoove B Love Man is a parody of a R&B smooth talker. He's been a mainstay on The Onion's site for years. You're really, really, really not getting the joke, which is to mock a certain style of machismo. Your sniffy reaction reminds me of the old wisecrack:
Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny!
Glad to see I'm not the only one who gets a kick out of Smoove B and The Onion in general. This time the Love Man really outdid himself haha.
If Rod had posted this and denounced it, you'd have laid into him for being a prude, sigaliris.
Yeah, well, continue to crack yourself up, Rod. Of course I know who Smoove B is, duh. I think in this case, you are the one who's not getting the point. In my opinion, Smoove "mocks" machismo in much the same way that minstrel shows "mocked" racism. That is, not so much. The joke is more at the expense of its object, Michelle Obama in this case, than it is on Smoove. It's interesting that you, who have such a delicate sense of propriety in other matters, fail to see how crass this is. Plug in your own wife's name, or your daughter's, and see if you still feel ultra-chuckly about this. The Onion is often hilarious, but Smoove is not one of my favorite bits.
As for Richard's link, it's wretched--on a par with the Obama Waffles debacle. If y'all are trying to make yourselves look bad, you're doing a heck of a job.
You don't laugh much, do you, sigaliris?
Ah, yes, because both The Onion and The Stranger are home to such right wing, macho, patriarchal people...
Oh well.
Who were the "ancient seduction monks" and what tradition did they come from?
Insane K, the Ancient Seduction Monks are Lutherans -- not Martin Luther, but Luther Vandross! Heh.
For the humorless feminists and excessively literal-minded among us, Smoove B is a satire on a certain kind of man. Smoove, who doesn't exist, is a fool who thinks he's a master of seduction, but who is in fact a cheesy peacock. The humor is found in the difference between the stud he thinks he is, and the boob he actually is.
Ah, I see my comment is gone too now. Probably for the best.
However, it doesn't change the fact that it took only 10 comments for someone to suggest an obscene act for anyone who didn't get a particular class of joke.
Ruth, I took your two comments down not because I didn't think you had a decent point to make (though not one I necessarily agreed with; I took the original post down because of crudeness), but because I generally don't think it's a good idea to have people criticize another commentator, esp by name, after I've taken down the original post. Just so you know.
Well, then Rod, to state it in the abstract, because my point is not actually dependent on the identity of the commenter (indeed, quite the reverse):
It is a common phenomenon in threads that discuss this kind of joke that anyone who doesn't find it funny falls into the stereotype of the humorless feminist. It's also fairly common that another commenter will then make a cruder joke, usually sexual, violent or both.
In this case, within the first 10 comments of this thread, someone revised Rod's joke of 12:57am to suggest that humorless feminists should perform an obscene act on him.
This is not a coincidence. This is actually a consistent pattern, unlike, say, an uptick in violence after the publication of Eightmaps. I'm interested in how a community that spends so much energy on such a tenuous connection can be unbothered about this one.
If these sorts of jokes did not fairly consistently lead down this particular dark and unpleasant path, I know I'd be more inclined to relax and find the humor. Unfortunately, reading it, I'm tensed up for what, from my previous experience, I know comes next. Being told that I'm therefore a humorless feminist and deserve it is like being punched "twice for flinching".
Well, gosh, I'm sorry I apparently missed what must have been a very amusing and witty comment . . . .
You know, on my planet, when someone doesn't laugh at your joke, the usual response is a shrug and an "oh well." If they explain that they didn't laugh because they found the joke offensive, chances are I'd say "I'm so sorry to have offended you! I really didn't mean it that way. Please accept my apologies." Even if one thinks the other person may be too sensitive, true courtesy requires going more than halfway to make the other person comfortable. A response--which I can only extrapolate from Rod's removal of the post--on the level of "**** my ****, you ****" would be curious, to say the least.
