Bruce Dowbiggin
Jerry Came to See The Babies. And They Walked Out On Him
Cometh the hour, cometh the comedian. Or, you can learn a lot about a demographic by what makes them laugh.
The legacy/ lunacy media schvitzed itself over a few furious sociology majors and look-at-me drama queens walking out on Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement address at Duke University last weekend. But the significance of his admission that he was 70 was probably far more newsworthy to those now in retirement, binge-watching his eponymous TV series on one of those down-the-dial channels.
If we had a dollar for every Boomer who said, “Seinfeld is 70?” while watching the address we’d be Warren-Buffett-rich this morning. He doesn’t look like any 70 year olds we know. Fifty? Maybe. But listening to his familiar delivery, the mocking on his honorary degree costume, it was easy to believe that we, too, are much younger than our blood-thinner prescriptions say.
It also pointed out the evolution of Boomers’ comedic tastes. When they came of age in the late 1960s/ early 1970s Woody Allen best profiled as his generation’s comedic muse. With a dozen classic movies ranging from What’s New Pussycat (1965) through Play It Again Sam (1972) to Annie Hall (1977) Allen’s self-deprecating nebbish captured the romantic/ridiculous self-image of Boomers with “Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle”.
The neurotic, insecure Allen then decided to become Ingmar Bergman, and Boomers— now assembling jobs, children and first spouses— moved on. But for that 12-year span the bedraggled standup comedian was the go-to with lines like “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you” and “The only love that lasts is unrequited love.”
Woody’s pointed contemporary political references in those years were few (conflating “D’you” for “Jew” with Tony Roberts in Manhattan) and self-deflating (see Annie Hall). His most prominent political jabs were framed in absurdist material like Love And Death and Bananas. Culturally he was merciless but affectionate about his Brooklyn upbringing. In short his were perfect date movies for Boomers seeking love to advertise their pretensions.
Flash forward from Woody to Seinfeld (created with Larry David) which was anti-romantic in the extreme. The characters were sociopaths. The situations often cringeworthy. The 24-minute formula harkened back to Lucy and the Honeymooners. And while schlock like Friends trod the same ground it was Seinfeld that somehow captured the Boomer zeitgeist.
Why? Boomers going through middle age were too disillusioned with how life was turning out to romanticize anymore. The self-obsessed characters were people they knew from work, school and dealing with government. Smirking Bill Clinton was the face of an era. “When we did my show in the 90s, it was so easy to make fun of things. It was so easy,” Seinfeld told Amy Schumer.
Significantly, Seinfeld the Show was cultural. Or quasi-cultural. It was never about politics per se. It was about the people who thwart you in life. Whose vanity ruins your plans from school days. Who go 50 mph in the left lane. “When is Jerry going to see the baby?” It rarely challenged its fans on an emotional level. It was mostly about navigating madness.
And often about the most mundane elements of life. The address on the weekend contained The Seinfeld Doctrine of Lowered Expectations. “It’s easy to fall in love with people. I suggest falling in love with anything and everything, every chance you get. Fall in love with your coffee, your sneakers, your blue zone parking space. I’ve had a lot of fun in life falling in love with stupid, meaningless physical objects.
“The object I love the most is the clear-barrel Bic pen — $1.29 for a box of 10. I can fall in love with a car turn signal switch that has a nice feel to it, a pizza crust that collapses with just the right amount of pressure. I have truly spent my life focusing on the smallest things imaginable, completely oblivious to all the big issues of living.”
Reaching across the generations Seinfeld delivered Dad jokes and bromides to kids who education probably cost $100 K a year. “I think it is also wonderful that you care so much about not hurting other people’s feelings in the million and one ways we all do that,” he said. Then he explained why that might be a fruitless pursuit. Not in Curb Your Enthusiasm darkness. But sobering.
That’s why it was in character for him to let the furious demonstrators depart at Duke without comment. So was appearing at Duke, the Ivy League of Tobacco Road, founded by the people who made jillions selling nicotine. And why he let them garb him like Thomas Cromwell in the absurd 16th century cape and hat so he could score few laughs.
Because laughter is his means of dealing with jerks like the outbound Hamas crowd. “What I need to tell you as a comedian: Do not lose your sense of humour. You can have no idea at this point in your life how much you are going to need it to get through. Not enough of life makes sense for you to be able to survive it without humour.”
