Bill Maher Reads Some 'Conservative Porn' - worth a look-see

[tomm2thumbs]

Spoilers from the video:

This week Rupert Murdoch acquired Harlequin, the publishing outfit known for those incredibly steamy softcore porn, housewife-fetish books. Well, now that Murdoch owns it, Bill Maher suspected the books might take a rightward turn, and read an excerpt of what sounded a lot like some conservative fetish porn.

Maher read the mock book as a Fox News wet dream, with everything from the title to the asides filled with conservative clichés. One line describes a male character as a "widower whose wife had died in the War on Christmas."

And the pillow talk was just as cheesy, with lines like "drill, baby, drill!" and "Shh, don't speak. Until you learn to speak English."

____________

Trying not to put too many spoilers in print but want those who can't see the video to get the idea

[smallcat88]

1. I didn't even know

Harlequin was still around. Haven't seen one of those since I was in high school (more than 30 years ago). Maher is brilliant but should have done a joke about this being a conservative take on sex ed. Love anything Maher does though.

[Warpy]

2. They're still being cranked out like sausages

and they still sell like hotcakes.

Harlequin, it's not just for dessert any more, we're talking breakfast.

It's almost a weird subculture out there, informal and formal fan clubs all trading books back and forth.

I don't care how dull the shift was, I have never been able to get past page 4 of one of those things before flinging it across the room, propelled by curses.

[Bucky]

6. "cranked out like sausages"

[Kalidurga]

3. oh dear too sexy for prime time.

my mother loved those books. she would consider something like Twilight to be too intellectual.

[Enthusiast]

4. That was some funny shit! Way to go, Bill!

[mdbl]

5. We laugh now but just wait..

I'll bet the writing does take a turn for the weirder over the next decade. These things always become self-fulfilling prophecies.

[valerief]

7. Harlekin or Harlekwin? Maher says the former, but The Free Dictionary says the latter. nt

[xocet]

12. Dictionary.com has both pronunciations listed.

har·le·quin (hahr-luh-kwin, hahr-luh-kin)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/harlequin

Larousse has the following:

arlequin ( arlək?̃ )
nom masculin
Harlequin

http://www.larousse.com/en/dictionaries/french-english/arlequin/5237

From Larousse's entry, one may hear that the French pronunciation of the end of the word arlequin corresponds very approximately to the pronunciation that Bill Maher is using.

Here is a video that illustrates this pronunciation - unless you know some French picking the word out of the video's commentary may be difficult - it is pronounced between time indices 0:03 and 0:05 (almost exactly at 0:04):

I listened to the rest of the video, and it seems that the word arlequin is pronounced only that one time.

At any rate, this is likely the origin of the twofold pronunciation of harlequin.

[Jim Lane]

13. Dictionary, schmictionary, I'll go with rock stars.

As it happens, the word occurs in the first line of "Helplessly Hoping" by Crosby, Stills & Nash. They sing it as -kin. I checked a few covers of the song, on YouTube videos that were probably copyright violations, and all the ones I heard also said -kin.

End of story.

[xocet]

14. Thanks for bringing up that song. I had not heard it in a long time.

Here is the audio from the CSN website (http://www.crosbystillsnash.com/):

"Helplessly Hoping" excerpt:

"Helplessly hoping her harlequin hovers..."

www.crosbystillsnash.com/discography/1969/crosby-stills-nash/mp3/08.mp3

That is a great piece of alliteration.

Of course, my favorite from that album is "Wooden Ships":

Wooden Ships excerpt:

www.crosbystillsnash.com/discography/1969/crosby-stills-nash/mp3/06.mp3

There are so many wonderful songs on that album....

[EEO]

8. Excellent.

[Populist_Prole]

9. Well done! What's funny is I know people who actually talk like that

Desperately trying to steer the conversation toward politics any and every way they can. They do this by either hoping something they say sticks, or mostly to push your buttons enough to where you'll rebut.

Doesn't matter what the conversation was about either: Traffic lights, fenceposts, crabgrass, food, movies, TV, locomotives, mountains; The'll really reach ( without shame ) to frame it in politics.

I may laugh at their desperation, but then I think and wonder at how absolutelyexhausting it must be...the mental anguish and expenditure of energy required to always be "on" so to speak.

[MisterP]

10. it's like Tourrette's, isn't it? and it's never about the issues, neither--

it's "vote for the right guy OR WE'RE GOING TO THE ALASKA SERFDOM/SOCIALISM CAMPS": it's in both parties but that actually means it's NOT on "both sides of the spectrum," since our parties only pretend to cover acceptable discourse (while leaving out 70-90% of the country on most issues)
"These commenters think they can see the Matrix code of life -- the plan of it all, the unquestionable truth of everything. The large pin board in their brain is loaded with newspaper clippings and strings linking them together to form an intricate web of blame. At its center, where all the strings meet, is the word "Republicans" or "Democrats" or "that motherfucker Ralph Nader." No one in real life wants to deal with their hyper-political rants, so they surf the Internet and spread their whiny bullshit far and wide, for all visitors of the comment sections to smell and step in."
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-annoying-laws-using-computer/ (half of Cracked's good, the other is derived from Michelle Malkin and Dick Taverne)

[lordsummerisle]

11. Thanks, very funny n/t