Rudy Giuliani Debuts His Funniest Bit Yet: Melissa Carone
In the '90s, Giuliani's approach to comedy consisted primarily of dressing in drag and struggling to read cue cards. But, as funny as that is to watch, audiences didn't really "get" him, and Rudy's turn as host has frequently been listed among the worst in the history of SNL.
Rita Delvecchio's Thanksgiving - SNL www.youtube.com
Still, he had obvious potential as a sloppy, bumbling comedic genius. He would return to the show on multiple occasions, but it wasn't until years later -- as a frequent guest on cable news -- that Giuliani settled into his current, brilliant niche as "Donald Trump's personal lawyer" and a "cybersecurity advisor."
At 76 years old, conventional wisdom would dictate that Rudy's best years in comedy were far behind him. But Rudy Giuliani has never cared much for "convention" or "wisdom." In addition to various angry and unhinged rants, Rudy has given us some amazing comedy moments like the time he butt-dialed a reporter, the time he went to the Apple Genius Bar after getting locked out of his phone, and the time he texted another reporter his private password.
And those are just the cybersecurity bits from 2019! In 2020 his "lawyer" persona has reached new levels of comedy, including his scene-stealing collaboration with Sacha Baron Cohen for Borat 2 and a series of press conferences in which he "accidentally" booked a landscaping company instead of a luxury hotel and allowed hair dye to drip slowly down the sides of his face.
But this week he has topped himself. Rather than introducing another classic Rudy character, he used the incredible moment he's been having to elevate a newcomer -- passing on the torch of sloppy political ranting to a new generation of comedic genius: Melissa Carone.
Trump's star voter fraud witness goes viral HUMILIATING herself at “hearing" www.youtube.com
Carone had previously given a solid performances as the incomprehensible "whistleblower" on Fox Business's Lou Dobbs Tonight. There she demonstrated how poorly she could explain concepts like ballots being counted incorrectly and mysterious vans delivering something other than food.
With Dobbs she put on an amusing show, but was a bit too stiff and put-together to really lose herself in the role. It was only with Rudy's coaching that Carone was able to loosen up and deliver the sloppy, belligerent performance of a lifetime in a hearing in front of the Michigan legislature on Wednesday.
Billed as a key witness of election misconduct and voter fraud, Carone was on a roll throughout the hearing. In addition to making her explanation of ballot tabulation even more confusing, she slurred her speech and frequently interrupted the state senators with hostile comments while they attempted to clarify her baseless and confusing accusations.
I thought Rudy Giuliani was crazy. Then I thought that Trump's 46-minute tirade was insane. But the #Trump Star… https://t.co/hBVLxsNMDX— Colonel Hardstone (@Colonel Hardstone) 1607003476.0
Carone's bit involves her role as an IT contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, which placed her in Detroit's TCF while votes were being counted for the November 3rd election. There she claims to have seen workers counting stacks of ballots multiple times and signing voters names to incorrectly copied ballots.
Though Carone's claims have already been dismissed in court as incompatible with other witness testimony and "simply not credible," that didn't slow her down. She continued to hilariously claim that the fact that she had signed an affidavit was proof enough that she was telling the truth.
With unflinching, sloppy confidence, she delivered lines like, "I can't even get an actual job anymore ... because Democrats like to ruin your lives" and, "I signed something saying that if I'm wrong I can go to prison. Did you?" It was almost enough to make you believe that she really meant it -- which served to make the whole thing that much funnier.
Weekend Update: Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation with on the 2016 Election - SNL www.youtube.com
While others have compared her performance to characters from Saturday Night Live (specifically, Cecily Strong's drunk girl character), there is something unrestrained and bizarre about it that more accurately recalls the heyday of Mad TV. Judging by the way he attempted to shush her, even Rudy couldn't believe how funny Carone was being, as she interrupted Republican state representative Steven Johnson to claim that the Detroit poll book contains zero registered voters and that turnout was 120% (it was actually under 50%).
Does it matter that she offers no evidence to support her claims that the poll book is "wildly off" by "over 100,000" votes or that "dead people voted and illegals voted?" Of course it matters. If she had any evidence for these claims, it wouldn't be comedy gold.
And now we have more of that comedy gold to look forward to. While the current outpouring of hilarious political comedy around "election fraud" and various clumsy, attempted coups is set to wrap up on December 14th, when the electoral college votes to elect Joe Biden the next president, Melissa Carone gives us a reason to be hopeful for the future of comedy.
