Well, just to bring you down, the nearby seal breeding colony was destroyed...

Your video, Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

One thing I am looking forward to are good polemics as part of the election's post-mortem. In terms of video footage, both Cenk and Kyle over at TYT and Secular Talk respectively went off the rails quite nicely. But the good stuff, the really good stuff, will trickle in, and exclusively in written form.

Lambert over at NC makes a decent start, given his lack of sleep:

The Democrat establishment was warned about their weak candidate, and they were presented with a popular and well-funded alternative: Bernie Sanders. Instead, as the Podesta emails show in lavish detail, they used their control of the party machinery and their service providers in our famously free press to rig the primary in their favor at every turn. When their candidate was nominated, the Democrat establishment tacked right, and proceeded to explain to Sanders voters that their votes were not needed or even desired because, as #BernieBros, they were racist and sexist. Sanders supporters have every right to say #WeWereRight and #WeToldYouSo.

If this were Japan, we’d be seeing Democrat Party leaders committing seppuku, or cutting off their little fingers or — supposing them not to be gangsters — ritually and tearfully bowing to the people they betrayed. This being America, and these being Democrats, they are feverishly deploying the Blame Cannons at racist and sexist #BernieBros, Johnson, Stein, and the dogs who wouldn’t eat the dog food. These assclowns will only leave office if they’re whipped out with scorpions. So get to it, Sanders supporters. This is your time.

Oh my God! Samantha Bee is interviewing one of our very own sifters! @bobknight33, you're famous!

*promote the 'homegrown' troll.

And that's exactly what it's about.
I don't care about infedelity. Fuck as many Bimbos as you like, I'm not your wife. But sexual harassment? Sexual assault?
No, man. No fucking way. I'm a pig, okay? I love sluts and I don't mind the filthiest sex work in the world but if you think I'm ok with taking consent out of the interaction between men and women, you got the wrong guy.
You do not grab women 'by the pussy' unless they ask you to.
You're entitled to nothing. No matter who you are, no matter if anybody objects, no matter wether you're famous or not.
The Donald doesn't understand this. That's why he's a horrible, rapey person.

The problem here is not that he said some dirty, piggish shit about women... it's that he said he touches them and kisses them without their consent. HUGE difference... he admitted to sexual assault and said they let him do it because he's famous. The only Bill that he should be comparing himself to is Bill Cosby.

I have only one complaint. Calling "Get away from her you bitch!" the most famous line underplays the fact that this film is chock full of the most quotable lines in film history.

Compared to just about anything Apone says, also Hudson and many from Hicks, that line is pedestrian.

-"I like to keep this handy, for close encounters."
-"How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?"
-"Game over man... game over!"
-"Well why don't you put her in charge?!"
-"Me and my team of ultimate bad asses are here to protect you!... We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks," etc.
-"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure."
-"A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade - I LOVE THE CORPS!"
-"What do you want me to do, fetch your slippers for you?" etc. and "Look into my eye......"

I'll stop before I end up pasting the entire script.

Edit: One final complaint - i consider Aliens to be tarnished by associations with modern wonder woman, which IMO was indicative of the abject failure of rich Hollywood males to produce a worthy female superhero.

1. I tend not to like lists like these, so I always ensure that at least some answers are completely made up. In protest I will not reformat this list to make it more readable.
2. I was quite good at fencing. I was Irish national sabre champion, but that's a lot less impressive than it sounds.
3. I won Miss Fencing Intervarsities 3 years running. I'm male.
4. I'm a Monty Python fan to an unhealthy degree. I co-wrote the first Python FAQ online, based on actual questions that were asked frequently.
6. I have called every living member of Monty Python 'Michael' except Michael Palin. I called him Terry. None of them called me on it.
7. I have what amounts to a secret crush on someone here on the sift. They always say what I'm thinking, but far more eloquently than I ever can. I grin when they upvote me.
8. I have a Scaramanga-style extra nipple.
9. I have a son. My girlfriend's waters broke while I was watching Alien. I'm more proud of the second part than the first... lots of other people have tiny pet humans.
10. I was once kicked in the head by Armand Assante (a b-list-ish actor).
11. I can sing the names of about 20 particularly nasty diseases.
12. I'm batman.
13. I've been online since the 80s, but at this stage the web is pretty much read-only for me. I'm more active here on the sift than anywhere else, and that's not saying much.
14. I was in Russia during the 'invasion of Georgia' in 2008. In fact, I was in the mountains bordering the two countries and saw the situation almost first-hand. Before then I had little confidence in the news we get here in the west; now I have almost none. Stuff broadcast as fact was (to me) easily proven false at the time, and the subsequent UN report backs up my side of the story.
15. I teach tai chi.
16. One of my happiest memories is not sleeping with a hot (and very cool) Norwegian woman.
17. I once ran a marathon backwards. It's not as easy as it sounds.
18. My grandmother owned race horses, including one who holds a significant record in Cheltenham. She's quite famous here in Ireland (to a certain generation at least).
19. Online (and sometimes off) I tend to use anagrams of my name. The idea is that it's hard to find Noims from my real name (until someone ruins that), but not too hard to go the other direction. My avatar is based on the same principle. There are at least 3 other Noimses online, but I was the first.
20. My favourite piece of software is the vi editor (specifically gvim). I have no idea what my favourite book, music, or non-python film are.
21. I'm a keen gamer, but most offline. I hate Steam. I've been playing Nethack since the 80s, and still play in the devnull competition yearly... it's the longest running online game tournament there is.
22. I think one of the worst facts in the world is that marketing works.
23. I was in a metal band called the Bubonic Duck-Fuckers from Hell (BDF).
24. I used to be big into RPGs (role playing - not rockets). I once got first prize in 3 games in a single weekend convention with 4 game slots.
25. I love the number 12, and know all the powers up to 12^12. Consequently I dislike the number 5. I strongly tend to favour multiples/powers of 12 over those of 5.

