If You’re Going To Pull Down Statues

You might as well pull down Fawlty Towers while you’re at it.

Fawlty

Nobody gets this. But nobody gets what’s going on anywhere else these days so, whatever.

An episode of sitcom Fawlty Towers has been taken off UKTV’s streaming service because it contains “racial slurs”.

The BBC-owned platform said it had made The Germans unavailable while it carries out a review.

In the 1975 episode, Basil Fawlty declares “don’t mention the war” around German guests, while the Major uses highly offensive language about the West Indies cricket team.

“One of the things I’ve learned in the last 180 years is that people have very different senses of humour.”

Order Now While The Supply Lasts Or Something

Brain Quest – A Fantastic Voyage through the Progressive Mind. Out now!

Brain Quest

“Other than a slight run-in with an errant gang of deviant subculture corpuscles our passage through the blameless victim ventricle proved to be rather uneventful.”

Brain Quest: A Fantastic Voyage through the Progressive Mind

Available on December 26, 2017! Reserve your copy today for $0.99 and get a huge discount off the regular price. Pre-order now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Smashwords and other select retailers.

Brain Quest

Mission Nemo simply must succeed. If the crew of the Super Small Miniaturized Nano-like Operations Wessel S. S. Minnow fails to destroy the inoperable anti-capitalist coagulum lodged in Maurice Moore’s progressive brain, how will General De Klein’s Federal Department of Antidotes operatives at SUCFACE Mission Control find out if Leftylometazoline (aka LeftX) really works? Would this usher in the final stage of the liberal clerisy’s clandestine collectivist conspiracy to abolish our few remaining individual freedoms forever? That would not please President Thump one microscopic little bit.

Join Major Miles Stone and his disturbingly alluring crew on their miniaturized mission through the left and lefter hemispheres of the progressive brain. Their fantastic voyage is a race against time that takes them through such redoubtable regions as the Clinton Vortex, the Che Guevara Gray Area and the Obama Trauma Center itself. Here they bravely confront such anatomical monstrosities as the fantasist frontalis, the hyperbolthalamus and the dreaded pious aspiration node. Their progressive brain journey only gets progressively worse as they are repeatedly attacked by repulsive swarms of nanny neurons, doomsday dendrons, robin hoodlums and the formidable radical egalitarian bacterium. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, and their deadly arsenal of passing phasers, millennial mindset missiles, moral busybody antibodies and Condescendium®, the Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost.

The tension never stops building during this thrilling tale of adventure, danger, suspense and romance. And lust. Will Captain Hanna Grenada’s irresistible animal magnetism finally seduce the Major into experiencing something vaguely resembling basic human emotion? Can the all too communicative HAL 9999 super computer and his annoying eye drones really be trusted to operate the ship? And will the Minnow’s political corrector deflectors and smug shields hold, allowing Stone and his crew to reach their target and ignite the liberal bombast bomb in time? I could tell you but that would ruin the suspense.

Not your everyday dystopian science-fiction erotic horror political thriller, this bombastic bombshell of a book knows no shame when it comes to overwhelming you with its serious silliness, wanton wackiness and forthright, flat-out farce. Purchase it now before it is too late or something. Soon to be made into a major motion picture. Or maybe it has been already. There is also time travel involved here, after all.

Charges Dropped Against German Comedian Because He Wasn’t Being Funny On Purpose

He was only being funny by accident, investigators say, so that’s OK.

Comedy

If he had been funny while trying to be funny on purpose, however, this guy would have been up Scheiße Creek  without a paddle. Germany comedy is no laughing matter, folks.

Prosecutors have been praised in Germany for dropping a criminal probe into a poem perceived as insulting by Turkish President Recep Erdogan. Satirist Jan Böhmermann’s wording unleashed a diplomatic row last April…

In a three-page declaration Thursday, the prosecutors said their investigation had not established a deliberate intent to insult (insult comedy = to be funny, or can be), sufficient to lead to a criminal conviction.