Which is why I think Ruth has it exactly right. When "humor" is backed up with threats and taunts, it was never really meant to be funny in the first place.
Ruth
February 1, 2009 10:33 AM
If these sorts of jokes did not fairly consistently lead down this particular dark and unpleasant path, I know I'd be more inclined to relax and find the humor. Unfortunately, reading it, I'm tensed up for what, from my previous experience, I know comes next.
Although I found the Onion piece humorous in the same way I find the SNL Christopher Walken skits "The Continental" funny, I have to admit that Ruth is correct.
"Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny!"
That's not what your mothyr said!
For the record I agree with sigalirus on matters of gender and sex about as often as Smoove B actually scores, which given that he is a fictional character is pretty much never. So know that this is not some humorless feminist scold speaking here: this is not funny.
Perhaps it is difficult for a man to understand why, but any half-way attractive woman who has come of age in the last 30 years knows what it is like to be treated like this by some creep who thinks he's being funny and/or flattering you. It's extremely uncomfortable to say the least. In many circumstance when you are in a vulnerable position w/a man who has just shown by his words that he has no judgment, a filthy mind and is completely clueless about appropriate boundaries, it can be downright frightening.
When I was in college, I developed such a stand-offish persona to protect myself from dealing with creeps who sound startlingly like Smoove B that most of the guys decided that I must be a lesbian. Which was just fine with me. Sure, many of them would claim that they were just joking around, but why would I be amused by a man approaching me all but saying "I'll offer you the priviledge of having sex with me"? And of course, my lack of amusement pegged me as a snob (how dare she expect to be approach like a human being and not like a walking vagina? I mean, walking vaginas are funny - doesn't she have a sense of humor?).
I really do hate to sound like sigalirus in full anti-male scold mode, but we haven't done nearly enough work to teach our boys that this sort of thing is completely verboten in real life for this to be funny. And its not just the boys who have no concept that this sort of thing is neither funny or appropriate. Not too many years ago my husband and I were at a party and actually heard the following:
Male: "Come on baby, I'll get a nice hotel room and you can just try it [sex w/this guy]. If you don't like it, you'll never have to talk to me again. I promise. But I think you'll enjoy it and then we can get to know each other, maybe go out sometime. What do you have to lose?"
Female: "Yeah. OK. Let me go get my coat."
And they walked out together!
Maybe its because I know how uncomfortable, dirty and vulnerable dealing with the wanna be Smoove B's of the world makes real women feel, but this sort of thing is far too real to be amusing. Maybe as gallows humor done by a woman, but that would be about it. Especially when said in reference to a specific woman who has been the subject of far too much gross sex talk around poker games and bars across America, it's gross and disturbing, not funny.
That Smoove B is written--likely by men--as satire doesn't make the misogyny any more palatable, especially when less gifted comics like Scott take it completely into the gutter, underscoring the misogyny. Calling feminists "humorless" certainly has a country club, locker-room appeal, but we also see how it can evolve.
Those who don't understand why we just don't think some things are funny have never been cornered in an empty bathroom by a guy talking lines of crap like this.
He accused me of being humorless, too. Then he tried to follow me home.
Scott,
I begin to get the feeling that you're trying to make a point here. Why not stop pretending you're joking and just say what you really mean?
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. - Gilbert, in The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde
Infant, one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would strike you dead. - The Ancient, in Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw
En garde, or you are pinked; and you probably will be anyhow. - G. K. Chesterton
Lucky we didn't say anything about the dirty knife. - Graham Chapman, in the Restaurant sketch, Monty Python's Flying Circus
Well, thank you very much, commenters one and all...and from all of us all, well done to The Onion...and to all of you, not forgetting those of you who may be halfway in between, without whom, of course, and not forgetting who made it all possible, when, and we'll be back, until then and so it's goodnight from me and here's wishing you a safe journey home, thank you for watching this show, don't forget it was all great fun, I've enjoyed it, and I hope you watching at home have enjoyed it too.
