This is not about Rife’s banal, edge-lord jokes. It is about manufacturing outrage over whatever is handy and trending so you can sell advertising. You are not doing this to aid people “on the spectrum” or victims of domestic violence. You are doing this to advance numbers on a board that are tied to the performance…

I’d love to get a metric for how many people are actually upset. Besides the author I mean. Comedians can offend people, it happens. But this seems like a reach.

I think in part it’s because of a mismatch in expectations. No-one tuning in to It’s Always Sunny is expecting anything but shitty people doing shitty things in hilarious ways. You know you’re not getting a Safe For Church performance when you buy a ticket to a Jim Norton show.  It’s all very “Dead dove, do not eat”.

Yeah, if that one joke is about as bad as the whole special gets, then this is a non-story. (i.e. a perfect fit for The A.V. Club.) It’s just run-of-the-mill dark humor; nobody is seriously gonna interpret it as condoning domestic violence or anything.

Homer-ized Kirk Van Houten strangled Homer-ized Milhouse just last week in the Treehouse of Horrors episode.

Last week’s Halloween episode brought back the strangling bit. I’m not going to spoil it, but with the show’s lead time, it’s unlikely meant as a commentary on this recent “controversy”.

“but it is a job that people do”

Fun fact, actually not fun, Columbus Day was an apology to the Kingdom of Italy after the Hennessey Affair in New Orleans where in the 1890s an Irish police chief was shot dead by criminals and dozens of Italians were arrested.  Later a lynch mob killed over a dozen in what is the worst mass lynching in American…

In related AV Club news, a website that ushered its former writing staff out the door and replaced them with cheaper, more industry-friendly writers is reporting on the plight of writers.

If Hollywood could figure out a way to make limited-edition, foil-embossed hologram movies bagged and boarded, they’d jump on that too.

Hey, they can’t all be Corvette Summer.

The original story that inspired the film.

Hey now, Corvette Summer was 1978.  Don’t sell the man short.

You can also accidentally choke on your food, so you probably shouldn’t grill at all.

I agree with Knorr (formerly Lipton) sides are delicious and easy. I love their Alfredo pasta, Parmesan pasta, Chicken rice and Butter and Herb Rice.

Also, don’t suggest the use of a torniquet around the neck to cure a coworker’s verbal diarrhea. They don’t like that.

I’m pretty sure his sister Dot did, if only to tease him.

I’m Lance’s age & really liked James at 15/16. The nerdy guy getting the cute foreign exchange student was aspirational.

The more I hear about the idiotic unwritten rules about texting, the more I understand that most people should have their phones taken away from them for a week or two and be forced to interact with other humans instead. I say this as a misanthrope who hates interacting with other humans, yet here we are.