Late show hosts, then and now

    Lakeside Joe runs down the differences.

If you watch re-runs of Johnny Carson, one thing will stand out the most, and it’s that Carson had the unique ability to deliver jokes in a casual, midwestern-everyman tone; like chatting with the audience over a drink. He made it feel effortless and inclusive, as if he was one of them poking fun at the day’s absurdities (kind of like we do with snark on social media – everyone’s fair game) He recovered from weak jokes by leaning into them self-deprecatingly, which often got bigger laughs.

When Carson did his final show, one in five Americans were watching. Colbert’s final audience was a minor fraction of that. The numbers tell the whole story of what late night became:

Then: When Johnny Carson signed off in 1992, it’s been estimated that 55 million Americans watched – out of about 250 million. More than one in five.

Now: Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show drew 6.7 million – out of roughly 342 million. Under 2%.

The shift: same chair, a far bigger country, a fraction of the audience.

The reason: Carson made the whole country laugh; Colbert made half the country the butt of his ‘jokes’. Late night didn’t die of natural causes. It chose a side, aimed nine of every ten jokes at that side’s enemies, and then acted shocked when half the country stopped watching. Carson understood he was a guest in everyone’s living room. His successors decided the living room needed a lecture. Carson hosted an entire country. Colbert played ‘host’ to a minority who’s clubhouse was closed to anyone with half a brain.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. If the smarmy gasbag Colbert was even half as smart as he seems to think he is, you’d think he woulda realized that alienating half your audience from your very first night might not be such a hot idea. Which, hate to have to hip all you shitlib Supergenii!™ and all, actually has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with whether or not Trump can “take a joke,” by the by.

Suicidal empathy

Yes, it’s a thing, and it’s hilarious.


See what I mean? It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at a case of Just Deserts so apt, served up so piping hot and fresh, as this sub-genius twat willfully put herself on the receiving end of. This is PRECISELY what some of us mean when we say that stupidity should be actually, literally painful. Sayonara, sucker.

(Via Ed)

Telling it like it is

Of all people, Big John “Lumpy” Fetterman, and my cap is duly and humbly doffed to him for his honesty, forthrightness, and stark bravery.

Fetterman calls NYC protesters ‘pro-Hezbollah/Hamas,’ puts own Democratic Party on blast
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., described protesters who demonstrated in New York City on Tuesday as “Pro-Hezbollah / Hamas s[—]heads,” and indicated that the Democratic Party should speak out against them.

“Mob of Pro-Hezbollah / Hamas s[—]heads raging against law enforcement and terrorizing the NYC Jewish community near a synagogue and day care,” Fetterman wrote in a Wednesday post on X.

“Where’s my party’s condemnation?”

Where indeed, John. Free advice: don’t be holding your breath waiting on it.

(Via Ace)

En garde!

Take that, punk-ass beeyotch.



Truth hurts, don’t it Bill?

He shoots, he scores!

Big points for RFKJ.

The Way RFK Jr. Turned the Tables on This Democrat Was Amazing
Democrats thought they had Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right where they wanted him. On Friday, Kennedy was on Capitol Hill so that Democrats could grandstand on the HHS budget, the 25th Amendment, and whatever else they needed clips of to include in their fundraising pitches. They thought they could abuse Kennedy and he’d just take it.

They were wrong. Very, very wrong.

During the hearing, Democrats came loaded with their usual talking points about proposed Medicaid changes harming the poor and the sick. What they didn’t anticipate was Kennedy coming armed with numbers that reframed the entire argument. Instead of playing defense, he walked into that hearing room and went on offense.

Kennedy’s central point was straightforward: the administration isn’t cutting Medicaid. It’s cleaning it up.

Then came my favorite moment of the exchange. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) decided to challenge Kennedy with what he clearly thought was a devastating question. “Have you met with any of the 1.4 million people who have lost their health insurance just this last year from dropping off of Obamacare?” Casar asked. “Have you sat down and talked to those folks about the fact they won’t have their health insurance again?”