He is switched off, and fades into a dot. - after the 'Most awful family in Britain' sketch, Monty Python's Flying Circus.
And with that, I'm off to draft a simply FABulous blog post on the health value of "sick" jokes, using as my inspiration the very Koh-i-Noor in such precincts, what the episode titlers at Friends would call The One About the Eleven-Year-Old Boy and The 'Cocksure' Granny.
♫ I'll be there for you...♫
THE PUNCH LINE
So. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes? - Dr. Spielvogel, closing Portnoy's complaint by Philip Roth
Scott, you are an endless sewer of offensive humor and jokes. They must love you down at the middle school.
So someone clicked my links for a nice stroll, and, confirming that they knew well in advance what to expect, dropped the nice dead sparrows at my feet, for their expected backstroke, kibble, catnip and fresh scratch post. Mrrrow! They clicked me! They clicked me! As I said to my boulevardier chums of the French fin-de-siècle, flâneury will catch you everywhere.
Q. Why don't you just quit while you're so far behind?
A. What? And give up show business?
Daniel,
Clearly Scott is channeling the spirit of Florence Foster Jenkins. Best leave him to it for the moment, I reckon, rather than feed the ego.
Daniel
February 1, 2009 1:18 PM
That Smoove B is written--likely by men--as satire doesn't make the misogyny any more palatable, especially when less gifted comics like Scott take it completely into the gutter, underscoring the misogyny. Calling feminists "humorless" certainly has a country club, locker-room appeal, but we also see how it can evolve.
*****
Daniel, you seem to have a penchant of proving by your disagreement that which you disagree. And, it's very funny.
Personally, I thought the "Smooth" thing, or whatever it's called, was just stoooopid. So much so I didn't even finish it. Didn't offened my delicate sensibilities, but I was certain there would be some Nancy Boys and humor-immune feminist type moved to near apoplexy.
For once more playing faithful Boswell to my Johnson (I transcribed. Did you?), my thanks to one and all. It was indeed an honor and a privilege - and for me as well. You have afforded me the best possible arguments against mirth control this side of the shade of the late George Carlin and the even longer shadow of the Vatican.
And speaking of the sanctified, I'm touching up the libretto on an epic womanitarian mid-Atlantic musical that makes sport, with the featherlight touch the subjects demand (as though there were any other), true-crime Americana, Francis Ford Coppola's abyss-inian adventure, and the rank-and-file followers (not the leaders) of second-wave feminism.
Watch for Lay Ms. E. Borden, NOW in next week's comboxes...and for you seekers of discount dramatickets, relax: in my playhouse, every night is Ladies' Night...Ladies? Lay-deez!
Must have been something I didn't say.*
*You don't say...
Don't take our word for it; from earlier productions:
"Crunchy Comboxes, or, If These Threads Could Talk, They'd Shriek: a bedroom farce for the ages, and the most fun you can have this side of a mirror in your birthday suit. - Chester Riley, Life
Bibliography
Hugo, Victor. Le roi s'amuse. Paris: Flammarion and Barion.
Verdi, Giuseppe. Rigoletto, or, Pasta Primo Verdi.
Puccini, Giacomo. The First-Base Coach Fires Up The Team, or, Manon, Lescaut!
I am a middle aged married woman, and I think Smoove B is funny, much like "the Ladies Man" on MAD TV ( or was it Saturday Night Live). Come on ladies, it's a joke, and these kinds of guys are to be made fun of, not taken seriously.
Clearly, Beth has revealed herself as a traitor to the sisterhood, a class enema worthy of lightning-bolt anathemas hurled from the aeries of Harpy Marx and her other flying sisters Grouchy and Chicky, a scenario in which Rod is cast (as it were) for tragic relief as straight man given to professed outrage over the scenery-chewing, carpet-shredding antics of his foils the (gar)goils.
