The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

The Gabbo Incident

In the Simpsons episode titled Krusty Gets Cancelled, Krusty the Clown’s show is replaced by Gabbo, a ventriloquist’s dummy that has been described as being like “a demented Howdy Doody”.

In this episode, there’s a scene in which Gabbo’s show, which is broadcast live, cuts to commercial. During the break, Gabbo says “That ought to hold the S.O.B.’s.” Bart, seeing an opportunity to sabotage Gabbo’s show, lures the camera operator away from the camera, points it at Gabbo and turns it on just in time to broadcast Gabbo saying “All the kids in Springfield are S.O.B.’s.”

The incident makes the news in Springfield. After Kent Brockman reports the story, he repeats Gabbo’s gaffe by saying “That ought to hold the S.O.B.’s,” not realizing that the camera is still on.

The scene cuts to two newspapers spinning towards the camera. The first headline reads “Gabbo Still #1 in Springfield”. The second reads “Brockman Fired”.

Peggy Noonan’s “Gabbo Moment”

For those of you not familiar with the name, Peggy Noonan is a writer of several books, a Wall Street Journal columnist and conservative commentator. She’ll probably be remembered for her work as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (the Bushisms “kinder, gentler nation”, “a thousand points of light” and “read my lips: no new taxes” come from her speeches). I remember laughing at Jamie Malinowski’s comic, My Own Private Peggy Noonan, in which the character of Peggy Noonan boasted that only her writing skill could make Reagan seem coherent and Bush sound like a native English speaker.

Noonan had a Gabbo Moment with political consultant Mike Murphy while on Chuck Todd’s show on NBC when they went off camera while the microphones were still on. Here’s the video of the Gabbo Moment:

And here’s a transcript of that Gabbo Moment:

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.

The camera cuts away, but the microphones are still on. As far as everyone is concerned, we’re now “off the record”.

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —

Peggy Noonan: It’s over.

Mike Murphy: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

Chuck Todd: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to [Texas Senator] Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

Peggy Noonan: Saw Kay this morning.

Chuck Todd: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —

Mike Murphy: They’re all bummed out.

Chuck Todd: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Peggy Noonan: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —

Chuck Todd: Yeah they went to a narrative.

Mike Murphy: I totally agree.

Peggy Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

Mike Murphy: You know what’ sreally the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

Chuck Todd: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

Mike Murphy: Yeah.

The Reversal

Standard operating procedure for gaffes like this, regardless of your political persuasion, is to issue a “clarification” (which you can read as “backpedalling”) as quickly as possible in her Wall Street Journal piece titled Open Mic Night at MSNBC.

I’m not sure what sort of cognitive dissonance you need to change gears from complaining about “political bullshit about narratives” to spewing your own, but Noonan shows that she’s got it in spades in her description of Sarah Palin:

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing — who is really one of them and who is not — and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

And on she goes, as she is wont to do. For such a long-winded reversal thrown together in such little time, Ms. Noonan, it’s time to break out my “Sarcastic Joker Applause” animation:

Bravo, Peggy. Bra-vo.

You can read the article, or save valuable minutes by reading Andrew Sullivan’s summary: “How can a person who says this also have written this? Jeez, has everyone gone insane?”

The insanity may have only begun.

The Bang Bang Bar on Bloor Street West (between Dundas and Keele) promotes its events using Facebook:

In a place like Accordion City, where 1 in 3 people has a Facebook account, it makes perfect sense. (To be notified of Bang Bar Bar events, you join the Bang Bang Bar Boozers group and add one “Glenn Bang” as your friend.)

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Also seen on the work today: a guy in a brown Mazda who loves the hand gesture known as “The Shocker” so much that he bought a “shocker” decal for his car:

Here’s a close-up:

Stay classy, dude.

(In case you’re not familiar with “The Shocker”, it’s a hand gesture that makes “The Finger” seem like a Sunday school picnic for Barry Manilow fans. If you really must know, there’s a very complete explanation here with not-safe-for-work text.)

A couple of years ago, someone posed a question to my friend Reg Braithwaite that began with “Would it be unethical if…?”

“Hold it right there,” said Reg before the guy could finish asking his question. “In my experience, if you have to ask a question that starts with ‘Would it be unethical’, chances are, it probably is unethical.”

I was reminded of Reg’s words a couple of days ago when I saw the video below. It features Stuart Shepherd of Focus on the Family suggesting that people pray for non-lethal but convention-ruining rain at the Democratic National Convention. As one would expect, he didn’t suggest it directly; he instead took the weasel route and posed it as a question: “Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain?” “Not flood-people-out-of-their-houses-rain,” of course — that would be wrong — but “network cameras can’t see the podium rain.”

Here’s the video featuring Shepherd’s weaselly suggestion:

You won’t find this video on Focus on the Family’s site anymore, as a number of people who actually follow Jesus’ teachings protested the video, and rightly so. Luckily for us, the video lives on as an example of how not to behave, thanks to YouTube.

Asking God to harm or even inconvenience your fellow human being — and doing so with advance schadenfeude? That’s not Christianity — that’s voodoo.

In response, they said “it was a joke”. It’s a strange defense for people who throw major conniption fits whenever someone pokes fun at their religion or makes a mockery of prayer.

And what of the apparent response to these prayers? Perfect weather for the Democratic National Convention and storms on the Gulf Coast coinciding with the start of the Republican National Convention, forcing them to change plans, rearrange schedules and do whatever they could to not remind people of all the Hurricane Katrina missteps.

There’s an opportunity for Shepherd to make a new video about how God deals with inappropriate uses of prayer, but somehow I doubt they’ll take advantage of it.

This made me chuckle:

This Bristol Palin-based parody of the poster for Juno made me chortle:

(For those of you unfamiliar with Alaskan geography, Juneau is a city in the Alaskan panhandle.)