The question was stupid, but the implication was obvious. According to Cesar, Kennedy was supposedly indifferent to real Americans losing coverage.

They were wrong. Very, very wrong.

During the hearing, Democrats came loaded with their usual talking points about proposed Medicaid changes harming the poor and the sick. What they didn’t anticipate was Kennedy coming armed with numbers that reframed the entire argument. Instead of playing defense, he walked into that hearing room and went on offense.

Kennedy’s central point was straightforward: the administration isn’t cutting Medicaid. It’s cleaning it up.

Then came my favorite moment of the exchange. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) decided to challenge Kennedy with what he clearly thought was a devastating question. “Have you met with any of the 1.4 million people who have lost their health insurance just this last year from dropping off of Obamacare?” Casar asked. “Have you sat down and talked to those folks about the fact they won’t have their health insurance again?”

The question was stupid, but the implication was obvious. According to Cesar, Kennedy was supposedly indifferent to real Americans losing coverage.

Kennedy’s response was about as devastating as it gets. “They’re almost all illegal immigrants,” he told him.

There was a brief pause before Cesar stuttered his way through a response and then proceeded to talk over Kennedy as he attempted to make a critical point.

“We found 1.5 million illegal immigrants illegally collecting Medicaid,” Kennedy said.

Heh. Go get the goddamned idiots, Sec Kennedy, sir.

Marketing genius

Once upon a time, there was a lovely old song went a little something like this:

Now, down the years since it was written there have been many versions of this particular song cut by many artists, many of them females. I just used this one because, I mean, come ON, man, it’s Nat King Cole—of COURSE I did!

Which is not germane to the central point of this post; no, this remarkable story of marketing superdupergenius is.

Los Angeles Rams Cheerleaders
The Los Angeles Rams Cheerleaders are the official National Football League cheerleading squad representing the Los Angeles Rams team.

History
They were established in 1974 during the team’s original tenure in Los Angeles and were known as the Embraceable Ewes. The cheerleading organization became known as the “St. Louis Rams Cheerleaders” when the team moved to St. Louis, Missouri. Beginning with the 2016 NFL season, the organization changed its name to the “Los Angeles Rams Cheerleaders” to associate themselves with the recently relocated Los Angeles Rams football team. They also have their own television show by the name of LA Rams Cheerleaders: Making the Squad.

Heh. Bold mine, because I absolutely love it.

“The Times regrets the error”

Mike’s Iron Law #7846: When all the “errors” and “honest mistakes” seem to cut in only one direction, what you’re seeing isn’t actually an error at all, but an agenda.

To wit

Via Ed Driscoll, who, incredible as it may seem, has more examples of those one-way NYT “errors.”

In response to…

This lackwit drivel.


Is Joe Huffman’s no-bull blast of plain common sense.

Your “horrifying if you believe in the First Amendment” drivel is the exact cognitive blind spot these cells exploit…weaponizing free speech as a get-out-of-consequences card for those who piss on it with bullets and bombs.

Brandenburg v. Ohio carved it out decades ago:

protected speech stops cold at incitement to imminent lawless action that actually happens. They didn’t just talk; they executed.

The Constitution doesn’t shield arsonists, shooters, or terror enablers any more than it shields Al-Qaeda sympathizers handing out bomb manuals.

This verdict isn’t chilling dissent; it’s lethal accountability, the kind that deters the next cell of ideologically poisoned fuckwits from turning public facilities into kill zones.

So spare me your performative horror, you fucking idiot.

The jury saw the pathology for what it was. The FBI built the case on it. And the law cut them down.

Cry harder, sweetheart.

LHGrey™️ @grey4626
Posted on X, March 14, 2026

With this Parthian shot tacked on for good measure.

It is interesting this person believes the First Amendment protects the destruction of government property and shooting a police officer with an AR-15. They must have crap for brains. With that broad of scope for the First Amendment, just imagine what the Second Amendment must protect. Why, it must protect the use of artillery dropping HE on the U.S. Capital or some such thing.