Me, I heart Beth, on the purest Platonic level from which Plato's retreat stands no chance whatever, even if our family car keys get mixed up in the kitchen fruit bowl. Anyone whose name starts with what connoisseurs have long recognized as by far the shapeliest of all the upper-case letters already has one leg up and over her rivals among the Lower Twenty-Five...
Scott, I toast you with my "Cour-vwah-thee-ay" as the Ladies Man might put it!
Oh-ho-ho, yeah - however you put it works for me - Leon Phelps, Th' Laydeeth Man.
To borrow from the late Butch Cassidy, "Why thank you, Flatnose - it's what sustained me in my hour of need."
"Didn't offened my delicate sensibilities, but I was certain there would be some Nancy Boys and humor-immune feminist type moved to near apoplexy."
Trolling and always classy, Max. Maybe you and Scott can create a comedy duo where you can add tight-ass Christian jokes and watermelon anecdotes to you repertoire. Maybe toss in some Holocaust jokes too
Nondescript troll: "Maybe you and Scott can create a comedy duo where you can add tight-ass Christian jokes and watermelon anecdotes to you repertoire."
These three tight-assed Christians walk into a watermelon, and one says, "I'm aghast; let's leave - this place is way too seedy."
"Maybe toss in some Holocaust jokes too."
Great minds think alike - and so do we:
These three Holocausts walk into a Crunchy Con comment thread, and after laughing in spite of his determination to do anything but, the first one says, "I'm aghast." The second added, "Shoah'm I; let's leave." The third said, "We must never forget - so as never to enter here again."*
*He was just kidding, of course, and, like Ebenezer Scrooge after he had the living Dickens scared out of him on Christmas Eve, would return many times in the succeeding decades, becoming a kindly uncle of sorts to commenters too lame and infirm to walk on anything more fortified than their own rancid bile, but whose deathless cries would come to melt the iciest of hearts from Ketchikan to Keokuk:
"Blog bless us, everyone." (tiny tm, a division of tinyurl)
Daniel,
You do realize, don't you, sensitive soul that you are, that describing Christians' "asses" as "tight" shows an altogether prurient and uninvited interest in Christian anal-cavity consistency, one for which you ought to make amends by submitting to sensitivity training *right now*?
But Flethcer, everything is a joke and anyone who is offended is just humorless. So why doesn't Scott write a humorous ditty about tight-assed, gay-hating Christians so that Max can do a little troll dance?
Daniel,
I'm guessing it's for much the same reason that *you* only ever do your *own* little troll-dance of outrage on anyone's behalf but abortionists, lesbians, gays, and "Christians" who don't believe in God.
And, please sir (or madam), take your rhetorical hands off my "ass" -- however "tight" you may take it to be -- lest I file a sexual harassment complaint with Beliefnet.com.
Don't flatter yourself, Fletcher.
Excuse me for taking your hand in my "ass" pocket as a sign you're glad to seize me.
I'm glad we're agreed that you should seek for your "stimulus package" somewhere else besides my pants.
I'm sensing you and Scott are a match made in heaven. Toss in Max, and I see a threeway in your future, my friend.
Daniel,
You really are very funny, but probably not the way you think. After all, you only seem to prove that you are what you rail against.
You calling someone a troll is like Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy calling someone intemperate.
Troll, heal thyself!
LOL!
I have to agree with Rod on this post, except for his later comment about feminists being humorless. I am a feminist and I find pretty much everything funny, and Smoove B is very funny to me. His columns make fun of Smoove only--not the women he seeks to woo with his silk sheets, hand-fed strawberries, and "smoove" moves. I can understand that it's irritating and offensive to women that men like Smoove exist in real life, but that's why the parody is relevant and funny. A man like Smoove is laughable, and that's why we're laughing.
As for Ms. Obama, I don't view Smoove's latest entry about her to be objectfying or insulting. The joke is that Smoove sees her as a higher class of lady than he's used to (and yet he still thinks that by upping the Smoove anty he can win her over). The idea that Michelle Obama would take a tool like Smoove as a lover is silly, so he's the one I'm laughing at.