Es ist enorm wichtig für mich als Künstler in solchen Zeiten einen starken, selbstbewussten öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender mit klarer, unabhängiger Haltung hinter sich zu wissen.

Germans Don’t Need Foreign Leaders Telling Them How Far Free Speech Can Go

They have there own leaders to do that.

Erdogan

It is illegal under Section 103 of Germany’s criminal code to insult foreign leaders, you see.

So that is why German officials are now “carefully reviewing” the Turkish government’s request to have criminal proceedings be brought against German comedian Jan Boehmermann over his satirical poem suggesting that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan engages in sexual acts with goats.

Wait a minute. Shouldn’t the goats be the insulted ones here? Hardy, har, har. Just joking. Honest, man.

Dass beleidigende Äußerungen hingegen überhaupt strafbar sind, versteht sich keinesfalls von selbst – in Ländern mit angloamerikanischer Rechtsordnung sind sie es ganz überwiegend nicht.

Terrorists Are People, Too

And it would be wrong to hurt their feelings. So that is why German comedian Dieter Nuhr has been reported to the police for anti-Islamic agitation. In Germany. By a Muslim. This guy had the nerve to make fun of Osama bin Laden himself – and Islamic terrorists and “martyrs” in general.

It is unclear if the Muslim who reported him ever reported Osama bin Laden to the police for anti-Islamic agitation, too. But that is beside the point, many hand-wringing Gutmensch-Germans are already pointing out. Islamic terrorists commit their acts in the name of Islam. So by making fun of them you also insult their religion, or so the reasoning must be. Ever feel like you’ve woken up in Wonderland?

„Ich habe kein Verständnis dafür, dass die bei uns lange erkämpfte Meinungsfreiheit nicht mehr ernst genommen wird, wenn sich Islamisten dagegenstemmen.“

Brought To You Since 72

Who am I to question a long English television tradition? In Germany, I mean.

Freddie

Do you know who Freddie Frinton was? Or May Warden? Nope. Don’t feel so bad. If English is your native language and you live in the US or the UK, then you’re not alone. But a German would likely know the names, or surely at least know their most famous characters.

Happy New Year!

Try And Stop Me

Some ideas are so unoriginal that they’re almost original. But only almost. That’s why it’s time for something completely different (not) and “Dinner for One, or the 90th Birthday” on New Year’s Eve – in Germany. Yet again.

Dinner for One

Happy New Year!

It’s a German New Year’s tradition – an English-language TV sketch that has been broadcast more often than any other program. It will be 50 years old in 2013.

The New York Times Must Be Hurting Even More Than We Thought

Wow. Front page material even (online): Cindy aus Marzahn herself.

Cindy aus Marzahn

An overweight 6-foot-2-inch Valkyrie of a woman in a pink velour sweatsuit, Cindy plays up the worst stereotypes of Germany’s contemporary version of the welfare queen. She wakes up at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and begins drinking. Her dream man, Enrico, stands 4-foot-10, weighs 375 pounds and works as a bouncer.

Critics call her act offensive, lowbrow and worse, mixing high-minded attacks on her with patronizing depictions of her supposedly benighted fans.

“I have Alzheimer’s bulimia,” Cindy likes to say. “I eat everything in sight and then forget to throw up.”

I Thought He’d Never Leave

Contrary to popular belief, Germans have a great sense of humor. What they’re not terribly good at, however, is imitating other comedy formats, something they insist on doing time and time and time again. Harald Schmidt is a prime example of this and – glory hallelujah let the saints be praised – they’ve finally gotten around to cancelling his show for good.

He has been Germany’s late night Tonight-Show-David-Letterman-Conan-O’Brien-like clone for many, way too many years and I’ve never understood why people here pretend that he is funny, but, then again, maybe that’s just me (uh, who else is it going to be?).

I’d give you an example of some of his highbrow, sophisticated humor (see above), but that would only make me feel more aggressive than I do already so go out there and dig up something on YouTube yourself if you absolutely positively have to and good luck with the translation because it won’t be worth it.

Geh mit Gott, Harald, aber geh.