Even if Rudy Giuliani retires from comedy later this month, he has anointed an heir in Carone. With her talent now in full bloom, we can all look forward to many more years of virtuosic comedic rants.
Was the Jimmy Fallon Blackface Skit Intentionally Released as a Distraction from the Murder of George Floyd?
Jimmy Fallon Blackface youtu.be
This quickly led to the hashtag #jimmyfallonisoverparty trending on Twitter. While fans seemed split on whether Fallon should be forgiven for the 20-year-old misstep, most everyone agreed that Fallon should apologize regardless. This morning, he did just that in the form of a tweet.
In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There i… https://t.co/6k9alCsBq7— jimmy fallon (@jimmy fallon) 1590526687.0
As far as celebrity apologies go, Fallon's is a pretty good one. He doesn't try to sidestep the blame, he doesn't bring up the fact that there were undoubtedly many, many other individuals involved in the creation of the skit, and he doesn't even mention the fact that in 2000, many people still thought it was possible for black face to be done in the spirit of fun, because the deeply racist nature of the act was largely ignored in mainstream (white) media. Of course, we know better now, and it's easy to see that a white person doing an exaggerated imitation of a black person—darkened skin included—can only be a racist, belittling act with a long, dark history of racial oppression. With that in mind, Fallon's only option was to apologize without caveat or reservation. Indeed, it's refreshing to see a celebrity apology that doesn't try to justify or minimize their own misstep. While we can all agree Fallon made a terrible, racist choice 20 years ago, we have to believe that, like all of us, he's grown since then. If cancel culture is to have any efficacy in making the world a better place, it has to leave room for forgiveness and growth. Hopefully, the whole affair will leave Fallon (and those who witnessed it) more racially sensitive.
All of that being said, one has to ask why the clip was brought up now, given that it's been circulated around the Internet before, and the specific YouTube clip that was shared was posted on the site over a year ago. It's also worth noting that the version of the clip that was going around Twitter has a text overlay that reads: "NBC FIRED MEGAN KELLY FOR MENTIONING BLACKFACE. JIMMY FALLON PERFORMED ON NBC IN BLACKFACE."
Megan Kelly, an outspoken conservative, was indeed fired from her job at NBC because she defended the use of blackface in Halloween costumes, saying on her talk show, "Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween, or a black person who put on whiteface for Halloween," she said. "When I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as a character." While Fallon's instance of racial insensitivity was in 2000, Kelly defended blackface in 2019, long after society at large had begun to acknowledge the hurt that blackface and other forms of racial impersonation could cause. This fundamental difference aside, Kelly also has a long history of racial insensitivity that Fallon does not, even once saying, "What is the evidence that what happened to Eric Garner and what happened to Michael Brown has anything to do with race?" in a conversation about the epidemic of racist police officers in America.
Given the text overlay, it's pretty clear that whoever began the #jimmyfallonisoverparty was not necessarily seeking justice for the black community, but was instead trying to imply hypocrisy in the cancellation of Megan Kelly, given that Fallon (who has been outspoken about the flaws of the Trump administration and political pundits like Kelly) is still on the air. One even has to wonder if, given that it's obvious that the #jimmyfallonisoverparty trend was begun by a conservative individual or group, if the trend was meant to be a distraction from the widespread racist police violence that has been emphasized in recent weeks by incidents like the death of George Floyd, a black man who was murdered in Minneapolis by a white police officer on Monday. It seems oddly coincidental that the clip of Fallon should flood the Internet with controversy the day after Floyd's murder, unfortunately serving to help steer conversation away from Floyd's unjust death.
George Floyd
Indeed, under the unquestionably racist Donald Trump administration, more and more black people are being harassed, attacked, and murdered at the hands of racist white civilians and police officers. But Trump and his supporters don't want you to focus on that–so much so that it doesn't feel impossible that the Fallon skit was intentionally weaponized as a distraction.
In the last few weeks alone we learned that Ahmaud Arbery was murdered senselessly by a white man while simply out for a jog, and we all witnessed the harassment of Christian Cooper, a black man who was threatened by a white woman in Central Park who didn't want to put her dog on a leash. It's clear that racism in America cannot be reduced to insensitive skits from 20 years ago but is instead a current and deadly problem. What Jimmy Fallon did in 2000 was racist, yes; but don't let that distract you from the deadly consequences of racism in 2020, don't let celebrity apologies make you take your eyes of our lawmakers, who aren't doing enough to protect people of color in this country. Don't let the latest "#_____isoverparty" trend distract you from the deadly consequences of racism in our laws, culture, and criminal justice system.