Hey, I’m okay with that interpretation, myself.

(Via Sarah Hoyt)

The final, fatal plunge

T’uqr takes the last step, goes full Nazi.

Tucker Carlson calls pro-Hitler Oswald Mosley one of Britain’s ‘great war heroes’
Mosley’s only crime, Carlson claimed, was being the leader of the ‘opposition party’ to Churchill

Controversial US podcaster Tucker Carlson has described Oswald Mosley, the pro-Hitler leader of Britain’s short-lived fascist party during the Second World War, as one of the country’s “great war heroes”.

Carlson further claimed this week that Mosley’s “only crime was being the opposition” to Winston Churchill, and that was why he was arrested.

Churchill, according to Carlson, was a person we are “required to deify”, but in fact was a figure who “presided over the imprisonment of his opposition party during the entire length of the war, and their families, and their wives.”

About Mosley and his party, he continued: “Their crime was being the opposition party and being disloyal and unpatriotic, they weren’t.”

Speaking in a video interspersed with images of Mosley doing fascist salutes, Carlson said: “The opposition party was led by a First World War war hero who fought not just as you know, a pilot in the sky but and in the trenches. [He was] one of the great war heroes, former member of parliament, the country ever produced. And he and his compatriots and their wives were interned without charges by Winston Churchill for the duration of the war.”

Mosley was not fact the then-leader of the opposition but founder of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), a minor party that never performed well in elections even at its height in the mid 1930s, and never won a seat in Parliament.

As per usual, T’uqr gets his timelines all jumbled up, commits several patent errors of fact without offering to correct himself, and just generally stomps around beclowning himself in most spectacular fashion.

Mosley was a hapless fascist boob; Churchill was a masterful orator, a bit too much the political animal for my tastes, but ultimately and incontrovertibly (however strenuously the Crackpot Right might wish it were otherwise) a great wartime Prime Minister who held Britain together and saw the England he so deeply loved through its darkest, most desperate hours.

As for T’uqr, he badly needs to do himself a YUUUUGE favor and just keep his mouth shut.

RIP Chuck Norris

As ever, the fine folks at Jimmy’s Seafood in Baltimore say it for me, so I don’t have to.

Heh. Y’know, I am consistently bemused by those who insist that anyone with an adequate vocabulary should never resort to blue language, lest he make himself look doltish, coarse, or low-class thereby. Au contraire, mon frère! I have always maintained, and will always maintain, that in certain circumstances a rousing cuss word is no more nor less than the mot juste, the only way to be sure the job is done RIGHT. I’m happy to see that the Jimmy’s crew gets that too.

Chumped!

Did Trump just play that dumbass Tucker Carlson like a cheap violin? Hmmmm, could be, could be.

New Theory Emerges: Was the Supreme Leader Set up by a Leaker Named… Tucker Carlson?
Hmm. So Carlson admits he was “talking to people in Iran before the war.”

To whom was he talking — and what was he talking about?

Because we know he spoke directly to the leadership of Iran. Less than a year ago, he bootlicked Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in an astonishingly powder-puff “interview.” And when a journalist (or whatever Carlson is) has relationships like that, he tends to use ‘em.

It gives you a competitive advantage: Access is power.

Furthermore, before the Iran War began, we know Tucker Carlson made numerous trips to the White House. Multiple outlets reported that Carlson was attempting to convince President Trump not to go to war against Iran.

Yet once war broke out, Carlson insisted Israel must’ve somehow talked Trump into it.

It’s all very intriguing, because one of the biggest mysteries of this war is, why the heck were the Iranian mullahs and their “supreme leader” so careless and stupid to meet all together in broad daylight? It decapitated Iran’s government.

Anyone with half a brain would’ve known how dangerous that was!

And now, finally, an explanation emerges.

Perhaps the reason why the mullahs and their “supreme leader” were lulled into a false sense of security was because Tucker Carlson told them that the president was bluffing: There were no strikes coming, so there’s nothing to fear.

