Trump and his immigrant wife are insisting that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel for joking that Melania had the “glow of an expectant widow.” They insist this was an incitement to violence.
So the guy who says vicious stuff and then claims he was joking can’t recognize an actual joke when he hears one. A mean joke, maybe, but a joke nonetheless. Ironically, a lot of people are treating this whole gunman-at-the-ball incident as something of a joke, a publicity stunt to drum up support for the Passion of the Donald and his bunker-ballroom. The jokes are getting hard to identify.
“Laugh, Laugh,” released in December 1964, was among the first successful American responses to the British invasion that dominated popular music that year. The band’s name, invoking the famous British dandy, helped disguise their roots in San Francisco’s music scene.
The record was produced by a very young Sylvester Stewart, before he became known as Sly Stone. Guitarist Ron Elliott wrote the song, which Roger McGuinn credits as one of the first folk-rock tunes, though its debt to the Beatles is obvious. The single rose to No. 15 in Billboard, making the Brummels the first Bay Area band to crack the charts, helping turn San Francisco fertile ground for American record companies.
Here’s an idea of how big “Laugh, Laugh” was: An animated version of the band got to perform the song on “The Flintstones,” as the Beau Brummelstones. Maybe that’s where Sylvester Stewart got the idea for his new name.