Yes, He has been vocal lately about the effect of political correctness ruining TV comedy. Drawing flak from former friends and fans who are in the Biden re-education camps at the moment. But his annoyance at ruining an art form far outweighed any complaints about Covid and Ukraine.
As opposed to the nihilism of his former partner David, his insouciance and comic patter represent an antidote for where most of his original fans are at the moment. Woody Allen, their former idol, is now seen as a pedo and a failed nouveau vage auteur. Disillusioned with virus lies, electoral shenanigans and soaring prices, Boomers on a pension are unanchored, floating through what used to be North American society (when only women had babies).
In fact, Boomer spectators watching Seinfeld’s 17-minute speech maybe summed it up for themselves by recalling the Seinfeld mantra, “It was a show about nothing.” And they’d be right. Jerry is the man for those times.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
Bruce Dowbiggin
Why Canada’s Elites Are Captives To The Kamala Narrative
“As he closes the election with rank racism, relentless unreality and authoritarian threats, Trump’s popularity among Canadian Conservatives is higher than ever. This seems like it could be a problem”.— Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star
A problem for whom, Bruce? It’s telling that while 50 percent of Americans see through Kamala Harris and the DEMs coup narrative as complete bushwah, probably 90 percent of Canadians– led by Arthur and the corporate media– lap up this condescending narrative. Their biggest fear remains that the populist revolt against authority in the U.S. might threaten Canada’s elite class. Like Toronto Star squishy columnists.
In the hermetically sealed media world of Canada, natives take their cues from CNN and MSNBC talking points both of which employ Canadians in highly visible roles. (Here’s expat Ali Velshi famously describing on NBC that the 2020 George Floyd riots that burned for weeks— destroying billions in damages while resulting in multipole deaths— as “generally peaceful”
The narratives of Russiagate, drinking bleach, “fine people” to Hunter Biden’s laptop— long ago debunked down south— are still approved wisdom in Canada’s chattering class. Especially if America’s conflagration election can be used to demonstrate the good sense and judgment of Canada’s managerial and media class.
The northern pecksniffs have loads of insanity to work with as Trump seemingly edges ahead in polls. There’s the brouhaha over a shock comedian at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”. Unhinged outgoing POTUS Biden then called GOP voters “garbage”. So Trump made an appearance as a garbage man, to the shrieking disapproval of CBS News chief anchor Nora O’Donnell.
Then there’s Whoopi Goldberg on The View predicting Trump will “break up interracial marriages and redistribute the white spouses: “He’s going to deport and you, put the white guy with someone else… The man is out there!” Forget that Trump did nothing of the sort when he was president from 2016-2020. It’s every hysteric for himself as Nov. 5 looms. Their biggest fear? Those who vilified Trump the past decade will be out of the power loop for at least four years— or longer if VP candidate J.D. Vance extends the Trump revolution. It’s panic time.
Picked up on by those fearing their place in the Canadian power grid might fall next. The disdainful cheers from Arthur and Andrew Coyne and the CBC bien pensants at each thrust of Trump-as-Nazi echo through a press corps which now fawns over Mark Carney, the bespoke banker/ heir apparent to Trudeau. They grasp at each anti-Trump narrative like starving men in the desert.
It’s 1990s redux in Ottawa as think-tank Aristotles work to reinforce their status quo. While a public that has CPC ahead by 20 points in the polls demands change, the Liberal/ NDP cabal want that old-time political religion of insider baseball Ottawa-style. Here’s NDP attack bot Kathleen Monk insisting that PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievre get security clearance on the Chinese election interference case so that he might better be skewered for not telling Canadians the truth included in them about how their elections are being subverted by the Chinese.
No one drawing a Liberal support cheque worries aloud that Trudeau knows the truth contained in this files, that it’s injurious to him and the NDPs, that Canadians need to know the names of MPs and senators taking bribes, why a police request sat on a minister’s desk for 54 days unopened. It’s Poilievre/ Trump who’s untrustworthy. It’s a strategy that the Libs and NDP pray Poilievre will fall for. Pierre’s sin is he doesn’t believe the public should depend on government for everything. That’s heresy in Canada’s Family Compact, and so the Trump comparisons.
