"Comedy Nation This Week" - March 16, 2012

Here's today's podcast with me, Laurie Buckley, Dave Plunkett and host Bill Bronner:

The panel discuss the recent GOP primaries, the War on Women, Sudan and more.

Trippitorial - Southern Strategy

I have never eaten grits. I’m not opposed to eating grits, but I’m not going out of my way to eat grits. And I’m certainly not going to eat cheese grits. With all apologies to my farming constituency, dairy is not always my friend, but that’s another story.

I don’t even know…what are grits? I know what “true grit” is, but I don’t think that applies in this situation, although in the movie, I think there was a scene where somebody was eating grits, but it might have been just mush, although then it would have been “True Mush,” and that’s a different movie altogether. I never had mush either. Is there a mush constituency? I know mush has a consistency.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I don’t have a southern strategy. I have nothing against saying y’all, as a matter of fact, I just said it. It’s just that I typically don’t say it. I once said, “Blimey,” but that was in southern England. “Blimey!” It was kind of a Dick Van Dyke interpretation. But if I was to run for president, and I want to make it perfectly clear, I am not running, I don’t think I would change who I am.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich like to pander. Newt’s better at it, probably because he looks like a panda. When Mitt panders, you just don’t believe him. If a presidential candidate talks to you like you're a redneck and it doesn’t bother you, you might be a redneck. If you know the Ten Commandments better than you know the bill of rights, you might be a redneck. Wait a minute. That’s not my act. That’s an act?

The Republican candidates in the race I am not in have had their fun in the South and now they’re on to Missouri, Puerto Rico and Illinois. I wonder if Mitt Romney knows the owner of the Cubs. Rick Santorum, on the other hand, is not too good at pandering. He told a newspaper in Puerto Rico that if the territory wants to become a state, they’re going to have to speak English, just like Jesus.  I guess that’s one way to court the Catholic vote.

Of course, maybe his real audience for that remarkable remark was in the States. Maybe he’s not as dumb as his religious beliefs. Of course, you have to be dope to listen to a Pope.

It’s like LBJ said when he signed civil rights legislation, “we’re gonna lose the south until the 2012 election.