10 Comments

There is always the question about when to mix tragedy with comedy. However, I think Lenny Bruce struck a fine balance when he opened his post Kennedy assassination club act three days after it happened with, "Wow! Poor Vaughn Meader."

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I had to google Vaughn Meder but I’m glad I did.

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Wow. Just listened to the full album. Good stuff! Such a blow to the JFK impressionist industrial complex.

I wonder if you will see this comment made by a visitor from the future.....

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Oct 16, 2023·edited Oct 16, 2023

OMG! I loved that "First Family" album when I was a kid! I dunno, maybe it wasn't "too soon" by the late 60's? Or maybe that so many other awful things had happened that JFK didn't have the same salience by then?

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I always thought it was Harry Frazee. Thanks for settin' me straight. HA

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I read a Lenny Bruce biography long ago, and think I read it in that book.

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You got my hopes up with that Double Coverage by A Whitney Brown--long overdue for a comeback.

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One other thing: Why should the van with the billboard be considered out of bounds if (a big if, admittedly) they accurately show members of these groups? They’re not contacting employers, or posting addresses, just the names and pictures. If someone is a member that’s posted on the billboard, they’re free to disavow the statement. And employers, the same “adults in the room” are free to reach the calculus you did about how young and stupid they were, same as we both wished they would have for the last decade.

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I think as more of the story has come out, there's not a clear indication that the students being doxxed on the truck were actually responsible for signing the statements (in one case, Jesse Singal said on "Blocked and Reported," one doxxed person had previously graduated and wasn't even a current student, so wherever the truck guy was getting his info was old/out of date). You could also be a member of a student group whose leadership decided to sign without having been consulted at all, which has also been confirmed, especially for many of the groups that later pulled themselves off the statement.

In any case, I think it was a colossally stupid waste of money. Send that money to the g-d- victims in Israel and Gaza if you want to accomplish something instead of doxxing Harvard undergrads, sheesh.

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Do *not* — I repeat — do *not* check the “Fire In A Crowded Theater Box:

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/

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