The anti-Trump vendetta also means that Canadians have decided that Elon Musk, the pre-eminent genius of the 21st century— is now Josef Goebbels to Trump’s Hitler. As we wrote recently “on his way to immortality Elon Musk made one critical mistake: purchasing the website Twitter, now re-branded as X. In doing so he fired 90 percent of the previous staff and instituted a policy of open speech for the Right on the site— starting with restoring Donald Trump’s account. Which put Musk on the Hit List for leftist plutocrats.”
So now the sneering scribes are going after him, too, in spite of his Canadian citizenship. This is no small thing as Canadians reflexively grab at any shred of CanCon elsewhere. Canadian politics under the Liberals has become a vedette exercise since Pierre Trudeau started dating Funny Girl Barbra Streisand. In the U.S. outsiders to the political system are rare. Much of the pearl clutching about Trump results from his not being manipulated by the byzantine American political universe.
In cases such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, the nominees were moulded by the machine to highlight their acceptability. Ronald Reagan excepted, the insider track is the preferred route to a nomination in either party. Biden personified lifelong membership in the insiders club. As did John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, John McCain, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Gerald Ford, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and so on.
But in Canada, the Liberal party in particular now disdains the tried-and-true. After decades of zero-charisma PMs such as Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent and Mike Pearson, the Grits went ga-ga for the international flair of PET. His irreverence and impertinence on the world stage was catnip to Liberals as the 1960s cultural revolution shook up staid Canada. Since then the blue print has listed more toward “star” candidates from outside the party, such as Michael Ignatieff, Stephane Dion, Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney.
Trudeau II is the epitome of the vedette candidate, bathed by the glow of U.S. magazines and slathering leftists in Europe. Liberals felt vital as long as the trust-fund PM got props from outside, such as when WEF honcho Klaus Schwab outed Skippy as one of his lieutenants. Trump, the antithesis of the Dauphin, is a blustery carny riding the wings of populist outrage. His crass, bumptious style personally offends the sensibilities of Toronto Star scribblers and CBC wind therapists.
The clincher for Canadians is the overwhelming Kamala love from the Hollywood crowd. Virtually every high-profile actor/ singer/ writer has embraced the woman who was parachuted into the nomination in a coup— even as the glitterati raved about anti-democratic Trump. From Beyoncé to Bilie Eilish to Bruce Springsteen, their support has been a winner in Canada’s fangirl/ fanboy culture.
So as we head to next Tuesday’s end to the election marathon in America, the finger-wagging will increase as Canadians try to elevate themselves above a nation that, for all its faults, has actually staged a policy choice. Meanwhile in Canada, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh once again embraces his coalition with a drowning Trudeau for another year.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Musk Win: How Elon’s Heel Turn Has Driven The Left Insane
It’s not often that we can watch the workings of our modern world with childlike glee. But glee might be the best word to describe the feelings of most as they watched the stunning safe return of the booster rocket from Starship X. The video showed how the arms of the Starship X tower grabbed the rocket from out of thin air as it slowly descended to earth, gently place it safely back on the launch pad.
In normal times the person who created such a company would be hailed as the pinnacle of human potential. Add in that he has also created revolutionary electric cars and Starlink satellite systems and the PayPal network and you’d probably nominate the South African/ Canadian in question as a permanent Nobel winner. He’s among the world’s richest people as a result.
But on his way to immortality Elon Musk made one critical mistake: purchasing the website Twitter, now re-branded as X. In doing so he fired 90 percent of the previous staff and instituted a policy of open speech for the Right on the site— starting with restoring Donald Trump’s account. Which put Musk on the Hit List for leftist plutocrats.
How? He hired prominent independent journalists such as Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberg and Matt Taibbi to show that Twitter, along with Facebook and other prominent social media sites, had been paid to censor opponents at the behest of the Joe Biden campaign during the 2020 election. He started posting about the disturbing contrast of America’s voting system (results up to three weeks after election) compared to Argentina (6.6 hours). He pointed out that America is broke, saying things like “”The reason why I’m involved in politics this time, is because this time it’s a fork in the road. I think we’re doomed if Trump doesn’t win, so he’s gotta win.”.
