I truly never thought I’d see this day. Really. Honestly. Apparently it is now shocking that veteran comedian Don Rickles made a …now get ready…don’t go into shock….don’t be stunned…if you have a pacemaker make sure it’s charged up….
a POLITICALLY INCORRECT JOKE, this time about Barack Obama.
It people in the audience were in any way shocked or put off then:
— they don’t know a thing about Rickles Rickles’ who became famous as a comedian due to a)insult humor b) politically incorrect insult humor. You know, the same jokes he made about Sammy Davis, Jr. (African-American) or Frank Sinatra (Italian..but my favorite one was: “Hey, Frank. Make yourself at home. Hit someone.”)
–they must have been on living on Jupiter because Rickles has been doing the same, exact humor for years. In fact, some of his jokes are “switched” jokes: jokes where you revise a joke using a different name or make a slightly different punchline.
–they are caricatures of the tiresome P.C. reaction.
All of those who were shawked…I mean really SHAWKED….offended..had their feathers ruffled are now members of The Moderate Voice’s famous Get a Life Club.
An early Don Rickles TV appearance:
Rickles insults Sinatra:
In 1986 insulting the Los Angeles Dodgers:
An excerpt from John Landis’ great film documentary on Rickles:
FOOTNOTE: In the fall of 1982 my late aunt Marge Gandelman of Los Angeles took her to her synagogue for Yom Kippur services. Loooong services. It was a synagogue attended by some Hollywood celebrities. At one point the Cantor was chanting a prayer and everyone was supposed to sing. And in the back of me a guy was singing with passion but so offkey I almost chuckled. I looked back. It was Don Rickles, quite serious, observing the holidays. I was told that he had donated some money to the temple by one of the members. My parents saw him in Vegas in the 70s and could not stop raving about him AND one of their key points was how politically incorrect he was but no one took it seriously.
Until, apparently, some people at the AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Shirley MacLaine did (pictured below).
Surprised that Don Rickles is not P.C.? Surprised he do an un P.C. joke about someone famous? Surprised that he might bring up someone’s race or ethnicity?
Here’s another huge surprise for those folks:
Swiss cheese has holes in it…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.