By Bob Cesca:

Republicans are hilarious.

No, not like that.

They make me laugh just about every day, but it’s not because they’re naturally funny with killer senses of humor. They simply, and unintentionally, do stupid things that make me laugh out loud. And that’s a good thing because given the awfulness they often blurt out and the intensity with which I follow their antics, it’s a considerably better reaction than screaming and banging my face against the wall.

The other day, I wrote an item for The Daily Banter (later crossposted at The Huffington Post) about the Fox News Channel show The Five. In addition to dingus-level political commentary on the show, it kind of fancies itself as a comedy show with several panelists offering up funny reactions to the news. But the funny isn’t really funny. It’s usually at about the same level as Bruno Kirby’s “Lieutenant Steve” character from Good Morning, Vietnam.

Case in point, here’s Eric Bollings saliently hilarious response to my post:

Honestly, I have no idea what that means or how it counterpoints the litany of gripes I included in my column about the show and the panelists’ views on constitutional amendments and campaign finance reform. As near as I can tell, Eric Bolling thinks I write as if I work at a TGI Fridays. Or perhaps because I’m not fortunate enough to be a Fox News Channel scam-artist, I’m occupied at a subhuman level of the media — one step up from TGI Fridays. Weird because not only is The Huffington Post the most popular blog on the internet, but The Daily Banter will soon conquer the world, and I’m a featured contributor to both. Besides, the joke is “don’t quit your day job” — not “night job.”

Yes, I’m rationalizing the words of a simpleton doofus. Given Bolling’s record, it’s a miracle he didn’t reflexively add some sort of horrendously racist slur in there, too, even though I’m not, you know, black. (Rewind a few months to Bolling’s “joke” about the president hosting “a hoodlum in the hizzouse.”) However, one of his fans responded to Bolling’s tweet by remarking that I somehow resemble Rachel Maddow. Again, hilarious for all of the wrong reasons. Any day now, regarding New Controversy X you can expect to hear bitching on “The Five” about how liberals resort to personal attacks and conservatives only want to debate policy.

Speaking of awesome lesbian jokes, McLaughlin Group panelist and Fox News Channel contributor Monica Crowley stepped in a heaping bucket of crazy Thursday when she tweeted about Sandra Fluke, the woman who testified to Congress about her friends needing affordable contraception for medical/health reasons. Here’s what she wrote: “To a man? ‘Sandra Fluke Announces Engagement’”

Get it? Sandra Fluke is like a lesbian for some reason. Not only is this homophobic and unfunny, but I thought the conservative lie all along has been that Fluke needs contraception so she can have sex with men. (Again, Fluke only testified about other women and their healthcare needs — not sex.)

Since then, Crowley said, “I love exposing the Left’s total lack of a sense of humor.” That’s hilarious! Conservatives, who are notoriously humorless or comedy-impaired — unless, that is, we’re missing something and malaprops, racist song parodies and fat-asses pretending to be redneck cable guys are endlessly hysterical. But forgive us, Monica, if we’re perplexed and offended by your tweet. The homophobia really has zero basis in reality — even by the talking points of conservatives who, again, have painted Fluke as a nymphomaniacal penis hoarder.

And finally, easily the biggest controversy of the week has been the president’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show to participate in Fallon’s ongoing bit “Slow Jam The News.” Conservatives everywhere have crapped their cages and screeched about how it was undignified. A president should never ever appear on a comedy show, they said.

Unless, of course, the president is named Richard Nixon, who appeared on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In and famously repeated the catchphrase, “Sock it to me!”

Wrapping up here, if you’re a conservative and you disagree with what I’ve written today, try this exercise. Name as many right-wing comedians as you can. Use the comments below if you want to. Hint: there aren’t many.

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By Bob Cesca: Finally, there appears to be significant action backing up the outrage surrounding Rush Limbaugh’s attacks against Sandra Fluke. As of this writing, seven advertisers have dropped the Limbaugh show and there will likely be more to follow.

But many of the rebukes coming from various sources, political and otherwise, have only referenced his use of the word “slut,” and this tends to make the issue seem smaller than it is — like a gaffe or poor choice of words. Consequently, Limbaugh’s apology centered around his word usage rather than the intent, the multi-day assault or his total ignorance about how the president’s contraception law actually works.