Congratulations! Your comment on Famous Failures, and why you should never give up. has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

Congratulations! Your comment on Famous Failures, and why you should never give up. has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

This achievement has earned you your "Silver Tongue" Level 5 Badge!

Infact, there's a VERY famous video now of a woman who was crushing grapes and fell off (It was a news anchor thing.)

Ebaums was the only place to actually see the video because everywhere else took it down.

We have (commissioned) graffiti here in Austin that is so famous that the city will restore it if you damage it and refuses to let the owner of the building it is on to touch it either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Johnston#/media/File:Hi_How_Are_You_Austin_2005.jpg

I fear you have misunderstood what I was getting at.

He talks for full minute about the ironic idea of the victims hypothetically having a sense of cognitive dissonance about the experience (done from his perspective).

Timestamp: 3:40ish to 4:50ish

I don't for a moment think he is suggesting they actually did, but the juxtaposition of that can be funny for the reasons I already outlined.
i.e. it is a common phenomenon in other areas of our experience, with people we idolise. By associating it with an experience in which we presume most people wouldn't or didn't feel that way, we have more strings of that irony thrown into the comedy orchestra.

Cosby is famous and loved and his fans presumably find him funny. There is therefore humour in the ridiculous idea that there might be some starstruck joy in being violated by said idol.

I think the bit worked perfectly if one can detach oneself from ideological prejudices.

As I already said, Louis's bits about paedophilia don't appear to be doing anything different here and thus far you have failed to explain how they actually differ, other than using the unqualified term "truthful".

Louis talks about their desires and relates them in a way universal to the human condition. This is precisely what much of Jim routine is clearly doing. "think about the thing you really love to do, well that's how Bill feels about rape" (paraphrased).

I can't see a distinction right now other than you appear to be much more emotionally sensitive to the rape thing. This is understandable, but I'm not seeing the lack of equivalence between the two comics here in terms of composition and implied meaning?

This whole bit felt deeply multi stranded and was tackling many disparate concepts at once. The gradation of rape was merely one of them and I think it's unfair to break it down to only one, or to deny the "truthfulness" hiding behind the sham.

Without that "truthfulness" the whole bit doesn't work, the assumption that the audience recognises the reality beneath the sham is unavoidable. Unless of course you think the audience and or Jim to be genuinely callous and misogynistic (which you've made clear you do not).

I guess my whole point is that the two bits are functionally almost identical. The only difference I can really see is a different style of delivery and subject matter.

I notice you appear to have dodged the comparisons to his war jokes?

Is there no moral equivalence there? If anything there is far less empathy and personal "truth" being explored. The "little cunt" just dies, Jim never attempts to humanise him or relate the kids experience in an ironic way.

By your logic that routine should be far more offensive surely? (especially when we consider that life and subsequent brutal death in a warzone is quite possibly a more horrible experience than most rapes, especially the kind being discussed here)

Hilarious. Maybe they should have tried to not giggle like naughty teenagers making a prank call if they want to be taken seriously.
First, they did make the shirt he asked for, a quality one it seemed, just with a bonus secret message.
Second, Trump supporters are the same people who advocate the refusal of service for people who offend their religious (or political) sensibilities, so what's his problem? He was probably hoping they would refuse him service so he could use the video as proof that "liberals" are totally hypocritical and refuse service to those they dislike but vilify "conservatives" for the same thing, but got something unexpected instead.

It's now pretty clear that initially they did this looking for and expecting a negative reaction they could exploit somehow, then pressed the point when they got one, thinking they 'got them' and now he can be the conservative hero of the week.

To be fair though, what response does one expect when one goes into a business in a firmly red state like Alabama or Mississippi, and an even more firmly Republican city, and then go to a world famously Republican neighborhood in that city, enter a store with a Trump sign in the window and ask them to make you a HILLARY T-shirt? I would bet $10 it involves threats of violence if not actual violence and firearms, not a quality shirt with a 'secret' message inside.