From worshipful respect, Musk was suddenly met with scorn, derision and, in Europe, plans to censor him permanently. Brazil shut down X completely. British intelligence targeted his association with Trump. The radical Left in the U.S., accustomed to its version of truth, suddenly decided that Musk was in line with Nazis and the Far Right.
As blogger Mike Benz notes, the deep state targeted him for not playing along. “CCDH — whose explicit written goal is to “Kill Musk’s Twitter” — not only has its Chairman come from NATO’s Atlantic Council, its former Comms chief was a CIA operative who worked extensively in NATO intelligence ops… CCDH’s former Head of Communications is a self-described “CIA operative” in her own Twitter bio (!!) with an extensive history of NATO operations: ‘Covert operations, intelligence & disinformation’”
While admitting that he’ll likely be in jail within six months of Kamala Harris winning the presidency, Musk is unfazed. Here’s fired CNN talking head Don Lemon challenging— and losing— on Musk’s commitment to free speech. But Musk’s deft debating didn’t discourage the purchased media of the left from trying some more.
Here’s Vanity Fair excoriating Musk for veering from their catechism. Here is reliably lunatic NBC News saying Musk is— gasp— against DEI. For good measure here’s Reuters giving an airing of former Twitter employees grievances against Musk. Topped by president Joe Biden’s demand to “Politically, lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do,” said even as he president’s Justice Department was in fact trying to jail Mr. Trump literally.
When he realized that the Left was using him as a piñata Musk responded to the onslaught by making an alliance with former president Donald Trump, the Beelzebub of Woke folk and the bureaucrat’s nightmare. Because Trump, the braggart, was at least in favour of free speech for other braggarts, Musk agreed to join his team after the election as Efficiency Czar for government.
Musk began saying things like he’d reduce the approximately 340 agencies in the U.S. federal government to just 90. He also questioned the usefulness of most people in the DC bubble. He began asking why the government’s $42 B plan for rural internet, awash in delay and debt, shouldn’t be shelved for his Starlink system which already serves customers at a fraction of Kamala Harris’ white elephant.
While he was at it, Musk also eviscerated the DEMs pet cause of border reform. “If given 4 more years to do it, the big govt machine will legalize vast numbers of illegals, making all swing states permanently deep blue, just like they did with California. Every major Democrat politician has stated that their goal is to legalize all illegals. Believe them.
If you thought January 6, 2021, was a shock to Washington’s privilege, a Musk efficiency regime— combined with RFK Jr taking on the healthcare industry— will be tantamount to setting off a thermo-nuclear device beneath the Senate lunchroom. Democrats and the trained hamsters of the GOP establishment swore a fatwa on a guy whom they’d venerated not long ago.
Here’s the New York Times, party organ of the DNC, on Musk’s Efficiency commission. “That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest.” Yahoo calls him a threat to national security because something something something. MSNBC, the TV voice of Woke Washington, declarded that Musk is using his power to sue his critics into silence.
But such is the temperature of the DEI Left as it faces imminent destruction in the 2024 election. Having rationalized two assassination attempts on Trump they now nurse snuff fantasies about eliminating Musk the Menace. As legal scholar Jonathan Hurley writes, “It is all part of Musk mania and the need to break the only executive who has defied the anti-free speech movement.”
You can measure their panic by the employment of DEMs superstars like Barack and Michelle Obama and the odious Clintons. While the obsequious Obama laments division in the body politic, Kamala Harris states: “Trump is literally Hitler and he will use the military to kill US citizens.”
Obama, who institutionalized the Racism® industry upon his winning the presidency, is accusing Trump and Musk of… you guessed it… racism for dividing Americans. From Henry Louis Gates to struggle sessions in the military to embracing race hustlers with ankle bracelets in the White House, Obama guaranteed the George Floyd America as it heads to the polls on November 5. Before Musk bought Twitter, he got away with it all, But a Musk X has exposed the glib Obama as a petty Marxist tyrant.
That a transitional figure such as Musk is being sacrificed to the altar of Woke politics is, regrettably, no surprise in these times. Which makes it no less reprehensible. The Obama motto regarding enemies is “No one gets out alive”. Perhaps Musk should heed A.E. Houseman who observed, “smart lad to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay. For early though the laurel goes, it withers sooner than the rose.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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