By way of a reminder, Limbaugh dedicated at least three shows to attacking a noncombatant — an ordinary citizen who isn’t a pundit or politician and who isn’t involved in the national political discourse what-so-ever. This makes his unrelenting assault even more egregious. Fluke is a law student and simply met with congressional Democrats in an informal hearing. During this hearing, she merely discussed her friend’s ovarian cysts, and how the cost of birth control forced this friend to lose an ovary. Rather than attacking the president’s policy or various Democrats or liberal supporters in the media (new and old), Limbaugh attacked Fluke. Like any cowardly schoolyard bully.

It was a dick move, and one that’s often pursued by fellow cowards and bullies on the right. Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck have each repeatedly engaged in these sorts of attacks against noncombatants, be they children, high school administrators, small town yokels and even the president’s adolescent children. Easy targets because they’re unfamiliar with rhetorical tactics, none have media platforms in which to respond and, most of the time, it’s impossible to overcome the massive brute force of Fox News Channel (the number one cable news network in America) and AM talk radio hosts with anywhere from 10 to 20 million weekly listeners.

So it wasn’t so much the “slut” remark, but the relatively defenseless target of the word itself.

Comparatively, Ed Schultz used that word to describe talk radio host Laura Ingraham and it was just as stupid and insensitive, but at least Ingraham had years of media savvy and a powerful stage on which to counterattack. Sandra Fluke and others don’t.

And, again, it wasn’t just that word. Last week alone, nine hours of Limbaugh broadcast time was dedicated to smearing and belittling this woman. During that time, Limbaugh also demanded to see pornographic videos of Fluke and others in exchange for — and this is yet another point to be made presently — paying for their birth control.

This brings up the next point. Limbaugh and others on the right are totally clueless about the law. They aren’t “paying” for anyone to receive anything. It sounds like Limbaugh believes that birth control pills and devices will be financed by taxpayers, which is totally false. The rule mandates that health insurance companies cover the treatment, just like any other treatment. Not the government. Employees and employers are sharing the cost of the premiums and perhaps a small fraction of those payments might pay for birth control — if it’s needed in the first place and not every woman needs it. But the way the right is talking about this makes it seem as if President Obama is forcing you at gunpoint to personally buy IUDs for every woman in sight. And that’s a lie. So either Limbaugh is stupid or he’s deliberately misleading his easily-tricked disciples. For what it’s worth, I tend to believe the latter.

If you recall, Limbaugh was famously nabbed at an airport for carrying a bottle of Viagra not prescribed to him, but, instead, prescribed in his doctor’s name. Fine. There are many legitimate medical and psychological reasons for men to use Viagra and there’s nothing shameful about receiving treatment for erectile dysfunction. However, as with any conservative sex scandal, it’s the hypocrisy. Limbaugh was on a vacation to the Dominican Republic with a group of male companions. Why would he need Viagra on such a trip without any women in sight? I’ll address that later, but the main reason I mention this incident is to suggest that perhaps Limbaugh is ignorant enough to believe that birth control pills work like Viagra — you pop one every time you plan to have sex, thus his mistaken remarks about “paying for Fluke to have sex.” It’s not a pay-per-sex proposition since most birth control is taken on a daily basis irrespective of sexual activity, and various birth control devices are implanted inside the body, occasionally replaced per the devices’ instructions.

It doesn’t even really matter in this case because Fluke wasn’t even talking about her own sex life — or sex in any context. But that doesn’t matter when you’re trying to fool your listeners into believing that someone who disagrees with you is a “slut.”

In the broadest sense, this birth control issue is about male domination and oppression of women. Pure and simple. It’s as old as evolution itself. And it’s also about Limbaugh’s considerably lengthy record of attacking anyone who he perceives to be weaker targets. The current advertiser boycott and the outrage surrounding the Fluke controversy should take into consideration the roster of previous Limbaugh victims as well (examples here). While Limbaugh might think twice before he again uses the word “slut,” it’s likely he’ll come up with other synonyms and the show will go on. Unless he’s stopped now.

By the way, you know what a slut is? A guy who takes erection pills to the Dominican Republic without any female companions. We can only assume the purpose was to engage in anonymous sex with one or more partners — he didn’t bring one or two, but an entire bottle indicating he planned to have sex multiple times. That’s a slut.

Every Friday, I’ll be responding to viewer mail here at The Daily Banter, so send your e-mails to thedailybanter@gmail.com. Get going!

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