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After a decade of striving in the comedy clubs, Donald Jay Rickles got his big break in 1957, when Frank Sinatra saw him perform at a club.Noticing Sinatra in the audience, Rickles improvised his act to hilariously deride the legendary singer. "I just saw your movie The Pride and the Passion and I want to tell you, the cannon's acting was great," were among his lively zingers.Sinatra was in stitches, causing him to become Rickles’s foremost advocate and leading to him becoming a popular headline performer in Las Vegas.Clearly, Sinatra was among the rare variety of superstars who could laugh...

Could cancel culture actually stunt our society's strides towards better race relations?In the Washington Post, Philip Bump argues that we should all calm down about Dr. Seuss. He supports the decision by the children’s author’s estate to stop publication of a handful of his books with allegedly racist imagery. I say allegedly because, as I have written about before, our society has at least two competing definitions of what racism is. The more traditional one requires intent. The newer one does not. There is no way to know if Seuss intended to cause harm with the images, so it is...

Don Rickles in two great interviews with Tom Snyder from The Late Late Show With Tom Snyder (1997,1998).Don Rickles: Two appearances on The Late Late Show With Tom Snyder (1997, 1998; 48 mins)

Video Link Been watching 70s stuff last night and some today. Mostly Tonight Shows. Not the first time. Getting big time 70s nostalgia. This one is too funny. Great chemistry between all. Totally forgot how awesome Dom DeLuise was.

Don Rickles has died. I pray that his tribe increases. Mr. Comedy was so refreshingly anti-politically correct (PC). We need that, desperately. If he were a budding comedian in this day and age, his career would have died after one day on the stage. Imagine the SJWs crawling all over the stage and pushing this doddering grandpa off… for good! Rickles knew how to rib everyone and touch the hot-button issues. But he wasn’t vulgar or mean-spirited. He wasn’t a jerk. Here were some of his best lines: On the Tonight Show with Jay Leno: “You’re Chinese? That’s what they...

Don Rickles, the acidic stand-up comic who became world-famous not by telling jokes but by insulting his audience, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90. The cause was kidney failure, said a spokesman, Paul Shefrin. For more than half a century, on nightclub stages, in concert halls and on television, Mr. Rickles made outrageously derisive comments about people’s looks, their ethnicity, their spouses, their sexual orientation, their jobs or anything else he could think of. He didn’t discriminate: His incendiary unpleasantries were aimed at the biggest stars in show business (Frank Sinatra was a favorite...

Don Rickles, one of the most legendary, iconic and influential comedians in history, has died. We've learned Don died Thursday morning of kidney failure at his home in Los Angeles. His wife, Barbara, was by his side. Don rose to fame in the '60s ... he got a huge boost by making regular appearances on "The Tonight Show" and "The Dean Martin Show." Rickles got Frank Sinatra's attention in Miami Beach when he performed a comedy routine, and the 2 regularly worked together throughout the years. Rickles was the best insult comic ever, and was a master at roasting celebs...

Rickles died Thursday morning at his home in Los Angeles from kidney failure, his longtime publicist Paul Shefrin confirmed.

“Sweetie,” Don Rickles says, welcoming us to his sumptuous Spanish villa near Beverly Hills. “Can I get anything for you, dear?” This is the comedian known as the Merchant of Venom, the Insult King from Queens, Mr. Warmth (as in precisely the opposite). But not once in a convivial afternoon will he lob an insult our way, the sort he hurls at friends and fans alike, the latter paying handsomely for a dose of Rickles ridicule. At one point, he takes our left hand, bows his bullet head and, in the custom of an Old World courtier, bestows a kiss....

Here's a WWII Navy trifecta ... Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer plays the comic relief in this Official US Navy training film. The "Flight Chief" you see instructing him and the men about the parachute is Don Rickles, who had never acted before. The star is Robert Taylor, who directed and wrote the film. Taylor was an actual Flight Instructor, but mostly grounded in order to produce these films--about ten in all. Carl was also in the regular Navy, but in the Special Services in order to make films like this. But Rickles was Navy 100% and had not acted at all...

Don Rickles nearly hijacked the American Film Institute’s tribute to Shirley MacLaine on Thursday night at Sony Pictures Studios, unleashing a trademark barrage of insults that took aim at President Obama, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and the honoree herself. “I shouldn’t make fun of the blacks,” Rickles said, and then proceeded to do just that: “President Obama is a personal friend of mine. He was over to the house yesterday, but the mop broke.” The black-tie crowd, gathered to celebrate MacLaine, the 40th recipient of the AFI’s Life Achievement Award, alternately gasped at the 86-year-old comic’s put-downs and then found...

Comedian Don Rickles subs for a Bachelorette on this late-1960's segment of "The Dating Game." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXzu8qgkINs

You know what a true insult from comedian Don Rickles would be? It would be if you appeared on a stage with Rickles and did NOT receive an "insult" from the "Merchant of Venom." However, many media websites seem to be unaware of Rickles' stock in trade. They are crowing over the fact that they believe Don Rickles delivered serious insults to Bristol and Sarah Palin during a visit of the former to the Tonight Show last Thursday where the comedian was one of the guests. As you can see in this video (and below the fold), Rickles "insults" were...

A week has gone by since the "controversy" over the New Yorker cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama broke and the media is still wringing their hands in excruciating microanalysis over it. The ironic thing is that the true target of the New Yorker wasn't even Obama and his wife. They meant to satirize a "simplistic rightwing" attitude about the Obamas. Or at least how the left thinks the right views the Obamas. At this point, your humble correspondent will cease comment on the New Yorker cover to avoid the risk of falling into the overanalysis of humor trap that the...

With all the publicity about the leftwing outrage over the Obama New Yorker cover, I thought I would take you back to a time when politicians actually enjoyed being comedically roasted. Specifically the roast of Ronald Reagan by Don Rickles as you can see in this VIDEO of a Dean Martin Roast of the Gipper back around 1970. And no one enjoyed the roast more than Reagan. Take a good look at Reagan's reactions to Rickles humorous jabs. The ability to laugh at oneself is a true sign of character. Take note, Barack.

Speaking of the Opera, I guess if you want Music Director Donald Runnicles to stick around, you'd better vote for John Kerry in November. The Scottish maestro, in Salzburg to conduct Korngold's "Die Tote Stadt," told an interviewer from the Austrian paper Der Standard that the outcome of the presidential election could determine whether he stays in the United States: "I would really have to think about whether I could stay there [the United States] if Bush wins a second time," he said. "The American people can make a mistake once, but if they re-elect him, then they actually want...