Re: James Fulford’s blog post Don Rickles,"Racist"—Seriously?

From: Dave Shanken (email him)

He's not a racist, but he should have retired a decade ago. Comedian Rickles' "jokes" about Obama are unfunny, and the purpose of comedy is being funny. If he wants to do yesterday's material, he should do benefits at retirement homes.

See previous letters from Dave Shanken.

James Fulford writes: It’s a point of view—everyone has their own idea of what’s funny. I disagree, and I suggest that people watch Mr. Warmth, The Don Rickles Project (2008) which is online at Hulu.com, including the DVD extras, and see what they think.

But that’s not the point—it’s possible that many victims of censorship and blacklisting are bad. The point is that it’s as soon as he says something about Obama that he’s officially racist according to the youth of today. That’s because, to repeat what I said about Obama before he was elected: “anything you say about Obama is a gaffe; see how much trouble Joe Biden [was] in for saying Obama is ‘clean. ‘”