My Sunday Feeling

If Norm Macdonald, who died last week, (and yes that’s the way he spelled it) was not the funniest man who ever drew a breath, I don’t know who was.  I took a mental inventory the other day of other comedians that I found to be hysterical. It was a short list: Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, early Steve Martin, occasionally David Letterman and Joan Rivers.  That’s about it.  Norm was better than them all.  As someone said upon his passing, “He did comedy they way other people do breathing.”  

BTW, I owe a debt of gratitude to David Letterman for telling The Greatest Joke Ever Written in an interview with Esquire magazine.  As this is a family blog, I shall not repeat it in this space.  Ask me about it sometime though.

Macdonald’s highest and best use (as we say in real estate) was as the Anchor on SNL’s Weekend Update.  His flat affect, his slightly nasal accent of no fixed abode and sense of timing was perfect for that role.  That and his dadesque wordplay in the service of reading the “news.” A personal favorite? With the face of the Chicago Seven’s Jerry Ruben superimposed in the background, Norm gleefully shouted out “Yippee! Jerry Ruben is dead!  Oh. Wait. I read that wrong.  Yippee Jerry Ruben is dead.”  He also famously attributed the breakup of Marie Presley and Michael Jackson to Wacko being “a child molesting homosexual.”

Someone asked me back then if I thought NBC and Macdonald were worried about getting sued for slander by Jackson.  Uhhhh no.  I mean, c’mon. Wacko couldn’t stand up to discovery.

After SNL he worked in movies, did voice work for cartoons, did guest appearances on  talk shows and returned to standup.

Here’s another thing I admired about Norm.  At the time of his death it was disclosed that he had been suffering from cancer for the last 9 years.  He never made that fact public knowledge.  According to his publicist, he didn’t want his illness to distract from the jokes.  He was a comedian first and foremost. Maybe he thought that people wouldn’t laugh at a guy they pitied.  

Perhaps I am projecting based on what we all know now, but he doesn’t look good in recent videos.  He was slender man.  But his face was puffy in his last images. I’ve known people with cancer and lupus who had to take massive doses of prednisone.  Their faces looked like that.  

But who knows?

Anyway, how many celebrities lives are closed books?  Pretty rare.  That was a major point concerning the documentary of Ronald and Russell Mael of Uber strange band Sparks.  The flick lasts some 2.5 hours and we don’t know anymore about the Mael brothers than we did going into it. That’s pretty rare.  My friend Philip Martin wrote in his review of the movie something along the lines of “Ronald and Russell Mael think their personal lives are none of our damn business. And they’re right.”

Me? I don’t have any particular need to know about a celebrity’s personal life.  For every Michael J. Fox, whose struggles with Parkinson’s Disease is both inspirational and instructive, there’s Kim Kardashian trying to pass the California bar without benefit of a law degree on reality TV.  Or, God forbid, Caitlyn Jenner who just tried to run for Governor out there, undeterred as she evidently was by a lack of political experience and/or introspection.  And, we now know why Elvira called herself the Mistress of the Dark. That is because she was in the closet.  Well, no more.  She along, with her fright wig and pushup bra, have come out.  Did I need to know that?  Do I give a rat’s ass? No. I could go on.  So could you.

I have all the respect in the world for a guy like Norm who went out on his own terms.  Perhaps he thought revealing too much about himself was undignified. Or un-Canadian. We now also know he had no use for war as a metaphor for coping with cancer, saying that a bad outcome is no worse than a draw since the disease entity dies when the patient does.  Nobody wins. Nobody loses. It’s a draw. Maybe, like the Maels, he simply thought it was none of our damn business.  And he was right.  

Gold standard source Wikipedia reports that Norm died from leukemia.  The legit press evidently “scooped” by Wikipedia.  How about that?

Imagine what Norm Macdonald could have made of that.  

My Sunday Feeling

I’m not feeling it today.  

Talk amongst yourselves until I get back. 

My Sunday Feeling

 Not to put words in the President’s mouth, but I think Joe Biden has had it.  Last week he signed an Executive Order requiring all businesses with over 100 employees to require said employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine or to get tested for the disease on a regular basis.  The EO puts enforcement of the mandate-there I said it-on OSHA, which has plenty of enforcement tools in its  toolbox.

Personally, I think it’s about time.  This pandemic which is draining resources and clogging up hospitals is a scourge created by the unvaccinated.  The stats don’t lie.  In every state, the vast majority of folks that acquire the disease or the delta variant thereof are not vaccinated.  The overwhelming majority that die from it are likewise unprotected.  This public health crisis is susceptible to amelioration by proven medical intervention.  Which does not include horse de-wormer or whatever Jim Bakker is hawking at the moment as one of its protocols.

Predictably the gasbags on the right-gasbagitis having no known cure-have denounced this as “government overreach” and “dictatorship.”  3 or 4 governors have threatened legal action.  To which President Biden has said, “Bring it on.”

He’s got the better argument based on what us lawyers call venerable case law.  In 1905, there was a smallpox epidemic.  The City of Cambridge, Massachusetts mandated that all of its citizens be inoculated against the disease.  A local pastor named Jacobson took umbrage at this notion.  He sued claiming that forcing he and his son (as I recall) to take the medicine violated his 14th Amendment rights to “life, liberty and property.” In other words, considerations of personal liberty come above all else.

Does this sound remotely familiar?

Anyway, the Supreme Court upheld the actions of the government in this case, stating that  “[u]pon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

Now, unless the US Supreme Court is going to ignore over 100 years of settled law in the case of Jacobson vs. Massachusetts -and who knows with this bunch?- Joe Biden is on pretty solid legal ground I would say.  

So what will happen as a matter of practicality?  Will folks quit their jobs en masse as a matter of what passes for principle?  Doubtful.  Just look at it from the unemployment compensation angle. An arguable “voluntary quit” would render one ineligible for unemployment. Further, refusal of a lawful request by an employer-which this would be-is insubordination which would likewise render an employee ineligible.  OSHA hasn’t promulgated its regs on the issue yet (and this will most likely be where the action is at legally) but I imagine that the “closely held religious belief” exception (or legitimate medical condition exemption) to getting the shot will still be available.  But as far as I know that exception would not apply to getting tested. Just because you are a Christian Scientist doesn’t mean you get to come to work sick.

And it bears repeating, even to those with deaf ears, asking you about your vax status or requiring you to be tested does not violate your rights under HIPAA, or, for the most part, the ADA or Title VII. It just doesn’t.

Here in Darkansas you can expect our Trumpian Attorney General to join in the flurry of lawsuits that will be filed.  You can expect the Ledge-which is permanently in session (or so it would seem)-to produce something equally idiotic.  Like introducing a bill that bans OSHA enforcement actions anywhere within the borders of the Natural State or something.  You wait and see.  I’m guessing they will be back in Little Rock by Monday week.  Besides, the holidays are coming up and those freeloaders could use the per diem to buy presents.  

Joe Biden has evidently had it.  The Supremes have held that protection of the community is a “paramount necessity.”  That’s pretty solid ground upon which to pick a fight. 

We shall see what we shall see.  

Program Note

No Sunday blog this weekend as I will returning from-God help me-Branson.  

If I happen to run into Wayne Newton I will pass along your regards.