” … you could fit all the famous conservative comedians in a Toyota Prius and still have room in the backseat for packages.” — Dean Obeidallah, CNN correspondent
Jared Schmeck of Medford, Oregon, is the most famous comedian Republicans have, and he isn’t very funny. He’s merely a smart aleck blowing off steam (which is okay, in its time and place).
He’s the guy who called in to a family-friendly Christmas Eve TV show featuring the Joe and Jill Biden taking live calls to wish kids and their parents a Merry Christmas and — in rightwing code language — told the president to f**k himself. In front of his kids, and millions of other watching kids.
Schmeck would later say he did it in “innocent jest” to express disagreement “in a joking manner” with Biden’s policies (including vaccine mandates, which makes him an anti-vaxxer), a social group already considered by many Americans as stupid, gullible, reckless, and anti-social.
Let’s just skip the “innocent” nonsense and go directly to the Nielsen Ratings, Comedy Division. Telling the president front of kids to go f**k himself isn’t funny. Period. On a scale of 0 to 10, it gets a zero.
At this point, let’s get the First Amendment stuff out of the way. I’ll let Obeidallah do the heavy lifting:
“I believe that, as Americans, we have the right to say anything we want to criticize a President — from ‘Let’s go Brandon’ to a blatant ‘F**k you.’ Our right to freedom of speech must be vigilantly protected, especially when speaking about political issues and our elected officials. Schmeck’s remark on a Christmas Eve special with families watching was despicable, yet he should still have the right to say it if he chooses.”
You know how this works. I’ll fight to the death to defend his right to tell a president — any president — to go f**k himself. He can. He did. And the law won’t come after him, because he did nothing illegal. The government won’t come for him (notwithstanding rightwing paranoia). But to make things perfectly clear, the First Amendment only applies to the government.
Everyone else can say whatever they like about what he did. In other words, neither the First Amendment nor anything else exempts him from criticism.
Schmeck apparently doesn’t like being criticized. Can’t say I blame him in that regard; nobody does. As you would expect, he’s getting a lot of criticism, and in response, “Schmeck is now doing the cliché conservative move of saying he’s being unfairly criticized because people have slammed his ‘joke.’ Schmeck complained to The Oregonian … ‘now I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech.'”
No, he’s being criticized. And that doesn’t make him a victim.
Playing the victim is basically a rightwing profession. As Obeidallah says, “Aww, poor ‘victim’ Schmeck. … [He] seems to have the right’s victimhood mentality down pat.” If print could have inflection, you’d hear the mocking tone.
Obeidallah continues, “Apparently, he thinks he should be able to tell Biden to basically go f**k himself while on a family friendly holiday call, but no one should be able to take issue with his actions. Sorry, that’s not how freedom of speech works. If you want to troll a president to apparently make others on the right happy, you can expect criticism.”
He then offers the following advice: “If you don’t want criticism because you are painfully thin-skinned, then don’t say ‘Let’s go Brandon’ on a live Christmas Eve special. It’s as simple as that.”
But Schmeck isn’t just a not-funny, thin-skinned, vulgar clod. He’s also a liar. He told The Oregonian he’s not a “Trumper,” then went on Steve Bannon’s podcast to declare, “Donald Trump is my president and he should still be president right now. The election was 100% stolen. So, I just want to make that clear.”
That makes him a not funny, thin-skinned, vulgar, stupid liar. Honestly, I get a strong impression this guy simply isn’t very intelligent. He’s a living, breathing stereotype of a Trumper idiot. And a national goat (photo, right).
But the main point of this post is that Republicans aren’t funny, they have no idea how to be funny, and the harder they try, the worse it gets. Schmeck proved it.
Read Obeidallah’s entire op-ed here.