At the risk of two-timing on my Platonic passion for Beth, above, I go on the record in declaring that I heart NK, now, as well. The two will be the lead characters in my reworking of the old Harry Browne book on freedom, with the new title How I Found Sanity in an Insane World. The pair's dead-on hermeneutics in peeling back the multiple layers of The Onion in discerning its pungent core will have readers tearing up in joy, as will they when getting to the more clueless supporting characters surrounding, who see sedition in self-defense, and a sanctuary in a slaughterhouse.
Hear, hear, NK. The voice of reason! You're absolutely right about Smoove B. HE'S the butt of the joke, not Michelle Obama. Those of you reading more into it really need to ask yourselves why it is that you see malice and victimization everywhere you turn. There's plenty of it to go around, certainly, but sometimes a joke is just a joke, and the "bad guy" (in this case, Smoove B) really IS the one being busted on. NK is right that Michelle Obama comes across, here, as the classy lady she is, and totally out of Smoove's league. Daniel, Sigilarus, et. al... Try a little experiment: Start giving people the benefit of the doubt; try assuming that people have good intentions... let that be your default mode. You won't always be right, but often you will be. You'll be amazed at how much joy and laughter and fellowship there is to be had in this world when you let your defenses down.
Scott, Max and Fletcher... you guys crack me up! Thanks for the smiles.
MargaretE,
Glad to crack you up, dear lady as I'm sure the other gentlemen are.
Now, if Scott, Max, and I could just keep Daniel from getting all up in our cracks ...
MargaretE,
Smiles right back atcha.
Scott, Max and Fletcher... you guys crack me up! Thanks for the smiles. - MargaretE.
Did you mean Max Fleischer - Google.
First Beth, then NK, now MargaretE! Just as I was about to assume of this thread that like-mounded chicks just keep getting harder to find, along come three toga'd lovelies to alternately dangle grapes above me, and fan me after my Nero turns/burns above. Fiddle "D" dee, indeed. Just as I thought my incisors might not prove meet to shred the rancid birds of prey served up elsewhere in this fowl-food fair, along come three lady dentists to bat cleanup in affording me molar support! Be assured I love you each as much as the next, and that there's more of me to go around after every meal. The blasts of fresh air you three are earn you an adjustment to the closing line of Orwell's tribute to Gandhi: "How clean a smell they have managed to leave behind."
Fletcher
February 2, 2009 2:32 PM
MargaretE,
Glad to crack you up, dear lady as I'm sure the other gentlemen are.
Now, if Scott, Max, and I could just keep Daniel from getting all up in our cracks ...
****
Hey Daniel,
Just say "NO!" to crack!
Lordy, Fletch, Max and I in a three-layer sweet left discreetly atop Margaret's pillow - a trifection! Great minds think alike - and so do we...just call our trio The Chixie Dicks...
Not since the three Israel-bound Russian Jews who apparently designed the air-conditioning settings on our family's Oldsmobile - MAX, NORM and BI-LEV - has a trio so outdone itself in cooling hot heads behind the searing wheel.
And given the renewed snap, crackle and pop afforded Smoove B's mornings thanks to the I-am-Smoovicus shoutouts from his lady loyalists, if he turns even a wee bit smoover than he is already, he may find himself cast as the lead in Three Brides (At Last Count) For One Brother.
As Leon "Laydeeth Man" Phelps* would thay, "Oh-ho-ho yeah..."
*I'll Tim, er, trim those Meadows any day...
i Just say "NO!" to crack!
What happens between you and Fletcher and Max in the privacy of your own bedroom is of no interest of mine. Whether you want to say "no" or "yes" to crack is part of your negotiation.
Jeez, this discussion really has hit the wall. The ditch. Something. Comments closed.