Full disclosure: I don’t know for sure if this theory is true. Just like Tucker Carlson, I’m “just asking questions.”

But as far as conspiracy theories go, you’ve gotta admit, the pieces fit quite nicely.

Don’t they just. You can just about hear Trump laughing his ass off from all the way over here.

2
1
1

Meow mix

This Rock & Roar dude is a bona fide all-caps GENIUS.

That one’s gotta be my fave, but R&R has a crapton of these, including Judas Purrst, Slipkcat, Catallica, and this next one.

At last, something AI can do really, really well.

Update! ZOMG, just found this one. My new favorite.

Heh. Go, Angus!

Make.It. SO

Fret not, foks; that loud POP-POP-POPPITY-POP! sound you keep hearing is just “liberal” heads exploding, from sea to shining sea.

Rep. Ogles Proposes Amending the 22nd Amendment to Allow Trump to Serve a Third Term
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Andy Ogles introduced a House Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States to allow a President to be elected for up to but no more than three terms. The language of the proposed amendment reads as follows:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

“President Trump’s decisive leadership stands in stark contrast to the chaos, suffering, and economic decline Americans have endured over the past four years. He has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal. To that end, I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution to revise the limitations imposed by the 22nd Amendment on presidential terms. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs,” said Congressman Ogles.

Oh HELLS muhfuggin’ yeah! Though I’d guesstimate it has no chance whatsoever of passing, much less being implemented—which I’m sure Ogles knows as well as the rest of us do—I’m still one hunnert and umpteen percent on board with this move.

And bang, zoom! Just like that, Congressman Ogles’ über-canny political maneuver goes into the “Win” column—if only because of how delightfully it’s gonna get under The Enemy’s skin and just irk the everloving tar out of those clot-head pantywaists, and nothing else. Trust me, I am in no way, shape, or form joshing y’all about this: for shitlibs, Ogles’ Big Idear is gonna smart awhile.

Most likely, they’ll still be feigning shock and revulsion over this black-belt exhibition of Instructor-level Stunt-Politicking for years to come, as their Jurassic Media poodles blind-loyally take up their customary role with eagerness and aplomb, ferociously snapping, yapping, and growling, pretending they’re much more fearsome Guardians of Forbidden Knowledge than they in fact are.

Yes, this abominable Crime Against Duh Peepul amounts to beyond-reasonable-doubt confirmation of Our Side’s genetically-instilled penchant for duplicity, guile, perfidious anti-Superstate agitation, and E-ville Moste Foule™ in the “minds” of their loathsome ilk, which imagines Normal American Whypeepuh to be nothing more nor less than the final straw which broke the back of Our Sacred Democracy© past any hope of repair or restoration.

Mark the date, folks, and believeth Ye Humble Aulde Bloggehoste when he proclaimeth unto you: these pitiful Pearls will still be weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth over the mountebank Ogles’ deliberately provocative and reckless H88 Crime sixty/seventy years from now, perhaps much, much longer than, even. If this latest involuntary spasm of bargain-basement histrionics—quelle horreur, quel dommage!—turns out to be insufficient impetus to goad the slope-shouldered, sunken-chested, gender-indeterminate Lefty Loser Legions (ie, pAntifa, Black Lies Murder, the ASWP, Pink Rifles, to name but a few) into taking to the streets en masse and wreaking a grownup-size dose of Duh Peepuls “Justice” upon the severely dangerous, perilously imminent menace which all intelligent, compassionate, well-meaning Leftist-Americans acknowledge the aptly-named Basket of Deplorables to be, I haven’t the vaguest clue what might do the trick.

4
1

CF Archives

Categories

Comments policy

NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.

If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.

Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.

Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum

Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

Subscribe to CF!

Support options

Shameless begging

If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:

Correspondence

Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc

All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender

Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

Fuck you

Kill one for mommy today! Click to embiggen

Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

Best of the best

Finest hosting service

Image swiped from The Last Refuge

2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

RSS feed

RSS - entries - Entries
RSS - entries - Comments

Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx

Copyright © 2026